Cardinals

"God or Nothing: A Conversation on Faith (Ignatius Press; Sew edition (September 1, 2015)) by Cardinal Robert Sarah (Author), Nicolas Diat (Author)"

"The Power of Silence: Against the Dictatorship of Noise (Ignatius Press; Paperback edition (April 15, 2017)) by Cardinal Robert Sarah (Author), Nicolas Diat (Author)"

"Mass is the salvific sacrifice, not a fraternal meal."

"I don't know who, in the space of three months of taking power, led you to make two decisions of enormous gravity that have reopened great wounds in the hearts of many Guineans."

"Africa could become the spearhead of the Church in its opposition to Western decadence"

"Unfortunately, it is easier to destroy a country than to re-build it."

"After his encounter with Jesus, a real Christian changes his conduct."

"We all must march to the same drum as Christ. The Church is reformed when the baptized march more resolutely toward holiness, allowing themselves to be recreated in the likeness of God by the power of the Holy Spirit."

"On that September morning I spent more than an hour with John Paul II. During the meal he asked me my age. I told him that I was thirty-four years old. He then let out a great burst of laughter and exclaimed: "But then you are a baby bishop! Un vescovo Bambino!" There was no arguing with that; I was at that time the youngest bishop in the world..."

"It is true, Archbishop Tchidimbo was very strict, intensely upright, and endlessly demanding. He used to come visit us at the minor seminary in Kindia. I remember that he insisted on the importance of spiritual qualities, and especially good character, moral integrity, and honesty. I can still hear him thunder to the class: "The first reason to expel a seminarian is for duplicity, the second, for duplicity, and the third, for duplicity.""

"No prophet ever encountered God without withdrawing into solitude and silence. Moses, Elijah, and John the Baptist encountered God in the great silence of the desert. Today, too, monks seek God in solitude and silence. I am speaking, not just about geographical solitude or movement, but about an interior state. It is not enough to be quiet, either. It is necessary to become silence. For, even before the desert, the solitude and the silence, God is already in man. The true desert is within us, in our soul. Strengthened with this knowledge, we can understand how silence is indispensable if we are to find God. The Father waits for his children in their own hearts."

"At the heart of man there is an innate silence, for God abides in the innermost part of every person."

"When he drapes himself in silence, as God himself dwells in a great silence, man is close to heaven, or, rather, he allows God to manifest himself in him."

"We bishops ought to tremble at the thought of our guilty silences, our complicit silences, our over-indulgent silences in dealing with the world."

"The Holy Spirit is the One Who, through the imposition of hands and the anointing of the sacred chrism during Confirmation, clothes the Christian with divine strength and makes him become the fragrance of Christ in every place."

"(About ordination of women) [No one] “has the power to transform this divine gift to adapt it and reduce its transcendent value to the cultural and environmental field. No council, no synod, no ecclesiastical authority has the power to invent a female priesthood… without seriously damaging the perennial physiognomy of the priest, his sacramental identity, within the renewed ecclesiological vision of the Church, mystery, communion and mission. The Catholic faith professes that the sacrament of holy orders, instituted by Christ the Lord, is one; it is identical for the universal Church. For Jesus, there is no African, German, Amazonia, or European priesthood."

"Spiritual crisis of faith"

"(On the necessity of priestly celibacy) The conjugal state concerns man in his entirety, and since serving the Lord requires all the resources of a person, it does not seem possible for the two vocations to be realised simultaneously."

"The source of the inner life: adoration of Jesus Christ, God made man, because we know and believe that in Him is the only true God, and therefore we kneel and prostrate ourselves before the Holy Eucharist."

"The idea that would enclose the Magisterium in a beautiful casket, detaching it from pastoral practice that might evolve according to circumstances, fashions and passions, is a form of heresy, a dangerous schizophrenic pathology. I therefore solemnly affirm that the Church of Africa will firmly oppose any rebellion against the teaching of Jesus and the Magisterium."

"(About the gender ideology) As far as my continent is concerned, I want to strongly denounce a desire to impose false values using political and financial arguments. In some African countries, ministries dedicated to gender theory have been created in exchange for financial support! These policies are all the more odious because the majority of African populations are defenceless, at the mercy of fanatical western ideologues."

"In my life, God has done everything; all I have wanted to do is pray. I am sure that the red of my cardinalate is truly a reflection of the blood of the suffering of the missionaries."

"The Church is not a human organization. She is not subject to the fashions of the day or the winds of doctrine. She must be faithful to Christ."

"Distraction is the devil’s tool for cutting man off from God."

"All migrants who arrive in Europe are penniless, without work, without dignity. This is what the Church wants? The Church cannot cooperate with this new form of slavery that has become mass migration."

"The West no longer knows who it is, because it no longer knows and does not want to know who made it, who established it, as it was and as it is. The West refuses to acknowledge its Christian roots. By losing its faith, Europe has also lost its reason to be. It is experiencing a lethal decline and is becoming a new civilization, one that is cut off from its Christian roots."

"All human life is a struggle against the shackles of evil, against the slavery of sin, in order to regain true freedom."

"Sin blurs man's face. Now Christ came not only to save mankind but also to repair what sin had broken, to snatch man away from everything that disfigures him, so as to restore to human destiny all its breadth and fulfillment."

"Two millennia ago, the apostles followed Christ. They left everything, and their lives were never again the same. The path taken by the apostles is still a model today."

"Many expect, as something normal, that God should pour out his mercy on them while they remain in sin..."

"On the question of marriage, there is a gulf between some people and the Church. The question, therefore, becomes quite simple: Must the world change its attitude, or must the Church change her fidelity to God?"

"(In an open leter to Denver Archbishop Samuel J. Aquila) Catholic sacramental theology is based on the premise that the sacraments are the work of Christ, which is the meaning of the Church’s affirmation at Trent (DS 1608) that the sacraments act ex opere operato, or, as St. Thomas wrote in the Summa, III, 68,8: ‘The sacrament is not wrought by the righteousness of either the celebrant or the recipient, but by the power of God.’ Owing to the nature of God, Christ and his works can never be diminished by any act on our part. [...] I write as a brother bishop with the suggestion that you consider offering a public clarification of your point."

"I’m moving along on the crest of the wave that he has created. That’s to my advantage, because there is a new enthusiasm, an awareness of what it means to be church. The fact that the media has tied my wagon to his horse has been very helpful because there is a way in which the Holy Father is opening us to look at how the church can be of service to the world. That’s something I’ve always believed. People ask me whether I like what the pope is saying. I say, “Yeah, but I’ve been saying this for forty years as a priest.” The real enthusiasm that people have for the life of the church and for the moment of transition in this archdiocese is tied in many ways to what the pope is doing."

"(About the Catholic Church sexual abuse cases). [Prelates] have to be very clear about an accountability procedure for accusations about bishops. Bishops have to, as a group, say, 'We cede our rights as bishops to have somebody else come in and investigate us,'. Every bishop has to be willing to say, 'I will allow myself to be investigated by an independent group if there is an accusation against me.'"

"Interviewer: That’s in fact what the pope is reported to have said in an interview published this morning in La Repubblica when asked before the elections what he thought about Donald Trump. “I do not pass judgement on persons or politicians, I just want to understand what are the sufferings that their way of proceeding causes to the poor and the excluded,” the pope is quoted as saying. Cardinal Cupich: That’s right, and I think before an election it is important that we do not single people out and speak about them in a personal way. That has never been our our way of acting, and it is disturbing that some have deviated from that tradition and practice. We need to return to speaking about these issues without speaking directly about individuals and criticizing them personally."

"The person of faith, (Henri Nouwen) says, is able to see in that moment the faithful presence of God, the one who has never left us, who keeps his word. He comes and picks up those bricks from the crumbling wall and begins to fashion something new, not a wall but a concave space, where we are invited to a deeper intimacy with the ones we love and with God. It is in that greater sharing, that greater intimacy that we begin to realize that the real stability in life is not the wall of our accomplishments but the faithfulness of the ones we love and the faithfulness of God, because both reveal how rich life is in keeping a promise, in keeping one's word. There is nothing to compare with having someone keep their word to us."

"Receiving the Eucharist is not a private action but rather a communal one, as the very word "communion" implies. [...] or that reason, the norm established by the Holy See for the universal church and approved by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops is for the faithful to process together as an expression of their coming forward as the Body of Christ and to receive Holy Communion standing."

"These stories offer us a model of how real refreshment of body and spirit is achieved. Three things are worth noting. First, rest comes as an invitation from Jesus. Recently, Pope Francis recommended to a group of priests that they should be open to the rest that comes from Jesus, rather than relying on other ways to relax, some of which can be very unhealthy, if not destructive. We can use entertainment, mind altering substances and other means that only serve as a temporary release of tension and fatigue. Superficial at best, these efforts end up provoking more restlessness and lethargy, especially if they bring upon guilt and depression. It is known, for instance, that alcohol can be a depressant and impact our overall mood. Jesus offers us the gift of rest, and so the first step is to surrender to the kind of rest he offers, and accept his invitation, rather than taking on this burden ourselves. Second, his invitation is to go to an “out of the way” place, a deserted place. This is not an invitation to take a vacation to an exotic location, but rather a summons to enter into those places in our lives that we ignore, yet which have an impact on us."

"Jesus doesn’t talk about being conservative or being liberal. He talks about knowing the truth or living in darkness. It is true and false that define our internal dynamics and not politics or law directly."

"Since life is a gift from God, it does not have to be strong and independent in order to be valuable. A human being in a civilized society does not have to be 'wanted' by anyone in order to merit legal protection."

"I expect to die in bed, my successor will die in prison and his successor will die a martyr in the public square. His successor will pick up the shards of a ruined society and slowly help rebuild civilization, as the Church has done so often in human history.""

"I was gazing toward the Circus Maximus, toward the Palatine Hill where the Roman emperors once resided and reigned and looked down upon the persecution of Christians, and I thought, ‘Where are their successors? Where is the successor of Caesar Augustus? Where is the successor of Marcus Aurelius? And finally, who cares? But if you want to see the successor of Peter, he is right next to me, smiling and waving at the crowds."

"It's hard to discover that you're hated."

"The workers saw themselves first as persons deserving of respect, and people demand respect more than they demand wages."

"There are only two kinds of arguments for euthanasia. The first is based on owning your life. Already in the last century, some philosophers and novelists began to talk of suicide as the ultimate act of self-control or self-possession. That is, of course, an illusion, for death is the surrender of all control or possession; and killing oneself is always an act of despair. It means a person has given up all hope. The second kind of argument is based on escaping from suffering. In actual fact, pain control is so far advanced now that suffering can be alleviated in almost all cases. The fear of suffering, however, creates a strong case for accepting a “right to die”. Right or no right, we will all die. The basic question, therefore, is always: since I must die, what is the meaning of life?"

"When it comes to abortion, euthanasia, and other sanctity of life issues, we should not suppose that our choice is between reforming the law and working to change the culture. We must do both. The work of legal reform is necessary, though not sufficient, ingredient in the larger project of cultural transformation. Yes, we must change people's hearts. But no, we must not wait for changes of heart before changing the laws. We must do both at the same time, recognizing that just laws help to form good hearts, and unjust laws impede every other effort in the cause of the Gospel of Life."

"In the long run, any attempt to reduce the complexity of the relations among the sacred, the properly secular, and the profane is doomed to failure, although each such effort can cause great human hardship in the short run. But in both the short and the long run, the Church, or the synagogue, or the mosque or the temple, is where you go when you want to be connected to the One who relates to everyone and every people. If the Church is where one goes to be truly free, how does the Church contribute to our understanding of who we are and what we should do in the activities that shape the world we live in, that fill the theater of secularity?"

"Some have recently argued that pluralism by its very nature demands civic secularism. There seems to be no logical reason why respect for the beliefs of more than a quarter billion Americans, 90 percent of whom declare themselves to be religious, should require us now to eschew the public expression of religion, even in discussing political affairs that have moral foundations or implications."

"Belief in God's presence and action in American public life, in social events, in education, in civic celebrations and political discussions, which for two hundred years had been considered broadly beneficent, changed radically on September 11, 2001."

"Seen as a whole, the direction of theological thinking has been characterized by a transference away from attention to the being per se of supernatural realities, and toward attention to their relationship with man, with the world, and with the problems and the affirmations of all those who for us represent the others."