Cardinals

"God, therefore, is the one most simple essence of the entire universe."

"With the senses man measures perceptible things, with the intellect he measures intelligible things, and he attains unto supra-intelligible things transcendently."

"You know how the divine Simplicity enfolds all things. Mind is the image of this enfolding Simplicity. If, then, you called this divine Simplicity infinite Mind, it will be the exemplar of our mind. If you called the divine mind the totality of the truth of things, you will call our mind the totality of the assimilation of things, so that it may be a totality of ideas. In the divine Mind conception is the production of things; in our mind conception is the knowledge of things. If the divine Mind is absolute Being, then its conception is the creation of beings; and conception in the human mind is the assimilation of beings."

"It is you, O God, who is being sought in various religions in various ways, and named with various names. For you remain as you are, to all incomprehensible and inexpressible. When you will graciously grant it then sword, jealous hatred and evil will cease and all will come to know that there is but one religion in the variety of religious rites."

"Summitry was now reaching its premodern heyday, for reasons relevant to our larger story.Although by about 1500 several strong national states had emerged in Europe, they remained greatly dependent on their monarchs. This kind of personalized power is at the heart of summitry. One of the most famous encounters took place on the so-called Field of the Cloth of Gold in June 1520, toward the summit bringing together Henry VIII of England and François I of France. The young English monarch, whose titles still included “King of France,” had resumed the old struggle in 1512. But his advisor Cardinal Thomas Wolsey secured a truce and then arranged a summit to consummate an enduring peace. It took place on the edge of Calais, the last English enclave in France, in a shallow dip known as the Val d’Or. Both sides of the valley were carefully reshaped to ensure that neither party enjoyed a height advantage. A special pavilion was constructed for the meeting and festivities, surrounded by thousands of tents and a three-hundred-foot-square timber castle for the rest of those attending. Henry’s entourage alone numbered more than five thousand, while the French crown needed ten years to pay off its share of the cost."

"Wolsey turned out to be the most disappointing man who ever held great power in England and used it for so long with skill and high intelligence... His foreign policy, often brilliant and never negligible, had resulted in the isolation of England, the enmity of both Spain and France, and the king's failure to get his divorce; it had been based on a false estimate of English power and directed consistently to ends in which England had little interest. The administration, badly in need of reform, was on the contrary more confused than before; the reserves of treasure were gone, prosperity was declining, trade neglected. The Church, his special charge, Wolsey left in an unprecedented state of weakness... Only in the law he had done things that bore fruit, and much though he liked the work of a judge he would surely have been dissatisfied with a verdict that allowed him but this piece of success. And yet it is hard to see what else one can say. Embodying in himself the link with Rome and the height of the medieval polity, he pulled them down in his fall; his death marks the close of the older order with as much definition as any man's fate ever marks the fate of nations."

"Begot by butchers, but by bishops bred, How high his Highness holds his haughty head!"

"Be very, very careful what you put into that head, because you will never, ever get it out."

"I am come to leave my bones among you."

"Master Kingston, I see the matter against me now it is framed; but if I had served God as diligently as I have done the King He would not have given me over in my gray hairs."

"The Royal Navy was Henry's creation, and it saved both himself and his daughter after him when they adopted an island policy and defied the Catholic powers of Europe. Wolsey had no notion of the importance of sea power to England. He was a great medieval churchman, a civil servant of the old school, and a diplomatist of the Renaissance type. But of the future development of England at home and on the sea Wolsey had no vision at all. His master, with that curious instinct of oneness with the English people which was the secret of Tudor greatness, saw deeper. He could use Wolsey's consummate administrative powers during the years of his own apprenticeship in statecraft, and then pass over him along a path of his own which no Cardinal could be expected to tread."

"At the appointed hour on June 7, 1520, the Feast of Corpus Christi, the two monarchs with their retinues in full battle array appeared on the opposite sides of the valley. There was a moment of tense silence—each side feared an ambush by the other. Then the two kings spurred their horses forward to the appointed place marked by a spear in the ground and embraced. The ice was broken. They dismounted and went into the pavilion arm in arm to talk. Then began nearly two weeks of jousting, feasting and dancing that culminated in a High Mass in the open air. Choirs from England and France accompanied the mass and there was a sermon on the virtues of peace. n both choreography and cost, the Field of the Cloth of Gold resembles contemporary summits. In a further similarity, style was more important than substance: by 1521 the two countries were at war again. In many ways they were natural rivals, whereas Henry was bound—by marriage and interest—to France’s enemy Charles V, king of Spain. Both before and after the Cloth of Gold Henry met Charles for discussions of much greater diplomatic magnitude. And although Wolsey hoped the meeting of the British and French elites might build bridges, this soon proved an illusion. As the Cloth of Gold demonstrated, egos were everything in these summits, with each side alert to any hint of advantage gained summits by the other. Commines was implacably opposed to such meetings for this very reason. It was, he said, impossible “to hinder the train and equipage of the one from being finer and more magnificent than the other, which produces mockery, and nothing touches any person more sensibly than to be laughed at.”"

"Egli è meglio perdere, dicendo il vero, che vincere con le bugie."

"A donna non si può credere, eziam poi che è morta."

"L’uomo mai un disegno non fa, che la fortuna un altro non ne faccia."

"Un buon servo non dee mai avere ozio."

"La donna è sopra la pecunia, come il sol sopra il ghiaccio, che del continue lo strugge e consume."

"Chi scappa d’un punto ne schifa cento."

"Chi ha amore in seno sempre ha i sproni in fiance."

"Un padrone, quanti ha più servi, tanti più ha inimici."

"Non può il vitello, e vuol che porti il hue."

"Non può essere superiore di consigli, chi è inferiore di costumi."

"(Che) bel fin fa chi ben amando muore."

"On ne rit plus, on sourit aujourd'hui, Et nos plaisirs sont voisins a l'eunui."

"Monseigneur, j'attendrai"

"Quel triste élève de la Grè Pourrait, en voyant sa beauté, Préférer les lis de Lucrèce, Et les paleurs de la sagesse, Aux roses de la volupté?"

"L'amour sacré de la patrie."

"Malheureux qui craint de rentrer Dans la retraite de son âme! Le coeur qui cherche a s'ignorer Redoute un censeur qui le blâme."

"Le naturel est le sceau du génie."

"And now go and serve your fatherland."

"It is just not true that, in the summer of 1933, when the name Galen was announced as the new Bishop, the whole diocese broke out in rejoicing...Nor is it the case that Galen was immediately recognized as being a great opponent of the despotic regime. On the contrary,the pugnacious pastor of St Lambert's was regarded, to put it bluntly, as a Nazi."

"Woe to mankind, woe to our German nation if God's Holy Commandment 'Thou shalt not kill,' which God proclaimed on Mount Sinai amidst thunder and lightning, which God our Creator inscribed in the conscience of mankind from the very beginning, is not only broken, but if this transgression is actually tolerated and permitted to go unpunished."

"Who will be able to trust his doctor any more? He may report his patient as 'unproductive' and receive instructions to kill him. It is impossible to imagine the degree of moral depravity, of general mistrust that would then spread even through families if this dreadful doctrine is tolerated, accepted and followed."

"Then, it is only necessary for some secret edict to order that the method developed for the mentally ill should be extended to other 'unproductive' people, that it should be applied to those suffering from incurable lung disease, to the elderly who are frail or invalids, to the severely disabled soldiers. Then none of our lives will be safe any more. Some commission can put us on the list of the 'unproductive,' who in their opinion have become worthless life. And no police force will protect us and no court will investigate our murder and give the murderer the punishment he deserves."

"If you establish and apply the principle that you can kill 'unproductive' fellow human beings then woe betide us all when we become old and frail! If one is allowed to kill the unproductive people then woe betide the invalids who have used up, sacrificed and lost their health and strength in the productive process. If one is allowed forcibly to remove one's unproductive fellow human beings then woe betide loyal soldiers who return to the homeland seriously disabled, as cripples, as invalids. If it is once accepted that people have the right to kill 'unproductive' fellow humans--and even if initially it only affects the poor defenseless mentally ill--then as a matter of principle murder is permitted for all unproductive people, in other words for the incurably sick, the people who have become invalids through labor and war, for us all when we become old, frail and therefore unproductive."

"Have you, have I the right to live only so long as we are productive, so long as we are recognized by others as productive?"

"What does one do with such an old machine? It is thrown on the scrap heap. What does one do with a lame horse, with such an unproductive cow? No, I do not want to continue the comparison to the end--however fearful the justification for it and the symbolic force of it are. We are not dealing with machines, horses and cows whose only function is to serve mankind, to produce goods for man. One may smash them, one may slaughter them as soon as they no longer fulfil this function. No, we are dealing with human beings, our fellow human beings, our brothers and sisters. With poor people, sick people, if you like unproductive people. But have they for that reason forfeited the right to life?"

"These unfortunate patients must die but rather because, in the opinion of some department, on the testimony of some commission, they have become 'worthless life' because according to this testimony they are 'unproductive national comrades.' The argument goes: they can no longer produce commodities, they are like an old machine that no longer works, they are like an old horse which has become incurably lame, they are like a cow which no longer gives milk."

"I encouraged them, each who was able, to serve the Fatherland...I have done this [volunteered] because I believe I must be a good example for my community."

"These ten commandments come to us as a Divine Revelation, as a document signed by God Himself [-] But these books contain a higher wisdom besides. Not the wisdom of the street corners, nor the wisdom of the learned schools, but the conduct which God requires of us"

"The Encyclopedia Britannica says: "Repelled by Nazi totalitarianism, neopaganism, and racism, Faulhaber contributed to the failure of Hitler’s Munich Putsch (1923)... During the Nazi regime he delivered his famous sermons entitled Judaism, Christianity, and Germany... Throughout his sermons until the collapse (1945) of the Third Reich, Faulhaber vigorously criticized Nazism, despite governmental opposition. Attempts on his life were made in 1934 and in 1938. He worked with American occupation forces after the war, and he received the West German Republic’s highest award, the Grand Cross of the Order of Merit.""

"Hitler biograpger Ian Kershaw described Faulhaber as "a man of sharp acumen, who had often courageously criticized the Nazi attacks on the Catholic Church". (Ian Kershaw; Hitler a Biography; 2008 Edn; WW Norton & Company; London; p. 373)"

"Cardinal Michael Faulhaber, Archbishop of Munich and temporary vice-rector of the Anima, even referred to his episcopal colleague [ Alois Hudal ] as 'court theologian of the NSDAP', even though he himself had for a long time maintained bridges between fascism and the Church. After 1945, however, he changed his position and distanced himself from Hudal."

"The Christian, so long as he observes the above conditions, is not forbidden to stand up for his race and for its rights. It is possible, therefore, without divided allegiance, to be an upright German and at the same time an upright Christian. Hence there is no need to turn our backs upon Christianity and to set up a Nordic or Germanic religion, in order to profess our nationality. But we must never forget: we are not redeemed with German blood. We are redeemed with the Precious Blood of our crucified Lord (I Pet. i, 9)."

"No nation ever insisted more on race and ties of blood than the Israelites of the Old Testament. But in the fullness of time the dogma of race was eclipsed by the dogma of faith. Around the cradle of Bethlehem there were Jews and pagans, shepherds from the land of Juda and wise men from the East. In the kingdom of this Child, according to the words of His Apostle, there is no distinction of the Jew and the Greek, for the same is Lord over all (Rom. x, 12)."

"Notwithstanding all the guidance of divine grace Israel did not know the time of her visitation. [-] The great majority of the people rejected the Messiah with the cry: 'His blood be upon us and upon our children' (Matt. xxvii, 25)."

"The times are not far distant when we used to hear the cry in Communistic circles: 'Private property is a theft from the people.' Fortunately these voices are now silenced."

"In recent years the fourth commandment has been stigmatized as un-German because it proposes a reward for its observance... on November I3th, 1933, the German Christians passed the following resolution : We expect our national Churches to shake themselves free of all that is un-German, in particular of the Old Testament and its Jewish morality of rewards... But it is not true to say that the fourth commandment teaches children a mercenary attitude with regard to God, that it encourages and consecrates an un-German spirit of self-seeking."

"Outside Palestine the ancient East treated women as slaves without rights... in the fourth commandment, Thou shalt honour thy father and thy mother, the mother is set upon the same level as the father in the eyes of the children. Such reverence for women was not revealed by oriental 'flesh and blood.'"

"...the most serious charges are made nowadays, not against the religious values of the Old Testament, but against its ethical values....the Sacred Scriptures of the Old Testament, which all Christians, of whatever denomination, treat with reverence, are spoken of in blasphemous terms which may not be repeated in this holy place."