Roman Catholic Priests

"In Christ’s Name, let us begin. For Christ has finished."

"Charity, it has been said, is the pardoning of the unpardonable and the loving of the unlovable."

"The car was now ascending rapidly towards the pass up across the huge tumbled slopes, ravines, and cliffs that lie like outworks of the enormous wall. Seen from this great height they were in themselves comparatively insignificant, but they at least suggested the vastness of the bastions of which they were no more than buttresses."

"Nothing is so bad as not trusting God."

"The tragedy of a child over a broken doll is not less poignant than the anguish of a worshipper over a broken idol, or of a king over a ruined realm."

"Robin felt a strange thrill of glory at the thought that he bore with him, in virtue of his priesthood only, so much consolation. He faced for the first time that tremendous call of which he had heard so much in Rheims—that desolate cry of souls that longed and longed in vain for those gifts which a priest of Christ could alone bestow."

"Growth means the unfolding of interior capacities through the assimilation of external substances."

"The Ireland of to-day feels acutely that the springs of her greatness lie in the past, and that by restoring ancestral traditions, blending them naturally with existing social forms, and by drawing strength and dignity from the memories of pre-Christian and medieval Ireland, before the Anglo-Norman had deformed and strangled her, she may yet discover her true self, and start life afresh."

"Turn your eyes again upon your prayer, as God looked again upon each of His works in the creation of the world, and examine attentively what fruit you have drawn from your prayer, what resolutions to serve Him ; for this is like collecting the grain from the threshing floor, and conveying it to the granary to make. use of it and not to lose it."

"Mexico is a land of contrasts. Tropical heat and perpetual snow; inordinate riches and abject poverty; aboriginal Indians and twentieth century millionaires; a constitution and a state of continual anarchy; superstitiously religious, and yet pagan and savage."

"What really attracts the will, and stirs it as a motive to action, is the goodness of the object presented by the intellect; for the rational appetite is by its nature an inclination to good. Hence it is that the desire of perfect happiness necessarily results from rational nature, and that the supreme good, clearly apprehended by the mind, cannot but be desired and embraced by the will. Hence, too, a law is not presented as obligatory, unless its observance is known to be necessarily connected with the attainment of the supreme good. It is, therefore, wrong to denounce the pursuit of happiness as immoral or repugnant to human nature. On the contrary, a paralysis of all human energy and utter despair would result from bidding man to act only from the motive of stern necessity inherent in law, or forbidding him ever to have his own good in view or to hope for blessedness."

"Variations are naturally to be expected in four distinct, and in many ways independent, accounts of Christ's words and deeds, so that their presence, instead of going against, rather makes for the substantial value of the Evangelical narratives."

"I have trusted very much and been sometimes deceived; but I know that had I trusted less I would have been still oftener deceived."

"He was to me, for more than a quarter of a century, a most affectionate, devoted, and faithful friend, and a wise and able counsellor."

"No heresy has ever been so wholly and hopelessly false that it did not reflect at least some broken lights of truth. This we may rightly say of Socialism where truth and error, fact and fiction are forever blended in an indistinguishable confusion. What is good we must keep and perfect, what is wrong and evil we must relentlessly reject."

"Catholic scholars justly regard Biblical introduction as a theological science. They are indeed fully aware of the possibility of viewing it in a different light, of identifying it with a literary history of the various books which make up the Bible. They distinctly know that this is actually done by many writers outside of the Church, who are satisfied with applying to the Holy Scriptures the general principles of historical criticism."

"Jesus Christ reigns here over the minds of his servants by faith, and over their hearts by charity. The greatest enemies of his spiritual kingdom are errors and vices, heresies, schisms, and scandals. Christ himself has foretold that his Church on Earth should have such enemies to encounter. She is not here below in the place of her repose, but in a place of trial, and in a foreign country. She must of course necessarily expect to meet with severe trials and persecutions, and must be prepared to combat them."

"Impartial observers of Indian affairs admit that the greatest good accomplished for the Indian has been through the agency of religious schools, and particularly of Catholic schools, and it is in this cause the Bureau has done its best work."

"Only those who unite scientific knowledge of morality with practice in its application may be trusted to solve promptly and safely problems of conscience. Personal, social, commercial, and political experience proves this abundantly. Moral education requires long, patient, and delicate training, and few acquire it without the aid of casuistry."

"Agassiz says the American Continent was the first created; it will be the last in the fulfillment of the designs of the Creator. A cosmopolitan land—cosmopolitan in the intentions of its founders, in the bloody struggle of its defenders—God has in store for you who peopled it the accomplishment of admirable results. Northward are the Esquimaux; southward is Africa. You summon from walled China the unmoving people to dwell amid the moving nation, the stationary to mingle with the progressive; all impelled by the breath of you, the great humanitarian people. The foundation of your people is the Bible, the book that speaks of God the living word of Jesus Christ. In an admirable manifesto from your President, there shines through his words the Christian faith. A belief in Jesus is at the root of this nation. ... And when I return, I shall tell Europe that I have found here liberty associated with Christianity, and have been among a people who do not think that to be free they must be parted from God."

"The controversial importance of this subject in more recent times is, of course, obvious. The Catholics answered the accusation of Protestant writers, that their special doctrines could not be found in the writings of the early Fathers, by showing the existence of this practice of reserve. If it was forbidden to speak or write publicly of these doctrines, silence was completely accounted for."

"Men must understand that if they go to prostitutes, they are contributing to the enslavement of these girls and to the growth of criminal organisations."

"The important thing is to work so that, from childhood, people can nurture the infinite love that is present within each of us."

"It is the same logic that leads to abortion: if the child is a nuisance, it is not accepted, it is eliminated; and the citizens pay the costs. But the child is a person, a unique word of God, with its own history. [...] But then what is the difference between the Mafia, the Camorra and the 'Ndrangheta, who kill their opponents because they are a nuisance, and those who argue that it is acceptable to kill someone who is a nuisance in a premeditated murder?"

"The girls forced into prostitution on the streets made me understand the beauty of chastity and the deep need for a relationship with God the Father."

"There are certain negative influences in today's society that lead young people to drugs and keep them there because they take away their sense of responsibility, teaching them to do whatever they want, to have everything immediately and at any cost, instead of encouraging obedience to fundamental values."

"Prostitution comes from the heart, but it is also from the heart that good can begin."

"I am addressing those concerned directly: there is no right to recognition of same-sex unions. Homosexuality can be corrected and the psychological deviation that is inherent in it can be removed. I am appealing to you to save the identity of natural and Christian marriage. Only you can save it by rejecting what is not your own."

"Acquired homosexuals are the effeminate men mentioned in Scripture who are not allowed to enter the kingdom of heaven. Acquired homosexuality can be overcome and, being a vice, must be removed at all costs."

"The only thing worse than him on the radio is all static."

"It would have been tragic if Leonard Feeney, the great apostle of salvation within the church, had died an excommunicate. ... There are certain texts from the Bible that I can never read without hearing, in my imagination, the voice and intonations of Leonard Feeney."

"Ceremonies are employed to embellish and adorn sacred functions; to excite in the faithful sentiments of respect, devotion, and religion, by which the honour of God is increased and the sanctification of the soul is obtained, since these constitute the principal object of all liturgical acts; to lead the illiterate more easily to a knowledge of the mysteries of religion; to indicate the dispositions necessary to receive the sacraments worthily; and to induce the faithful to fulfil with greater docility the obligations which the reception of the sacraments imposes on them."

"Do you know a good way to convince ladies who adore he-men that you are a he-man and not a sissy? Raise a challenging mustache, write a humorless book full of unabridged hells and damns and kindred phrases in the field of sex, and then come out blatantly in favor of the Loyalists' cause in Spain."

"As good a pun as was ever spoken, to my memory, was made by a young English Jesuit now teaching at Wimbledon College. He met in a railway train a young man who said he was constructing a philosophy of his own. The young man declared that he set the foundation of his private philosophical system in the following epistemological principle: "I am, therefore I think!" "Oh," replied the young Jesuit, "isn't that putting Descartes before the horse?""

"Though art be on vacation, The studio remains; The well of inspiration Is backing out of drains. Come, let us daub, my crazys, Surrealize the thrill Of soapsuds on the daisies And skylarks in the swill. Ours not to reason whether Surprise surpasseth wonder, When man hath joined together What God hath rent asunder."

"It is hard to believe that he chops nearly as much wood as he pretends to, or that cows, hens, and barnyards are his chief loves. He has been known to enjoy the tea life of social England and is at present a professor of poetry in a college."

"They put a hood upon his head And bound it with a thong. Then—England lost a ball of lead And Ireland lost a song."

"Motherhood is never honored by excessive talk about the heroics of pregnancy."

"People who believe in little laugh at little."

"(About the opening of the holy door) This is a great opportunity that God is offering us: let us all welcome it. A few days ago, I was in Loreto with Don Oreste Benzi and three elderly priests who were celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of their ministry. One of them said: 'The year 2000 is coming: what do you want to change? Don q:it:Oreste Benzi looked at us and replied: “There are five of us: if we five change, a lot will change”. So, we must take these words as an example: each of us can do something, each of us can give a little light, because each of us is an open window through which God's light can pass."

"The collapse of the parameters for accepting oneself as male in today's society completes the picture of factors that create conditions favourable to homosexuality."

"To stand tall, you need to know how to kneel in prayer."

"The other day it was reported in the newspaper that a Maine hen had won a prize for having hatched nearly 200 pullets in the course of a single year. Now what ought the faithful youngster to remark on hearing that? He ought to remark that the hen deserved the Pulletser Prize."

"The Devil and demons, being created, [...] are necessarily limited in their being and acting."

"The Devil seeks to know our evil inclinations and obtains this knowledge, in the ordinary way, through temptation."

"The Devil cannot inhabit the soul; there can be no "demonic possession of the soul" [but solely of the flesh]."

"Demons cannot know the future."

"Demons cannot know our souls or our thoughts."

"The Devil is not able to give his devotees everything he promises."

"Demons are found where they act."