Catholics From England

"The Doctor is said also to have invented an extraordinary weapon which will make war less brutal. It is described as a very powerful liquid which rots braces at a distance of a mile."

"Erratum. In my article on the price of milk, 'horses' should have read 'cows' throughout."

"Dr. Strabismus (Whom God Preserve) of Utrecht has patented a new invention. It is an illuminated trouser-clip for bicyclists who are using main roads at night."

"Rush hour: that hour when traffic is almost at a standstill."

"Dr. Wiseman was particularly pleased by the conversion of a Mr. Morris, who, as he said, was ‘the author of the essay, which won the prize on the best method of proving Christianity to the Hindoos.’"

"The placid pug that paces in the park."

"The model of a modern Prime Minister would be a kind of grotesque composite freak—someone with the dedication to duty of a Peel, the physical energy of a Gladstone, the detachment of a Salisbury, the brains of an Asquith, the balls of a Lloyd George, the word-power of a Churchill, the administrative gifts of an Attlee, the style of a Macmillan, the managerialism of a Heath, and the sleep requirements of a Thatcher. Human beings do not come like that."

"I am the Love that dare not speak its name."

"I was brought up with good values, so that's played a huge part in my life. I'm not outspoken, particularly, about my faith, but I'm a believer and I'm very pleased to have had a good life which I've had to this day. I'm very thankful – I've worked very hard, and having good morals instilled in me, behaving well as a citizen – I believe has helped me on the journey to where I am."

"Honesty and charity are sometimes difficult characteristics to hold together. Alan was an exemplar of both virtues. Alan never compromised on matters of theological truth, but we always knew that central to we are on a pilgrimage, with much to learn and discover."

"When the traitors understood that he was a mild man, and gentle and good, and did not exact the full penalties of the law, they perpetrated every enormity. They had done him homage, and sworn oaths, but they kept no pledge; all of them were perjured and their pledges nullified, for every powerful man built his castles and held them against him and they filled the country full of castles."

"King Stephen was a worthy peer; His breeches cost him but a crown; He held them sixpence all too dear, Therefore he called the tailor ‘lown.’ He was a king and wore the crown, And thou’se but of a low degree: It’s pride that puts this country down: Man, take thy old cloak about thee!"

"Stephen (by the grace of God), king of the English, to the justices, sheriffs, barons, and all his servants and liegemen, both French and English, greeting. Know that I have granted, and by this my present charter confirmed, to all my barons and vassals of England all the liberties and good laws which Henry, king of the English, my uncle, granted and conceded to them. I also grant them all the good laws and good customs which they enjoyed in the time of King Edward. Wherefore I will and firmly command that both they and their heirs shall have and hold all these good laws and liberties from me and my heirs freely, fully and in peace. And I forbid anyone to molest or hinder them, or to cause them loss or damage in respect of these things under pain of forfeiture to me."

"I'm now on the death track. There is a time when God lets us jump tracks. It seems strange we don't want to go to God but I think it needs a grace to see that."

"Bishop Clark exercised his theological and pastoral gifts in many ways both to his own diocese, to the Catholic Bishops' Conference, and to the wider Christian family both nationally and internationally. Truly, he can be termed a good shepherd."

"As a child, the person of Jesus Christ was really really present to me. I wasn't a particularly pious child but I knew that Jesus was real in my life, I knew that he was with me, and again my prayer as a kid wouldn't have been a pious type of prayer. It would have just been a conversation with a friend and sometimes as curt and straight forward as a conversation with a friend."

"In this Season of Advent I am more aware that we unite with the whole Church and especially in Pakistan to prepare the welcome the Birth of Our Saviour whom comes to us in poverty and in the midst of our joys and sorrows. Finally when I see the red mission box I know how important those pennies are to the lives and faith of our brothers and sisters."

"If we are people of reconciliation, if we are reconciled to each other in our own country, reconciled to the different communities that make this a nation, transfer that into our concern and our love for our neighbour. We're called to be good neighbours, and that’s the first stage of evangelisation – to be a good neighbour."

"One doesn't become a priest in order to become a Bishop... The only difference has been that whereas I was doing it at a parochial level, I've been doing it at a diocesan level for the past 15 years."

"The celebration of the Mass is not something to be a matter of personal choice. We celebrate as a community, as the entire Church and the Church throughout the centuries, has always regulated the form of liturgy that it has come to believe is more pertinent for a particular age."

"A sinful world creates many false kingdoms around its own selfishness. Sin, no less than despotic reigns in the past, has the subtle power to subject us to its own reign and influence. On this day we proclaim that Christ is the only King with the power to change and claim our lives."

"Scandal impacts the very sacramentality of the Church and damages our evangelizing mission. Of course, we must also remember that evangelization is always two-way, like breathing in and breathing out."

"It was a source of great joy to pass these three weeks not only "sub Petro" but "cum Petro". Pope Benedict was with us for most of the time, listening with arefuly and creating a friendly atmosphere amongst the Synod fathers; that's very important."

"Dialogue, that is the life of faith of the Christian, is not a matter of consciousness or of "self-consciousness" of the faith. That is just another affirmation of self, it is not the life of Christians. The life of Christians is Jesus. Those who engage in dialogue don’t have the "immediate" purpose of converting their interlocutor, but have the desire in their hearts of maybe one day kneeling together before Jesus with their interlocutor."

"I think this moment requires everyone to pray for peace, and not to put ourselves one against the other, but to work for national unity. Christians do not feel adequately protected, but they understand the difficulties in preventing acts of terrorism. In seven days the Coptic Orthodox will celebrate Christmas. I hope that this Christian community may celebrate the holiday in tranquility, peace and joy."

"As soon as men decide that all means are permitted to fight an evil, then their good becomes indistinguishable from the evil that they set out to destroy."

"I learnt more during my school-days from my visits to the Cathedral at Winchester than I did from the hours of religious instruction in school. That great church with its tombs of the Saxon kings and the mediaeval statesmen-bishops gave one a greater sense of the magnitude of the religious element in our culture and the depths of its roots in our national life than anything one could learn from books."

"This distrust of the bourgeois is no modern phenomenon. It has its roots in a much older tradition than that of socialism. It is equally typical of the mediaeval noble and peasant, the romantic Bohemian and the modern Proletarian. The fact is that the bourgeoisie has always stood somewhat apart from the main structure of European society, save in Italy and in the Low Countries. While the temporal power was in the hands of the kings and the nobles and the spiritual power was in the hands of the Church, the bourgeois, the Third Estate, occupied a position of privileged inferiority which allowed them to amass wealth and to develop considerable intellectual culture and freedom of thought without acquiring direct responsibility or power. Consequently, when the French Revolution and the fall of the old regime made the bourgeoisie the ruling class in the West, it retained its inherited characteristics, its attitude of hostile criticism towards the traditional order and its enlightened selfishness in the pursuit of its interest. But although the bourgeois now possessed the substance of power he never really accepted social responsibility as the old rulers had done. He remained a private individual — an idiot in the Greek sense — with a strong sense of social conventions and personal rights, but with little sense of social solidarity and no recognition of his responsibility as the servant and representative of a super-personal order. In fact, he did not realize the necessity of such an order, since it had always been provided for him by others, and he had taken it for granted."

"The Bolshevik philosophy is simply the reductio ad absurdum of the principles implicit in bourgeois culture and consequently it provides no real answer to the weaknesses and deficiencies of the latter. It takes the nadir of the European spiritual development for the zenith of the new order."

"In reality the existing tendency toward social uniformity is far from solving the problem of social organization; it merely provides the material, the unorganized mass, which has to be informed by living spirits and ordered to some higher end. Without this, social uniformity can mean no more than a reversion to barbarism, and democracy nothing more than the rule of the herd."

"For the Liberal the spiritual center of gravity was in the individual, and the realm of private opinion and private interests was the ideal world. Hence, when the Liberal spoke of religion as a purely private matter it was in compliment rather than in derogation. To separate the Church from the State — to keep religion out of politics, was to elevate it to a higher sphere of spiritual values. But today in the democratic world, these values have been reversed. The individual life has lost its spiritual primacy, and it is social life which has now the higher prestige, so that to treat religion as a purely individual and personal matter is to deprive it of actuality and to degrade it to a lower level of value and potency. To keep religion out of public life is to shut it up in a stuffy Victorian back drawing room with the aspidistras and antimacassars, when the streets are full of life and youth. And the result is that the religion of the Church becomes increasingly alienated from real life while democratic society creates a new religion of the street and the forum to take its place."

"There will always be, I suppose, those people who are simply ignorant of the situation and people who would deny we are in such a difficult place. We've got to go on making sure that people understand the seriousness and the urgency of what we face at the moment."

"On the Cross we venerate God who does not just offer us sympathy, from the safe distance of heaven; but rather God who, in his love for all humanity, became a human being, Jesus, who revealed God's love in his words and actions and, most especially, in his being willing to suffer and die on a Cross for us and all humanity, so as to become our Saviour."

"We all know how easy it can be to submit passively to the opinions of the crowd. But the Christian in whom Christ is risen sometimes needs to dare to think and act differently, not because they are arrogant, but because they listen carefully and respond to the guidance of God's Holy Spirit at work within them. They know they are not alone, and that God's grace will provide them with what they are lacking."

"I would say there's something for everybody at shrines of Our Lady."

"When I worked as a University Chaplain some years ago one of my tasks was to welcome students, of all faiths and none, to their new life and the work of the chaplaincy. Odd though it may sound, I spoke first not of God, but of sin and human imperfection. People may or may not believe in God; sadly all human beings are confronted with the effects of human sin."

"Our Church, along with the other Churches in that area need to grasp that as an ecumenical opportunity and we must also be respectful of the other faiths represented within our community."

"For now, I find peace in accepting the appointment from a trust that the Lord has placed in me. I have to deepen my relationship with Christ, the Good Shepherd, who laid down his life for his sheep."

"One key fruit from meeting with curial officials is the opportunity simply to meet in person. It is always easier to write, if the occasion arises, to someone whom one has met personally."

"You cannot be a Christian in isolation, the gospel makes that clear, what we're called to is communion, we are called to live as the body of Christ."

"It was all much simpler than today - naive, looking back on it," Stiles says. "It wasn't until '70 in Mexico that there was any hint of medical stuff. Alf's preparations for Mexico, by the way, were incredible. They'd be reckoned obsolete by today's standards but in them days they was revolutionary. No stone was left unturned. He even took HP Sauce out there. I'll always remember that: HP Sauce on the tables. But for '66 we were at home, nothing special needed."

"My advice to those who are discerning religious vocation is take the risk, follow your sense of calling and you will know in time how God is calling you. Whether your destination is the priesthood or not, through the process of exploration you will discover the deepest desires of your heart. That is, how God is speaking to you in the depths of your being. You will then be fully able to commit to the sacrifices it takes to enter into priesthood such as family and a particular career."

"We need the voice of the prophets of old who would speak out and say, every violation of someone's human dignity is a sin and an offence to God."

"Bishops have a certain standing in the life of the life of the community, but when you're a sick person, then you're on par with everybody else, and that's a very good thing, I think, there's no privilege in that sense any longer, of status or office, or whatever it may be. You belong in the place where all human beings belong: in the hands of the Lord and waiting on his person and his love."

"Dialogue for the sake of conversation serves no ethical, moral or practical purpose. Dialogue that is one way, or in which we are silent about our grave concerns about injustice, or where we end up kowtowing, appeasing or unwittingly complicit with evil, is immoral."

"The thing that touches people's hearts is the example of Christian life within families, within marriages, reaching out to the poor and those who are in particular need in local societies, and a desire to actually love in the sense of being willing to give of ourselves, to spend our own energy for the good of others, whatever the return seems to be for ourselves, in the desire that this will show our faith."

"We are all disciples of the same Master in the same mission. With the White Father community in Ghardaïa, I hope to find spiritual and fraternal support in line with our White Father Charism, which is deeply rooted in my heart without for all that interfering in what is proper to them. I admit that living alone outside community will be a sacrifice for me, being the White Father that I am."

"It was an intriguing story that met me when first installed as Bishop of the Forces and I immediately realised what a good opportunity it was, not only to return the statue, but also to demonstrate a united faith across two countries that have experienced political division."

"In his Mathura: A District Memoir, Growse has recorded his exhaustive survey and research about Brajbhoomi. He was so overhelmed by the vandalism that visited the area repeatedly, that he wrote feelingly, although his home was in far away England. To quote: thanks to Muhammadan intolerance, there is not a single building of any antiquity either in the city itself or its environs.Its most famous temple - that dedicated to Kesava Deva (Krishna) - was destroyed in 1669, the eleventh year of the reign of the iconoclast Aurangzeb (Alamgir was also his name). The mosque (idgah) erected on its ruins is a building of little architectural value. Mahmud Ghazni was however the first iconoclast to vandalise Mathura. That was in 1017 AD about which Growse wrote: If any one wished to construct a building equal to it, he would not be able to do so without expending a hundred million dinars, and the work would occupy two hundred years, even though the most able and experienced workmen were employed. Orders were given that all the temples should be burnt with naphtha and fire and levelled with the ground. The city was given up to plunder for twenty days. Among the spoils are said to have been five great idols of pure gold with eyes of rubies and adornments of other precious stones, together with a vast number of smaller silver images, which, when broken up, formed a load for more than a hundred camels. The total value of the spoils has been estimated at three millions of rupees; while the number of Hindus carried away into captivity exceeded 5,000.... To go back to Aurangzeb, over two centuries after the desecration, Growse felt that: of all the sacred places in India, none enjoys a greater popularity than the capital of Bra}, the holy city of Mathura. For nine months in the year, festival follows upon festival in rapid succession and the ghats and temples are daily thronged with new troops of way-worn pilgrims. So great is the sanctity of the spot that its panegyrists do not hesitate to declare that a single day spent at Mathura is more meritorious than a lifetime passed at Benares. All this celebrity is due to the fact of it being the birthplace of the demi-god Krishna. In his chapter entitled The Bra} Mandai, the Ban Yatra and the Holi as Growse puts it: Not only the city of Mathura, but with it, the whole of the western half of the district has a special interest of its own as the birthplace and abiding home of Vaishnava Hinduism. It is about 42 miles in length with an average breadth of 30 miles and is intersected throughout by the river Jamuna. In the neighbourhood is Gokul and Brindaban, where the divine brothers Krishna and Balaram grazed their herds. He continues: Almost every spot is traditionally connected with some event in the life of Krishna or of his mythical mistress Radha."

""So many names that at a hasty glance appear utterly unmeaning can be traced back to original Sanskrit forms as to raise a presumption that the remainder, though more effectively disguised, will ultimately be found capable of similar treatment: a strong argument being thus afforded against those scholars who hold that the modern vernacular is impregnated with a very large non-Aryan element" (Growse 1883, 353)."