Roman Catholic Bishops

"There is not a single striving or pursuit or yearning of the human heart, even in the midst of the most sensual pleasures, that is not a dim grasping after the Infinite."

"It is assumed by many reformers that the principal and major cause of unhappiness is economic insecurity, but this theory forgets that there are economic problems only because men have not solved the problems of their own souls. Economic disorder is a symptom of spiritual disorder."

"All intense interest in luxury is a mark of inner poverty. The less grace there is in the soul, the more ornament must be on the body."

"There are no plains in the spiritual life; we are either going uphill or coming down. Furthermore the pose of indifference is only intellectual. The will must choose. And even though an "indifferent" soul does not positively reject the infinite, the infinite rejects it."

"Anxiety increases in direct ratio and proportion as man departs from God."

"[N]o man hates God without first hating himself."

"The revolt of the modern child against his parents is a miniature of the revolt of the modern world against the memory of 1900 years of Christian culture and the great Hebrew, Grecian and Roman cultures which preceded them. Any respect for that tradition is called "reactionary," with the result that the modern soul has developed a commentator mentality which judges yesterday by today, and today by tomorrow. Nothing is more tragic in an individual who once was wise than to lose his memory, and nothing is more tragic to a civilization than the loss of its tradition."

"The modern man is no longer a unity, but a confused bundle of complexes and nerves. He is so dissociated, so alienated from himself that he sees himself less as a personality than as a battlefield where a civil war rages between a thousand and one conflicting loyalties. There is no single overall purpose in his life. His soul is comparable to a menagerie in which a number of beasts, each seeking its own prey, turn one upon the other. Or he may be likened to a radio, that is tuned in to several stations; instead of getting any one clearly, it receives only an annoying static.If the frustrated soul is educated, it has a smattering of uncorrected bits of information with no unifying philosophy. Then the frustrated soul may say to itself: "I sometimes think there are two of me a living soul and a Ph. D." Such a man projects his own mental confusion to the outside world and concludes that, since he knows no truth, nobody can know it. His own skepticism (which he universalizes into a philosophy of life) throws him back more and more upon those powers lurking in the dark, dank caverns of his unconsciousness. He changes his philosophy as he changes his clothes. On Monday, he lays down the tracks of materialism; on Tuesday, he reads a best seller, pulls up the old tracks, and lays the new tracks of an idealist; on Wednesday, his new roadway is Communistic; on Thursday, the new rails of Liberalism are laid; on Friday, he-hears a broadcast and decides to travel on Freudian tracks: on Saturday, he takes a long drink to forget his railroading and, on Sunday, ponders why people are so foolish as to go to Church. Each day he has a new idol, each week a new mood. His authority is public opinion: when that shifts, his frustrated soul shifts with it."

"Christian theology is, in a certain sense, a psychology, since its primary interest is the soul, the most precious of things. Our Lord balanced a universe against a soul and found the soul worth more than gaining a world."

"Unless souls are saved, nothing is saved; there can be no world peace unless there is soul peace. World wars are only projections of the conflicts waged inside the souls of men and women, for nothing happens in the external world that has not first happened within a soul."

"The trouble with Hitler and other tyrants is that they practice what they preach. Because their doctrines are wrong, their deeds are wrong. Because Nazism as a creed is wrong, its workings are wicked."

"It makes no difference whether you have any rules in football; it depends upon how you play. It makes no difference whether you believe triangles have three sides; it depends on how you draw. Can we not see that if we believe wrongly, we will act wrongly?"

"If there is no difference between right and wrong, how can Hitler be wrong and how can we be right? Why are we at war, if it is not because right is more precious than life?"

"The man who has never made a mistake has no need of an eraser; just so the man who has never done anything wrong has no need of a Redeemer."

"Hitler had no need of God: in his own conceit, he was a god."

"No man has need of religion who is self-righteous, who is all he wants to be and all he ought to be."

"Before you deny God, ask yourself why you deny Him. Is it because of the way you live? A poem of Arthur Hugh Clough satirized those who wish there was no God because He interferes with their dishonesty, their lawlessness, or their license."

"Atheism is not a doctrine; it is a cry of wrath."

"We live in a sensate age. We are no longer governed by Faith, we are no longer governed by reason. We are governed by feelings."

"Another instance of how our Lord associated Peter with himself was in the payment of the temple tax. It is the only time in scripture where God ever associates a human being with himself under the personal pronoun we.... Now at the time of the payment of the temple tax our blessed Lord told Peter to pay it, and he said to pay it “for me and thee.” Then he adds, "that we may not scandalize." Here he makes himself one with Peter. Peter is associated with the Master in a way that no one else can ever be associated. We — Christ and Peter. That is why papal encyclicals begin with the word we."

"When the record of any human life is set down, there are three pairs of eyes who see it in a different light. There is the life as I see it. as others see it, and as God sees it."

"All my sermons are prepared in the presence of the Blessed Sacrament. As recreation is most pleasant and profitable in the sun, so homiletic creativity is best nourished before the Eucharist. The most brilliant ideas come from meeting God face to face. The Holy Spirit that presided at the Incarnation is the best atmosphere for illumination. Pope John Paul II keeps a small desk or writing pad near him whenever he is in the presence of the Blessed Sacrament; and I have done this all my life — I am sure for the same reason he does, because a lover always works better when the beloved is with him."

"Too many people get credit for being good, when they are only being passive. They are too often praised for being broadminded when they are so broadminded they can never make up their minds about anything."

"Some will not look on suffering because it creates responsibility."

"The only argument the world will listen to now is the argument of personal holiness. It has heard all the rest and rejected them."

"False compassion, which is gradually growing in this country, is a pity that is shown, not to the mugged, but to the mugger; not to the family of the murdered, but to the murderer; not to the woman who was raped, but to the rapist. ... There are some judges — some, in some of our courts; there are some social workers — not all; there are sob sisters; there are the social slobberers, who insist on compassion being shown to the muggers, to the dope fiends, to the throat slashers, to the beatniks, to the prostitutes, to the homosexuals, to the punks: so that today the decent man is practically off the reservation."

"No one can understand Communism who does not believe in the devil. The Communists believe in the devil. The Communists organized a so-called "patriotic" church. A few brain washed were to be in charge of the churches because they were loyal to the anti-God regime. One of the first orders given by the Communists to them was that the prayer to Prayer to Saint Michael be no longer said because it invoked the protection of St. Michael against "the wickedness and snares of the devil." As one Communist judge said: "We are those devils." It is hard for many in the free world to believe that there are not only bad men, but evil men. Bad men steal, rape, ravage and plunder. Evil men may not always do these things, but they seek to destroy goodness, virtue, morality, decency, truth and honor. Bad men who steal admit honesty; evil men who do not steal, call dishonesty "honesty," totalitarianism "democracy," slavery "freedom." Evil men can be nice at table, polite with women, courteous in Washington, refined in London and calm in Geneva. But the principle which guides their every move is the maxim of Lenin: every lie, trickery, knavery and deceit must be used to."

"Tolerance is an attitude of reasoned patience toward evil … a forbearance that restrains us from showing anger or inflicting punishment. Tolerance applies only to persons … never to truth."

"America, it is said, is suffering from intolerance — it is not. It is suffering from tolerance. Tolerance of right and wrong, truth and error, virtue and evil, Christ and chaos. Our country is not nearly so overrun with the bigoted as it is overrun with the broadminded."

"Unless there is a Good Friday in our lives, there will never be an Easter Sunday; unless there is a cross, there will never be an empty tomb; unless there is the torn flesh, there will never be the glorified body."

"If all things in this universe exist, it is because they participate in the Being of God, if there are some things with life, it is because they are reflections of the life of God; if there are beings endowed with intellect and will — like men and angels — it's because they are a participation of the Sovereign Intellect which is God."

"If there is continuity in the universe, it is fitting that there should be intelligent beings without bodies which are called angels."

"It takes three to make love."

"All our anxieties relate to time. … The major problems of psychiatry revolve around an analysis of the despair, pessimism, melancholy, and complexes that are the inheritances of what has been or with the fears, anxieties, worries, that are the imaginings of what will be."

"The principle of democracy is a recognition of the sovereign, inalienable rights of man as a gift from God, the Source of law."

"There are not a hundred people in America who hate the Catholic Church. There are millions of people who hate what they wrongly believe to be the Catholic Church — which is, of course, quite a different thing."

"Since a week ago last Saturday, we can no longer expect them to defend the law of God. These sects will work out the very logic of their ways, and in 50 or 100 years there will be only the Catholic Church and paganism. We will be left to fight the battle alone, and we will.""

"Reconciliation and unity cannot be achieved through a politically motivated Bill."

"The healing of a nation is a slow process that requires patience. It begins with truth telling, the confession of wrong-doing, the genuine respect for forgiveness and the willingness to accept the consequences of one's actions."

"I support the effort of government to bring about reconciliation and unity but this cannot be achieved through a Bill that has caused so much opposition, division and confusion in the country."

"The overthrow of a democratically elected government is a very serious crime and those involved — great or small — must face the consequences. Otherwise we will continue to see a repetition of coups and other politically motivated criminal activity."

"I publicly appeal to our President, our Prime Minister and the members of our Government to withdraw the Bill until such time as proper consultations can be held and appropriate amendments made."

""For I am holy." When I hear these words I recognize the voice of the Saviour. But shall I take away my own? Certainly when He speaks thus He speaks in inseparable union with His body. But can I say, "I am holy"? If I mean a holiness that I have not received, I should be proud and a liar; but if I mean a holiness that I have received - as it is written: "Be ye holy because I the Lord your God am holy" (Lev. 19:2) - then let the body of Christ say these words. And let this one man, who cries from the ends of the earth, say with his Head and united with his Head: "I am holy." … That is not foolish pride, but an expression of gratitude. If you were to say that you are holy of yourselves, that would be pride; but if, as one of Christ's faithful and as a member of Christ, you say that you are not holy, you are ungrateful. …"

"Of all the church fathers, it is Augustine (354-430) who speaks most frequently of abortion and presents the most detailed discussions of the nature and status of the fetus. This is a fruit of his lifelong concern and theological wrestlings with the questions of the origin of the soul, and when and how the fetus received a soul. He discusses a variety of solutions: (1) the soul is pre-existent (2) the soul is created by god at the moment of conception; (3) like the body, the soul comes from the parents; (4) the soul is infused at a particular stage in the development of the fetus. As I have mentioned in an earlier chapter, he never found a satisfactory solution to this question. He frequently makes a distinction between the unformed and the formed fetus; the latter term refers to the fetus which has received a soul. We find one example of this distinction in the treatise ‘’De Nuptiis et Concupiscientia’’, when Augustine condemns sexual intercourse detached from reproduction: “At times this lust-filled cruelty or cruel lust goes far that it even procured drugs to cause sterility, and if they are not effective, it somehow extinguishes and destroys within the womb the fetus already conceived, desiring that its own offspring perish before it begins to live. Or, if it was living in the womb, it desires that it be killed before it is born. Naturally, this distinction presupposed that the fetus receives a soul at one particular stage in its development; the consequence of this idea, which he shares with Jerome, is that only the abortion of a formed fetus that has a soul can be classified as murder. This becomes clear in the ‘’Questiones in Heptateuchum’’ 2.80, where Augustine refers to the Septuagint version of Exodus 21:2 and following and argues that the abortion of an unformed fetus is not murder, since one cannot say whether it already has a soul at that stage. Although the abortion even of an unformed fetus is morally reprehensible, the punishment for this act is limited to a fine. On the question whether the embryo is to be define as a part of the mother’’s body, Augustine breaks with Stoic thinking and Roman law, which affirmed that this was not the case."

"We have seen that Augustine draws an ambiguous picture of childhood. On the one hand, he emphasizes that the child is from birth a sinner. Against the Pelagians, who asserted that the little ones are innocent with respect both to actual sins and to their nature, Augustine ascribed to infants an original sin inherited from Adam. In Augustine’s boyhood, this universal human condition is manifested in behavior and deeds that seek pleasures, renown, and truth in things that belong to the created world instead of in the Creator. In his adolescence, this was manifested by unrestrained sexual desire and by the committing of sin without the purpose of gain, illustrated by the theft of pears. Though the infant has not committed any personal sin, Augustine tends to take babies’ greed for the breast and their jealousy as manifestations of their sinful nature. It is hard for a modern reader to agree with his explanation and evaluation of children’s behavior. What we tend to regard as sign of development, Augustine takes as evidence of the sinful nature of the child. His view that assigns little ones who die unbaptized to eternal punishment also sounds harsh to modern readers, and might be invoked (as the Pelagaian did) as evidence of a hostile attitude towards children. On the other hand, Augustine’s apparently negative view is balanced by an attitude that acknowledges the value of children, in whom Augustine finds that “everything is wonderful and worthy of praise.” Although this appraisal is related to the fact God has provided children with the gifts that enable them to seek and find him, so that they thus realize the ultimate purpose of life, it also reflects a striking recognition of the value of children. Likewise, the description of infants and children in his ‘’Confessions’’ reflects warm sympathy with how they experience life. Perhaps more importantly, Augustine’s deep concern about the salvation of children, for which baptism was a precondition, indicates that he regarded children as full and worthy religious beings who need to same spiritual nourishment as adults. However, I can find no connection between this expression of concern for the well0being of the child’s soul and the status and role of children in social life. Furthermore Augustine considers children as subjects with responsibility for their moral behavior. He depicts an increasing accountability as they mature and their abilities to speak and to reason develop Because babies lack speech and the faculty of reason, there is no point for adults to rebuke them. But when they reach the age when they learn to speak and reason develops, the conditions for knowing and understanding what is right and wrong gradually emerge and children become increasingly responsible for their moral behavior. When children reach adolescence, their abilities to speak and reason are so developed that they are fully accountable for their deeds. Augustine assumes that children are capable of behaving according to his moral ideals, if they receive a proper Christian upbringing."

"In addition to theological arguments, Augustine refers to the practice of the church. Infants, like adults, underwent the exsufflatio, a rite of exorcism conducted before the baptism took place. This implies that little ones, like adults, needed exorcism to be rescued from the darkness of the devil. “What does my exorcism work in that babe, if he be not held in the devil’s family?” Augustine asks rhetorically. His point is, of course, that infants are afflicted with original sin and need remission of sins through baptism in order to be reconciled with God. He also takes the crying and struggling of babies when they are baptized as an expression of their original sin. Due to their condition, they resist grace. He even takes the hurrying of mothers to church with their babies to baptize them as an argument that children need to be redeemed from the power of the devil."

"At one point Augustine wrote a letter to Jerome asking for advice on the possibility of combining belief in original sin with the creationist position he imputed to Jerome. Though what Augustine says is related to this particular position regarding the origin of the soul, the offense he felt at the view that little ones were condemned by God is apparent. “”What kind of justice is it that so many thousands of souls should be damned because they departed from their bodies by death in infancy, without the grace of the Christian sacrament … when He [God] certainly knew that each one of them by no fault of its own would leave the body without the baptism of Christ?” Jerome never answered. Augustine explicitly states his uneasiness about his view in “Sermon 294’’. He admits that the question is profoundly difficult and recognized that his powers are not sufficient to get to the bottom of it . . . . I cannot find a satisfactory and worthy explanation; because I cannot find one.”” His interpretation of scripture led him to the conclusion that unbaptized babies go to damnation, and he felt obliged to maintain this. He could not “condemn divine authority” and quotes Romans 11:33-36 as he often does when he faces a question that goes beyond the limit of his reason: “Oh the depths of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of Go! How inscrutable are his judgments, and untraceable his ways!” Ultimately, the damnation of unbaptized children is a mystery, and therefore cannot be given a logical explanation. However, because Augustine was convinced that his view on this matter was in agreement with God’s revelation in the Holy Scriptures, he maintained it. Although he apparently felt that this doctrine was harsh, he never wavered from his view that little ones who died unbaptized were punished by god."

"If they suffer without deserving it, the implication is that God punishes them without any reason. This is to say that God is unjust. This is exactly what Augustine accuses Julian of doing: “When you say that these miseries happen to the little ones without any sin, you really make God unjust.” However, this position is impossible because only justice and goodness can be ascribed to God. Augustine is concerned with the salvation of the little ones, and emphasizes that Christ died for them too. He refers to several passages of the New Testament which say that Christ’s salvific work was intended for all human beings. For instance, after having quoted the words of Paul that God demonstrated his love toward us by the fact that Christ died for us when we were sinners (Romans 5:8-9), he argues that if the little ones are not fetted by sin, then Christ did not die for them. The premise is that all those for whom Christ has died are guilty, otherwise there would be nothing from which to save them. According to Augustine, the Palagian position implies that little ones do not benefit from the death of Christ. Similarly if the little ones are not affected by original sin, there is no need to baptize them since baptism provides remedies for sins. The grave consequence would be that they are excluded from the kingdom of God. “Why do you exclude from the kingdom of God so many images of God in little ones if they are not baptized, since they have done nothing evil?” In fact, if one denies the existence of original sin, one exposes little ones to serious harm. Consequently, Augustine asserts, it is not he who is cruel to infants (as the Pelagians alleged because of his view that little ones who died without being baptized were not saved) but the Pelagians themselves. Instead of leaving them in the power of the devil, Augustine exhorts his audience to : speak for the babies all the more mercifully, the less they can do it for themselves. The Church habitually comes to the assistance of orphans in watching over their interests; let us all peak for the babies, all of us come to their assistance, lest they should lose their heavenly inheritance. It was for their sakes too that their Lord became a baby. How can they not be included in his liberation, seeing that they were the first who were found worthy to die for him? In spite of his attempt to convince his readers that it is his own position that in the deepest sense takes care of little ones who die unbaptized, Augustine felt troubled by his conclusion. Early in the debate he speculated that they would suffer only “the mildest condemnation of all.” He does not discuss how a milder form of punishment might differ from a “normal” punishment, not does he return to this question in other writings. This may be because it is difficult to combine the idea of different levels of condemnation with his criticism of the Pelagians’ distinction between different levels of salvation for unbaptized infants. Given their position on the innocence of babies, the Pelgians asserted that babies are not to be baptized for the sake of obtaining salvation and eternal life, but for the kingdom of heaven. Against this position, Augustine argued that there is no intermediary place between the kingdom of heaven and eternal damnation."

"In the Middle Ages society was far more static and was essentially hierarchical in nature. As a result the causal or genetic attitude was far less important in medieval thought that it is in ours and the concept of evolution had little influence compared with the role of symbolism in the general world-view... Moreover, even the concept of time itself was of less significance to historians... For St Augustine the date of an event was of far less importance than its theological significance. His tendency to see everything in a theological rather than in a historical perspective was a powerful influence in the Middle Ages... It was not until the nineteenth century that the fundamental significance of the historical perspective came to be generally recognized. This was several hundred years after the theory and practice of perspective had been developed by painters and others. In each case a new way of looking at the world resulted."

"This idea of these great fathers of the Eastern Church took even stronger hold on the great father of the Western Church. For St. Augustine, so fettered usually by the letter of the sacred text, broke from his own famous doctrine as to the acceptance of Scripture and spurned the generally received belief of a creative process... In his great treatise [De Cenesi contra Manichæos] on Genesis he says: "To suppose that God formed man from the dust with bodily hands is very childish. ...God neither formed man with bodily hands nor did he breathe upon him with throat and lips.""