Clergy From France

"Let Man remember that he is the Master, but not a Tyrant."

"Chorus novae Ierusalem novam meli dulcedinem promat colens cum sobriis paschale festum gaudiis.Quo Christus, invictus leo, dracone surgens obruto, dum voce viva personat, a morte functos excitat."

"Te de pauperibus natum suscepit alendum Christus, et immeritum sic enutriuit et auxit, Vt collata tibi miretur munera mundus. Nam puero faciles prouidit adesse magistros, Et iuuenem perduxit ad hoc ut episcopus esses. Reges, pontifices, populi te magnificabant, Seruum prudentem censentes atque fidelem Esse pii Domini. Sed pro pudor ipse nefande. Nec prudens neo fidus eras ut res manifestat. Nam contra memorare pudet quam nequiter ipsum Laeseris et sanctos eius tua praua tuentes, Quae uix ulla satis possunt tormenta piare. Prestolatur adhuc Dominus tamen ille benignus, Et te uiuere perpetitur, si forte resciscens Segnitiem zelo perimas, meritoque reatum."

"How is it possible we should taste true joy for one moment, in this life, in which we are beset with miseries, and sin, — are continually in danger of being lost forever, and are exiles from Paradise, our true country?"

"I desire, if by any possibility I should become a priest, to be a missionary, and if I am a missionary to be a martyr."

"There will be sacrifices in thus referring everything to God; there are sacrifices, and there will be always. But what matters it ? This is our life, the end for which we were created, our destination, — to sacrifice everything to God with devotion and courage, and to find everything in God in eternity."

"France must have the blood of the pure to raise her again; which one of us indeed, is worthy to offer his life, and what a joy, should we be chosen."

"Persecution is upon us; it will be terrible; we will pass through torrents of blood."

"Though his services were peculiarly valuable n his early fields of labour as he had mastered both the Montagnais and the English languages, yet an able man being needed to organize parish and mission work among the French Canadians at Lowell, Father Garin was ordered thither and in a short time his remarkable good sense, courteous manner, and kindly disposition won for him a wonderful influence over his people."

"He was untiring in his efforts to conserve the moral life within his diocese, especially among the clergy and the religious orders."

"It may be asked what possible object a redactor could have had in combining the narrative of a rebellion against civil authority with another having for its moral to warn against usurpation of the priesthood. The story presents nothing improbable. We need not search deeply into history to find similar examples of parties with different, or even conflicting interests, uniting for a common end."

"Great iniquities still exist in the world. Slavery has been holding her ground for the last eighty years in the United States, and was a stain upon the American Republic long before becoming the instrument of her ruin, or at least of a scandalous dissolution. In Sweden, civil liberty of conscience is still proscribed by laws of another age, and is only bought by exile or loss of property. Perfidy and violence are going hand in hand to destroy the nationality of Poland, and crush in her the last struggles of Catholic faith by the united force of schism and despotism. In fine, there is in the East of Europe an anti-Christian empire crumbling away visibly under the weight of its own corruption; whose protestations do not hinder indignant Europe from requiring an account of the thousands of victims butchered by Moslem fanaticism almost under our eyes, which empire is, nevertheless, protected by the mutual jealousy and distrust of western nations. All these facts are so many outrages upon justice, and so many insolent triumphs of might over right."

"To select well among old things is almost equal to inventing new ones."

"In love, if inconstancy gives some pleasure, constancy alone gives happiness."

"Fluery had the qualities of a great minister. He was the first to foresee that France would not always be at enmity with the Hapsburghs."

"The Catholic Church has no other weapons but prayer and brotherhood among all peoples. I leave here hundreds of young people who are the future of humanity. I beg them not to give up in the face of violence but to be apostles of the civilization of love."

"A Christian is a complete being, a being having the knowledge of its strength in the order of nature, and walking under the eye of God to perfection, to supernatural transfiguration, but never to the annihilation of the faculties."

"Since perhaps there are some, who may think themselves concerned in this History, because they are the Grand-children or Descendants of those who are here mentioned, I desire them to consider, Writing like a faithfull Historian, I am oblig'd sincerely to relate either the good or ill, which they have done. If they find themselves offended, they must take their satisfaction on those who have prescrib'd the Laws of History: let them give an account of their own rules; for Historians are indispensably bound to follow them; and the sum of our reputation consists in a punctual execution of their orders."

"Do not imagine each moment that all the Chinese are at my heels and think only of destroying me. These are the men whom I love much more than I fear."

"As a diplomat, Fesch sometimes employed questionable methods. His relationship to the emperor and his cardinalitical dignity often made his position a difficult one; at least he could never be accused of approving the violent measures resorted to by Napoleon. As Archbishop, he was largely instrumental in re-establishing the Brothers of Christian Doctrine and recalling the Jesuits, under the name of Pacanarists. The Archdiocese of Lyons is indebted to him for some eminently useful institutions. It must be admitted, moreover, that in his pastoral capacity Fesch took a genuine interest in the education of priests."

"Character is one of the most estimable gifts of the Creator, with which he has enriched your family. Exercise courage then, and strength of mind, to rise superior to misfortune. Let no economy appear a sacrifice. At this moment we are all poor."

"The nations which have been converted to Christianity are in a way like branches which have been grafted upon Judaism. They were Jews who announced the Gospel to the world, and they were Jews who composed the first Christian community, to which all the other peoples of the world are successively joining themselves. Evidently, therefore, these Jews in becoming Christians did not change their religion, for they only acknowledged the Messias whom they were expecting ; it was the Greeks, the Romans, and the Egyptians, and all the heathen who, in embracing the faith, renounced the worship of idols."

"As the conversion of these poor folk is not the work of man, but the effect of the mercy of our Divine Master, let us endeavour to obtain it by prayers and holy deeds. A day never passes, without my remembering these unfortunate people before the altar. May it please the Mercy of the Lord to grant the prayers that I offer for their conversion!"

"I think you will hardly take him by surprise. However, you can come with me, and we will search for him. Did I not tell you from the first that you would not find him?"

"Colmar worked like a true apostle."

"There is nothing that can contribute so much to its quietude and stability as the zeal and piety of kings in preserving the discipline of the Church and in defending her liberties."

"In our opinion nothing so clearly proves the assistance of the Holy Spirit and the necessity for a ruling power in the bosom of the Church as this law of harmonious development. It would seem that those who reject the idea of such a power are obliged either to ignore all that is done by that power and to raise up an entirely new Church, or to take the illogical and insincere method of adopting for their own a part only of the Church's institutions and rejecting the rest."

"In none of his writings to which I have had access, does there appear a disposition to judge too favourably of Chinese notions, but the reverse."

"It is not by a succession of periods of progress and decay only That nations manifest their life and individuality. Taking any one of them at any period of its existence, and comparing it with others, peculiarities immediately show themselves which give it a particular physiognomy whereby it may be at once distinguished from any other; so that, in those agglomerations of men which we call nations or races, we see the variety everywhere observable in Nature, the variety by which God manifests the infinite activity of his creative power."

"Father Thébaud was a man full of energy, even in old age, an untiring student, and well-informed scholar. Withal he was a most agreeable companion, witty and full of life, and universally beloved by his friends and his pupils."

"Bishop Flaget's great experience, absolute self-denial, and holy life gave him great influence in the councils of the Church and at Rome."

"While the religious idea of a crusade inspired the secular policy of Père Joseph, intense sacerdotal and Apostolic zeal characterized him amid all his political preoccupations."

"Fear is a natural passion, which, like all the others, is in itself neither bad nor good, but bad when it is excessive and disquieting, good when it is subordinate to reason."

"Give to the faithful the example of submission and obedience to the Republic. You have long cherished the hope of enjoying the liberty which makes our brethren of the United States so happy; the liberty you shall have."

"Gentle as I am now towards every one, it is part of my character never to give way to fear, or to do anything under compulsion."

"When a priest can do any good to a soul he must make that his first business."

"Learned, theological, lucid, varied, firm. supernatural, and austere. Mgr. d'Hulst's direction was also sincere. 1 mean he was ever anxious to practise himself what he counselled others to do"

"Sire, God protect the crown of the king, for many royal crowns too have been shattered."

"Mary was conceived without sin. Behold! what the Church of Paris glories in professing and maintaining; what her Doctors hold it an honor to teach and defend; what her children are jealous of preserving as one of their dearest possessions after the sacred dogmas of faith; what they do not hesitate to regard as an immediate consequence of their faith, not believing it possible to separate in Mary, the title of Immaculate Virgin from that of Virgin Mother of God, and not considering it possible to refuse the privilege of a Conception without spot, to her who was to receive and who indeed did receive, that of the divine Maternity."

"A contemporary is always at a disadvantage in forming a clear opinion of his age, of those deep causes of which the slow but measured action must inevitably transform society."

"Lourdes does not disappoint, even though miracles remain the exception there."

"We sinners oscillate dangerously between harshness and complicity towards others."

"The events at Lourdes present an order, a harmony that becomes increasingly apparent as one delves deeper."

"Mass and the Body of Christ have become the very center of pilgrimage to Lourdes."

"Thérèse of Lisieux was one of the sources of inspiration for the philosopher Henri Bergson during the final stage of his search, in which he found God thanks to the testimony of mystics."

"The Virgin [Mary] is the one in whom no sin has diminished love."

"One cannot understand the sinner through sin, because sin is not a positive technique: in its essence it is deprivation, absence, nothingness; it is sin to the exact extent that it decapitates the good of the act performed. It is therefore not a factor of understanding but of obscurity."

"Mary shared the obscure condition of faith that is that of the other redeemed."

"Conversion: this is the word that most specifically expresses the meaning of pilgrimage."

"The mid-19th century saw the triumph of the reign of money over the medieval reign of honor and traditions."