Clergy From Italy

"I speak with the Devil every day. I talk to him in Latin. He answers in Italian. I have been wrestling with him, day in day out, for 14 years."

"Once I asked Satan: ‘But why are you more afraid when I invoke the Madonna than when I invoke Jesus Christ?’ He replied: ‘Because it humbles me more to be defeated by a human creature than to be defeated by Him.’"

"Prayer at distance rarely has a liberating effect. In itself, it is possible to attempt prayers at distance, but whether they take root is another matter. One of the requirements for doing exorcisms is in fact that the person is present, and that he or she is consenting. Doing exorcisms on someone who is neither present nor consenting nor Catholic presents difficulties. I have no doubt, however, that Hitler was a Satanist. From this point of view, I am not surprised that Pius XII might have attempted an exorcism at distance. [The Führer's possession emerges from his] humanly inexplicable perfidy: one cannot explain such wickedness without a higher force and outside human nature."

"I have no doubt about the fact that the demon tempts the authorities of the Church especially, just as he tempts every authority, those of politics and industry."

"As a highly Pagan poet said to me: "The Reformation happened because people hadn't the brains to understand Aquinas." The Church is more immortally important than the State; but the State has its rights, for all that. This Christian duality had always been implicit, as in Christ's distinction between God and Caesar, or the dogmatic distinction between the natures of Christ. But St. Thomas has the glory of having seized this double thread as the clue to a thousand things; and thereby created the only creed in which the saints can be sane. It presents itself chiefly, perhaps, to the modern world as the only creed in which the poets can be sane. For there is nobody now to settle the Manichees; and all culture is infected with a faint unclean sense that Nature and all things behind us and below us are bad; that there is only praise to the highbrow in the height. St. Thomas exalted God without lowering Man; he exalted Man without lowering Nature. Therefore, he made a cosmos of common sense; terra viventium; a land of the living. His philosophy, like his theology, is that of common sense. He does not torture the brain with desperate attempts to explain existence by explaining it away. The first steps of his mind are the first steps of any honest mind; just as the first virtues of his creed could be those of any honest peasant."

"St. Thomas confronts other creeds of good and evil, without at all denying evil, with a theory of two levels of good. The supernatural order is the supreme good, as for any Eastern mystic; but the natural order is good; as solidly good as it is for any man in the street."

"The difficulty of dealing with St. Thomas Aquinas in this brief article is the difficulty of selecting that aspect of a many-sided mind which will best suggest its size or scale. Because of the massive body which carried his massive brain, he was called "The Ox"; but any attempt to boil down such a brain into tabloid literature passes all possible jokes about an ox in a teacup. He was one of the two or three giants; one of the two or three greatest men who ever lived; and I should never be surprised if he turned out, quite apart from sanctity, to be the greatest of all. Another way of putting the problem is to say that proportion alters according to what other men we are at the moment classing him with or pitting him against. We do not get the scale until we come to the few men in history who can be his rivals."

"We have, among innumerable other works, the Summa theologica, surely one of the most amazing and stupendous products of the human mind. ...never before or since has the wide world been so neatly boxed and compassed, so completely and confidently understood, every detail of it fitted, with such subtle and loving precision, into a consistent and convincing whole."

"O excellent Thomas would that you had not been born in the West such that you would have need to advocate the differences of that [Roman] Church! You were influenced by it with regard to both the procession of the Holy Spirit as well as by the difference with respect to the divine essence and energy. For surely, then, you would have been infallible in your theological doctrines, just as you are so too inerrant in these matters of ethics!"

"Pope John XXII about the Summa Theologiae: As many articles as miracles."

"This dumb ox will fill the world with his bellowing."

"Prostitution in towns is like the sewer in a palace; take away the sewers and the palace becomes an impure and stinking place."

"Hominem unius libri timeo"

"Now, as the Word of God is the Son of God, so the love of God is the Holy Spirit."

"Suppose a person entering a house were to feel heat on the porch, and going further, were to feel the heat increasing, the more they penetrated within. Doubtless, such a person would believe there was a fire in the house, even though they did not see the fire that must be causing all this heat. A similar thing will happen to anyone who considers this world in detail: one will observe that all things are arranged according to their degrees of beauty and excellence, and that the nearer they are to God, the more beautiful and better they are."

"If man of himself could in a perfect manner know all things visible and invisible, it would indeed be foolish to believe what he does not see. But our manner of knowing is so weak that no philosopher could perfectly investigate the nature of even one little fly."

"Nullum malum bona intentione factum excusatur."

"Lex naturae […] nihil aliud est nisi lumen intellectis insitum nobis a Deo, per quod cognoscimus quid agendum et quid vitandum. Hoc lumen et hanc legem dedit Deus homini in creatione."

"Tria sunt homini necessaria ad salutem: scilicit scientia credendorum, scientia desiderandorum, et scientia operandorum."

"Vita enim in hoc maxime manifestatur quod aliquid movet se ipsum; quod autem non potest moveri nisi ab alio, quasi mortuum esse videtur."

"There is no order between created being and non-being, but there is between created and uncreated being."

"Man reaches the highest point of his knowledge about God when he knows that he knows him not, inasmuch as he knows that that which is God transcends whatsoever he conceives of him."

"It is on account neither of God's weakness nor ignorance that evil comes into the world, but rather it is due to the order of his wisdom and the greatness of his goodness that diverse grades of goodness occur in things, many of which would be lacking if no evil were permitted. Indeed, the good of patience would not exist without the evil of persecution; nor the good of preservation of life in a lion if not for the evil of the destruction of the animals on which it lives."

"Now what has been said about the Jews is also to be understood about Cahorsins, and anyone else depending upon the depravity of usury."

"It would be better if they [rulers] compelled the Jews to work for their living, as they do in parts of Italy, than that, living without occupation, they can grow rich only by usury (solis usuris ditentur)."

"Since the Jews may not licitly keep those things which they have extorted from others through usury, the consequence is also that if you [rulers] receive these things from them, neither may you licitly keep them.[…] You should restore them to those to whom the Jews themselves are morally bound to make restitution."

"To become like God is the ultimate end of all."

"The highest perfection of human life consists in the mind of man being detached from care, for the sake of God."

"Natural inclinations are present in things from God, who moves all things. So it is impossible for the natural inclinations of a species to be toward evil in itself. But there is in all perfect animals a natural inclination toward carnal union. Therefore it is impossible for carnal union to be evil in itself."

"The perfection of the effect demonstrates the perfection of the cause, for a greater power brings about a more perfect effect. But God is the most perfect agent. Therefore, things created by Him obtain perfection from Him. So, to detract from the perfection of creatures is to detract from the perfection of divine power."

"For creation is not a change, but that dependence of the created existence on the principle from which it is instituted, and thus is of the genus of relation; whence nothing prohibits it being in the created as in the subject. Creation is thus said to be a kind of change, according to the way of understanding, insofar as our intellect accepts one and the same thing as not existing before and afterwards existing."

"Muhammad seduced the people by promises of carnal pleasure to which the concupiscence of the flesh goads us. His teaching also contained precepts that were in conformity with his promises, and he gave free rein to carnal pleasure. In all this, as is not unexpected, he was obeyed by carnal men. As for proofs of the truth of his doctrine, he brought forward only such as could be grasped by the natural ability of anyone with a very modest wisdom. Indeed, the truths that he taught he mingled with many fables and with doctrines of the greatest falsity. He did not bring forth any signs produced in a supernatural way, which alone fittingly gives witness to divine inspiration; for a visible action that can be only divine reveals an invisibly inspired teacher of truth. On the contrary, Muhammad said that he was sent in the power of his arms—which are signs not lacking even to robbers and tyrants. What is more, no wise men, men trained in things divine and human, believed in him from the beginning, Those who believed in him were brutal men and desert wanderers, utterly ignorant of all divine teaching, through whose numbers Muhammad forced others to become his followers by the violence of his arms. Nor do divine pronouncements on the part of preceding prophets offer him any witness. On the contrary, he perverts almost all the testimonies of the Old and New Testaments by making them into fabrications of his own, as can be seen by anyone who examines his law. It was, therefore, a shrewd decision on his part to forbid his followers to read the Old and New Testaments, lest these books convict him of falsity. It is thus clear that those who place any faith in his words believe foolishly."

"Truth is the ultimate end of the whole universe."

"We can open our hearts to God, but only with Divine help."

"Nothing is in the intellect that was not first in the senses."

"The greatness of the human being consists in this: that it is capable of the universe."

"One who liberates his country by killing a tyrant is to be praised and rewarded."

"With regard to the abuse of authority, this also may come about in two ways. First, when what is ordered by an authority is opposed to the object for which that authority was constituted (if, for example, some sinful action is commanded or one which is contrary to virtue, when it is precisely for the protection and fostering of virtue that authority is instituted). In such a case, not only is there no obligation to obey the authority, but one is obliged to disobey it, as did the holy martyrs who suffered death rather than obey the impious commands of tyrants. Secondly, when those who bear such authority command things which exceed the competence of such authority; as, for example, when a master demands payment from a servant which the latter is not bound to make, and other similar cases. In this instance the subject is free to obey or disobey."

"The order of authority derives from God, as the Apostle says [in Romans 13:1-7]. For this reason, the duty of obedience is, for the Christian, a consequence of this derivation of authority from God, and ceases when that ceases. But, as we have already said, authority may fail to derive from God for two reasons: either because of the way in which authority has been obtained, or in consequence of the use which is made of it. There are two ways in which the first may occur. Either because of a defect in the person, if he is unworthy; or because of some defect in the way itself by which power was acquired, if, for example, through violence, or simony or some other illegal method."

"Anima mea non est ego."

"Jesus Christ: Bene scripsísti de me, Thoma; quam ergo mercédem accípies? Aquinas: Non áliam, Dómine, nisi teípsum."

"Raynalde, non possum, quia omnia quae scripsi videntur mihi palae. Replying to Reginald of Piperno: Videntur mihi palae respectu eorum quae vidi et revelata sunt mihi."

"Omne verum a quocumque dicatur a Spiritu Sancto est."

"A hymn is the praise of God with song; a song is the exultation of the mind dwelling on eternal things, bursting forth in the voice."

"If … the motion of the earth were circular, it would be violent and contrary to nature, and could not be eternal, since … nothing violent is eternal.… It follows, therefore, that the earth is not moved with a circular motion."

"The reason, however, why the philosopher may be likened to the poet is this: both are concerned with the marvellous."

"It must be said that charity can, in no way, exist along with mortal sin."

"Charity, by which God and neighbor are loved, is the most perfect friendship."

"Reason in man is rather like God in the world."

"Anything done against faith or conscience is sinful."