Clergy From Italy

"Only the young men who sat under him could know his fascination as a teacher."

"We believe that it has been brought about by a special dispensation of Divine Providence, that the Frankish Princes should profess the orthodox faith; like the Roman Emperors, in order that they may help this city, whence it took its rise. Persuade them with all earnestness to keep from any friendship and alliance with our most unspeakable enemies, the Lombards."

"Influence exercised by the Jesuits, in their golden age, was largely due to the far-seeing policy of Aquaviva, who is undoubtedly the greatest general that has governed the Society."

"Acquaviva was chosen by a strong majority. His subsequent career justified the wisdom of the choice."

"Scholars have long noted that Angelico’s vision of Hell did not emerge from a vacuum. …His Hell is not the feverish grotesquerie of later Northern painters, nor the architectural labyrinth of Dante’s nine circles. Instead, it is a carefully staged moral drama, Dominican in its clarity, theological in its logic, and yet unmistakably shaped by the imaginative vocabulary of both Dante and ."

"When all shall see me, by fair Fortune's love Pass through the days which Fate unsparing spins On her eternal distaff for my destiny, Joyful, contented with myself; for then Far other shall I be than now I am."

"The amount of vigor, health, and power meted out to the secretary was in just proportion to his need of them. He retained them as long as they were required by him for whose comfort and glory they had been intrusted to him."

"It was pleasantly said of him that he had two passions---one for pure mathematics, and the other for the pure Catholic religion."

"There is nothing perhaps harder to defend and easier to attack than a system not clearly defined, at least in its principal parts. Its defenders waste their time in showing what is either beside the question or only touches the surface, and its adversaries, when they have pointed out the weak points in that which, true or false, has nothing to do with the truth of the system, settle the controversy in their own favour."

"To render the Science of Algebra intelligible to pupils whose minds are yet unaccustomed to such studies, is not an easy task. For should the instructor subject every principle, as it is announced, to a rigorous demonstration, he will very probably not be comprehended; while, on the other hand, inconclusive reasoning is worse than none at all."

"May the young learn from Savio how to sanctify themselves, even in the midst of dangers, how to join holiness with cheerfulness, frankness with reserve, dignity with modesty, the interior life and intimate union with Our Lord with the diligent exercise of external duties; let them learn of him to be beloved by God and men, and thus to leave a holy memory to succeeding generations."

"Every historical epoch has its special conflict, and from the sixteenth century down to our own time the conflict has been between liberty and authority. It is the office of religious and social truth to establish harmony between these two terms. The excess of social authority leads to oppression, and the excess of liberty leads to license and the disorganization of the social fabric. The equilibrium of the two constitutes and maintains the life of all society. Proofs are not needed to show that it has ever been the highest glory of the Catholic Church, I do not say to have invented either social authority or social freedom, but to have maintained the equilibrium and established the harmony of the one with the other."

"Though he was a good philosopher and theologian, he was a better religious. Those well acquainted with him are convinced that he never lost his baptismal innocence. Neither his holiness nor his learning made him a disagreeable companion or an undesirable friend. It would be hard to say whether he was more admired or loved by those who came into contact with him."

"His wise and unwearying efforts to reform his diocese, whose clergy were in a deplorable state, were crowned with unhoped-for success."

"Only by successful war can we obtain peace."

"It will not be weapons that give us the future, and much less justice and peace, instead, it will be internally unarmed people who will stop violence in all its forms and its false or presumed reasons. Justice is not in the unstable balance of forces involved, but in the testimony of a truly new life in love without measure."

"These are ten decisive years. I ask you to spend them with me, because you are entering the final period of the Second Advent, which will lead you to the triumph of my Immaculate Heart in the glorious coming of my son Jesus. In this period of ten years, the fullness of time, which I have indicated to you, will be fulfilled, beginning with La Salette and continuing until my last and current apparitions. In this period of ten years, the purification that you have been experiencing for years will reach its climax, and therefore the sufferings will become greater for everyone. In this period of ten years, the mystery of iniquity, prepared by the ever-increasing spread of apostasy, will be manifested. During this ten-year period, all the secrets that I have revealed to some of my daughters will be fulfilled, and all the events that I have foretold will come to pass. Therefore, I ask you today to consecrate this entire period of time to me, as if it were a longer and continuous Marian year. (Message from Mary to Don Gobbi, Lourdes, 18 September 1989)"

"I chose you, my son, for this simple reason: because you are the poorest, the smallest, the most limited. Humanly speaking, you are the most unprepared. / I chose you because in your life my Adversary had already managed to claim victory. In your existence, I made you experience in advance what I myself will do at the moment of my greatest triumph. / My Adversary will one day believe he has achieved complete victory: over the world, over the Church, over souls. / Only then will I intervene – terrible and victorious – so that his defeat will be all the greater, the more certain he was of having won forever. (18 October 1975)"

"Do not waste time in front of the television, which is the most powerful tool in the hands of my Adversary, used to spread the darkness of sin and impurity everywhere. Television is the idol mentioned in the Book of Revelation, created to be worshipped by all the nations of the earth, and to which the Evil gives form and movement, so that it may become, in his hands, a terrible means of seduction and perversion."

"Divine Scripture has warned you that those who sin through the flesh will find their just punishment in the same flesh. Thus, the time has come when the angel of the first plague passes over the world, so that it may be punished according to God's will."

"My soul is pierced at seeing my Church prostrated under the weight of a most painful agony. Errors leading to the loss of faith are spreading more and more within her; sin seduces the minds and hearts of so many of my children. (15 September 1994)"

"Fight with Me, little children, against the beast that looks like a lamb, Freemasonry, which has infiltrated ecclesial life in order to destroy Christ and His Church. To achieve this goal, it wants to build a new idol, that is, a false Christ and a false Church. (17 June 1989)"

"The task of the Masonic Lodges today is to work with great cunning to lead humanity everywhere to despise the holy Law of God, to work in open opposition to the Ten Commandments, to take away the worship due to God alone and give it to false idols, which are exalted and adored by an ever-increasing number of people. (3 June 1989)"

"Jesus is the way that leads to the Father through the Gospel. Ecclesiastical Freemasonry favours exegesis that gives interpretations of it that are rationalistic and natural, through the application of various literary genres, so that it is torn apart in every part. In the end, it leads to the denial of the historical reality of the miracles and of his Resurrection, and the very divinity of Jesus and his saving mission are called into question."

"The Church established by Christ is one: holy, catholic, apostolic, one, founded on Peter. Like Jesus, the Church founded by Him, which forms His mystical body, is truth, life and way."

"There are in these parts many reputed defenders of the Catholic faith who think that our religion consists in nothing but hatred of the Lutherans... and they are so wedded to this point of view that, without ever looking into the matter itself, they take in bad part not only all negotiations with the Lutherans, but every single word spoken about them which is not abusive."

"His career is that of a good man, struggling for the welfare of his Church against corruptions not essential to the system to which he was devoted."

"Few ecclesiastics in that century were so successful in retaining the esteem of men of all parties and all creeds as this large-minded and eminently able and honest churchman."

"He was a man passionately devoted to letters, and somewhat vehement in character. At the conclave of 1758, he was on the point of being elected Pope: he had obtained eighteen votes; but the fears inspired by the inequality of his temper caused him to be set aside."

"His character was impetuous and haughty, especially towards the Romans."

"Spedalieri was wrongly claimed by the Liberals as one of theirs, and if some of them accuse him of a want of loyalty when he wishes to conciliate democracy and a Divine sanction of the social order, it is because they do not understand the true nature of democracy or of the saying that all authority comes from God."

"A spiritual man, who, by the practice of virtue, prayer, penance and mortification, has already laid up a certain treasure of merit in heaven, knowing full well that he has in his house, nay, even within himself, a traitor sense which, assaulting his will, and alluring it by the bait of its delectations, is able to strip it of all its spiritual wealth; with what jealousy ought he to keep guard over it; how sternly ought he to check its motions; how rigorously to keep it in subjection and restraint."

"Because of his prudence and his business-like methods, he was a favourite with the popes."

"Convinced that life is not destined to be a burden for many and a celebration for some, but rather a task for everyone, for which each person will be held accountable, he began as a child to think about how he could make his life useful and holy."

"Federigo Borromeo, born in 1564, was one of those rare men who, in any era, have employed their exceptional genius, all the means of great wealth, all the advantages of a privileged position, and a continuous intent in the pursuit and exercise of excellence."

"If a spark of God's love has already been kindled in you, do not boast about it. Do not expose it to the wind. Close the door of your heart so that it does not grow cold."

"Remember that at home and everywhere else, you should accept other people's shortcomings in the same way that you want others to accept you."

"(About the Milan plague) It was, my children [...] God's great mercy. He wounded and healed; he scourged and consoled; he laid his hand on the rod of discipline and also offered us the stick of support and sustenance."

"Science owes to him many important discoveries."

"[...] if healthy realism, spiritual harmony, and Thomist balance—which became a spiritual attitude and lifestyle through the deepening of thought—flourishing among Italians, had been the backbone of social and political life, perhaps we would have acted more wisely and experienced fewer disasters. (p. 579)"

"Cardinal Capecelatro, particularly in recent years, was overwhelmed by the course of events and by that Modernist crisis which had long been preparing and so violently burst out in the Church. He remained immured in his old ideal of "God and Liberty", in the old dream of "the pope arm-in-arm with the King of Italy". He did not understand the new movement and the hard lessons which it brought with it."

"Far from modernising ourselves in order to keep up with the times, as they say, we must return to the faith and piety of the Fathers (Tradition and the Deposit of Faith) in every way, because modernisation is already a more or less concealed apostasy and leads infallibly to perdition."

"[Don Dolindo] is a saint. The whole of Paradise [is in his soul]. [...] Why do you come here, you have Don Dolindo in Naples?, Go to him. He is a saint."

"Quattro Vangeli commentati dal sac. Dolindo Ruotolo, Casa Mariana Editrice, Napoli, 2005, 4 volumes."

"Against the current eclipse of moral values and the resulting oppression of the human person in a world dominated by moral relativism, St. Thomas points to conscience as the norm of action, the path to man's redemption from the powers of the age and victory over technocracy, materialism, and idolatry of the State, which, by denying conscience, have suffocated or enslaved the human person. (p. 572)"

"The ways of divine Love cannot be travelled without Mary; the contrary is absurd, for without her effective mediation there is no vigour of faith to nourish and sustain it. The soul does not marry God without Mary, and does not have the purest wine of love without her. (p. 1656)"

"[...] he [Thomas Aquinas] was neither traditionalist nor rationalist; he did not allow himself to be fascinated by intuitionist subjectivism, nor did he reduce intellectual life to cerebralism; he defended reason against those who, emphasizing its weakness, wanted to deduce the impossibility or danger of a relatively autonomous philosophy, but he was equally decisive and strong in affirming the transcendence of faith and the infinite height of revealed mysteries; he had a marked preference for Aristotle, precisely because of his fidelity to the most obvious data of reason and common sense, but he did not become an idolater to the point of confusing a divine religion with a philosophical system. (p. 575)"

"Jesus was alone and praying. What a sight! His soul prayed, and in praying he was like a flame rising from a holocaust, for his body was wholly a sacrifice of love. He prayed and was enveloped in the divine splendour of the divine Person of the Word, almost like a torch in the midday rays. He shone with divine light, and drew his body close to him as if it were a cloud of thymian drawn up by the flame. His centre of gravity was no longer the earth but the eternal splendour of the Word, and he tended upwards, made light as a feather. (p. 1768)"

"The sky with all its creation is like a telescope that allows us to glimpse God: it does not magnify Him, it cannot magnify Him to our eyes, because He is infinite, but it can give us a glimpse of His greatness, it can allow us to contemplate a ray of His power, a glimmer of His wisdom, a warm reflection of the infinite flame of His love. (p. 1615)"

"And even if I ascend into the sidereal sky, what is this before You, my God? And even if my mind reaches high and, like a cherub with outstretched wings, stretches towards the boundaries of the sky, what has it seen of creation, and what has it been able to intuit about You, my God? If I were to open my arms to the east and west, as Michelangelo's image in the Sistine Chapel has opened and stretched out, and if I were to carry on the tips of my fingers, so to speak, the power of the mind that sees and the love that shapes, as that image seems to carry it, what would I have seen of You, my God, and of Your works? (p. 1616)"