Catholics From The United States

"The noonday devil of the Christian life is the temptation to lose the inner self while preserving the shell of edifying behavior. Suddenly I discover that I am ministering to AIDS victims to enhance my resume. I find I renounced ice cream for Lent to lose five excess pounds… I have fallen victim to what T.S. Eliot calls the greatest sin: to do the right thing for the wrong reason."

"Jesus was victorious not because he never flinched, talked back, or questioned, but having flinched, talked back, and questioned, he remained faithful."

"None of us has ever seen a motive. Therefore, we don’t know we can’t do anything more than suspect what inspires the action of another. For this good and valid reason, we’re told not to judge."

"To affirm a person is to see the good in them that they cannot see in themselves and to repeat it in spite of appearances to the contrary. Please, this is not some Pollyanna optimism that is blind to the reality of evil, but rather like a fine radar system that is tuned in to the true, the good, and the beautiful."

"Faithfulness requires the courage to risk everything on Jesus, the willingness to keep growing, and the readiness to risk failure throughout our lives."

"I have been seized by the power of a great affection."

"Whenever I allow anything but tenderness and compassion to dictate my response to life"

"The Christ within who is our hope of glory is not a matter of theological debate or philosophical speculation. He is not a hobby, a part-time project, a good theme for a book, or a last resort when all human effort fails. He is our life, the most real fact about us. He is the power and wisdom of God dwelling within us."

"What makes authentic disciples is not visions, ecstasies, biblical mastery of chapter and verse, or spectacular success in the ministry, but a capacity for faithfulness. Buffeted by the fickle winds of failure, battered by their own unruly emotions, and bruised by rejection and ridicule, authentic disciples may have stumbled and frequently fallen, endured lapses and relapses, gotten handcuffed to the fleshpots and wandered into a far county. Yet, they kept coming back to Jesus."

"I met him one day coming out of Louis B. Mayer's office, and he told me Mr. Mayer had been telling him how much he liked the picture we had done. Mr. Brown said, "I told him, 'Give me writers like Lenore Coffee, and I'll give you stuff like that all the time." I put my hand on his shoulder, and I said, "Goodbye, Clarence." He said, "What do you mean?" I said, "I'll never work for you again. This is a producer's studio. They don't like teams of writers-directors." And I never worked for him again."

"I look back on my forty years in Hollywood with nothing but pleasure. If you can work forty years in Hollywood without getting your throat cut, you can count yourself lucky."

"I have seen Family Portrait. I went into the theatre with a chip on my shoulder and came out on my knees."

"They pick your brains, break your heart, ruin your digestion -- and what do you get for it? Nothing but a lousy fortune."

"Coffee took pride in her sharp eyesight (no need of eyeglasses); she continued to read avidly (mostly romantic paperbacks), to talk of writing (although her hands were not up to it), and to be witty and sharp-tongued. The afternoon visit with her was memorable for its bon mots, its rambling panorama of Hollywood life, and the sly, sexual innuendo so surprising in a woman whose storytelling roots were essentially Victorian (and Roman Catholic). One could detect a sense of what a feisty and inventive writer the young Lenore Coffee must have been, fresh off the train in 1919; what a formidable presence she must have been in a roomful of male studio executives."

"In most pictures today, the 'sex appeal' is primarily manifested through the feminine characters. But women, as I said before, constitute by far the greatest portion of all audiences. It should be aimed at them. It is an almost indefinable thing. I should call it a hint of great capacity for emotion, a capacity which can only be tapped by a touch on a hidden spring, seldom found. Take, for instance, and William Boyd, who played what might almost be called a double lead in the last picture I did for Cecil DeMille. In both of them 'sex appeal' will be strikingly manifested. Between these two men I have appealed to every potential feminine spectator of the picture. And that is the way 'sex appeal' should be directed, not to the men, but to the women, I believe."

"When a man of forty marries a girl of twenty, it isn't her youth he's seeking but his own."

"Give it a chance, try to make it happen. This is our greatest asset as a nation and one that we have to continue to encourage. You don’t have to go broke, you don’t have to bet everything on it, but you can start one day at a time by taking a chance and seeing if you too can build a great company."

"Twenty seconds and counting. T-minus fifteen seconds; guidance is internal. Twelve, eleven, ten, nine, ignition sequence starts; six, five, four, three, two, one, zero. All engine running. Lift-off! We have a lift-off! Thirty-two minutes past the hour, lift-off on Apollo 11. Tower cleared!"

"People have often asked me, "If you weren’t in show business, what would you be doing?" The truth is, I don’t think there’s anything else I could be doing, so the answer would have to be, nothing. Then again, there's nothing I love more than making people laugh, so I guess you could say I’m in the only business I could be in. I was born to enjoy life and I've always wanted everyone to enjoy it along with me. That's why I can't see myself any place other than standing in front of an audience with one purpose in mind — to make people feel little bit happier than when they came in."

"Barrett, in addition to serving as an appellate judge, is also a professor at the University of Notre Dame. Almost 100 of Barrett’s colleagues in a letter urged her to hold off on the confirmation process until after the presidential election in November.... “You are not, of course, responsible for the anti-democratic machinations driving your nomination,” the letter added."

"When she was asked about a newspaper ad she signed criticizing Roe v Wade, first reported by the Guardian, Barrett said she had “no recollection” of it and stressed she had nothing to hide... Most of the Democrats’ questioning centered on the ACA (Affordable Care Act), and how a ruling by the high court overturning the law would take healthcare away from millions of Americans... Barrett said she was not hostile to the ACA, abortion or gay rights, another area worrying progressives as the court seems set to tilt to a 6-3 conservative majority. She repeatedly denied any indication that her political views would color her rulings on the high court. (Kamala) Harris at one point asked Barrett if she had heard Trump’s vows to seat a supreme court justice who would overturn Roe v Wade and the ACA. Harris also pointed out that Trump nominated Barrett to serve as an appellate judge seven months after Barrett penned an article criticizing Justice John Roberts’ ruling upholding the ACA. Harris argued that showed Trump had been elevating Barrett to overturn the healthcare law."

"Both Roe and Casey emphasize the burdens of parenting, and insofar as you and many of your amici focus on the ways in which forced parenting, forced motherhood, would hinder womens access to the workplaceand to equal opportunities, it's also focused on the consequences of parenting and the obligations of motherhood that flow from pregnancy. Why don't the safe haven laws take care of that problem?"

"Dogma and law are two different things, and I think whatever a religion is, it has its own dogma. The law is totally different. And I think in your case, professor, when you read your speeches, the conclusion one draws is that the dogma lives loudly within you, and that’s of concern."

"Eighty-eight faculty members at the University of Notre Dame have penned an open letter to colleague and Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett, asking her to halt the confirmation process until after the presidential election. The group — which does not include any instructors at Notre Dame Law School, where Barrett, 48, teaches — called on her to “take this unprecedented step” in light of three considerations... Your nomination comes at a treacherous moment in the United States. Our politics are consumed by polarization, mistrust, and fevered conspiracy theories... You have the opportunity to offer an alternative to all that by demanding that your nomination be suspended until after the election.... We’re asking a lot, we know. Should Vice-President Biden be elected, your seat on the court will almost certainly be lost. That would be painful, surely. Yet there is much to be gained in risking your seat. You would earn the respect of fair-minded people everywhere. You would provide a model of civic selflessness. And you might well inspire Americans of different beliefs toward a renewed commitment to the common good."

"It allows (indeed it requires) the recusal of judges whose convictions keep them from doing their job. This is a good solution."

"I am not here on a mission to destroy the (Affordable Care Act). I’m just here to apply the law and adhere to the rule of law... No hints, no previews, no forecasts (quoting Ruth Bader Ginsburg)... I apply the law, I follow the law. You make the policy... I would not discriminate on the basis of sexual preference."

"Then, too, there was Father Coughlin. "I take the road of Fascism," he said in 1936, before forming the Christian Front, whose members referred to themselves as "brown shirts." His virulently anti-Semitic radio program, regularly transmitting claims from the fabricated Protocols of the Elders of Zion, reached almost 30 million Americans at its height—the largest radio audience in the world at the time. Those listeners tuned in at the end of 1938 as Coughlin was justifying the violence of Kristallnacht, arguing that it was "reprisal" against Jews who had supposedly murdered more than twenty million Christians and stolen billions of dollars in "Christian property"; Nazism, he said, was a natural "defense mechanism" against the communism financed by Jewish bankers. Coughlin’s weekly newspaper, Social Justice, which had an estimated circulation of 200,000 at its height, was described by Life magazine at the time as probably the most widely read voice of "Nazi propaganda in America.""

"From modern capitalism, as from a poisoned fountainhead, there flows that stream of detestable internationalism, by which the Warburgs, the Rothschilds and the Morgans dominate affairs not only in America but also in the Central Banks of Europe… It is an internationalism which cares not for the righteousness of social justice or of sound philosophy, but is willing for the protection of its private property, to become a bed-fellow with the harlot of the ages."

"We maintain that it is not only the prerogative but it is also the duty of the government to limit the amount of profits acquired by any industry."

"We maintain the principle that there can be no lasting prosperity if free competition exists in industry. Therefore, it is the business of government not only to legislate for a minimum annual wage and maximum working schedule to be observed by industry, but also to curtail individualism that, if necessary, factories shall be licensed and their output shall be limited."

"Modern capitalism violates right order because it so employ the working of wage earning classes as to divert business and economic activity to its own advantage without any regard to the human dignity of the workers, the social character of economic life, social justice, and the common good."

"Let them heed the words of the President that "we have undertaken a new order of things". Let them be cautious, henceforth, because only at their own personal peril will they dare obstruct the rising of this sun of social justice which will not set until the new economic system will have been perfected."

"If I own a shotgun that is no argument why I may kill my neighbor’s child. If I own a factory that is no argument why I may starve the laborers to make profits and profits only for the stockholders. All property is subject to control."

"In a sense, gentlemen, grant that Machiavelli was right. Grant that Machiavelli his genius when he said that by their very nature the masses require a strong hand and a superior brain to rule them and to exploit them."

"I mean that you have been constantly deceived. Are you not aware that this so-called democratic country of ours has been controlled by the capitalist and the plutocrat? Have you not learned through bitter experience that no political party seriously cares for your welfare. The mockery of your vote was all that counted. I mean that you have been victims of class legislation—of legislation designed to protect the rich and the property rights of the rich; legislation which sneered at the poor and at human rights."

"Nor does the concept of the Fascist or Nazi dictator appeal to the American liberty loving citizen with his traditional love for democracy and republican institutions which bar both Nazism and Fascism."

"In this nation there is ample room for everyone to profit according to his merit provided he is willing to work. Henceforth our national motto shall be ‘security for all.’ Henceforth our laws will be so written and so executed that financial privileges for the few shall disappear. This is what is meant when Mr. Roosevelt said: "Among our objectives I place the security of the men, women and children of the Nation first." These words indicate the philosophy which will guide our President during his tenure of office. It is the philosophy of social justice which is about to vanquish the sophistry of greed and of individualism."

"I believe that, in the present state of human society, it is advisable that the hourly wage contract should be abolished. In its stead legislation would be passed by which the laborer would receive an annual wage which would enable him to live in decently and according to the American standard."

"The representatives of labor should have a voice in the management of the business."

"[I] couldn't honestly take back much of what I said and did in the old days when people still listened to me. The press ignored it at the time [...] but [the] real reason I couldn't take any more of Roosevelt was because he recognized the atheistic, godless government of the Communists in Russia."

"I could have bucked the Government and won — the people would have supported me. But I didn't have the heart left, for my church had spoken. It was my duty to follow, for disobedience is a great sin."

"Are you for the old deal with its industrial dictatorship and its doctrine of laissez faire-ism or are you for a new deal whereby the government shall legislate against unfair competition, against concentration or profits in the hands of stockholders?"

"I am not boasting when I say to you that I know the pulse of the people. I know it better than all your newspaper men. I know it better than do all your industrialists with your paid-for advice. I am not exaggerating when I tell you of their demand for social justice which, like a tidal wave, is sweeping over this nation."

"I oppose modem capitalism because by its very nature it cannot and will not function for the common good. In fact, it is a detriment to civilization."

"Following this preamble, these shall be the principles of social justice towards the realization of which we must strive:… I believe that every citizen willing to work and capable of working shall receive a just, living, annual wage which will enable him both to maintain and educate his family according to the standards of American decency."

"At any rate I was persuaded by a lot of gentlemen, important gentlemen around the country, to get up an organization for the purposes of indoctrinating the people with the principles of social justice. That was it. It wasn't political, although you can't prove it wasn't political. If you’re indoctrinating anybody today, you’re in politics."

"I am beginning to understand why I have been dubbed a 'Nazi' and or a 'fascist' by the Jewish publications in America; for practically all the 16 principles of social justice are being put into practice in Italy and Germany."

"One thing is sure. Democracy is doomed. This is our last election. It is fascism or communism. We are at the crossroads—I take the road to fascism."

"When we get through with the Jews in America, they’ll think the treatment they received in Germany was nothing."

"I believe in upholding the right to private property but in controlling it for the public good."