Timothy Radcliffe Quotes

I believe that my own Christian faith does indeed make universal claims.

The next challenge for Christianity is to remind Europeans that we are called to seek the truth.

I believe that his death and resurrection transformed humanity's relationship with God.

Celibacy is not just a matter of not having sex. It is a way of admiring a person for their humanity, maybe even for their beauty.

We need a place in which we may flourish and be ourselves.

What can the Church do? If she stands by her moral teaching, then she will be seen as standing in judgement over a vast percentage of Europeans.

This evening I wish to suggest that we Christians should accompany people on their pilgrimages. Specifically we should travel with people as they search for the good, the true and the beautiful.

The medieval Church believed that the resurrection of Christ marked a new time for all of humanity.

To be a preacher requires two apparently contradictory qualities: confidence and humility.

We can identify with Frodo and Sam, setting off not knowing quite where they are going and what they are to do.

The trouble is that after nine years as a Jack of all trades and Master of the Dominican Order, I have no expertise on anything except airports and exotic foods.

The key question for the future of Europe is whether these faiths will live together in peace or whether they will tear Europe apart.

Despite all the lunacy of the last century, all the absurdity of war and genocide, we believe that humans being are rational and are made to seek the truth.

The unutterable violence of the Holocaust shook our confidence in the possibility of telling any story of faith at all.

One of our deepest needs is to be at home.

Indeed if we Christians so tell our story that Judaism is silenced, then we have not spoken rightly of Christ.

We need the wisdom of women, and the experience of married people and parents, and the depth of the contemplative if we are to be formed as preachers.

The history of Israel and Judaism is the unfolding of the meaning of this story. It's retelling is never finished and will not be until the Kingdom.

Christianity will only make a contribution to the future of Europe if it can prove that people like Sam Harris are wrong and that we can make peace.

Christians can bring peace to multi-religious Europe because we are able to understand the role of faith in the lives of other believers better than atheists.

Orthodoxy is the wide open field within which successful breeding can take place. If one maintains that Jesus was an eater of magic mushrooms or a Martian, then this will not make for fertility. There is not enough in common for there to be intercourse in any sense. How different can two believers be for the encounter to be fertile? This is a complex question which we do not need to explore here. Of course ultimately we must share orthodoxy, but this is not to narrow the scope of the conversation; it is to enter the broad terrain of the mystery, in which we are liberated from the tightness of ideology. It is a serious misuse of language to use the word 'orthodox' to mean conservative or, even worse, rigid. Orthodoxy does not lie in the unvarying and thoughtless repetition of received formulas. As Karl Rahner pointed out, that can be a form of heresy. Orthodoxy is speaking about our faith in ways that keep open the pilgrimage towards the mystery. Often it is hard to know immediately whether a new statement of belief is a new way of stating our faith or its betrayal. It takes time for us to tell.

To be frank, I suspect that today there is little respect for Christianity as source of moral teaching about goodness.

Our society has lost confidence in the power of reason, except perhaps scientific reason.

At the centre of Christianity is community; we are gathered by the Lord around the altar.