Catholicism Quotes

People always ask me if I hate the nuns. Do I make my movies extra dirty to piss them off? I always say no, that's not the point. To a Catholic, a movie is only dirty if it makes you want to have sex more. If it makes you feel sick, disgusted, ashamed of your own body, then it's not a dirty movie at all. It's a Catholic movie. And I make very Catholic movies. ~ Kevin Smith

It is not brains or intelligence that is needed to cope with the problems with Plato and Aristotle and all of their successors to the present have failed to confront. What is needed is a readiness to undervalue the world altogether. This is only possible for a Christian ... All technologies and all cultures, ancient and modern, are part of our immediate expanse. There is hope in this diversity since it creates vast new possibilities of detachment and amusement at human gullibility and self-deception. There is no harm in reminding ourselves from time to time that the "Prince of this World" is a great P.R. man, a great salesman of new hardware and software, a great electric engineer, and a great master of the media. It is his master stroke to be not only environmental but invisible for the environmental is invincibly persuasive when ignored. ~ Marshall McLuhan

Yes, hypothetically, western Catholicism could revise the theme of celibacy ... But for the moment, I am in favor of maintaining celibacy, with the pros and the cons it has, because we have ten centuries of more good experiences than bad ones. ~ Pope Francis

There is another reason also why the soul has traveled safely in this obscurity; it has suffered: for the way of suffering is safer, and also more profitable, than that of rejoicing and of action. In suffering God gives strength, but in action and in joy the soul does but show its own weakness and imperfections. And in suffering, the soul practices and acquires virtue, and becomes pure, wiser, and more cautious. ~ San Juan De La Cruz

To convert somebody go and take them by the hand and guide them. ~ Thomas Aquinas

Back in the '50s and '60s, most politicians were concerned about not talking about faith, partly because there were consequences you had to deal with - (for instance) Catholicism had been made an issue. ~ Barack Obama

He said 'My kingdom is not of this world.' So did Bowie. It tapped into the whole Catholic idea of creating your own saints, finding icons of divinity in the mundane. As a religion, Bowieism didn't seem so different from Catholicism - the hemlines were just a little higher. ~ Rob Sheffield

What the Vatican did will be indelibly and eternally engraved in our hearts. Priests and even high prelates did things that will forever be an honor to Catholicism. ~ Israel Zolli

It is neither just nor human so to grind men down with excessive labour as to stupefy their minds and wear out their bodies. ~ Pope Leo XIII

In a certain sense, these people have a better appreciation of the Church and of Catholicism than many Catholics have: an appreciation which is detached and intellectual and objective. But they never come into the Church. They stand and starve in the doors of the banquet -- the banquet to which they surely realize that they are invited -- while those more poor, more stupid, less gifted, less educated, sometimes even less virtuous than they, enter in and are filled at those tremendous tables. ~ Thomas Merton

There is nothing to unify God and the soul but the Cross. ~ Louis De Wohl

I see that you get all your info on Catholicism from thriller novels. ~ Christian M. Frank

Then a movement began among the people. They creaked to their feet, shuffled and fumbled up to the front, kneeling on the floor, and she saw little Thomas at the beginning of the row. The priest turned and made the sign of the cross and all signed themselves; then he came forward and moved along the line, placing the Hosts in the mouths of the people.

Cecil had a very strange feeling; she felt that this was at the same time the most natural and the most unnatural thing she had ever seen. They were like little birds being fed by their mother, and yet it was grown people who knelt to receive what looked like a paper penny of bread on their tongues. She knew at once why the Mass provoked such love and such hate. Either what they believe is true, or else it is a dreadful delusion, she thought. ~ Meriol Trevor

For the political leader the religious doctrines and institutions of his people must always remain inviolable; or else has no right to be in politics, but should become a reformer, if he has what it takes! ~ Adolf Hitler

Catholicism is not a lifeless set of rules and regulations. Catholicism is a lifestyle. Catholicism is a way of life designed by God to help you become all you can be. ~ Matthew Kelly

A Catholic culture does not mean or imply universality. A nation or a whole civilization is of the Catholic culture not when it is entirely composed of strong believers minutely practicing their religion, nor even whit it boasts a majority of such, but when it presents a determining number of units-family institutions, individuals, inspired by and tenacious of the Catholic spirit. ~ Hilaire Belloc

Catholicism is a really mean religion, and it's incredibly hypocritical. But it plays a role in my life 'cause you can't really get a lot of things out of your head, such as what Jesus Christ looks like and that divorce is a horrible thing. ~ Madonna Ciccone

Our favorite games were killing.
Our favorite books were death.
It had been beaten into us:
God is love.
Not the parched face and gnarled
capes across a stick body; jittering
in the nude sky, we couldn't see
trying to touch us
for the blood in our eyes. ~ Joseph Bathanti

I am bound, as a pastor, by divine command to give my life for those whom I love, and that is all Salvadoreans, even those who are going to kill me. ~ Oscar Romero

I shouldn't be surprised. Catholicism is the ultimate loophole religion (sin, confess, repeat), so it makes sense that a priest would know better than anyone how to work the angles. Still, when you go to confession and say, "Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned," you don't expect him to say, "So, who hasn't? ~ Marc Acito

Mary thus learns that the Most High has ever borne a Son in his bosom, and that this Son has now chosen her bosom as dwelling-place. ~ Hans Urs Von Balthasar

Eagleton has spent his life inside two mental boxes, Catholicism and Marxism, of both of which he is a severe internal critic - that is, he frequently kicks and scratches at the inside of the boxes, but does not leave them. Neither are ideologies that loosen their grip easily, and people who need the security of adherence to a big dominating ideology, however much they kick and scratch but without daring to leave go, hold on to it every bit as tightly as it holds onto them. The result is of course strangulation, but alas not mutual strangulation: the ideology always wins. ~ A.C. Grayling

As well as being essential to theological study, philosophy is an indispensable tool for communicating theology, for evangelization and catechesis. A faith based on how warm and comfortable you feel and how "affirmed" you are by your community is pleasant, but there is no guarantee that it is true. Fides et ratio make clear that philosophy's central tasks are to justify our grasp of reality, of truth, and to make cogent suggestions as to life's true meaning. Being able to say something compelling on these topics -- reality, truth, and life's meaning -- is critical in winning young and old alike to the faith. A theology that incorporates philosophy's work in these areas will be faithful to the teaching of the Church and able to stand up to the most rigorous secular arguments and the ideologies of the age. ~ George Cardinal Pell

If I have trust in Catholicism, it is because I find in it much more possibility than in any other religion for presenting the full symphony of humanity. The other religions have almost no fullness; they have but solo parts. Only Catholicism can present the full symphony. And unless there is in that symphony a part that corresponds to Japan ... it cannot be a true religion. ~ Shusaku Endo

The Knox family were all there, as neither George's Catholicism nor his Presbyterianism prevented him from supporting the vicar, who was a great friend. ~ Angela Thirkell

Christ did not found an abstract religion, a mere school of religious thought. He setup a community of apostles, of teachers, with the task of spreading His message and so giving rise to a society of believers: His Church. He promised the Spirit of truth to His Church and then sent Him. ~ Pope Paul VI

He clenched his small fist, bellowed his rage to the heavens, and resolved to never again recognize the authority of any man on earth. ~ Patricia Lockwood

Narcissism makes people incapable of looking beyond themselves, beyond their own desires and needs. ~ Pope Francis

On Good Friday last year the SS found some pretext to punish 60 priests with an hour on "the tree." That is the mildest camp punishment. They tie a man's hands together behind his back, palms facing out and fingers pointing backward. Then they turn his hands inwards, tie a chain around his wrists and hoist him up by it. His own wight twists his joints and pulls them apart ... Several of the priest who were hung up last year never recovered and died. If you don't have a strong heart, you don't survive it. Many have a permanently crippled hand. ~ Jean Bernard

That's not a lucky thing, Cecil," said Teresa, "it's a sacred thing."

"What's the difference?" Cecil asked.

Teresa smiled. "Roughly this," she said. "A thing is magic if you get what you want through it; but if it is blessed you get what God wants through it. ~ Meriol Trevor

The Pope's entrance was stunning. Maybe the Catholics know about miracles, and maybe they know about saints, but they've never received enough credit for what they know about show business. ~ George Burns

The apostle Paul often appears in Christian thought as the one chiefly responsible for the de-Judaization of the gospel and even for the transmutation of the person of Jesus from a rabbi in the Jewish sense to a divine being in the Greek sense. Such an interpretation of Paul became almost canonical in certain schools of biblical criticism during the nineteenth century, especially that of Ferdinand Christian Baur, who saw the controversy between Paul and Peter as a conflict between the party of Peter, with its 'Judaizing' distortion of the gospel into a new law, and the party of Paul, with its universal vision of the gospel as a message about Jesus for all humanity. Very often, of course, this description of the opposition between Peter and Paul and between law and gospel was cast in the language of the opposition between Roman Catholicism (which traced its succession to Peter as the first pope) and Protestantism (which arose from Luther's interpretation of the epistles of Paul). Luther's favorite among those epistles, the letter to the Romans, became the charter for this supposed declaration of independence from Judaism. ~ Jaroslav Pelikan

Never forget that there are only two philosophies to rule your life: the one of the cross, which starts with the fast and ends with the feast. The other of Satan, which starts with the feast and ends with the headache. ~ Fulton J. Sheen

Peace is not simply the absence of warfare. ~ Pope Paul VI

Much of what is called Christianity has more to do with disguising the ego behind the screen of religion and culture than any real movement toward a God beyond the small self, and a new self in God. ~ Richard Rohr

Pascal makes no attempt in this most famous argument to show that his Roman Catholicism is true or probably true. The reasons which he suggests for making the recommended bet on his particular faith are reasons in the sense of motives rather than reasons in the sense of grounds. Conceding, if only for the sake of the present argument, that we can have no knowledge here, Pascal tries to justify as prudent a policy of systematic self-persuasion, rather than to provide grounds for thinking that the beliefs recommended are actually true. ~ Antony Flew

If you're raised Methodist, Catholicism is a bit of a workout. It's sort of like you're up, you're down, you're up, you're down. It's a continual hokey-pokey. ~ Douglas Carter Beane

28. It is a capital evil with respect to the question We are discussing to take for granted that the one class of society is of itself hostile to the other, as if nature had set rich and poor against each other to fight fiercely in implacable war. This is so abhorrent to reason and truth that the exact opposite is true; for just as in the human body the different members harmonize with one another, whence arises that disposition of parts and proportion in the human figure rightly called symmetry, so likewise nature has commanded in the case of the State that the two classes mentioned should agree harmoniously and should properly form equally balanced counterparts to each other. ~ Pope Leo XIII

Organized religion is the school of hate, and never more exultant in its righteous indignation than when it talks about gay and lesbian. In America the unholy alliance between the know-nothing fundamentalists and the Catholic hierarchy keeps the faithful whipped up to a frenzy of witch-hunting and fag-bashing. ~ Paul Monette

Catholicism played such a huge part in my life, I would not have survived without my faith. ~ Samantha Morton

I think Catholicism took root very quickly in Ireland because it's a very superstitious religion, the holy ghost, the holy spirit, it has a goddess, very visual, the music. ~ Conor McPherson

Curiously enough, it is a fear of how grace will change and improve them that keeps many souls away from God. They want God to take them as they are and let them stay that way. They want Him to take away their love of riches, but not their riches - to purge them of the disgust of sin, but not of the pleasure of sin. Some of them equate goodness with indifference to evil and think that God is good if He is broad-minded or tolerant about evil. Like the onlookers at the Cross, they want God on their terms, not His, and they shout, "Come down, and we will believe." But the things they ask are the marks of a false religion: it promises salvation without a cross, abandonment without sacrifice, Christ without his nails. God is a consuming fire; our desire for God must include a willingness to have the chaff burned from our intellect and the weeds of our sinful will purged. The very fear souls have of surrendering themselves to the Lord with a cross is an evidence of their instinctive belief in His Holiness. Because God is fire, we cannot escape Him, whether we draw near for conversion or flee from aversion: in either case, He affects us. If we accept His love, its fires will illumine and warm us; if we reject Him, they will still burn on in us in frustration and remorse. ~ Fulton J. Sheen

Constantine saw with his own eyes the trophy of a cross of light in the heavens, above the sun, and bearing this inscription: conquer by this. At the sight, he himself was struck with amazement and his whole army also. ~ Eusebius

You and I are faced with one of those situations (which fortunately are not very numerous in one lifetime) which cannot possibly be adequately judged beforehand. It strikes me as a colossal gamble, or rather, a very great adventure. And personally I am considerably exhilarated by the risks! ... The greatness of the adventure perhaps consists partly in the fact that as a Catholic I can marry only once! But, as with being born, perhaps once is quite sufficient! In the Church, you know, there is a great heightening of every moment of experience, since every moment is played against a supernatural backdrop. Nothing can be humdrum in this scheme. ~ Marshall McLuhan

Latins are predisposed to thinking about the past. Catholicism has a lot to do with it because Catholicism is a contemplation of the past, of symbols that are supposed to be eternally present. ~ Oscar Hijuelos

Catholicism actually resembles a family that survives because even as it aspires to holiness, it understands and can live with sin and imperfection. ~ Eugene Kennedy

Show business offers more solid promises than Catholicism. ~ John Guare

Father Nicholas Steno, is often identified as the father of geology. ~ Thomas E. Woods Jr.

The true friends of the people are neither revolutionaries, nor innovators, but traditionalists. ~ Pope Pius X

Benito Mussolini had barely seized power in Italy before the Vatican made an official treaty with him ... Catholicism became the only recognized religion in Italy ... and in return urged its followers to vote for Mussolini's party. Pope Pius XI described [Mussolini] as 'a man sent by providence.' ... Across southern Europe, the church was a reliable ally in the instatement of fascist regimes ... ~ Christopher Hitchens

To understand our faith -- to theologize in the Catholic tradition -- we need philosophy. We must use the philosophical language of God, person, creation, relationship, identity, natural law, virtues, conscience, moral norms if we are to think about religion and defend it. Theology has some terms and methods of its own, but its fundamental tools are borrowed from philosophy.

The growth of religious fundamentalism and the collapse of religious education mean theology is more urgently needed in universities -- especially Catholic ones -- than ever before. ~ George Cardinal Pell

Meditating on the nature and dignity of prayer can cause saying at least one thing to God: Lord, teach us to pray! ~ Karl Rahner

But the truth is that there is no more conscious inconsistency between the humility of a Christian and the rapacity of a Christian than there is between the humility of a lover and the rapacity of a lover. The truth is that there are no things for which men will make such herculean efforts as the things of which they know they are unworthy. There never was a man in love who did not declare that, if he strained every nerve to breaking, he was going to have his desire. And there never was a man in love who did not declare also that he ought not to have it. ~ G.K. Chesterton

Indeed God has spoken. And He has spoken to you and me. But when He says "Christmas", He means Christ and His Mass. When He says "Merry", He not only wishes us to meet His Christ, but wills that we become His members; He not only wishes that we learn about Christ's Mass, but wills that we live it. Unless we have heard all that, we have never heard God's greeting. Unless we do ll that we have never returned it; for we have missed the Gospel, rejected the Gift, and will never attain our goal. ~ M. Raymond

It was easy to know the doctrine. It's much harder to help a billion people live it. ~ Pope Benedict XVI

That there should be some fire even after this life is not incredible, and it can be inquired into and either be discovered or left hidden whether some of the faithful may be saved, some more slowly and some more quickly in the greater or lesser degree in which they loved the good things that perish, through a certain purgatorial fire. ~ Saint Augustine

The expression 'to lose one's faith', as one might a purse or a ring of keys, has always seemed to me rather foolish. It must be one of those sayings of bourgeois piety, a legacy of those wretched priests of the eighteenth century who talked so much.

Faith is not a thing which one 'loses', we merely cease to shape our lives by it. That is why old-fashioned confessors are not far wrong in showing a certain amount of scepticism when dealing with 'intellectual crises', doubtless far more rare than people imagine. An educated man may come by degrees to tuck away his faith in some back corner of his brain, where he can find it again on reflection, by an effort of memory: yet even if he feels a tender regret for what no longer exists and might have been, the term 'faith' would nevertheless be inapplicable to such an abstraction, no more like real faith, to use a very well-worn simile, than the constellation of Cygne is like a swan. ~ Georges Bernanos

In the Catholic Church, there are many other things which most justly keep me in her bosom. The consent of peoples and nations keeps me in the Church; so does her authority, inaugurated by miracles, nourished by hope, enlarged by love, established by age. The succession of priests keeps me, beginning from the very seat of the Apostle Peter, to whom the Lord, after His resurrection, gave it in charge to feed His sheep (Jn 21:15-19), down to the present episcopate. ~ Saint Augustine

Catholics can in no way convince themselves that so enormous and unjust an in equality in the distribution of this world's goods truly conforms to the designs of the all-wise Creator. ~ Pope Pius XI

I sometimes call my new system 'Italian pagan Catholicism,' but it could more accurately be called 'pragmatic liberalism,' with roots in Enlightenment political philosophy. It is a synthesis of the enduring dual elements in our culture, pagan and Judeo-Christian, Romantic and Classic. ~ Camille Paglia

Love God, serve God; everything is in that. ~ Clare Of Assisi

How liberating it must be to stop evading, questioning, or complaining about your trials and start embracing them as opportunities to draw closer to God, to realize that even if Jesus is all you have, He is enough ~ Colleen Carroll Campbell

Catholicism is a matter of the body and the senses as much as it is a matter of the mind, precisely because the Word became flesh. ~ Robert Barron

The Nation doesn't simple need what we have, It needs what we are. ~ Bharath Mamidoju

There is no need for particular speech in order to be with God. We have only to be quiet and to contemplate his love. In the silence, we look at God and let him look at us. ~ Robert Sarah

Those who deny guilt and sin are like the Pharisees of old who thought our Saviour had a "guilt complex" because He accused them of being whited sepulchers - outside clean, inside full of dead men's bones. Those who admit that they are guilty are like the public sinners and the publicans of whom Our Lord said, "Amen, I say to you, that the publicans and the harlots shall go into the Kingdom of God before you" (Matt. 21:31). Those who think they are healthy but have a hidden moral cancer are incurable; the sick who want to be healed have a chance. All denial of guilt keeps people out of the area of love and, by inducing self-righteousness, prevents a cure. The two facts of healing in the physical order are these: A physician cannot heal us unless we put ourselves into his hands, and we will not put ourselves into his hands unless we know that we are sick. In like manner, a sinner's awareness of sin is one requisite for his recovery; the other is his longing for God. When we long for God, we do so not as sinners, but as lovers. ~ Fulton J. Sheen

I think I would like to be a monk. I really considered Catholicism a few years ago, but there were some things that I just couldn't reconcile. ~ Rich Mullins

When I was in my single digits, I was subjected to the worst torture you can possibly inflict on a child: Catholic mass. ~ Tyler Oakley

My first memories of religion were being taken to Episcopal church. My father was Catholic, but my mother, I believe, was Episcopal. So I sort of veered off into the watered-down version of Catholicism. ~ Marilyn Manson

It is, after all, far too easy to pinch and kick the bizarre Mormon Church; to say it's ripe for satire and parody is to say a Catholic schoolgirl is ripe for debauchery. It's like shooting polygamist fish in a barrel of coffee. ~ Mark Morford

The human being is single, unique, and unrepeatable, someone thought of and chosen from eternity, someone called and identified by name ~ Pope John Paul II

I think that it [the Church] stands for everything most hostile to the mental emancipation and stimulation of mankind. It is the completest, most highly organized system of prejudices and antagonisms in existence. Everywhere in the world there are ignorance and prejudice, but the greatest complex of these, with the most extensive prestige and the most intimate entanglement with traditional institutions, is the Roman Catholic Church. It presents many faces towards the world, but everywhere it is systematic in its fight against freedom. ~ H.G.Wells

Fernanda was scandalized that she did not understand the relationship of Catholicism with life but only its relationship with death, as if it were not a religion but a compendium of funeral conventions. ~ Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Sanders argued, basically, that the normal Christian, and especially Protestant, readings of Paul were seriously flawed, because they attributed to first-century Judaism theological views which belonged rather to medieval Catholicism. Once we described Judaism accurately, Sanders argued, we were forced to rethink Paul's critique of it, and his whole positive theology in its turn. ~ N. T. Wright

They believe, along the lines of social networks, that love can be connected or disconnected at the whim of the consumer, and the relationship quickly "blocked". We treat affective relationships the way we treat material objects and the environment : everything is disposable; everyone uses and throws away, takes and breaks, exploits and squeezes to the last drop. Then, goodbye. ~ Pope Francis

Catholicism is not a soothing religion. It's a painful religion. We're all gluttons for punishment. ~ Madonna Ciccone

The wish to pray is a prayer in itself. ~ Georges Bernanos

Sin is a personal act. Moreover, we have a responsibility for the sins committed by others when we cooperate in them: by participating directly and voluntarily in them; by ordering, advising, praising, or approving them; by not disclosing or not hindering them when we have an obligation to do so; by protecting evil-doers. [1868] ~ The Catholic Church

It is hard to believe that many of those now exercising authority in the Church appears to have as their dearest ambition the obliteration of the most Sacred Prayer [1962 Latin Mass] from the face of the earth - and would it be too outrageous to suggest that where they do manage to obliterate the Sacred Prayer, the sacrifice which it enshrines may vanish too? ~ Michael Treharne Davies

It is absurd and a detestable shame, that we should suffer those traditions to be changed which we have received from the fathers of old. ~ Thomas Aquinas

The Trinity is the answer to the questions of Plato.
If there is only one God, what does He think about? He thinks an eternal thought: His eternal Word, or Son.
If there is only one God, whom does he love? He loves His Son, and that mutual love is the Holy Spirit.
The great philosopher was fumbling about for the mystery of the Trinity, for his noble mind seemed in some small way to suspect that an infinite being must have relations of thought and love. But it was not until the Word became Incarnate that man knew the secret of those relations and the inner life of God, for it was Jesus Christ, the Son of God, Who revealed to us the inmost life of God. ~ Fulton J. Sheen

Such a pity that he [GK Chesterton] became a Catholic. ~ Jorge Luis Borges

We can only abandon the Catholic Church for some spiritual home which is more of a home than the Catholic Church . . . Where are we to bind such a revelation, such a spiritual home, such sources of inspiration? Nowhere; there is no other system in the world which does even to claim what the Catholic Church claims. Are we to abandon the Catholic faith for something less than the Catholic faith? ~ Ronald Knox

The Offices rerooted me in a tradition where, monk or not, I would always be at home. From long ago I knew the power of their repetition, the incantatory force of the Psalms. But they had an added power now. As a kid, the psalmist (or psalmists) had seemed remote to me, the Psalms long prayers which sometimes rose to great poetry but often had simply to be endured. For a middle-aged man, the psalmists' moods and feelings came alive. One of the voices sounded a lot like a modern New Yorker, me or people I knew: a manic-depressive type A personality sometimes up, more often down, sometimes resigned, more often pissed off, railing about his sneaky enemies and feckless friends, always bitching to the Lord about the rotten hand he'd been dealt. That good old changelessness. ~ Tony Hendra

Roman Catholicism: a hundred million people bowing down before a flesh-hating, elderly celibate. ~ Barbara Ehrenreich

Justice comes before charity. ~ Pope John XXIII

And Latin America has become very fashionable, yet what repels me is that everyone in Europe goes and imposes themselves there under this mantle of social and socialist cooperation, which in reality is nothing but a disgusting subspecies of European Christian-Socialist fussiness.The Europeans bore themselves to death and meddle every where in the so called Third World in order to escape that fatal European boredom. Missionarianism is a German vice which has invariably just brought misfortune to the world today, which has invariably just plunged the world
into crisis The Church has only poisoned Africa with its detestable dear God, and now it is poisoning Latin America with it. The Catholic Church is the world poisoner the world destroyer, the world annihilator, that is the truth. The Germans continually poison the world outside of
their borders and they will give it no rest until this entire world is fatally poisoned. So I have long withdrawn from my bad habit of wanting to help people in Africa and South America and into myself entirely. There is no helping humanity in our world which has been a hypocrisy for centuries. And, like humanity, there is no helping the World because both are a hypocrisy through and through.
(Goethe Dies, p. 73) ~ Thomas Bernhard

Sacraments are like hoses. They are the channels of the living water of God's grace. Our faith is like opening the faucet. We can open it a lot, a little, or not at all. ~ Peter Kreeft

No one, on his deathbed, ever regretted having been a Catholic. ~ Thomas More

No one religion is right for everyone, and no religion - whether it be Wicca, Buddhism, Judaism, Catholicism - is more valid than any other. Religious diversity is something that needs not only to be tolerated, but also celebrated. The good that religion was designed to teach and maintain inevitably turns to harm when one religious group claims superiority over another or tries to deny others of their constitutional right to believe in and worship the god or goddess of their choice. ~ Gerina Dunwich

The problem is that one man's superstition is another man's religion, and vice versa. Many Protestants today still see Catholicism as being rife with superstition, ... while atheists and agnostics would see bien-pensant Protestants as worshiping an equally absurd form of the supernatural. ~ David Gibson

I can't bear Catholicism. ~ George Michael

All love tends to become like that which it loves. God loved man; therefore He became man. For nine months her own body was the natural Eucharist, in which God shared communion with human life, thus preparing for that greater Eucharist when human life would commune with the Divine. Mary's joy was to form Christ in her own body; her joy now is to form Christ in our souls. In this Mystery, we pray to become pregnant with the Christ spirit, giving Him new lips with which He may speak of His Father, new hands with which He may feed the poor, and a new heart with which He may love everyone, even enemies. ~ Fulton J. Sheen

We suffer with those who have disappeared, those who have had to flee their homes, and those who have been tortured. ~ Oscar Romero

I'd given up Catholicism in my teens but something of it stays with me. I try to create the perfect sentence - that's as close to godliness as I can get. ~ John Banville

The first good news for all of us, the first joyful story of our lives, is that there is a story at all, and an Author who has loved us into being. ~ Anthony M. Esolen

She thoroughly understands what no other Church has ever understood, how to deal with enthusiasts. ~ Thomas Babington Macaulay

I believe that Judaism was an improvement on polytheism; Christianity was an improvement on Judaism (to some degree and in some departments only); that Protestantism is an improvement on Catholicism; that Mormonism is an improvement on Protestantism. So I give Joseph Smith credit as an innovator and as a smart fellow. ~ Thomas Ferguson

I think it is quite remarkable actually that Pope Benedict has a sense of the variety of ways in which it is possible to be a Catholic. I think he is more comfortable with a plurality of expressions of Catholicism in different rites, traditions than many of us are. ~ Vincent Nichols

Both Mum and Dad were converts to Catholicism, and normally if you convert to Catholicism you have thought about it more than someone who just grew up with it, taking it for granted. ~ Tony Abbott