Popes Quotes

The best attitude to receive the Pope's teachings is to understand that he is a religious leader and the essence of his message comes from the Gospel, not from one ideology or another.And so, if our economic systems are not oriented toward the human person but only concerned with profits, he wants to confront the system and change it. This, by the way, is common to all the popes, it comes directly from the so-called social teachings of the church. ~ Marcelo Sanchez Sorondo

Dig in the pope's pocket for the bullet, the brown glass vial with the magic top. Snort. Taste chemicals running down the back of your throat. Snort again. ~ Amanda Boyden

I don't think I look like the pope's favorite Catholic - at least not under close scrutiny. ~ Mary Karr

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

Bologna is celebrated for producing popes, painters, and sausage. ~ Lord Byron

We had better be without God's laws than the Pope's." To which Tyndale passionately responded: "I defy the Pope, and all his laws; and if God spares my life, ere many years, I will cause the boy that driveth the plow to know more of the Scriptures than thou dost! ~ William Tyndale

I never want to see umbrellas around me," he [Mussolini] once said. "The umbrella is a bourgeois relic, it is the arm used by the pope's soldiers. A people who carry umbrellas cannot found an empire. ~ David I. Kertzer

For if God be on our side, what matter maketh it who be against us, be they bishops, cardinals, popes, or whatsoever names they will? ~ William Tyndale

What is wrong with priests and popes is that instead of being apostles and saints, they are nothing but empirics who say I know instead of I am learning, and pray for credulity and inertia as wise men pray for skepticism and activity. ~ George Bernard Shaw

You can say any sort of nonsense in Latin, and our feeble university men will be stunned, or at least profoundly confused. That's how the popes have gotten away with peddling bad religion for so long, they simply say it in Latin. ~ Neal Stephenson

It's also important to read the newspaper every day to see how the pope is doing. Here in Rome, the pope's health is recorded daily in the newspaper, very much like weather, or the TV schedule. Today the pope is tired. Yesterday, the pope was less tired than he is today. Tomorrow, we expect that the pope will not be so tired as he was today. ~ Elizabeth Gilbert

All computers expect to be yelled at. There's not a single computer in the whole world that hasn't been sworn at. Even the discreet little VDU with the crossed keys monogram on the keyboard that sits on the Pope's desk in his office in the Vatican has in its time heard language that'd make a Marine blush. ~ Tom Holt

In the eyes of Popes and Imams we are Us and Them, but in the eyes of the Lord we are one. ~ Yasmina Khadra

Grace abounds in contemporary movies, books, novels, films and music. If God is not in the whirlwind, He may be in a Woody Allen film, or a Bruce Springsteen concert. Most people understand imagery and symbol better than doctrine and dogma. Images touch hearts and awaken imaginations. One theologian suggested that Springsteen's 'Tunnel of Love' album, in which he symbolically sings of sin, death, despair and redemption, is more important for Catholics than the Pope's last visit when he spoke of morality only in doctrinal propositions. ~ Brennan Manning

Yes, I am fond of history.'
'I wish I were too. I read it a little as a duty, but it tells me nothing that does not either vex or weary me. The quarrels of popes and kings, with wars or pestilences, in every page; the men all so good for nothing, and hardly any women at all – it is very tiresome: and yet I often think it odd that it should be so dull, for a great deal of it must be invention. The speeches that are put into the heroes' mouths, their thoughts and designs – the chief of all this must be invention, and invention is what delights me in other books. ~ Jane Austen

Catholics believe that the Pope will never lead the Church into error, at least in his doctrinal formulations of matters of faith and morals. History well attests that popes can be corrupt, inept, and imprudent; but they have never - so Catholics claim - proposed as a matter of belief anything contrary to faith (CCC 890). Besides this, Catholics think there are purely logical reasons for why such a thing as a Magisterium is necessary. For the ~ Ryan N.S. Topping

It is often asserted that as woman has always been man's slave
subject
inferior
dependent, under all forms of government and religion, slavery must be her normal condition. This might have some weight had not the vast majority of men also been enslaved for centuries to kings and popes, and orders of nobility, who, in the progress of civilization, have reached complete equality. ~ Susan B. Anthony

A discovery must be, by definition, at variance with existing knowledge. During my lifetime, I made two. Both were rejected offhand by the popes of the field. Had I predicted these discoveries in my applications, and had those authorities been my judges, it is evident what their decisions would have been. ~ Albert Szent-Gyorgyi

Stand-up comedy and comedy in general is the ultimate form of free speech, because you get to poke holes in all the pretentious bubbles politicians and pundits and popes and pretenders try to float over our heads. ~ Denis Leary

Popes, prophets, mystics, buddhas are all just actors playing a role. ~ Marty Rubin

It is as disastrous to true government in the state, and home, to teach all womankind to submit to the authority of man, as divinely ordained, as it is to teach all mankind to bow down to the authority of kings and Popes, as divinely ordained. ~ Elizabeth Cady Stanton

If you were to tell the thing down at the bottom of that pit it had napped through forty-two presidential inaugurations, eight British coronations, sixteen popes and three number ones by the Danish pop group, Aqua, it would have told you to stop talking nonsense and shut the fuck up. It had slept, somewhat peacefully, through Emmet's Insurrection, World War I and II, Vietnam, and even the Great War of Blur Vs. Oasis. ~ Adam Millard

Now it's going to turn into the biggest media blitz since the Pope's divorce. ~ Dani Kollin

I despair at the rise of modern violence. I truly give in to despair at times, that deep, futureless pit of despair ... I watch the American slaughterhouse, the casual attacks on popes, presidents, and uncounted others, and I wonder if there are many more out there with the Ability or if butchery has simply become the modern way of life. ~ Dan Simmons

Today, the Pope is only a religious figure. At the time of 'The Borgias,' he was also a political leader, a financial leader, and the head of an army. I think popes are much less relevant today than they were then. ~ Francois Arnaud

Nuns are great, but they aren't priests. Nuns can't celebrate Mass. They can't hear confessions or consecrate the Eucharist. They can't become bishops or cardinals or popes, they can't become the people who make the big decisions. How do you change a church that doesn't listen to you? ~ Katie Henry

With The Pogues, at least the first three albums I'll stand by completely, yeah? Because I was in artistic control then, yeah? And the last couple of albums I'll stand by anything that's got my name on it, yeah? But I'll stand by anything that is on The Popes' albums, you know? I wouldn't put stuff out that I didn't like. I don't put out bad music. And I can tell the difference. I know that. ~ Shane MacGowan

I read it [history] a little as a duty, but it tells me nothing that does not either vex or weary me. The quarrels of popes and kings, with wars or pestilences, in every page; the men all so good for nothing, and hardly any women at all - it is very tiresome: and yet I often think it odd that it should be so dull, for a great deal of it must be invention. ~ Jane Austen

The perpetrators of the Inquisition - the torturers, informers, and those who commanded their actions - were ecclesiastics of one rank or another. They were men of God - popes, bishops, friars, and priests. ~ Sam Harris

As one would expect, the Pope's schedule is quite disciplined - he wakes up at four o'clock each morning and runs on the treadmill for an hour. I'm totally kidding. Nobody's knees have time for that. ~ Jared Brock

I read in the newspaper that the Catholic Church finally decided that it had been theologically improper to try to convert the Jews. Whoops! Sorry for all those inquisitions, crusades, and autos-da-fe. Previous popes were wrong - infallible, perhaps, but wrong. ~ Alan Dershowitz

GERTRUDE
Gertrude Appleman, 1901-1976

God is all-knowing, all-present, and almighty.

--A Catechism of Christian Doctrine

I wish that all the people
who peddle God
could watch my mother die:
could see the skin and
gristle weighing only
seventy-nine, every stubborn
pound of flesh a small
death.

I wish the people who peddle God
could see her young,
lovely in gardens and
beautiful in kitchens, and could watch
the hand of God slowly
twisting her knees and fingers
till they gnarled and knotted, settling in
for thirty years of pain.

I wish the people who peddle God
could see the lightning
of His cancer stabbing
her, that small frame
tensing at every shock,
her sweet contralto scratchy with
the Lord's infection: Philip,
I want to die.

I wish I had them gathered round,
those preachers, popes, rabbis,
imams, priests – every
pious shill on God's payroll – and I
would pull the sheets from my mother's brittle body,
and they would fall on their knees at her bedside
to be forgiven all their
faith. ~ Philip Appleman

When we walk without the cross, when we build without the cross and when we proclaim Christ without the cross, we are not disciples of the Lord. We are worldly. We may be bishops, priests, cardinals, popes, all of this, but we are not disciples of the Lord. ~ Pope Francis

Kiss the feet of Popes provided their hands are tied. ~ Napoleon Bonaparte

Why do many believers insist on repeatedly pointing to the crimes of 20th century dictators who led officially atheistic societies as some sort of evidence of their god's existence? It makes no sense.
If the rivers of blood on Stalin's hands and Mao's hands, for example, are supposed to prove there is a god, then what do the oceans of blood on the hands of several thousand years' worth of religious kings, queens, presidents, popes, priests, generals, Crusadersm jihadists and tribal chiefs prove? It's not, of course, but if bodycount is somehow the measure of a god's likelihood of existence, then believers lose.
It is clear that humans are quite capable of killing with or without images of gods bouncing around in their heads. If anything, however, history suggests that the concept of gods makes the idea of massacring your fellow man (and women and children, too, of course) a lot easier to act upon. ~ Guy P. Harrison

If the Pope were to deny that the death penalty could be an exercise of retributive justice, he would be overthrowing the tradition of two millenia of Catholic thought, denying the teaching of several previous popes, and contradicting the teaching of Scripture. ~ Avery Dulles

New Rule: Let the Pope be Pope. An animal-rights group in Italy has asked Pope Benedict to give up his fur-trimmed cape and hat. To which the Pope replied, "Don't be hatin' on my cape, bitch." Sorry, but Popes are the original divas, they invented bling, they've been wearing outlandish outfits for a thousand years
almost as long as Elton John. The clothes, the jewels, the fancy palace ... Those aren't just symbols of the Papacy, they are the Papacy. The day the Pope shows up on the balcony in a pair of jeans and polo shirt is the day a billion Catholics go, "What the hell were we thinking? ~ Bill Maher

Sister Carmelita says animals don't have souls"
"Of course animals have souls, where did she get that idea?"
"She said the Pope says."
"The Pope's an old meanie. Animals have much nicer souls than we do. They never tell lies or blow anybody up."
"They eat each other."
"Well, they have to eat each other; they can't go to Dairy Queen and get a large vanilla cone with sprinkles, can they? "
"They could eat grass."
"So could we, but we don't. We eat hamburgers. ~ Audrey Niffenegger

Many critics of the Crusades would seem to suppose that after the Muslims had overrun a major portion of Christendom, they should have been ignored or forgiven; suggestions have been made about turning the other cheek. This outlook is certainly unrealistic and probably insincere. Not only had the Byzantines lost most of their empire; the enemy was at their gates. And the loss of Spain, Sicily, and southern Italy, as well as a host of Mediterranean islands, was bitterly resented in Europe. Hence, as British historian Derek Lomax (1933-1992) explained, 'The popes, like most Christians, believed war against the Muslims to be justified partly because the latter had usurped by force lands which once belonged to Christians and partly because they abused the Christians over whom they ruled and such Christian lands as they could raid for slaves, plunder and the joys of destruction.' It was time to strike back. ~ Rodney Stark

Father Jude Nnorom says he hopes the pope's travels in Africa will help end all the wars ravaging the continent. ~ Sylvia Poggioli

The dogma of the infallibility of the Bible is no more self-evident than is that of the infallibility of the popes. ~ Thomas Huxley

Since the primitive times, the wealth of the popes was exposed to envy, their powers to opposition, and their persons to violence. ~ Edward Gibbon

Mother is the first word that occurs to politicians and columnists and popes when they raise the question, 'Why isn't life turning out the way we want it?' ~ Mary Kay Blakely

Ask me if Christianity (my version of it, yours, the Pope's, whoever's) is orthodox, meaning true, and here's my honest answer: a little, but not yet. Assuming by Christianity you mean the Christian understanding of the world and God, Christian opinions on soul, text, and culture I'd have to say that we probably have a couple of things right, but a lot of things wrong, and even more spreads before us unseen and unimagined. But at least our eyes are open! To be a Christian in a generously orthodox way is not to claim to have the truth captured, stuffed, and mounted on the wall. ~ Brian D. McLaren

I STOOD IN the piazza facing St. Peter's Basilica in Rome. Bodies pressed around me and a pope's voice boomed in my ears. The ground began to tremble, as if aching under the crowd's weight. The cobblestones lurched under my feet. I staggered, tripped over someone, and fell flat on my back. People started running and screaming. ~ J.B. Simmons

This requires a level of delusion/egomania usually reserved for popes and drag queens ~ Tina Fey

I saw also the relationship between the two popes I saw how baleful (evil; harmful) would be the consequences of this false church. I saw it increase in size; heretics of every kind came into the city (of Rome) Once more I saw the Church of Peter was undermined by a plan evolved by the secret sect (Masonry), while storms were damaging it. ~ Anne Catherine Emmerich

Systems of religious error have been adopted in times of ignorance. It has been the interest of tyrannical kings, popes, and prelates to maintain these errors. When the clouds of ignorance began to vanish and the people grew more enlightened, there was no other way to keep them in error but to prohibit their altering their religious opinions by severe persecuting laws. In this way persecution became general throughout Europe. ~ Oliver Ellsworth

As he flushed, an unexpected realization hit him. This is the Pope's toilet, he thought. I just took a leak in the Pope's toilet. He had to chuckle. The Holy Throne. ~ Dan Brown

In the agreement to rescue Rome [i.e., the Roman Catholic Church's hierarchy] from the predicament of losing its world control to Protestantism, and to preserve the spiritual and temporal supremacy which the popes [had] 'usurped' during the Middle Ages, Rome now 'sold' the [Roman Catholic] Church to the Society of Jesus [i.e., the Jesuits]; in essence the popes surrendered themselves into their hands. ~ John Daniel

He was Caesar and Pope in one; but he was Pope without Pope's pretensions, Caesar without the legions of Caesar: without a standing army, without a bodyguard, without a palace, without a fixed revenue; if ever any man had the right to say that he ruled by the right divine, it was Mohammed, for he had all the power without its instruments and without its supports. He cared not for the dressings of power. The simplicity of his private life was in keeping with his public life. ~ R. Bosworth Smith

Without artists, would this heritage have descended to us? Would the words and deeds - the revelation - have survived the arduous journey into the present without the painters, the mosaic workers, the storytellers, the stone carvers, the poets, the singers, the workers in stained glass? Wasn't it art, I thought - as I watched Bernard open a handsome black wallet and remove a handful of lire - that had been the carrier of the divine? Popes had understood that. The Emperor Constantine. Monks in damp Irish monasteries illuminating the Word. ~ Rachel Pastan

Pont Saint Benezet."
"What happened to it?" Luce asked.
Daniel glanced over his shoulder. "Remember how quiet Annabelle got when I mentioned we were coming here? She inspired the boy who built that bridge in the Middle Ages in the time when the popes lived here and not in Rome. He noticed her flying across the Rhone one day when she didn't think anyone could see her. He built the bridge to follow her to the other side."
"When did it collapse?"
"Slowly, over time, one arch would fall into the river. Then another. Arriane says the boy-his name was Benezet-had a vision for angels, but not for architecture. Annabelle loved him. She stayed in Avignon as his muse until he died. He never married, kept apart from the rest of Avignon society. The town thought he was crazy."
Luce tried not to compare her relationship with Daniel to what Annabelle had had with Benezet, but it was hard not to. What kind of relationship could an angel and a mortal really have? Once all this was over, if they beat Lucifer…then what? Would she and Daniel go back to Georgia and be like any other couple, going out for ice cream on Fridays after a movie? Or would the whole town think she was crazy, like Benezet?
Was it all just hopeless? What would become of them in the end? Would their love vanish like a medieval bridge's arches?
The idea of sharing a normal life with an angel was what was crazy. She sensed that in every moment Daniel flew her through the sky. And yet she lo ~ Lauren Kate

Thus the popes, sometimes in zeal for religion, at others moved by their own ambition, were continually calling in new parties and exciting new disturbances. ~ Niccolo Machiavelli

The free-trade idea, logically applied, will abolish usury; and with usury will disappear the chief bone of contention between labor and capital. But, just at this point, free-traders go over to the enemy; and many writers on political economy, in flat contradiction of the essential principles of that science, have made elaborate arguments to prove self-government in finance, impossible! What shall we think of men who, having dethroned kings, demolished popes, destroyed slave oligarchies and assailed tariff monopoly, advise submission to the most oppressive and dishonest of despotisms, Usury? ~ Ezra Heywood

If this is so, why should any man bother about moral rules and regulations? Why should any man conform to laws formulated by a people whose outlook on the universe probably differed diametrically from his own? Why should any man obey a regulation which is denounced, by his common-sense, as a hodge-podge of absurdities, and why should he model his whole life upon ideals invented to serve the temporary needs of a forgotten race of some past age? These questions Nietzsche asked himself. His conclusion was a complete rejection of all fixed codes of morality, and with them of all gods, messiahs, prophets, saints, popes, ~ H.L. Mencken

Thus Turks and Christians are of different religions, because these take the Holy Scriptures to be the rule of their religion, and those the Alcoran. And for the same reason there may be different religions also even amongst Christians. The Papists and Lutherans, though both of them profess faith in Christ and are therefore called Christians, yet are not both of the same religion, because these acknowledge nothing but the Holy Scriptures to be the rule and foundation of their religion, those take in also traditions and the decrees of Popes and of these together make the rule of their religion; and thus the Christians of St. John (as they are called) and the Christians of Geneva are of different religions, because these also take only the Scriptures, and those I know not what traditions, for the rule of their religion. ~ John Locke

A crowd of men stood in front of them. Of all ages, with expressions of sex-wonder in their eyes, gazing curiously as men who cannot solve a mystery that populates graveyards and through the ages has sent poets, popes, kings and fools to the junk heap. ~ Jim Tully

The popes have spoken of human ecology, closely linked to environmental ecology. We are living in a time of crisis: we see this in the environment, but above all we see this in mankind Man is not in charge today, money is in charge, money rules. God our Father did not give the task of caring for the earth to money, but to us, to men and women: we have this task! Instead, men and women are sacrificed to the idols of profit and consumption: it is the 'culture of waste.' ~ Pope Francis

God has set popes over kings and kingdoms. ~ Pope Boniface VIII

Unless I am convicted by Scripture and plain reason-I do not accept the authority of popes and councils, for they have contradicted each other-my conscience is captive to the Word of God. I cannot and will not recant anything, for to go against conscience is neither right nor safe. Here I stand, I cannot do otherwise. God help me. Amen. ~ Martin Luther

We all have known good critics, who have stamped out poet's hopes; Good statesmen, who pulled ruin on the state; Good patriots, who, for a theory, risked a cause; Good kings, who disemboweled for a tax; Good Popes, who brought all good to jeopardy; Good Christians, who sat still in easy-chairs; And damned the general world for standing up. Now, may the good God pardon all good men! ~ Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Religions are vague, of course. This means that they are easy to follow -you can interpret their prescriptions as you like. but it also means that it is easy to slip up -there is always some injunction you are violating. But Islam has no religious establishment - no popes, no bishops - that can declare by fiat which is the correct interpretation. As a result, the decision to oppose the state on the grounds that is insufficiently Islamic belongs to anyone who wishes to exercise it. ~ Fareed Zakaria

The greatest empiricists among us are only empiricists on reflection: when left to their instincts, they dogmatize like infallible popes. ~ William James

We must have a religion - it goes without saying - but my idea is, to have it cut up into forty free sects, so that they will police each other, as had been the case in the United States in my time. Concentration of power in a political machine is bad; and and an Established Church is only a political machine; it was invented for that; it is nursed, cradled, preserved for that; it is an enemy to human liberty, and does no good which it could not better do in a split-up and scattered condition. That wasn't law; it wasn't gospel: it was only an opinion - my opinion, and I was only a man, one man: so it wasn't worth any more than the pope's - or any less, for that matter. ~ Mark Twain

Being Lutheran is about having the theological roadblocks cleared away. No good works. No law pretending to be Gospel. No popes or piety. No moralism. Just the Gospel loudly and clearly proclaimed. ~ A. Trevor Sutton

In a real world, the one outside the rarified atmosphere where Popes meet Archbishops of Canterbury, people no longer care whether somebody is an Anglican or a Roman Catholic. They already take it for granted that being a "believer" is more important than having a denominational name-tag any day of the week. ~ Tom Harpur

Is it possible that our world still knows better how to deal with a bandit, a murderer, and insurrectionist than it knows what to do with the Prince of Peace? There is a sense in which an assassin's attempt on the pope's life is less shocking to our world than the pope's forgiveness of him. Is it possible that we would rather deal with raw power that rides on a stallion than with this one who comes on a donkey, with the weapons of love, patience, suffering, and peace? Given the choice, isn't it possible that we would take Barabbas, too? ~ James A. Harnish

Christian legend later claimed that Peter also went to Rome and there became head of the Christian community, that is, a bishop. Both Peter and Paul, according to the Catholic version, died as martyrs in the Eternal City. Paul definitely went to Rome, and may have been martyred there. But that Peter, a very devout, timid Jewish fisherman, uneducated, and knowing little or no Greek, and no Latin, would have ended in Rome is most unlikely. Thus the whole claim of later bishops of Rome (the popes) that their authority in the Church was derived from its alleged first bishop, Saint Peter, was likely wishful thinking, if not an absolute hoax, that developed in the late second century A.D. ~ Norman F. Cantor

Legitimacy will come at the end of time, when the kingdom of men is assured. "The affair has only just
begun, it is far from being terminated, and the world has many other things to suffer, but we shall achieve
our aim, we shall be Caesar, and then we shall begin to think about universal happiness."
By then the prisoner has been executed; the Grand Inquisitors reign alone, listening to "the profound
spirit, the spirit of destruction and death." The Grand Inquisitors proudly refuse freedom and the bread of
heaven and offer the bread of this earth without freedom. "Come down from the cross and we will believe
in you," their police agents are already crying on Golgotha. But He did not come down and, even, at the
most tortured moment of His agony, He protested to God at having been forsaken. There are, thus, no
longer any proofs, but faith and the mystery that the rebels reject and at which the Grand Inquisitors scoff.
Everything is permitted and centuries of crime are prepared in that cataclysmic moment. From Paul to
Stalin, the popes who have chosen Caesar have prepared the way for Caesars who quickly learn to despise
popes. The unity of the world, which was not achieved with God, will henceforth be attempted in defiance
of God. ~ Albert Camus

You must know that it is by the state of the lavatory that a family is judged. ~ Pope John XXIII

God, what is all this talk put out by the popes? Paradise is here, my good man. God, give me no other paradise! ~ Nikos Kazantzakis

freshly dead popes are struck thrice on the forehead with a special silver hammer. ~ Mary Roach

Hey, this is Europe. We took it from nobody; we won it from the bare soil that the ice left. The bones of our ancestors, and the stones of their works, are everywhere. Our liberties were won in wars and revolutions so terrible that we do not fear our governors: they fear us. Our children giggle and eat ice-cream in the palaces of past rulers. We snap our fingers at kings. We laugh at popes. When we have built up tyrants, we have brought them down. And we have nuclear ********* weapons. ~ Ken MacLeod

Public opinion aside, it will be up to the future pope to continue John Paul II's journey to sainthood. Many of the late pope's followers believe he is already there. ~ Chris Matthews

Real solemn history, I cannot be interested in ... The quarrels of popes and kings, with wars and pestilences in every page; the men all so good for nothing, and hardly any women at all. ~ Jane Austen

Trying to Enjoy It (Proceed as if You Look Awesome)...This requires a level of delusion/egomania usually reserved for popes and drag queens, but you can do it. It's like being a little kid again, parading around in a nightgown tucked into your underpants, believing it looks terrific. Your "right mind" knows that you look ridiculous in a half-open dress and giant shoes, but you must put yourself back in third grade, slipping on your mom's quilted caftan and drinking cream soda out of a champagne glass while watching The Love Boat. You have never been more glamorous. ~ Tina Fey

I remember one Gentleman objected to the Christian Faith, that it made Men insolent, quarrelsom and ill-natur'd. From whence I concluded, (as I told him) that he had never read over the Gospells; truly he could not say that he had read 'em carefully, but yet that in reading the History of what had passed in Christendom, he observed that most of the Quarrels in which this part of the World had been engaged, arose from contentions among the Christian Priesthood. Church-History is chiefly a relation of Church-mens Wrangles, and D. Cave in a late Book of his has denominated every Century from some eminent Quarrel which arose among the Clergy. But besides this, what was the Holy War, what all the holy Massacres and Croisados which filled Europe with Blood, but the Inventions of the Holy Church? And what is holy Inquisition, but a perpetual Series of Murthers carry'd on in barbarous Forms of Law against the common Sense of Mankind? Does History account for any Barbarities so great as those committed by the Popes? Any Cruelties so savage as those of the Holy Inquisition? Any Murthers so solemn, and religiously brutal as the Acts of Faith? Any Pragmaticalness so insufferable as that of the Jesuits? is not their Humanity extinguished by their Christian Religion? Such is their Malice that no Man can eat Bread where they have to do, unless he submit his Faith to their guidance, witness the present French Persecution. ~ William Stephens

Thomas Merton said it was actually dangerous to put the Scriptures in the hands of people whose inner self is not yet sufficiently awakened to encounter the Spirit, because they will try to use God for their own egocentric purposes. (This is why religion is so subject to corruption!) Now, if we are going to talk about conversion and penance, let me apply that to the two major groups that have occupied Western Christianity - Catholics and Protestants. Neither one has really let the Word of God guide their lives.

Catholics need to be converted to giving the Scriptures some actual authority in their lives. Luther wasn't wrong when he said that most Catholics did not read the Bible. Most Catholics are still not that interested in the Bible. (Historically they did not have the printing press, nor could most people read, so you can't blame them entirely.) I have been a priest for 42 years now, and I would sadly say that most Catholics would rather hear quotes from saints, Popes, and bishops, the current news, or funny stories, if they are to pay attention. If I quote strongly from the Sermon on the Mount, they are almost throwaway lines. I can see Catholics glaze over because they have never read the New Testament, much less studied it, or been guided by it. I am very sad to have to admit this. It is the Achilles heel of much of the Catholic world, priests included. (The only good thing about it is that they never fight you like Protestants do about Scripture. They are e ~ Richard Rohr

There is no position so critical, no office so important, that the occasional, and even the more than occasional, utter incompetent will not wind up filling it. Heart surgeons, popes, presidents, it makes no difference. Look around and you will see an existence replete with people who are betraying, in a most egregious manner, the powers and responsibilities that have been entrusted to them. ~ Daniel Polansky

[Archbishop Lefebvre's excommunication] may be compared with the excommunications that popes in former times pronounced on their political enemies, sentences which were formally valid but which nobody today would regard as having moral force. In fact its weight is less, for the excommunication came not from a merely secular policy but from one aimed at excluding tradition from the Church or obliging it to compromise with false principles. ~ H.J.A. Sire

The stuff of nightmare is their plain bread. They butter it with pain. They set their clocks by deathwatch beetles, and thrive the centuries. They were the men with the leather-ribbon whips who sweated up the Pyramids seasoning it with other people's salt and other people's cracked hearts. They coursed Europe on the White Horses of the Plague. They whispered to Caesar that he was mortal, then sold daggers at half-price in the grand March sale. Some must have been lazing clowns, foot props for emperors, princes, and epileptic popes. Then out on the road, Gypsies in time, their populations grew as the world grew, spread, and there was more delicious variety of pain to thrive on. The train put wheels under them and here they run down the log road out of the Gothic and baroque; look at their wagons and coaches, the carving like medieval shrines, all of it stuff once drawn by horses, mules, or, maybe, men. ~ Ray Bradbury

Between their rise in the thirteenth century and their sudden fall in the seventeenth, when the line abruptly ended, the Medicis produced three popes, two queens, and many Florentine rulers, and they supported the work of Galileo, Michelangelo, Leonardo, and Botticelli - a veritable parade of geniuses. ~ Hanya Yanagihara

No compassion will be tolerated for the Jews. We deny the Pope's statement that there is but one human race. The Jews are parasites. ~ Robert Ley

The people with money to build today are corporations - they are our popes and Medicis. The sense of pride is why they build. ~ Philip Johnson

Art as an aesthetic principle was supported by thousands of years of discernment and psychic rewards, but art as a commodity was held up by air. The loss of confidence that affected banks and financial instruments was not affecting cherubs, cupids and flattened popes. The objects hadn't changed: what was there before was there after. But a vacancy was created with the clamoring crowds deserted and retrenched. ~ Steve Martin

Of course not all dissenters openly proclaimed their disloyalty to Rome. There were secret heretics who had to be sought out diligently. The method devised was the Inquisition, in the opinion of Egyptian author Rollo Ahmed, "the most pitiless and ferocious institution the world has ever known" in its destruction of lives, property, morals, and human rights. Lord Acton, a Catholic, called the Inquisition "murderous" and declared that the popes "were not only murderers in the great style, but they made murder a legal basis of the Christian Church and the condition of salvation. ~ Dave Hunt

Even if there were 10 Popes or a thousand Popes, there would be no schism. The Unity of Christendom could be preserved under numerous heads just as the separated nations under different sovereigns dwell in concord. ~ Martin Luther

Pope John Paul II is the great. Only two other popes had that title. Does that suggest there is going to be a move for canonization? ~ Chris Matthews

As already noted, "Of eighty popes in a line from the thirteenth century on not one of them disapproved of the theology and apparatus of the Inquisition. On the contrary, one after another added his own cruel touches to the workings of this deadly machine. ~ Dave Hunt