100 Quotes About Catholic

Socrates: Have you noticed on our journey how often the citizens of this new land remind each other it is a free country? Plato: I have, and think it odd they do this. Socrates: How so, Plato?Plato: It is like reminding a baker he is a baker, or a sculptor he is asculptor. Socrates: You mean to say if someone is convinced of their trade, they haveno need to be reminded. Plato: That is correct. Socrates: I agree. If these citizens were convinced of their freedom, they would not need reminders. E.a. Bucchianeri

The truth hurts sometimes. If we are going to be taught by God, the fisherman, we first need to be captured by Him. And His hook is going to have a bite. Of course, it's going to hurt. The truth hurts when we are sinners and when we acknowledge we are not surrendering to the truth. Donald H. Calloway

I perceived or thought of the Light of God and in it suspended one small mote (or millions of motes to only one of which was my small mind directed), glittering white because of the individual ray from the Light which both held and lit it.. And the ray was the Guardian Angel of the mote: not a thing interposed between God and the creature, but God's very attention itself, personalized.. This is a finite parallel to the Infinite. As the love of the Father and Son (who are infinite and equal) is a Person, so the love and attention of the Light to the Mote is a person (that is both with us and in Heaven): finite but divine, i.e. angelic. J.r.r. Tolkien

Satan is too hard a master. He would never command as did the Other with divine simplicity: 'Do likewise.' The devil will have no victims resemble him. He permits only a rough caricature, impotent, abject, which has to serve as food for eternal irony, the mordant irony of the depths. Georges Bernanos

If Christ is God, He cannot sin, and if suffering was a sin in and by itself, He could not have suffered and died for us. However, since He took the most horrific death to redeem us, He showed us in fact that suffering and pain have great power. E.a. Bucchianeri

Gift better than Himself God doth not know, Gift better than God no man can see; This gift doth here the giver given bestow Gift to this gift let each receiver be; God is my gift, Himself He freely gave me, God's gift am I, and none but God shall have me. Robert Southwell

People referred to the symbolism of the empty Cross more than once on its journey. It would seem obviously to point to our faith in Jesus’ resurrection. It’s not quite so simple though. The Cross is bare, but in and of itself the empty Cross does not point directly to the Resurrection. It says only that the body of Jesus was removed from the Cross. If a crucifix is a symbol of Good Friday, then it is the image of the empty tomb that speaks more directly of Easter and resurrection. The empty Cross is a symbol of Holy Saturday. It’s an indicator of the reality of Jesus’ death, of His sharing in our mortal coil. At the same time, the empty Cross is an implicit sign of impending resurrection, and it tells us that the Cross is not only a symbol of hatred, violence and inhumanity: it says that the Cross is about something more. The empty Cross also tells us not to jump too quickly to resurrection, as if the Resurrection were a trump card that somehow absolves us from suffering. The Resurrection is not a divine ‘get-out-of-jail free’ card that immunises people from pain, suffering or death. To jump too quickly to the Resurrection runs the risk of trivialising people’s pain and seemingly mapping out a way through suffering that reduces the reality of having to live in pain and endure it at times. For people grieving, introducing the message of the Resurrection too quickly cheapens or nullifies their sense of loss. The empty Cross reminds us that we cannot avoid suffering and death. At the same time, the empty Cross tells us that, because of Jesus’ death, the meaning of pain, suffering and our own death has changed, that these are not all-crushing or definitive. The empty Cross says that the way through to resurrection must always break in from without as something new, that it cannot be taken hold of in advance of suffering or seized as a panacea to pain. In other words, the empty Cross is a sign of hope. It tells us that the new life of God surprises us, comes at a moment we cannot expect, and reminds us that experiences of pain, grief and dying are suffused with the presence of Christ, the One Who was crucified and is now risen. Chris Ryan MGL

God's love is based on nothing, and the fact that it is based on nothing makes us secure. Were it based on anything we do, and that 'anything' were to collapse, then God's love would crumble as well. But with the God of Jesus no such thing can possibly happen. People who realize this can live freely and to the full. Brennan Manning

I think one of the things that has always stopped me from truly leaning into my fears is that I'm not always sure whether my dreams line up well with God's plan for my life. I might be willing to take a leap of faith if I was sure that God wanted me to leap. Hallie Lord

God withholds Himself from no one who perseveres. Unknown

A person's faith goes at its own pace. The trouble with church is the service. A service is conducted for a mass audience. Just when I start to like the hymn, everyone plops down to pray. Just when I start to hear the prayer, everyone pops up to sing. And what does the stupid sermon have to do with God? Who knows what God thinks of current events? Who cares? John Irving

Without radical humility that is expressed in gestures of adoration and in sacred rituals, no friendship with God is possible. Silence manifests this connection in an obvious way. True Christian silence makes itself sacred silence first so as to become silence of communion. Robert Sarah

Many fervent Christians who are moved by the Passion and death of Christ on the Cross no longer have the strength to weep or to utter a cry of pain to the priests and bishops who make their appearance as entertainers and set themselves up as the main protagonists of the Eucharist. These believers tell us nevertheless: "We do not want to gather with men around a man! We want to see Jesus! Show him to us in the silence and humility of your prayer! . Robert Sarah

Now: unlike ourselves, the Father of Jesus loves men and women, not for what He finds in them, but for what lies within Himself. It is not because men and women are good that He loves them, nor only good men and women that He loves. It is because He is so unutterably good that He loves all persons, good and evil.. He loves the loveless, the unloving, the unlovable. He does not detect what is congenial, appealing, attractive, and respond to it with His favor. In fact, He does not respond at all. The Father of Jesus is a source. He acts; He does not react. He initiates love. He is love without motive. . James Burtschaell

There is no sobornost without crucifixion, because it is through pain that one acquires that deep knowledge that has nothing to do with books and education… that deep knowledge that is given by God and by God alone that builds the foundation of unity. People thus united are transparent, and it is in those depths that one finds, I repeat, the foundation of sobornost… of unity. Unknown

By what route the infant Hansen found his way to the Jesuits, the file did not relate. Perhaps the mother converted. Those were dark years still, and if expediency required it, she may have swallowed her Protestant convictions to buy the boy a decent education. Give the Jesuits his soul, she may have reasoned, and they will give him a brain. Or perhaps she sensed in her son from early on the mercurial nature that later ruled his life, and she determined to subordinate him to a stronger religious discipline than was offered by the easy-going Protestants. If so, she was wise. Unknown

This was borne out again in October 1996 when Pope John Paul II, standing in the context of a train of Catholic thought which stretched back to the Church Fathers said, in essence, "Looks like there's some good evidence for some sort of biological evolution."[22] That is, he said, as so many Catholics have already said, that there is nothing in divine revelation that particularly forbids you to believe that God made Adam from the dust of the earth r-e-a-l-l-y s-l-o-w-l-y rather than instantaneously (and used other creatures to somehow assist in the process) so long as you bear in mind that God did, in fact, create man and woman (particularly the soul, which is made directly by God and is not a result of the collision of atoms). --Making Senses of Scripture . Mark Shea

One of my confreres sketched an explanation that attracted me: since the process of digestion is under the control of the brain, its cessation gave repose to the brain, allowed it a vacation. Unknown

What our closest friends do for us is to teach us true selflessness. We learn that while it might be safer for them if we keep them out, true friendship means letting them in. We cannot decide for them what they are willing to suffer with us and for us. While we certainly don't want to see our friends suffer, friendship isn't about protecting each other from pain so much as it is about helping each other to become what God has called us to be. . Mark Mossa

The mark of man is initiative, but the mark of woman is cooperation. Man talks about freedom; woman about sympathy, love, sacrifice. Man cooperates with nature; woman cooperates with God. Man was called to till the earth, to "rule over the earth"; woman to be the bearer of a life that comes from God. Fulton J. Sheen

The State which would provide everything, absorbing everything into itself, would ultimately become a mere bureaucracy incapable of guaranteeing the very thing which the suffering person–every person–needs: namely, loving personal concern. We do not need a State which regulates and controls everything, but a State which, in accordance with the principle of subsidiarity, generously acknowledges and supports initiatives arising from the different social forces and combines spontaneity with closeness to those in need. The Church is one of those living forces. Pope Benedict XVI

.. .fasting gives me singularly happy afternoons. Unknown

For centuries after Christ, the church and other religions that use cruciform symbols have misrepresented the physical nature of Christ's death with a satanic symbol (cross), and a pagan idol (corpus). This secret has been concealed by the church for centuries after Christ. Nwaocha Ogechukwu

In the afternoon the digestion of the meal deprives me of the incomparable lightness which characterizes the fast days. Unknown

When I walk in the forest just before the meal, while reciting the scriptural phrase that I "meditate" for that day, spiritual joy comes over me as if by appointment. Unknown

When a person eats shortly before going to bed, digestion accompanies sleep. The two great physiological functions are completed together, leaving the maximum of freedom to the mind during the day. Unknown

A Christian people doesn't mean a lot of goody-goodies. The Church has plenty of stamina, and isn't afraid of sin. On the contrary, she can look it in the face calmly and even take it upon herself, assume it at times, as Our Lord did. When a good workman's been at it for a whole week, surely he's due for a booze on Saturday night. Look: I'll define you a Christian people by the opposite. The opposite of a Christian people is a people grown sad and old. You'll be saying that isn't a very theological definition. I agree.. Why does our earliest childhood always seem so soft and full of light? A kid's got plenty of troubles, like everybody else, and he's really so very helpless, quite unarmed against pain and illness. Childhood and old age should be the two greatest trials of mankind. But that very sense of powerlessness is the mainspring of a child's joy. He just leaves it all to his mother, you see. Present, past, future -- his whole life is caught up in one look, and that look is a smile. Well, lad, if only they'd let us have our way, the Church might have given men that supreme comfort. Of course they'd each have their own worries to grapple with, just the same. Hunger, thirst, poverty, jealousy -- we'd never be able to pocket the devil once and for all, you may be sure. But man would have known he was the son of God; and therein lies your miracle. He'd have lived, he'd have died with that idea in his noddle -- and not just a notion picked up in books either -- oh, no! Because we'd have made that idea the basis of everything: habits and customs, relaxation and pleasure, down to the very simplest needs. That wouldn't have stopped the labourer ploughing, or the scientist swotting at his logarithms, or even the engineer making his playthings for grown-up people. What we would have got rid of, what we would have torn from the very heart of Adam, is that sense of his own loneliness.. God has entrusted the Church to keep [the soul of childhood] alive, to safeguard our candour and freshness.. Joy is the gift of the Church, whatever joy is possible for this sad world to share.. What would it profit you even to create life itself, when you have lost all sense of what life really is? . Georges Bernanos

His face frankly displays his suffering, expressing it with a truly royal simplicity. At such moments even the very best people are apt to give themselves away with the kind of look which says to you more or less directly: 'You see how I'm sticking it out; don't praise me, it's my nature; thanks all the same.' But the Curé de Torcy looks straight at you, guilelessly. His eyes beg your compassion and sympathy. But with what nobility they beg! A king might beg in just that way. . Georges Bernanos

The capacity to love is determined by the fact that man is ready to seek the good consciously with others, to subordinate himself to this good because of others, or to subordinate himself to others because of this good. John Paul II

The Child Christ lives on from generation to generation in the poets, very often the frailest of men but men whose frailty is redeemed by a child's unworldliness, by a child's delight in loveliness, by the spirit of wonder. Christ was a poet, and all through His life the Child remains perfect in Him. It was the poet, the unworldly poet, who was King of the invisible kingdom; the priests and rulers could not understand that. The poets understand it, and they, too, are kings of the invisible kingdom, vassal kings of the Lord of Love, and their crowns are crowns of thorns indeed. . Caryll Houselander

We could scrub the floor for a tired friend, or dress a wound for a patient in a hospital, or lay the table and wash up for the family; but we shall not do it in martyr spirit or with that worse spirit of self-congratulation, of feeling that we are making ourselves more perfect, more unselfish, more positively kind. We shall do it just for one thing, that our hands make Christ's hands in our life, that our service may let Christ serve through us, that our patience may bring Christ's patience back to the world. Caryll Houselander

In the world as it is, torn with agonies and dissensions, we need some direction for our souls which is never away from us; which, without enslaving us or narrowing our vision, enters into every detail of our life. Everyone longs for some such inward rule, a universal rule as big as the immeasurable law of love, yet as little as the narrowness of our daily routine. It must be so truly part of us all that it makes us all one, and yet to each one the secret of his own life with God.To this need, the imitation of Our Lady is the answer; in contemplating her we find intimacy with God, the law which is the lovely yoke of the one irresistible love. Caryll Houselander

Christ must be born from every soul, formed in every life. If we had a picture of Our Lady's personality we might be dazzled into thinking that only one sort of person could form Christ in himself, and we should miss the meaning of our own being. Nothing but things essential for us are revealed to us about the Mother of God: the fact that she was wed to the Holy Spirit and bore Christ into the world. Our crowning joy is that she did this as a lay person and through the ordinary daily life that we all live; through natural love made supernatural, as the water at Cana was, at her request, turned into wine. . Caryll Houselander

Feelings trap us in the self, Tony dear. Doing a thing because you feel wonderful about it–even a work of charity–is in the end a selfish act. We perform the work not to feel wonderful but to know and love the other. It's the same with your romance. You may not feel your love, but God is still your loved one, your other. Tony Hendra

When God laughs at the soul and the soul laughs back at God, the persons of the Trinity are begotten. When the Father laughs at the Son and the Son laughs back at the Father, that laughter gives pleasure, that pleasure gives joy, that joy gives love, and that love is the Holy Spirit. Meister Eckhart

Like the rest of Holy Week, Easter is also a terrific story. It starts as tragedy: the hero broken and bloody, against all expectation dead, his followers' joyful hope in him entombed with his corpse, the rock rolled into place, sealing their despair. But the curtain doesn't fall there. The next morning at dawn they discover the rock has been rolled back. The tomb is empty, the body's gone! A missing corpse? Great stuff. A whisper of comedy. Now a touch of farce as Mary Magdalen and the guys chase frantically around looking for help, or the corpse, when suddenly, out of nowhere, up it pops–alive! Of course it's Jesus, who's done the impossible and beaten death. And they're so amazed they think he's the gardener! It's a payoff way beyond the Hollywood ending: all the flooding emotion and uplift of a tragedy followed by all the bubbling joy and optimism of a comedy. Is that possible? Not just to live happily ever after but to die–and still live happily ever after? It's the most audacious claim of Christianity, the one element that marks the brand indelibly, that trumps the claims of all other major faiths. Tony Hendra

The Catholic Church standing in "solidarity" with members of the LGBT community while condemning their behavior as "sinful" is a little like attempting to stand with two feet in one shoe. "Love the sinner, hate the sin" sounds really high-minded until you realize the only sin committed was being born different. Quentin R. Bufogle

Mercy will always be greater than any sin, no one can put a limit on the love of the all-forgiving God. Just by looking at him, just raising our eyes from ourselves and our wounds, we leave an opening for the action of his grace. Jesus performs miracles with our sins, with what we are, with our nothingness, with our wretchedness. Pope Francis

Parishes that have learned to develop a culture of continual invitation to leadership, training, and growth in responsibility for their members are predisposed to ongoing health and growth when pastor transitions occur Unknown

The only way to know God, the only way to know the other, is to listen. Listening is reaching out into that unknown other self, surmounting your walls and theirs; listening is the beginning of understanding, the first exercise of Tony Hendra

Lust is a mysterious wound in the side of humanity; or rather, at the very source of its life! To confound this lust in man with that desire which unites the sexes is like confusing a tumor with the very organ which it devours, a tumor whose very deformity horribly reproduces the shape. Georges Bernanos

It seems to her [Saint Catherine of Siena] that the devil has this world in his power, not by his own will, for he is powerless, but through our help because we obey him. The evil aroma rising from the .. wars which are waged by Christians against Christians, are the same as war against God.. Peace, peace, for the sake of the love of the crucified Christ, and not war; that is the only solution. . Sigrid Undset

Lorenzo: In such a night stood Dido with a willow in her hand upon the wild sea-banks, and waft her love to come again to Carthage Jessica: In such a night Medea gathered the enchanted herbs that did renew old Aeson. Lorenzo: In such a night did Jessica steal from the wealthy Jew, and with an unthrift love did run from Venice, as far as Belmont. Jessica: In such a night did young Lorenzo swear he lov'd her well, stealing her soul with many vows of faith, and ne'er a true one. Lorenzo: In such a night did pretty Jessica (like a little shrow) slander her love, and he forgave it her. Jessica: I would out-night you, did nobody come; but hark, I hear the footing of a man. William Shakespeare

Older women are of less sexual and reproductive, and thus by extension, matrimonial value. This is just biology meets the Catholic sacrament of matrimony, of which its virtues are 1) pleasing your spouse and 2) making children. Older women, being less fertile and less able to please their spouse, thus make for less virtuous marriages. If the excellence of marriage is grounded in the unitative and procreative telos of sexuality, a woman's youth and fertility are virtuous traits and a virtuous man would rightly prize those traits in a prospective wife. Let us perform an empirical investigation. If we compare societies where the norm of marriage is at a younger age (for the girl) rather than an older age, which marriages are more fruitful? That is, which marriages produce more children and are less likely to end in divorce? I'm sure we are equally acquainted with the results of our modern Western norms, are you acquainted with the results of non-modern Western norms? Excusing, rather than excoriating, modern Western norms is mere sophistry, sophistry which our host has held forth as an ostensibly authentic Catholic view. However, it simply isn't; it is a modern view dressed up in Catholic-sounding phrases. . Bryce Laliberte

That's it. Love makes us all strong. E.a. Bucchianeri

... a true friend has your best interests at heart and the pluck to tell you what you need to hear. E.a. Bucchianeri

Faustus, who embraced evil and shunned righteousness, became the foremost symbol of the misuse of free will, that sublime gift from God with its inherent opportunity to choose virtue and reject iniquity. “What shall a man gain if he has the whole world and lose his soul, ” (Matt. 16: v. 26) - but for a notorious name, the ethereal shadow of a career, and a brief life of fleeting pleasure with no true peace? This was the blackest and most captivating tragedy of all, few could have remained indifferent to the growing intrigue of this individual who apparently shook hands with the devil and freely chose to descend to the molten, sulphuric chasm of Hell for all eternity for so little in exchange. It is a drama that continues to fascinate today as powerfully as when Faustus first disseminated his infamous card in the Heidelberg locale to the scandal of his generation. In fine, a life of good or evil, the hope of Heaven or the despair of Hell, Faustus stands as a reminder that the choice between these two absolutes also falls to us. E.a. Bucchianeri

In fine, a life of good or evil, the hope of Heaven or the despair of Hell, Faustus stands as a reminder that the choice between these two absolutes also falls to us. E.a. Bucchianeri

The gates of Hell are terrible to behold, are they not? E.a. Bucchianeri

There are many forms of tyrants, but there are none so terrible as those stifling their own people in the name of freedom. E.a. Bucchianeri

I know I am awful. But how much more awful I should be without the Faith. Evelyn Waugh

The three Secrets of Fatima were closely held by the Vatican for decades, until the text of the third and last secret was finally released in 2000. Peter J. Tanous

God awaits us with open arms; we need only to take a step toward him like the Prodigal Son. But if, weak as we are, we don't have the strength to take that step, just the desire to take it is enough. Andrea Tornielli

How can I use these [romantic] desires to love him, to serve him as a brother in Christ... Chris Damian

Jesus assumes, as it were, the fall of man, lets himself into man's fallenness, prays to the Father out of the lowest depths of human dereliction and anguish. He lays his will in the will of the Father's: "Not my will but yours be done." He lays the human will in the divine. He takes up all the hesitation of the human will and endures it. It is this very conforming of the human will to the divine that is the heart of redemption. . Pope Benedict XVI

We throw ourselves down, as Jesus did, before the mystery of God's power present to us, knowing that the Cross is the true burning bush, the place of the flame of God's love, which burns but does not destroy. Pope Benedict XVI

Heaven is not a republic. E.a. Bucchianeri

Even as a man just recovering from illness walks only so far as he is obliged to go, with a slow and weary step, so the converted sinner journeys along as far as God commands him but slowly and wearily, until he attains a spirit of true devotion, and then, like a sound man, he not only gets along, but he runs and leaps in the way of God's Commands, and hastens gladly along the paths of heavenly counsels and inspirations. Francis De Sales

The moment we care for anything deeply, the world - that is, all the other miscellaneous interests - becomes our enemy. Christians showed it when they talked of keeping one's self "unspotted from the world;" but lovers talk of it just as much when they talk of the "world well lost." Astronomically speaking, I understand that England is situated on the world; similarly, I suppose that the Church was a part of the world, and even the lovers inhabitants of that orb. But they all felt a certain truth - the truth that the moment you love anything the world becomes your foe. G.k. Chesterton

Freedom of choice makes it possible to plan our lives and to make the most of ourselves. Yet if this freedom lacks noble goals or personal discipline, it degenerates into an inability to give oneself generously to others. Pope Francis

When Abbess Ebba received tidings of the near approach of the pagan hordes, who had already wrecked vengeance upon ecclesiastics, monks, and consecrated virgins, she summoned her nuns to Chapter, and in a moving discourse exhorted them to preserve at any cost the treasure of their chastity. Then seizing a razor, and calling upon her daughters to follow her heroic example, she mutilated her face in order to inspire the barbarian invaders with horror at the sight. The nuns without exception courageously followed the example of their abbess. When the Danes broke into the cloister and saw the nuns with faces thus disfigured, they fled in panic. Their leaders, burning with rage, sent back some of their number to set fire to the monastery, and thus the heroic martyrs perished in the common ruin of their house. Michael Barrett

Turn over the rudder in God's name, and sail with the wind heaven sends us. Catherine Of Siena

Act in such a way that all those who come in contact with you will go away joyful. Sow happiness about you because you have received much from God; give, then, generously to others. They should take leave of you with their hearts filled with joy, even if they have no more than touched the hem of your garment. Maria Faustina Kowalska

Unwittingly, the feminists acknowledge the superiority of the male sex by wishing to become like men. Alice Von Hildebrand

One thing is certain: When the time has come, nothing which is man made will subsist. One day, all human accomplishments will be reduced to a pile of ashes. But every single child to whom a woman has given birth will live forever, for he has been given an immortal soul made to God's image and likeness. In this light, the assertion of de Beauvoir that 'women produce nothing' becomes particularly ludicrous. . Alice Von Hildebrand

Only when we cease to rely on our own strength can we discover that God's strength is always there for us. Scott Hahn

Good Lord didn't mean for us to hate ourself. He made us to love ourself like He do, with wide open arms. Rebecca Wells

In moments when fever, agony, and pain make it hard to pray, the suggestion of prayer that comes from merely holding the rosary - or better still, from caressing the Crucifix at the end of it - is tremendous! Fulton J. Sheen

He was an indecent man, I told myself - prayerfully - and then I prayed for him to become decent. Kelsey Brickl

To bring people closer to God, competency and clarity are important, but they are not enough. Of themselves they do not touch hearts deeply. Personal sanctity and goodness do. It is the saints who light fires. There is a direct correlation between the beauty of holiness and the fruitfulness of our work and interpersonal relationships. Fr Thomas Dubay

Reflect carefully on this, for it is so important that I can hardly lay too much stress on it. Fix your eyes on the Crucified and nothing else will be of much importance to you. Unknown

For Mercier, it was the ceremony of the mass that eased his soul: the sweetish smoke trailing from the censer, the ringing of the bell, the Latin incantations of the priest. In Warsaw, he attended early mass, at a small church near the apartment, once or twice a month, confessing to his vocational sins — duplicity, for example — in the oblique forms provided by Catholic protocol. He’d grown up an untroubled believer, but the war had put an end to that. What God could permit such misery and slaughter? But, in time, he had found consolation in a God beyond understanding and prayed for those he’d lost, for those he loved, and for an end to evil in the world.” ― Alan Furst, The Spies of Warsaw. Alan Furst

When we infuse our actions with a focus on God and on the many blessings we receive in even the most mundane moments of our lives, we create sacred rituals that bring a sense of holiness, a sense of wholeness, to what we do and who we are. Like the Eucharistic feast that nourishes our heart and soul, every meal we eat with mindfulness[, ] each bite we take with gratitude, has the power to transform us inside and out, for all time. Mary DeTurris Poust

But freedom starts with honesty. We aren’t doing ourselves any favors by defining our- selves as good and others as bad. Let’s just agree that we all need help, that we are all in this together. Judah Smith

I don’t believe in a god, not in the traditional sense anyway. I guess that’s what being raised Catholic has done to me. But I do believe in energy. I do believe in right and wrong. I do believe in kindness and truth. R.B. OBrien

At the root of all misery is unfulfilled desire. Scott Hahn