Only God may be adored, because only God is unlimited goodness, truth, and beauty, and thus only God deserves unlimited love.

On the conversion of the European tribes to Christianity the ancient pagan worship was by no means incontinently abandoned. So wholesale had been the conversion of many peoples, whose chiefs or rulers had accepted the...

Most theists are deists most of the time, in practice if not in theory. They practice the absence of God instead of the presence of God.

The university system, a gift of Western civilization to the world, was developed by the Catholic Church.

It became obvious why Catholics had built such beautiful cathedrals and churches throughout the world. Not as gathering or meeting places for Christians. But as a home for Jesus Himself in the Blessed Sacrament. Cathedrals...

To be a child means to owe one’s existence to another, and even in our adult life we never quite reach the point where we no longer have to give thanks for being the person...

From the outset, Protestantism rejected the critical medieval distinction between the ‘sacred’ and ‘secular’ orders. While this position can easily be interpreted as a claim for the desacralization of the sacred, it can equally well...

If your life is Christ, then your death will be only more of Christ, forever. If your life is only Christlessness, then your death will be only more Christlessness, forever. That’s not fundamentalism, that’s the...

Truth can prevail only in virtue of truth itself.

She was like a landscape you see from the train, and you want to stop just there.

When I think of the Middle Ages I think of castles, Catholicism, and taking your kids to soccer practice.

LIFE IS SUBVERSIVE

It is just as crazy not to be crazy about Christ as it is to be crazy about anything else.

Two or three angelsCame near to the earth.They saw a fat church.Little black streams of peopleCame and went in continually.And the angels were puzzledTo know why the people went thus,And why they stayed so long...

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...

The danger today is in believing there are no sick people, there is only a sick society.

The problem with the world is that we draw the circle of our family too small.

She had no need in her heart for either book or magazine. She had her own way of escape, her own passage into contentment: her rosary. That string of white beads, the tiny links worn...

The aim of all Christian education, moreover, is to train the believer in an adult faith that can make him a “new creation”, capable of bearing witness in his surroundings to the Christian hope that...

The exaltation of human reason and its capabilities, a commitment to rigorous and rational debate, a promotion of intellectual inquiry and scholarly exchange–all sponsored by the Church–provided the framework for the Scientific Revolution.

I swear in the name of almighty God, my loyalty to the Fuhrer?” How come that on the belt buckle of every Nazi soldier it says Gott mit uns, God on our side? How come...

The Church does not dispense the sacrament of baptism in order to acquire for herself an increase in membership but in order to consecrate a human being to God and to communicate to that person...

Most talk of a catholic spirit but it is only till they have been brought into the pale of their own church. This is downright sectarianism, not Catholicism. How can I act consistently, unless I...

The heart is like a woman, and the head is like a man, and although man is the head of woman, woman is the heart of man, and she turns man’s head because she turns...

Catholicism … tries to grab all the poker chips on the table, kick everybody out of the game, and then pretend they were never there until the game was effectively over. It’s just a ridiculous,...

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...

Hearing nuns’ confessions is like being stoned to death with popcorn.

… It seems to me / the the great bards of the 20th century are in Publicity / those Keatses and Shelleys singing the Colgate smile / Cosmic Coca-Cola, the pause the refreshes, / the...

It is reasonable to love the Absolute absolutely for the same reason it is reasonable to love the relative relatively.

Capitalism without Bankruptcy is like Catholicism without Hell.

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...

Why are those who are notoriously undisciplined and unmoral also most contemptuous of religion and morality? They are trying to solace their own unhappy lives by pulling the happy down to their own abysmal depths.

In light of heaven, the worst suffering on earth, a life full of the most atrocious tortures on earth, will be seen to be no more serious than one night in an inconvenient hotel.

But the lack of faith could just as well be a crutch for non-believers, allowing them to live their lives without any concept of accountability and giving them some sort of false confidence. The different...

It is theologically and anthropologically important for woman to be at the center of Christianity. Through Mary, and the other holy women, the feminine element stands at the heart of the Christian religion.

We are all born like Catholics . . . in limbo, without religion.

For the rest, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever modest, whatsoever just, whatsoever holy, whatsoever lovely, whatsoever of good fame, if there be any virtue, if any praise of discipline: think on these things.

God defines himself as “I am who I am”, which also means: My being is such that I shall always be present in every moment of becoming.

On ne comprends rien à la civilisation moderne, si l’on n’admet pas d’abord qu’elle est une conspiration universelle contre toute espèce de vie intérieure.

Our culture has filled our heads but emptied our hearts, stuffed our wallets but starved our wonder. It has fed our thirst for facts but not for meaning or mystery. It produces “nice” people, not...

Over the years, my church gave me passage into a menagerie of exotic words unknown in the South: “introit,” “offertory,” “liturgy,” “movable feast,” “the minor elevation,” “the lavabo,” “the apparition of Lourdes,” and hundreds more....

{Wells discussing his experiences with Christianity}I realised as if for the first time, the menace of these queer shaven men in lace and petticoats who had been intoning, responding, and going through ritual gestures at...

It takes three to make love, not two: you, your spouse, and God. Without God people only succeed in bringing out the worst in one another. Lovers who have nothing else to do but love...

When man is with God in awe and love, then he is praying.

Violence is spiritual junk food, and boredom is spiritual anorexia.

The study of truth requires a considerable effort – which is why few are willing to undertake it out of love of knowledge – despite the fact that God has implanted a natural appetite for...

The world in which we now live is a world whose outlook is so distorted that we absolutize what is relative (money-making, power, success) and relativize what is absolute (truth, moral values, and God).

Living the good life as created beings depends on living within the limits and according to the truths of the human condition. Purity of heart and the capacity to channel desires toward personal self-mastery in...

Once you have surrendered yourself, you make yourself receptive. In receiving from God, you are perfected and completed.

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...