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...

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,...

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.

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.

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.

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.

{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.

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....

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...

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 morning was bright and propitious. Before their departure, mass had been said in the chapel, and the protection of St. Ignatius invoked against all contingent evils, but especially against bears, which, like the fiery...

What the Father gives is the capacity to be a self, freedom, and thus autonomy, but an autonomy which can be understood only as a surrender of self to the other.

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,...

Catholics have more extreme sex lives because they’re taught that pleasure is bad for you. Who thinks it’s normal to kneel down to a naked man who’s nailed to a cross? It’s like a bad...

How many winds of doctrine we have known in recent decades, how many ideological currents, how many ways of thinking. The small boat of thought of many Christians has often been tossed about by these...

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...

Roman Catholicism is a broken and utterly desperate thing, capable only of malignant mischief in our awakening world.

Too many people get credit for being good, when they are only being passive. They are too often praised for being broadminded when they are so broadminded they can never make up their minds about...

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

The rich fop Francis of Assisi was bored all his life―until he fell in love with Christ and gave all his stuff away and became the troubadour of Lady Poverty.

Could there be any doubt that the Jews would seek to harm the Son of God again, knowing that his body was now readily accessible in the form of defenseless crackers?

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...

He loved the darkness and the mystery of the Catholic service–the tall priest strutting like a carrion crow and pronouncing magic in a dead language, the immediate magic of the Eucharist bringing the dead back...

Far better it is for you to say: “I am a sinner,” than to say: “I have no need of religion.” The empty can be filled, but the self-intoxicated have no room for God.

Cecil fingered the Agnus Dei round her neck. “Why shouldn’t they have lucky things?” she said. “Well, it’s all very complicated,” Dominic said. “And perhaps I’m not the one to explain it.” “Why not?” Cecil...

Stand in the divine rain, and seeds of wisdom will grow in your soul.

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

The neo-cons, or some of them, decided that they would back Clinton when he belatedly decided for Bosnia and Kosovo against Milosevic, and this even though they loathed Clinton, because the battle against religious and...

In Christ, for the first time, we see that in God himself there exists–within his inseparable unity–the distinction between the Father who gives and the Gift which is given (the Son), but only in the...

The first days of January 1942 brought enormous amounts of snow. The reader already knows what snow meant for the clergy. But this time the torture surpassed the bounds of the endurable. At the same...

It is by far the most elegant worship, hardly excepting the Greek mythology. What with incense, pictures, statues, altars, shrines, relics, and the real presence, confession, absolution, — there is something sensible to grasp at....

The love, loyalty, and dedication of Mary and Joseph are an example for all Christian couples, who are neither the friends nor masters of their children’s lives, but the guardians of this incomparable gift from...

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.

[W]hat one has as a born Catholic is something given and accepted before it is experienced. I am only slowly coming to experience things that I have all along accepted. I suppose the fullest writing...