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;”...

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...

Protestants believe that the sacraments are like ladders that God gave to us by which we can climb up to Him. Catholics believe that they are like ladders that God gave to Himself by which...

The idea of formulated ‘rights … comes not from John Locke and Thomas Jefferson … but from the canon law of the Catholic Church.

[I]t seemed to me now that a Catholic church was the right companion for all these horrors. Didn’t Catholicism deal with blood and resurrected flesh on a daily basis? Wasn’t it expert in superstition? I...

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.

The Irish people didn’t get on that well with each other either. They hated the Catholics, was the main issue, as I see. You can’t blame them for that. If I understand correctly, Catholics do...

If you have so many defects, why are you surprised to find defects in others?

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...

At the bottom of the ladder is Catholicism, and at the top is Science

For me it is the virgin birth, the Incarnation, the resurrection which are the true laws of the flesh and the physical. Death, decay, destruction are the suspension of these laws. I am always astonished...

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...

Antisemitism is unique among religious hatreds. It is a racist conspiracy theory fashioned for the needs of messianic and brutal rulers, as dictators from the Tsars to the Islamists via the Nazis have shown. Many...

Those who meet Jesus always experience either joy or its opposites, either foretastes of Heaven or foretastes of Hell. Not everyone who meets Jesus is pleased, and not everyone is happy, but everyone is shocked.

1868. 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...

Much water has flown under Tiber’s bridges, carrying away splendour and mystery from Rome, since the pontificate of Pius XII. The essentials, I know, remain firmly entrenched and I find the post-Conciliar Mass simpler and...

The Pope would have an easier job than the President of the United States in adopting a change of course. He has no Congress alongside him as a legislative body nor a Supreme Court as...

Happiness is not only a hope, but also in some strange manner a memory … we are all kings in exile.

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;...

Our favorite games were killing.Our favorite books were death.It had been beaten into us:God is love.Not the parched face and gnarledcapes across a stick body; jitteringin the nude sky, we couldn’t seetrying to touch usfor...

Churchmen sought to introduce rational trial procedures and sophisticated legal principles in place of the superstition-based trial by ordeal that had characterized the Germanic legal order.

Beware of formulas. If there’s a God, he’s not a God of formulas.

It is to the Cross that the Christian is challenged to follow his Master: no path of redemption can make a detour around it.

…we can never attain a maximum love of God with only a minimum knowledge of God

We sinned for no reason but an incomprehensible lack of love, and He saved us for no reason but an incomprehensible excess of love.

It is Jesus that you seek when you dream of happiness; He is waiting for you when nothing else you find satisfies you; He is the beauty to which you are so attracted; it is...

If all the bones of all the victims of the Catholic Church could be gathered together, a monument higher than all the pyramids would rise