James Carroll Quotes & Sayings

This is the God Nietzsche said had to be killed because nobody can tolerate being made into a mere object of absolute knowledge and absolute control. This is the deepest root of atheism. It is an atheism which is justified as the reaction against theological theism and its disturbing implications.8 — James Carroll

Discipleship is a commitment to the memory and presence of Jesus Christ that makes a difference in how a life is lived, driving thought and behavior week in and week out. — James Carroll

Asceticism was not necessary for holiness. — James Carroll

God suffers with you! — James Carroll

For Christian faith, the death of God is not a question of his disappearance. On the contrary, it is one of the places where He is most fully present. Jesus is not Man standing in for God. He is a sign that God is incarnate in human frailty and futility. — James Carroll

The very act of story-telling, of arranging memory and invention according to the structure of the narrative, is by definition holy. We tell stories because we can't help it. We tell stories because we love to entertain and hope to edify. We tell stories because they fill the silence death imposes. We tell stories because they save us. — James Carroll

The Spirit of the Lord GOD is upon me, because the LORD has anointed me to bring good tidings to the afflicted; he has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted. — James Carroll

Memory is a political act. Forgetfulness is the handmaiden of tyranny. — James Carroll

Humans are reeds of straw who think. Reeds of straw who know. Reeds of straw who choose. Reeds of straw who love. Reeds of straw who willingly surpass themselves. — James Carroll

Respect for everyone he met. The preference of service over power. The rejection of violence. Israel - its Law and worship - as the primal source of meaning. — James Carroll

The New Testament, that is, was made by the Church; the Church was not made by the New Testament. That is why, speaking generally, Catholics differ from Protestants in the importance given to the authority of the Bible on the one hand, and to the authority of the Church on the other. Therefore, Catholics more than Protestants would tend to say that the community has authority over its normative literature. — James Carroll

The whole story of human and personal progress is an unmitigated tale of denials today-denials of rest, denials or repose and comfort and ease and pleasure-that tomorrow may be richer. — James Carroll

It takes a disciplined imagination to acknowledge that the less personal savageries of bombs, missiles, artillery and heavy weapons are, to those blown to smithereens, also barbaric. The main horror of what the coalition is doing is not a matter of the occasional soldier who, in the heat of battle, commits a war crime, but the steady destruction rained on cities, villages, the Iraqi people. This violence is wreaked calmly, from a distance, within the rules of engagement. The war itself is the American war crime. — James Carroll

the grace of what makes him different, is what enables him to "stand up. — James Carroll

Indeed, an ecumenical spirit extending to the worldly, to the flawed, to the politically compromised, and to the sexually stigmatized was what separated Jesus from his rigorously puritanical mentor. — James Carroll

A naive belief in supernatural powers has been dispelled, — James Carroll

Before entering the seminary, I had not encountered the life-changing potential of reading as a source of meaning, as a way of ordering one's inner life, and being rooted in the world. — James Carroll

Communion over loneliness. Death not an end, but a beginning. At home in the absolute - and absolutely unknown - future. — James Carroll

Not satisfied with endlessly pulling drowning men from the torrents rushing past, Day went upstream to see who was throwing the poor bastards into the water in the first place - and — James Carroll

Scientific naturalism has proven incapable of accounting for a whole range of human experiences, from simple self-awareness to love. — James Carroll

The absence of Jesus is the mode of his presence. — James Carroll

Experience is a flow from event to consequence, with moral events defined by human choice. — James Carroll

Back home, this Catholic kid was accustomed to a Protestant culture's condescension, but here he could see for himself the world-historic glories of Catholicism ... [A Catholic American soldier's reaction to seeing St. Peter's Basilica during WWII.] — James Carroll

The Holy One's nearness, the readiness to name the Holy One as God, and the recognition of God as Father. — James Carroll

There are times when we stop, we sit still. We listen and breezes from a whole other world begin to whisper. — James Carroll

She had discovered within herself the unlikely gift for functioning with equilibrium and efficiency inside a full-blown, unending nightmare. [A Red Cross worker during WWII in Italy] — James Carroll

Scholars tell us that there was no word in ancient Latin or Greek for "self" as it is understood in contemporary usage. — James Carroll

Separated Peter from the vile and suicidal Judas was that he, Peter, had lived long enough to find his offense transformed - through no merit of his own - by the loving acceptance of Jesus. The humiliated Peter was, in the same moment, the forgiven Peter. — James Carroll

Asked to describe the Holy One, Jesus told the story of the father whose bond with his son, no matter the son's unworthiness, was unbreakable. — James Carroll

Forgiveness as the response to the inevitability of failure. Suffering understood as part of life. Trust as the other side of anguish. A permanent thankfulness. — James Carroll

Restlessness, therefore, is not to be regretted, but marshaled. Humans live toward. — James Carroll

The I AM of God, of Jesus, is the "I am" of every person, and it consists in every person being aware of herself or himself. — James Carroll

The nobility of what humans could be capable of, if only they weren't human. — James Carroll

To each one, the encounter with Jesus is unique, however it occurs. That no one possesses Jesus, or fully understands him, is why the movement toward Jesus can never be made alone. — James Carroll

Telling our stories is what saves us. The story is enough ... The very act of storytelling, of arranging memory and invention according to the structure of narrative is, by definition, holy. — James Carroll

American fighters of the Pacific War were not heroes. The desperation of island combat included exchanged barbarities of which no one would willingly speak for a generation. On the American side, there were foul racism, vengeful refusals to take prisoners, a generalized brutality that extended to a savage air war. — James Carroll

There are so many flaws, .. I don't think they can be fixed. — James Carroll

The God who makes the promise keeps the promise. — James Carroll

Saint Paul lives in the Christian imagination as the chief sponsor of Christian contempt for Jews, the avatar of law versus grace, flesh versus spirit, works versus faith, Moses versus Jesus, the Old Covenant versus the New. This brutal dichotomizing was attributed to Paul most influentially by Martin Luther, who used a perceived Jewish legalism, materialism, and obsession with externals as stand-ins for the decadence of his nemesis, the pope. "Because the Papists, like the Jews," he wrote, "insist that anyone wishing to be saved must observe their ceremonies, they will perish like the Jews."39 After Luther, both Protestants and Catholics read Paul as the preeminent tribune of Jewish corruption - a misreading that had terrible consequences, especially in Luther's Germany, where the Volk were defined in ontological opposition to Juden. Paul's — James Carroll