Catholic Life Quotes & Sayings

As local priests came to dine at the Walsh manor, Tyndale witnessed firsthand the appalling biblical ignorance of the Roman church. During one meal, he found himself in a heated debate with a Catholic clergyman. The priest asserted, "We had better be without God's law than the pope's."15 Tyndale boldly responded, "I defy the pope and all his laws." He then added that "if God spared him life, ere many years he would cause a boy that drives the plough to know more of the Scripture than he does."16 — Steven J. Lawson

Fuck hope and all the tiny little towns, one-horse towns, the one-stoplight towns, three-bars country-music jukebox-magic parquet-towns, pressure-cooker pot-roast frozen-peas bad-coffee married-heterosexual towns, crying-kids-in-the-Oldsmobile-beat-your-kid-in the-Thriftway-aisles towns, one-bank one-service-station Greyhound-Bus-stop-at-the-Pepsi-Cafe towns, two-television towns, Miracle Mile towns, Viv's Double Wide Beauty Salon towns, schizophrenic-mother towns, buy-yourself-a-handgun towns, sister-suicide towns, only-Injun's-a-dead-Injun towns, Catholic-Protestant-Mormon-Baptist religious-right five-churches Republican-trickle-down-to-poverty family-values sexual-abuse pro-life creation-theory NRA towns, nervous-mother rodeo-clown-father those little-town-blues towns. — Tom Spanbauer

If I invite God into my life, I am and always will be good enough. — Kate Wicker

I was born into a working class Irish Catholic family at the brutal bottom of the Great Depression. I suppose this early imprinting and conditioning made me a life-long radical. My education was mostly scientific, majoring in electrical engineering and applied math. Those imprints made me a life-long rationalist. I have become increasingly skeptical about, or detached from, the assumption that radicalism and rationalism are the only correct perspectives with which to view life, but they remain my favorite perspectives. — Robert Anton Wilson

I don't understand, then, why, in the midst of all this, pregnant women - women trying to make rational decisions about their futures and, usually, that of their families, too - should be subject to more pressure about preserving life than, say, Vladimir Putin, the World Bank, or the Catholic Church. — Caitlin Moran

I'm a closet Catholic. I love the iconography of the saints. There was a point in my life when I was going to convert to Catholicism, but I didn't want my grandmother spinning around in her grave like a rotisserie chicken. — Lynda Resnick

A Catholic understanding of priesthood is so strongly rooted in the historic actions of Jesus and in all their antecedents in the place of sacrifice in life. And those things ... they are rooted to the role of the man. — Vincent Nichols

There is only one misery . . . not to be saints. — Leon Bloy

I was brought up Catholic and, of course, I strayed and repudiated it. That's a painful thing to go through, because you have to look back and realize that you wasted a gigantic chunk of your life. — George Meyer

The Jew is not satisfied with de-Christianizing, he Judiazizes, he destroys the Catholic or Protestant faith, he provokes indifference but he imposes his idea of the world of morals and of life upon those whose faith he ruins. He works at his age old task, the annilation of the religion of Christ. — Bernard Lazare

I don't think it's any coincidence that I lost my religious faith and 'manned up' in the same year. I was described somewhere as a lapsed Catholic, which is funny because I'm not going back! I want to achieve things rather than live life in an animalistic way. — Jimmy Carr

His mind remained freakishly pin-point sharp until his last days, but his body had shut-down a good six months before. He surprised his hospice doctor and nurses by clinging to life long after he should have expired. It was a fear of dying, driven by guilt over something he did early on. He was afraid of judgment day. His strict Catholic upbringing wreaked havoc in his brain and kept his will from preventing his body to die. — Stephen Joseph Mitskavich

The mystery of being human and, certainly, of being a Catholic lies in our embracing together the imperfect state known as the human condition. First and foremost, if we could ever be perfect or do things perfectly, we would eliminate mystery, an essential ingredient in the good life and the spiritual life. — Eugene Kennedy

It is impossible to approve in Catholic publications of a style inspired by unsound novelty which seems to deride the piety of the faithful and dwells on the introduction of a new order of Christian life, on new directions of the Church, on new aspirations of the modern soul, on a new vocation of the clergy, on a new Christian civilisation. — Pope Pius X

I have these secret pangs of shame about being single, like I wasn't good enough to get a husband. Rita reminded me of something I'd told her once, about the five rules of the world as arrived at by this Catholic priest named Tom Weston. The first rule, he says, is that you must not have anything wrong with you or anything different. The second one is that if you do have something wrong with you, you must get over it as soon as possible. The third rule is that if you can't get over it, you must pretend that you have. The fourth rule is that if you can't even pretend that you have, you shouldn't show up. You should stay home, because it's hard for everyone else to have you around. And the fifth rule is that if you are going to insist on showing up, you should at least have the decency to feel ashamed.
So Rita and I decided that the most subversive, revolutionary thing I could do was to show up for my life and not be ashamed. — Anne Lamott

Why persist in walking difficult and toilsome paths? There is no repose where you are seeking it. Search as you like, it is not where you are looking. You are seeking a happy life in the realm of death, and it will not be found there. How could life be happy where there is no life at all? — Saint Augustine

I am not so foolish as to equate what happens under the influence of mescalin or of any other drug, prepared or in the future preparable, with the realization of the end and ultimate purpose of human life: Enlightenment, the Beatific Vision. All I am suggesting is that the mescalin experience is what Catholic theologians call "a gratuitous grace," not necessary to salvation but potentially helpful and to be accepted thankfully, if made available. To be shaken out of the ruts of ordinary perception, to be shown for a few timeless hours the outer and the inner world, not as they appear to an animal obsessed with survival or to a human being obsessed with words and notions, but as they are apprehended, directly and unconditionally, by Mind at Large - this is an experience of inestimable value to everyone and especially to the intellectual. — Aldous Huxley

In many people Christ lives the life of the Host. Our life is a sacramental life.

This Host life is like the Advent life, like the life of the Child in the womb, the Child in the swaddling bands, the Christ in the tomb. It is a life of dependence upon creatures, of silence and secrecy, of hidden light. It is the life of a prisoner. — Caryll Houselander

When I was young I believed people should be told everything and that, as a pastor, I had a duty to share all my knowledge. Over the years I came to see that was a mistake. A person may know only what they are capable of assimilating. I have been thinking about this for half my life, and especially since I have been in Israel, but there are few people I can confide in. Really only you. You see, it is a terrible thing to disturb someone's equilibrium. If a person has become accustomed to thinking in a particular way, even a slight digression from that can prove painful. Not everybody is open to new ideas, to making their understanding more precise and supplementing it, to change. I have to admit that I am changing. Today my views on many matters have diverged from those generally accepted in the Catholic world, and I am not the only person in that situation. "You see, the birth of the One whom — Lyudmila Ulitskaya

The Catholic writer, in so far as he has the mind of the Church, will feel life from the standpoint of the central Christian mystery: that it has for all its horror, been found by God to be worth dying for. — Flannery O'Connor

My spiritual life is an interesting thing. It's pretty private. I was raised Catholic in the Baptist Bible belt, so my spirituality was challenged and very much a private thing and it continues to be. — Kelli O'Hara

I contemplate the idea that maybe I'm an alcoholic. I get this occassionally, the need to define myself as something-or-the-other, and at various times in my life have wondered if I'm a Goth, a homosexul, a Jew, a Catholic or a manic depressive, whether I am adopted, or have a hole in my heart, or possess the ability to move objects with the power of my mind, and have always, most regretfully, come to the conclusion that I'm none of the above. The fact is I'm actually not ANYTHING. — David Nicholls

Not being like everyone else is a great thing, but when you're in elementary school, you want people to like you, and kids that age can be so closed-minded. I mean, I went to a little Catholic school in the San Fernando Valley! My life was so different from the other kids'. — Katy Rose

By becoming clearly contemplative in a matter of weeks, my prayer had been given a particular and novel cast; and this was matched by the distinctness in the reprecussions my daily sessions of exercises were having on my everyday life, as well as on the many different occupations which a monk is vowed to carry out. The genuine sense of euphoria that followed the exercises persisted in me and transfigured my day. During the early months I had to face up to the sort of difficulties which put one's nerves to the test, and which would certainly have put me on my back before. As it was, everything went off so smoothly and I took it all so well that I trained everyone under my charge to develop the attitude of 'accepting rather than undergoing. — Jean Dechanet

When I was a kid I went to Catholic school, and they used to drag us out to pro-life rallies and stuff full of crazy people. — Tim Heidecker

Ah, guilt and sorrow had dogged Juan's footsteps too, for he was not a Catholic who could rise refreshed from the cold bath of confession. Yet the banality stood: that the past was irrevocably past. And conscience had been given man to regret it only in so far as that might change the future. For man, every man, Juan seemed to be telling him, even as Mexico, must ceaselessly struggle upward. What was life but a warfare and a stranger's sojourn? — Malcolm Lowry

There is only one thing to be done," went on the old lady, "be simple and quiet. Whenever your soul begins to be disturbed and anxious, put yourself in His Hands, and refuse to decide for yourself. It is easy, so easy. — Robert Hugh Benson

Some Catholics have a concept I very much admire: the Sacrament of the Present Moment. It suggests that every moment of our lives is sacred, and that we should make of each moment a sacrament. Were we to do this we would think of the entire world as diffused with holiness. Wherever we might be would be a holy place for us, and we would see the holy, even sainthood, in everyone we encounter. — M. Scott Peck

The Catholic wisdom of the people ... provides reasons for joy and humor even in the midst of a very hard life. — The Catholic Church

For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. -John, Apostle (and brother?) of Jesus, The Bible (RSV, non-Catholic), 3:16 — John Apostle

QUAKER: Since God maintains direct accessibility with every human life and offers instant and uncomplicated guidance, the intervention of priests and ministers is unnecessary. The intercession of saints is not required. Musical chanting and pretentious prayers fulfill no need. God is not attracted by incense or ostentation or robes or colorful garments or hierarchies. CATHOLIC: You pretty well abolish my church. QUAKER — James A. Michener

I knelt and prayed, and the strongest truth came over me. Didn't matter if God in his heaven was a Catholic or a Protestant God, or the God of the Hindus. What mattered was something deeper and older and more powerful than any such image - it was a concept of goodness based upon the affirmation of life, the turning away from destruction, from the perverse, from man using and abusing man. It was the affirmation of the human and the natural. — Anne Rice

I'm turning fifty, and it is just now dawning on me that I have limited time," Nash said. "No kidding. I always felt my life was circumscribed by the finite terms, you know? There is a whole world of things I missed out on and will never experience. Whatever I have done, there is an endless amount I have not done. Do you know what that tells me?"
...
"It tells me it is not meant to be this all-encompassing journey. It is not meant to be catholic or encyclopedic. By now I have carved some grooves in this life. A few. What I need to do is hunker down and make those grooves deep and indelible. — Dana Spiotta

It is true that the Jewish tradition emphasizes the moral mandate to save life. It also has a different position from the Catholic Church on the moral status of the embryo. It has a more developmental view of when human life, in the sense of personhood, begins than does the Catholic Church. — Michael Sandel

Yet there is no reason to think he derived any consolation from the faith he had inherited. Brought up by his father to be a good Catholic, he became an atheist who admired polytheism. Realizing that the more benign faiths of ancient times could not be revived, he defended the religion of his own time as the least harmful illusion. But he was incapable of surrendering to that illusion himself. Instead, he made a life from disillusion. — John N. Gray

Man's life comes from God: it is his image and imprint, as sharing in his breath of life. God therefore is the sole Lord of this life: Man cannot do with it as he wills. — Pope John Paul II

I was a very nice boy. I was well-educated ... very Catholic family. So I was very respectful, never late at work. I was always the last one to leave. It's always been that way in my life. — Riccardo Tisci

1877. The vocation of humanity is to show forth the image of God and to be transformed into the image of the Father's only Son. This vocation takes a personal form since each of us is called to enter into the divine beatitude; it also concerns the human community as a whole. — The Catholic Church

I grew up in a small, strictly-Catholic fishing village on the coast of Wales. The people there have a different attitude to life than those in Hollywood - people stick together more. — Catherine Zeta-Jones

I wanted to confront her, to make her see the folly of her religion, to change her diet, to help her spend less on makeup and other nonessentials, to make her worship every biological moment she was offered instead of some badly punctured deity. I also wanted to kiss her for some reason, feel the life pulsing in those big Catholic lips, remind myself of the primacy of the living animal, of my time amongst the Romans. — Gary Shteyngart

If one's careful study of the facts shows that the Catholic Church is correct about Jesus-his life, teachings, death, and Resurrection-then why not give the Church the benefit of the doubt and carefully study her reasons for rejecting contraception, homosexual acts, and women's ordination? — Carl E. Olson

Be humble in this life ... — Stephen I Of Hungary

Being a Catholic is the most important aspect of my life. — Mark Wahlberg

A man may take his own life for many reasons, and it is impossible to make a general statement; but whenever suicide is a gesture - done, that is, to impress or influence or embarrass others - it is always, so it seems to me, a sign of immaturity and muddled thinking. However much we may admire the fortitude of this Vietnamese monk, the wisdom of his action remains very much in doubt. I do not know the details of the provocation offered by the Catholic Head of State, but the monk appears to have killed himself 'fighting for the cause of Buddhism'. Certainly this action is infinitely more honourable than the setting fire to churches and the crowning of statues that seem to be the favoured methods of giving battle in this country; but it does not follow that it is any the less misguided. — Nanavira Thera

Did you hear the one about the elderly Jew on his deathbed who sent for a priest, after declaring to his astonished relatives that 'I want to convert.' Asked why he would become a Catholic, after living all his life as a Jew, he answered: 'Better one of them should die than one of us.' — Alan King

This is the ultimate narcissistic white-girl game. I would picture how I would handle the attack differently. Or the same. Inevitably, I'd think about my own death, which next to staring at your face in a magnifying mirror is probably the worst thing you can do for yourself. The ambulance-chasing aspect combined with the Monday-morning quarterbacking of it all is the luxury afforded to those of us left untouched by trauma. Sometimes I would use these tragedy-porn shows to unlock deep feelings or cut through the numbness. I would read terrible stories to punish myself for my lucky life. Some real deep Irish Catholic shit. Either way, it was all gross and all bad for my health. — Amy Poehler

I believe in one Gnostic and Catholic Church of Light, Life, Love and Liberty, the Word of whose Law is THELEMA . — Aleister Crowley

the striving (and anxious) Christian, deprived of the Catholic's recourse to sacramental justification, could find signs of his being among the elect if he could successfully and unceasingly apply himself to disciplined work and his worldly calling. Material productivity was often the fruit of such effort, which, compounded by the Puritan demand for ascetic renunciation of selfish pleasure and frivolous spending, readily lent itself to the accumulation of capital. Whereas traditionally the pursuit of commercial success was perceived as directly threatening to the religious life, now the two were recognized as mutually beneficial. — Richard Tarnas

It is proper that the duty of helping the poor and unfortunate should especially stir Catholics, since they are members of the Mystical Body of Christ. In this we have come to know the love of God, said John the Apostle, that He laid down His life for us, and we likewise ought to lay down our life for the brethren. He who has the goods of this world and sees his brother in need and closes his heart to him, how does the love of God abide in him? (1Jn 3:16 17) — Pope John XXII

I'm a pro-life Roman Catholic conservative, always have been. — Michael Steele

Lifting our cup means sharing our life so we can celebrate it. When we truly believe we are called to lay down our lives for our friends, we must dare to take the risk to let others know what we are living. — Henri J.M. Nouwen

Perhaps this is one of the last remaining strands of my Catholic upbringing, but to me the word 'worship' means absolute unquestioning affirmation of the authority of the deity. I'll not have that in my life. If you are wise, neither will you. — Brendan Myers

My mom was very spiritual. We were a Catholic family. We read the Bible at a young age. I have two brothers and a sister. We're all very close. That was part of our childhood. But when I went to college and then got drafted and played in Anaheim, it was a life changer for me. I was exposed to so many things. I was out on my own for the first time. — Matt Cullen

Resentful of her own repressive Catholic upbringing, she'd avoided church altogether in her adult life, and now she was dying and I didn't even have God. — Cheryl Strayed

I was raised a Roman Catholic and had to go to the eight o'clock Mass every morning and have communion and wear a tie, kind of like a restricted life style. Then in the '60s, we got wild and let it go and started looking in other places to see where God really was, and I came back to the Christian thing. — Roger McGuinn

You know, all mystics - Catholic, Christian, non-Christian, no matter what their theology, no matter what their religion - are unanimous on one thing: that all is well, all is well. Though everything is a mess, all is well. Strange paradox, to be sure. But, tragically, most people never get to see that all is well because they are asleep. They are having a nightmare. — Anthony De Mello

This is America, where a white Catholic male Republican judge was murdered on his way to greet a Democratic Jewish woman member of Congress, who was his friend. Her life was saved initially by a 20-year old Mexican-American gay college student, and eventually by a Korean-American combat surgeon, all eulogized by our African American President. — Mark Shields

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

Thoughtful men, with hearts craving the truth, have come to seek in the Catholic Church the road which leads with surety to eternal life. They have understood that they could not cleave to Jesus Christ as the Head of the Church if they did not belong to the Body of Jesus Christ which is the Church. Nor could they ever hope to possess in all its purity the faith of Jesus Christ if they were to reject its legitimate teaching authority entrusted to Peter and his successors. — Pope Leo XIII

The Catholic community must offer support to those women who may find it difficult to accept a child, above all when they are isolated from their family and friends. Likewise, the community should be open to welcome back all who repent of having participated in the grave sin of abortion, and should guide them with pastoral charity to accept the grace of forgiveness, the need for penance, and the joy of entering once more into the new life of Christ. — Pope Benedict XVI

Most people know the sheer wonder that goes with falling in love, how not only does everything in heaven and earth become new, but the lover himself becomes new. It is literally like the sap rising in the tree, putting forth new green shoots of life. — Caryll Houselander

Even though he was a devout Catholic, he came to believe that the life force emerged from the action of the fundamental properties of natural forces in the inorganic world, combining into action to give rise to life. — R. Douglas Fields

The right-to-life movement and the Roman Catholic Church are saying that it is better to destroy these embryos, or preferably have them adopted - which is not going to happen - than to use them for research. — Mort Kondracke

St. Triduana devoted herself to God in a solitary life at Rescobie in Angus (now Forfarshire). While dwelling there, a prince of the country having conceived an unlawful passion for her is said to have pursued her with his unwelcome attentions. To rid herself of his importunities, as a legend relates, Triduana bravely plucked out her beautiful eyes, her chief attraction, and sent them to her admirer. Her heroism, it is said, procured for her the power of curing diseases of the eyes. — Michael Barrett

My children have gone to Catholic school ... Part of their whole education is talking about the inner life and looking at your life, even though you're only 15 or 16 - thinking about your mortality, thinking about the value of your life, thinking about your obligations. — Alice McDermott

Jesus Christ has taken the lead on the way of the cross. He has suffered first. He does not drive us toward suffering but shares it with us, wanting us to have life and to have it in abundance. — Pope John Paul II

Catholic education aims not only to communicate facts but also to transmit a coherent, comprehensive vision of life, in the conviction that the truths contained in that vision liberate students in the most profound meaning of human freedom. — Pope John Paul II

I do need to explore my faith, because it has got lost over the years and it has been kind of tainted through experience. But I also know it's enriched my life, my dad being a Catholic. — Johnny Vegas

We receive God's Will only in fragments; tiny fragments; one to each new now. It is our business to take them and piece them together, to fashion them into the design that is His and has been His from all eternity. What that design is we shall see only at our last moment. It will be perfect as God wills it to be perfect only if we live His Will in the now, the only fragment that is ours, the only fragment of God's plan that is allowed in our hands, the only fragment of Christ's life in us and our life in Christ that can be lived. But it is only by "gathering up these fragments, lest they be lost" that we can really live and attain life's only success - sainthood. — M. Raymond

The Catholic chruch as threatened your life - do you not want revenge? Have you not sold your hatred to the Pretestant cause to work against the church that has hunted you?"
"No," I said simply. "I hate no one. I want only to be left in peace to understand the mysteries of the universe in my own way."
"God has already laid out for us the mysteries of the universe, or as much as He permits us to understand. You think your way is better?"
"Better than these wars of dogma that have led men to burn and fillet one another across Europe for fifty years? Yes, I do."
"Then what is it you believe?"
I looked at him. "I believe that, in the end, even the devils will be pardoned. — S.J. Parris

Archbishop Mannix was possessed of the clearest intellect I have ever encountered. He prayed regularly for five hours and more each day, this in the midst of a life of intense activity. When he was well over ninety, I once asked him about the precise quality of the Faith which had sustained him. His answer? 'My Faith has always been like a thin silken thread, fraying perpetually at the brink of a precipice over which I hang. Yet the thread has never snapped. — Bartholomew Augustine Santamaria

Lent stimulates us to let the Word of God penetrate our life and in this way to know the fundamental truth: who we are, where we come from, where we must go, what path we must take in life ... — Pope Benedict XVI

It may seem somewhat ironic that the Catholic Church finds itself advocating the same position against abortion as its severest Christian critics, the Protestant fundamentalists. In fact, it is no more surprising than finding the so-called pro-life movement keeping company with Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin and Chairman Mao, all of whom at one time or another banned abortions. What they have in common is their belief, rooted in misogyny, that the woman's right to choose - a fundamental aspect of her autonomy - must be crushed in order to achieve what they have deemed a 'higher' religious, moral or social goal. — Jack Holland

Now a Protestant confronting a Catholic ghost is exactly Shakespeare's way of grappling with what was not simply a general social problem but one lived out in his own life. — Stephen Greenblatt

I am still a Catholic. I still believe life begins at conception. That is consistent with my Catholic beliefs. And I believe we must protect life. Whenever abortion comes up, we get questioned about the exceptions, but no one ever questions the extreme positions on the other side: late-term abortions, no on parental notification. — Michael Baumgartner

... Have you ever reflected that posterity may not be the faultless dispenser of justice that we dream of? One consoles oneself for being insulted and denied, by reyling on the equity of the centuries to come; just as the faithful endure all the abominations of this earth in the firm belief of another life, in which each will be rewarded according to his deserts. But suppose Paradise exists no more for the artist than it does for the Catholic, suppose that future generations prolong the misunderstanding and prefer amiable little trifles to vigorous works! Ah! What a sell it would be, eh? To have led a convict's life - to have screwed oneself down to one's work - all for a mere delusion!...

"Bah! What does it matter? Well, there's nothing hereafter. We are even madder than the fools who kill themselves for a woman. When the earth splits to pieces in space like a dry walnut, our works won't add one atom to its dust. — Emile Zola

My parents, neither one of them went to college. That wasn't available to them. But, you know, we had a wonderful life. You know, it - you know, we lived in what would now be considered poverty, but, you know, it didn't feel like poverty when I was living it. I had a great time and got a - had a great experience. I went to Catholic school through high school. I had a wonderful education. — Tad Devine

The real ecumenical crisis today is not between Catholics and Protestants but between traditional and experimental forms of church life. — Harvey Cox

The retirement of Athanasius, which ended only with the life of Constantius, was spent, for the most part, in the society of the monks, who faithfully served him as guards, as secretaries, and as messengers; but the importance of maintaining a more intimate connection with the catholic party tempted him, whenever the diligence of the pursuit was abated, to emerge from the desert, to introduce himself into Alexandria, and to trust his person to the discretion of his friends and adherents. — Edward Gibbon

He did not see that the continuity of an oligarchy need not be physical, nor did he pause to reflect that hereditary aristocracies have always been shortlived, whereas adoptive organizations such as the Catholic Church have sometimes lasted for hundreds or thousands of years. The essence of oligarchical rule is not father-to-son inheritance, but the persistence of a certain world-view and a certain way of life, imposed by the dead upon the living. A ruling group is a ruling group so long as it can nominate its successors. — George Orwell

I SPENT EIGHT YEARS at Blessed Sacrament School, far more than half my life by the time the last bell of eighth grade rang. Ted Shaw, a high school friend who later became the legal director of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, describes Catholic school as his salvation and damnation: it shaped his future and terrified his heart. I identify with this depiction. The Sisters of Charity helped to shape who I am, but there was much that I wouldn't be sad to leave behind. — Sonia Sotomayor

The band and I were leading at a Youth Specialties convention. We were asked to back up Matt Maher for one of the sessions. Matt handed us the chord charts and, with less than 5 minutes of practice, we were playing it live. I fell in love with this song immediately. You can't hear the message of God's sufficient grace too many times. Matt is a great lead worshiper and is a part of Life Teen, a growing worship movement in the Catholic Church. — Chris Tomlin

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

instead of becoming a strong and ardent and generous Catholic, I simply slipped into the ranks of the millions of tepid and dull and sluggish and indifferent Christians who live a life that is still half animal, and who barely put up a struggle to keep the breath of grace alive in their souls. — Thomas Merton

Love, like everything else in life, should be a discovery, an adventure, and like most adventures, you don't know you're having one until you're right in the middle of it. — E.A. Bucchianeri

Profound joy of the heart is like a magnet that indicates the path of life. — Mother Teresa

I sometimes wish I had been educated a Catholic, in order to unite the poetry of religion with its higher principles. Are they necessarily inseparable? Is man really so much of a philosopher, that he can conceive of truth in its abstract purity, and divest life and the affections of all the aids of the imagination? — James Fenimore Cooper

There a series of Catholic rituals and teachings had offered her young life a coherent universe. By 1946, Savannah had for O'Connor ceded to the university world of Iowa, where new influences, including intellectual joys, brought with them questions and skepticism. — Flannery O'Connor

We used to fuck with our Catholic roommate during Lent, trying to determine exactly how specific God's opinion was about that one. What if you ate something that you didn't know contained meat? What if you were driving east at 11:30pm and unknowingly crossed into a new time zone right before biting into a cheeseburger? During an airline flight, did God go by departure time, arrival time, or local time when determining the Hell- or Heavenbound nature of your meals? "What if you're a butcher," I remember saying, "and you're slicing up a side of beef on Friday when a stray bit of flesh becomes airborne and lodges itself in your throat. You begin to choke. You can't cough it up, but you could swallow it and save your life. What then, when your life is at stake?" Ridiculous? Sacrilegious? — Johnny B. Truant

Let me be clear: I am a Methodist. By that, I mean I think John Wesley was a recovery of Catholic Christianity through disciplined congregational life. — Stanley Hauerwas

In my view, it is inappropriate for us to refer to our confession as the Reformed Faith. The reformed churches did not (and do not) believe that they were confessing the Reformed Faith, but that they were confessing the "undoubted Christian Faith" in their confession and catechisms. There is a reason that this wing of the reformation called itself "Reformed." Unlike the Anabaptists, Reformed churches understood themselves as a continuing branch of the catholic church. At the same time, the Reformed wanted to reform everything "according to the Word of God." Not only our doctrine, but our worship and life must be determined by Scripture and not by human whim or creativity. — Michael S. Horton

[Taken from a BBC documentary]
Tariq was born in Lahore, now in Pakistan, then part of British-ruled India, in 1943. A Catholic school education did nothing to shake his life-long atheism, which he shared with his communist parents. — Tariq Ali

Still stands the forest primeval; but far away from its shadow,
Side by side, in their nameless graves, the lovers are sleeping.
Under the humble walls of the little catholic churchyard,
In the heart of the city, they lie, unknown and unnoticed;
Daily the tides of life go ebbing and flowing beside them,
Thousands of throbbing hearts, where theirs are at rest and forever,
Thousands of aching brains, where theirs no longer are busy,
Thousands of toiling hands, where theirs have ceased from their labors,
Thousands of weary feet, where theirs have completed their journey! — Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

A fundamental principle of Catholic theology is that grace perfects nature rather than setting it aside; and that means that the Christian life is not a two-layer cake, the supernatural simply added on to the natural. It transforms the natural but by perfecting it, not by demeaning it. — Peter Kreeft

If there is a true measure of a person's soul, if there is a single gauge of real divinity, of how beautifully a fellow human honors this life, has genuine spiritual fire and is full of honest love and compassion, it has to be right there, in the eyes.
The Dalai Lama's eyes sparkle and dance with laughter and unbridled love. The Pope's eyes are dark and glazed, bleak as obsidian marbles. Pat Robertson's eyes are rheumy and hollow, like tiny potholes of old wax. Goldman Sachs cretins, well, they don't use their own eyes at all; they just steal someone else's. — Mark Morford

I wanted to ask my father about his regrets. I wanted to ask him what was the worst thing he'd ever done. His greatest sin. I wanted to ask him if there was any reason why the Catholic Church would consider him for sainthood. I wanted to open up his dictionary and find the definitions for faith, hope, goodness, sadness, tomato, son, mother, husband, virginity, Jesus, wood, sacrifice, pain, foot, wife, thumb, hand, bread, and sex.
"Do you believe in God?" I asked my father.
"God has lots of potential," he said.
"When you pray," I asked him. "What do you pray about?"
"That's none of your business," he said.
We laughed. We waited for hours for somebody to help us. What is an Indian? I lifted my father and carried him across every border. — Sherman Alexie

Galileo got into trouble because he maintained that since the new discoveries seemed to contradict scripture, those passages of scripture should be reinterpreted in a metaphorical way. He did not seek to oppose the Church nor to doubt the inspiration of scripture. The problem is that he abandoned science and started talking theology and so attracted the notice of the Roman Inquisition. If he had left theology out of his writings and discussions he would probably never have had problems. And he remained a faithful and devout Catholic to the end of his life. — Michael Coren

Of course the Catholic ethic was an ethic of intentions. But the concrete intentio of the single act determined its value. And the single good or bad action was credited to the doer determining his temporal and eternal fate. Quite realistically the Church recognized that man was not an absolutely clearly defined unity to be judged one way or the other, but that his moral life was normally subject to conflicting motives and his action contradictory. — Max Weber

I went to Catholic school throughout my whole academic life. In fact, my children - my husband and I and our children in my own family now have over 100 years of Catholic education among us. — Nancy Pelosi

Fawn M. Brodie, whose classic life of Smith earned her excommunication from the Mormon Church, saw the Book of Mormon as 'one of the earliest examples of frontier fiction, the first long Yankee narrative that owes nothing to English literary fashions'.105 There was quite a genre of 'lost race' novels at the time. A century on, J. R. R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings saga formed an English Catholic parallel, conscious or unconscious, to Smith's work. — Diarmaid MacCulloch