Catholic Mother Quotes & Sayings

My father was a Catholic, but my mother wasn't. She had to do that weird deal you do as a Catholic - they deign to sanction your marriage and you have to bring your children up as Catholics. — Jared Harris

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

He has told us that He is the hungry one. He is the naked one. He is the thirsty one. He is the one without a home. He is the one who is suffering. These are our treasures, she said, looking at the rows of pallets in the caravanserai. They are Jesus. — Mother Teresa

I held the Host with two fingers and thought: How small Jesus made Himself, in order to show us that He doesn't expect great things of us, but rather little things with great love. — Mother Teresa

Real prayer is union with God, a union as vital as that of the vine to the branch.. — Mother Teresa

I'm from a family with five kids in it, and my father almost became a Catholic priest. And my mother never went to church, but she's the best Christian I know. My siblings have all chosen different paths to or away from their spirituality. — Carrie Coon

My Irish Catholic mother loved romantic movies, provided they ended with a kiss before the screen went dark. If things went any further than that, she'd complain, Why can't they leave something to the imagination? I sort of subscribe to her philosophy when it comes to writing sex. — Catherine Brady

My father was a Catholic, a coal miner in the Big Pit. My mother a Jew. A charwoman, when she could find the work. They didn't fit in Wales. Nor in the U.K., either. They didn't fit with each other all that well, for that matter. They fought every day for as long as I can remember and loved each other more than anyone I've ever known. At least they did right up till a night when he looked right and not left at a train crossing in Chepstow and ended up half a mile from where he'd started, dead as the Ghost. Looking for a job, he was. Turned out he didn't need one. — Patrick Reinken

Presentation was the name of the Catholic church [my mother's family] attended, and this is what I love about the Irish: My mother became known as the second prettiest girl at Presentation parish. "Why was that okay?" I once asked her. "Oh, because everybody knew Mary Griffin was the most beautiful girl at Presentation," she replied. My mom was happy to be on the D-list! Just like I'm not trying to be Brooke Shields, she wasn't trying to be Mary Griffin. — Kathy Griffin

My mother was an unbeliever - and still is. My father was a nominal Catholic. We would go in to church at the last minute before the gospel reading, take Communion, and walk right out again. — Frederica Mathewes-Green

Katie had slept through morning mass but she could still go to confession and make an effort to banish her unholy and unhealthy thoughts. Mother never asked what she was thinking and feeling on these trips; she just assumed that anything Katie had on her mind was dirty and sinful. — Carol Storm

Faith in action is love, and love in action is service. By transforming that faith into living acts of love, we put ourselves in contact with God Himself, with Jesus our Lord. — Mother Teresa

My father was Catholic, my mother was Protestant, and because of that I got Christened in both churches, so I've got all these names ... but my Dad always called me Mick. — Mickey Spillane

My father was Catholic, and my mother wanted me to go to Catholic school. That's what I did in first grade. But she couldn't afford the payments. I think it must have hurt her a lot, not to be able to give me a Catholic education. — Edward P. Jones

There is only one God and He is God to all; therefore it is important that everyone is seen as equal before God. I've always said we should help a Hindu become a better Hindu, a Muslim become a better Muslim, a Catholic become a better Catholic. — Mother Teresa

It was a music of the spirit, seeking peace, not emotional release, expressing the hunger of the soul rather than the heart. A way of sequencing notes so ancient it might be music's mother lode, its Fertile Crescent. It wouldn't have grated, I felt, on the ears of ancient Greeks or Egyptians or Mesopotamians or Sumerians - or even on the august auditory equipment of the Buddha or Lao-tzu. — Tony Hendra

I think both Protestants and Catholics have killed the woman for the sake of the mother. (Rubem Alves, p. 201) — Mev Puleo

Loren looked at Christ on the cross behind the Mother Superior's head. She remembered an old joke, one she heard when she first got here. A boy is getting all Ds and Fs in math so his parents send him to Catholic school. On his first report card, his parents are shocked to see their son getting straight As. When his parents ask him why, he says, "Well, when I went into the chapel and saw that guy nailed to a plus sign, I knew they were serious." Mother — Harlan Coben

Then, overcome by joy, I cried, 'Jesus, my love. At last I have found my vocation. My vocation is love. In the heart of the Church, my mother, I will be love, and then I will be all things. — Therese De Lisieux

The Catholic Church with its foreshortened American history and tangled puritanical roots was as inviolate to my mother and father as it was to the last-ditch aristocrats of Evelyn Waugh. — Maureen Howard

I made a crash landing here on Earth on February 14, 1962, in the Shreveport Catholic Charities Home for un-wed mothers. The infamous Bonnie and Clyde lost their lives just miles from where I was born. Like outlaws ourselves, my birth mother and I were on the run from the day she found out I was part of her. — Kevyn Aucoin

In Bolivia there are Catholic, Evangelical, Methodist, Baptist churches, and so on. In Bolivia there are indigenous religious beliefs like the rite of Pachamama Mother Earth, which shows us that Mother Earth is our life, we are born out of the Earth we live on the Earth and return to the Earth. — Evo Morales

Let us be very sincere in our dealings with each other, and have the courage to accept each other as we are. Do not be surprised or become preoccupied at each other's failures - rather, see and find in each other the good, for each one of us is created in the image of God. — Mother Teresa

Mother, with her upbringing in the primitive Baptist church, believed that converting to Roman Catholicism was a step upward in the social order. Of course she was wrong; when I grew up in the South, a Roman Catholic was the weirdest thing you could be. — Pat Conroy

For a moment this day, for many moments this May, let us gape in awe at the strength of women, and look upon their sinewy courage with respect and humility, as the Lord looked on His Mother, and still does. Like Him we are of women born, and to women must pay our first respect, and owe our first love, for they are as strong as the very ribs of the earth. — Brian Doyle

No one can have God for his Father, who has not the Church for his mother. — Cyprian

My mother desperately wanted to give her kids a wholesome environment, and we were born into a traditional Catholic family. — Marco Rubio

My identity has always been confused. Born in Edinburgh of a Scottish/Russian/Jewish mother and an English/Irish/Catholic father, there is no form of guilt to which I was not subjected in my childhood. Members of my immediate family live all over the world - a diaspora of cousins, aunts, uncles and more in a dizzying mix. — Sara Sheridan

We all have views on what our Irishness means to us. Two members of the band were born in England and were raised in the Protestant faith. Bono's mother was Protestant and his father was Catholic. I was brought up Catholic. U2 are a living example of the kind of unity of faith and tradition that is possible in Northern Ireland. — Larry Mullen Jr.

So she went to mass every Sunday as a child, received communion, went to confession, and was confirmed, but because her mother never participated in any of this, Alice began questioning the validity of these beliefs at a young age. And without a satisfying answer from either her father or the Catholic Church, she never developed a true faith. — Lisa Genova

It has always been the habit of Catholic in danger and in troublous times to fly for refuge to Mary, and to seek for peace in Her maternal goodness; showing that the Catholic Church has always, and with justice, put all her hope and trust in the Mother of God. And truly the Immaculate Virgin, chosen to be the Mother of God and thereby associated with Him in the work of man's salvation, has a favour and power with Her Son greater than any human or angelic creature has ever obtained, or ever can gain — Pope Leo X

My mother was Catholic, my father was Protestant. There was always a debate going on at home - I think in those days we called them arguments - about who was right and who was wrong. — David Bowie

I'm Catholic. My mother and I were unpacking and she found my diaphragm. I had to tell her it was a bathing cap for my cat. — Lizz Winstead

All of us must be saints in this world. Holiness is a duty for you and me. So let's be saints and so give glory to the Father. — Mother Teresa

A person like me who has grown up in a mixed culture ought to be spiritual. My mother is a Catholic, my father is a Muslim, and my wife is a Hindu. Personally, I feel spirituality is about being clear-hearted. It involves a sense of connection with the divine. — Emraan Hashmi

Christ must be born from every soul, formed in every life. If we had a picture of Our Lady's personality we might be dazzled into thinking that only one sort of person could form Christ in himself, and we should miss the meaning of our own being.

Nothing but things essential for us are revealed to us about the Mother of God: the fact that she was wed to the Holy Spirit and bore Christ into the world.

Our crowning joy is that she did this as a lay person and through the ordinary daily life that we all live; through natural love made supernatural, as the water at Cana was, at her request, turned into wine. — Caryll Houselander

I grew up in a Hindu household but went to a Roman Catholic school. I grew up with a mother who said, 'I'll arrange a marriage for you at 18,' but she also said that we could achieve anything we put our minds to an encourage us to dream of becoming prime minister or president. — Indra Nooyi

By what route the infant Hansen found his way to the Jesuits, the file did not relate. Perhaps the mother converted. Those were dark years still, and if expediency required it, she may have swallowed her Protestant convictions to buy the boy a decent education. Give the Jesuits his soul, she may have reasoned, and they will give him a brain. Or perhaps she sensed in her son from early on the mercurial nature that later ruled his life, and she determined to subordinate him to a stronger religious discipline than was offered by the easy-going Protestants. If so, she was wise. — John Le Carre

My mother was gentle and warm. She was the sort of person you could really open up to. I was the eldest and her only boy, so I guess I was treated differently. She did bring me up as a Catholic, and at one time I was an altar boy, but I lost my faith, as did my father, when my mother died at 45. — Stephen Mangan

Nick spoke again. "Her legitimacy will be questioned."
Gabriel thought for several moments. "If our mother married her father, it means that the marchioness must have converted to Catholicism upon arriving in Italy. The Catholic Church would never have acknowledged her marriage in the Church of England."
"Ah, so it is we who are illegitimate." Nick's words were punctuated with a wry smile.
"To Italians, at least," Gabriel said. "Luckily, we are English."
"Excellent. That works out well for us. — Sarah MacLean

I am Albanian by birth. Now I am a citizen of India. I am also a Catholic nun. In my work, I belong to the whole world. But in my heart, I belong to Christ. — Mother Teresa

In Indonesia, I had spent two years at a Muslim school, two years at a Catholic school. In the Muslim school, the teacher wrote to tell my mother that I made faces during Koranic studies. — Barack Obama

Once a member of Holy Mother Church, you are eternally marked as her child. However little you know about your faith, you are as much a Catholic as our Holy Father the Pope. — Anonymous

I was brought up Catholic. My mom brought us to mass every Sunday - short for 'massive head trauma' that you get from your mother punching you in your little nine-year-old head every minute because you can't sit still for anything that's boring. — Richard Jeni

We were sent to the Judengottesdienst, the children's service at the synagogue on Saturday afternoons. The maid was supposed to take us. But she was a Catholic, like most Austrians, and she feared the synagogue; and my mother - a working woman, dependent on her help - feared the maid. — Edith Hahn Beer

I was brought up Catholic and we show my mom, my mother, my sister and then I take pains to explain on camera, that there were years after that where I wasn't really religious. I certainly wasn't a Catholic anymore, but I still lived with some mythical man in my head. I didn't really put a name to a face, but I just knew that if I was in trouble or scared I would go, 'Oh God, please help me get out of this one.' — Bill Maher

My mother was French Protestant, and my father was Italian Catholic, and their union was an excess of God, guilt and sauce. — Mitch Albom

Because I cannot rely on myself, I rely on Him, twenty-four hours a day. — Mother Teresa

I think this is science, not God. I don't know much about God. I'm agnostic. My mother is a Catholic and she has never once done a single thing from the Bible, ever. I have seen her walk past starving people on the streets and not even bat an eyelash. To me Christians seem like the most selfish people on the planet. They're so worried about getting into Heaven, they don't think about the fact that their actions are what get them there. Not how many times they say sorry to God. To me anyway. Sorry, are you a Christian? — A.E. Watson

I don't like to speak of Islamic violence, because every day, when I browse the newspapers, I see violence, here in Italy ... this one who has murdered his girlfriend, another who has murdered the mother-in-law ... and these are baptized Catholics! There are violent Catholics! — Pope Francis

There goes the dismantled - Love has fallen off her wall. A religious woman," he thought to himself, "without the joy and safety of the Catholic faith, which at a pinch covers up the spots on the wall when the family portraits take a slide; take that safety from a woman," he said to himself, quickening his step to follow her, "and love gets loose and into the rafters. She sees her everywhere," he added, glancing at Nora as she passed into the dark. "Out looking for what she's afraid to find - Robin. There goes mother of mischief, running about, trying to get the world home. — Djuna Barnes

Real prayer is union with God, ... — Mother Teresa

The # poverty of being unwanted, unloved and uncared for is the greatest poverty. — Mother Teresa

If in coming face to face with God we accept Him in our lives, then we are converting. We become a better Hindu, a better Muslim, a better Catholic, a better whatever we are ... What God is in your mind you must accept. — Mother Teresa

I was an altar boy. My mother wanted me to be a priest. I am very Christian and Catholic ... I'm very faithful. I believe in God, in Jesus Christ. — Hugo Chavez

My mother was a good Catholic
she went to mass twice a week at St. Mary's in Richmond, but my father was an Orthodox Eclectic. — Sue Monk Kidd

Protestants sometimes laugh at us because we address ourselves, now to our Lady of Perpetual Succor, no to our Lady of Good Counsel, now to our Lady of Lourdes, and so on, as if they were so many different people. But the case is much worse than that, if they only knew; every individual Catholic has a separate our Lady to pray to, his Mother, the one who seems to care for him individually, has won him so many favours, has stood by him in so many difficulties, as if she had no other thought or business in heaven but to watch over him. — Ronald Knox

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

Faith is what gets you started. Hope is what keeps you going. Love is what brings you to the end. — Mother Angelica

At the time I attended a private Catholic school called Maryville College. I was the champion of the Maryville sports day every single year and my mother won the mom's trophy every single year. Why? Because she was always chasing me to kick my ass and I was always running not to get my ass kicked. Nobody ran like me and my mom. She wasn't one of those "Come over here and get your hiding [beating]" type of moms. She delivered to you free of charge. She was a thrower too. Whatever was next to her was coming at you. If it was something breakable, I had to catch it and put it down. If it broke, that would be my fault too and the ass-kicking would be that much worse. If she threw a vase at me, I'd had to catch it, put it down and then run. In a split-second I'd have to think "Is it valuable? Yes. Is it breakable? Yes. Catch it, put it down. Now run!" We had a very Tom and Jerry relationship, me and my mom. She was the strict disciplinarian, I was naughty as shit. — Trevor Noah

My first memories of religion were being taken to Episcopal church. My father was Catholic, but my mother, I believe, was Episcopal. So I sort of veered off into the watered-down version of Catholicism. — Marilyn Manson

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

My mother has an incredible rigidity, which is very Catholic. — Manolo Blahnik

My mother always told me if I really didn't wan to do something, if I was really tired, but if I had helped someone and I really went out of my way for them but I asked nothing for it, that I should donate my energy to the souls in purgatory-meaning that to give my goodness to those who are trapped. This is purgatory/limbo. This is a very Catholic thing that very few people really understand. — Peter Steele

At home, she toed the party line: "The greatest calling for a woman is to be a Catholic wife and mother." But I sensed that she hated the 1960s convention of stay-at-home motherhood. In my thirties, when my father shipped me my old Barbie-doll cases that had been sealed in storage since my mother's death, I found evidence of her unhappiness. My Barbie stuff was a mirror of her values. She never told me that marriage could be a trap, but she refused to buy my Barbie doll a wedding dress. She didn't say, "I loathe housework," but she refused to buy Barbie pots and pans. What she often said, however, was "Education is power." And in case I was too thick to grasp this, she bought graduation robes for Barbie, Ken, and Midge. — M.G. Lord

At age 11, I went to a Jewish school. I speak Yiddish. I'm Church of England Protestant. My father was Catholic, and my mother was Protestant. My wife is a Muslim. — Michael Caine

Keeping your coat on indoors in Russia, no matter how public the place, is far worse than keeping your hat on as the flag goes by. It is worse than going into a Catholic church in Spain with your upper arms bare. It is worse than telling a mother her baby bores you. — Ilka Chase

The central icon of Catholic Christianity is mother and child. That motif is so deep in not just our human experience but in our animal, biological past. — Robert Neelly Bellah

Writers write about what obsesses them. You draw those cards. I lost my mother when I was 14. My daughter died at the age of 6. I lost my faith as a Catholic. When I'm writing, the darkness is always there. I go where the pain is. — Anne Rice

You were baptized?"
"My sister told me that yes, Father baptized me shortly after birth. My mother was a Protestant of a faith that deplored infant baptism, so they had a quarrel about it." The Bishop held out his hand to lift the Speaker to his feet. The Speaker chuckled. "Imagine. A closet Catholic and a lapsed Mormon, quarreling over religious procedures that they both claimed not to believe in. — Orson Scott Card

Communion with Christ gives us our strength, our joy, and our love. — Mother Teresa

The roof of the big top was dark blue, spangled with silver stars, and it reminded him of something but he couldn't think what, and then he realized it was the roof - the vault of heaven - in a side chapel at the Catholic church where his mother dragged them three times a day on Sunday when they were very small, until she ran out of energy and let the devil have them. (One Good Turn) — Kate Atkinson

I've got a lot of back-up because my father was a Catholic, my mother was a Protestant, I was educated by Jews and I'm married to a Muslim. So I won't lose out on a technicality. — Michael Caine

Roman Catholics have always been able to appeal to the traditions of holy Mother the Church. But the Church of England, as such, has nothing to appeal to. How can we [Anglicans] pretend to appeal to Church traditions, when we have cut ourselves off from the main stream of it and any exposition of it must needs be a raking up of old dead documents, instead of obedience to a living voice? And how can we pretend to appeal to the Bible, when the Bible is for everyman's private interpretation, and not expounded by authority? — Ronald Knox

O Mary Mother of Mercy and Refuge of Sinners! We beseech thee to look with pitying eyes on poor heretics and schismatics. Do thou, who art the Seat of Wisdom, enlighten the minds wretchedly enfolded in the darkness of ignorance and sin, that they may clearly recognize the Holy, Catholic, Roman Church to be the only true Church of Jesus Christ, outside of which neither sanctity nor salvation can be found. — Pope Pius XII

She had once been a Catholic, but discovering that priests were infinitely more attentive when she was in process of losing or regaining faith in Mother Church, she maintained an enchantingly wavering attitude. — F Scott Fitzgerald

My mother is not a Catholic, but she's always tried to drag my brother and my sister and I to church from a very young age, and we have always put up a little bit of a rebellion against it. — Sophie Kennedy Clark

The propensity to say and do dumb things, and even wicked things, is simply part of human nature. One can blame the Church or Christianity for such things only on the thoroughly unwarranted assumption that Christianity claims to have abolished human nature. The truth is that Christianity, and the Catholic Church in particular, is the mother of Western civilization, with all it strengths and weaknesses, including its frequently exaggerated penchant for self-criticism. Like others who know what it is to be a mother, she is not surprised, although sometimes disappointed, when she is blamed for everything and thanked for nothing. — Richard John Neuhaus

I am sent to you to confute, not to embrace your heresy. The Catholic religion is the faith of all ages, I fear not death ... Pardon my enemies, O Lord: blinded by passion they know not what they do. Lord Jesus, have mercy on me. Mary, Mother of God, succor me! — Fidelis Of Sigmaringen