{"author":"Pope Benedict XVI","author_id":"Pope+Benedict+XVI","total_quotes":90,"quotes":[{"text":"From a theological point of view, Easter is the center of the Church year; but Christmas is the most profoundly human feast of faith, because it allows us to feel most deeply the humanity of God. The crib has a unique power to show us what it means to say that God wished to be “Immanuel”—a “God with us”, a God whom we may address in intimate language, because he encounters us as a child.","author":"Pope Benedict XVI","tags":["christianity","christmas"],"id":494,"author_id":"Pope+Benedict+XVI"},{"text":"After the evil spirit of a narrow Scholastic orthodoxy has been driven out, in the end seven much more wicked spirits return in its place.","author":"Pope Benedict XVI","tags":["scholasticism","theology"],"id":13772,"author_id":"Pope+Benedict+XVI"},{"text":"If we may not remain silent about evil in the Church, then neither should we keep silent about the great shining path of goodness and purity which the Christian faith has traced out over the course of the centuries.","author":"Pope Benedict XVI","tags":["great","path","evil "],"id":13812,"author_id":"Pope+Benedict+XVI"},{"text":"The great question that will be with us throughout this entire book: What did Jesus actually bring, if not world peace, universal prosperity, and a better world? What has he brought?The answer is very simple: God.... He has brought God, and now we know his face, now we can call upon him. Now we know the path that we human beings have to take in this world. Jesus has brought God and with God the truth about our origin and destiny: faith, hope and love. It is only because of our hardness of heart that we think this is too little. Yes indeed, God's power works quietly in this world, but it is the true and the lasting power. Again and again, God's cause seems to be in its death throes. Yet over and over again it proves to be the thing that truly endures and saves.","author":"Pope Benedict XVI","tags":["god","power","truth"],"id":14602,"author_id":"Pope+Benedict+XVI"},{"text":"The glory of God is the living man, but the life of man is the vision of God', says St. Irenaeus, getting to the heart of what happens when man meets God on the mountain in the wilderness. Ultimately, it is the very life of man, man himself as living righteously, that is the true worship of God, but life only becomes real life when it receives its form from looking toward God.","author":"Pope Benedict XVI","tags":["god","life","worship"],"id":34583,"author_id":"Pope+Benedict+XVI"},{"text":"Without God man neither knows which way to go, nor even understands who he is... One of the deepest forms of poverty a person can experience is isolation... Poverty is often produced by a rejection of God's love, by man's basic and tragic tendency to close in on himself, thinking himself to be self-sufficient or merely an insignificant and ephemeral fact, a 'stranger' in a random universe...The human being develops when ... His soul comes to know itself and the truths that God has implanted deep within, when he enters into dialogue with himself and his Creator... It is not by isolation that man establishes his worth, but by placing himself in relation with others and with God.","author":"Pope Benedict XVI","tags":["community","god","pope"],"id":39965,"author_id":"Pope+Benedict+XVI"},{"text":"Thus [the altar] brings heaven into the community assembled on earth, or rather it takes the community beyond itself into the communion of saints of all times and places. We might put it this way: the altar is the place where heaven is opened up.","author":"Pope Benedict XVI","tags":["catholic","liturgy","worship"],"id":44762,"author_id":"Pope+Benedict+XVI"},{"text":"A just laicism allows religious freedom. The state does not impose religion but rather gives space to religions with a responsibility toward civil society, and therefore it allows these religions to be factors in building up society.","author":"Pope Benedict XVI","tags":["freedom","responsibility "],"id":51280,"author_id":"Pope+Benedict+XVI"},{"text":"We must respect the interior laws of creation, of this Earth, to learn these laws and obey them if we want to survive.","author":"Pope Benedict XVI","tags":["earth","learn","want "],"id":51885,"author_id":"Pope+Benedict+XVI"},{"text":"Human rights, of course, must include the right to religious freedom, understood as the expression of a dimension that is at once individual and communitarian - a vision that brings out the unity of the person while clearly distinguishing between the dimension of the citizen and that of the believer.","author":"Pope Benedict XVI","tags":["unity","vision","rights "],"id":52310,"author_id":"Pope+Benedict+XVI"}],"pagination":{"page":1,"page_size":10,"total":90,"pages":9,"next":"?page=2\u0026page_size=10"}}