{"quotes":[{"text":"Men speak of God’s love for man… but if providence does not come in this hour, where is He then? My conclusion is simple. The Semitic texts from Bronze Age Palestine of which Christianity is comprised still fit uncomfortably well with contemporary life. The Old Testament depicts a God capricious and cruel; blood sacrifice, vengeance, genocide; death and destruction et al. Would He not approve of Herr Hitler and the brutal, tribalistic crusade against Hebrews and non-Christian ‘untermensch?’One thing is inarguable. His church on Earth has produced some of the most vigorous and violent contribution to the European fascist cause.It is synergy. Man Created God, even if God Created Man; it all exists in the hubris and apotheosis of the narcissistic soul, and alas, all too many of the human herd are willing to follow the beastly trait of leadership. The idea of self-emancipation and advancement, with Europe under the jackboot of fascism, would be Quixotic to the point of mirthless lunacy.","author":"Daniel S. Fletcher","tags":["apotheosis","bonhoeffer","bronze-age-palestine","catholic-church","catholic-church-nazi-germany","catholic-fascism","christianity","church-hitler","church-right-wing","crusades","emancipation","extreme-right","fascism","fascism-and-the-church","franco","god","god-vengeance","hitler","italy","jackboot","jackboot-britain","mussolini","nazis-and-the-church","nietzsche","old-testament","old-testament-god","religion","religious","right-wing","spanish-civil-war","the-crusades","tribalistic","vatican","vatican-city","vengeance","vengeful","zealotry","zealots"],"id":4201,"author_id":"Daniel+S.+Fletcher"},{"text":"Celebration toward the east fosters silence. Indeed, there is less temptation for the celebrant to monopolize the conversation. Facing the Lord, he is less tempted to become a professor giving a lesson throughout the Mass, reducing the altar to a podium centered on the microphone instead of the Cross.","author":"Robert Sarah","tags":["catholic-church","catholic-church-today","silence","the-new-mass"],"id":28910,"author_id":"Robert+Sarah"},{"text":"For a Man cannot believe a Miracle without relying upon Sense, nor Transubstantiation without renouncing it. So that never were any two things so ill coupled together as the Doctrine of Christianity and that of Transubstantiation, because they draw several ways, and are ready to strangle one another: For the main Evidence of the Christian Doctrine, which is Miracles, is resolved into the certainty of Sense, but this Evidence is clear and point blank against Transubstantiation.","author":"John Tillotson","tags":["catholic-church","communion","eucharist","miracles","senses","the-lord-s-supper","transubstantiation"],"id":43348,"author_id":"John+Tillotson"},{"text":"This was borne out again in October 1996 when Pope John Paul II, standing in the context of a train of Catholic thought which stretched back to the Church Fathers said, in essence, 'Looks like there's some good evidence for some sort of biological evolution.'[22] That is, he said, as so many Catholics have already said, that there is nothing in divine revelation that particularly forbids you to believe that God made Adam from the dust of the earth r-e-a-l-l-y s-l-o-w-l-y rather than instantaneously (and used other creatures to somehow assist in the process) so long as you bear in mind that God did, in fact, create man and woman (particularly the soul, which is made directly by God and is not a result of the collision of atoms). --Making Senses of Scripture.","author":"Mark Shea","tags":["catholic","catholic-church","catholicism","christian","christianity","evolution","religion","science"],"id":47966,"author_id":"Mark+Shea"},{"text":"The recasting of the Origin Myth as a story about the perils of disobedience precipitated a kind of decoupling of scripture from religious experience: when religious authorities began to insist on the literal truth of scripture, they were effectively promoting a kind of secular rationalism that states that one does not need to have a religious experience of any kind to live a moral life: all one has to do is declare one’s faith in scripture, in the doctrine of Jesus’ divinity and such, and accept the authority of the Holy Catholic Church as God’s representative on Earth.","author":"Daniel Waterman","tags":["ity","catholic-church","disobedience","faith","moral-life","origin-myth","rationalism","religious-experience","scripture","truth"],"id":51076,"author_id":"Daniel+Waterman"},{"text":"It must be said that charity can, in no way, exist along with mortal sin.","author":"Thomas Aquinas","tags":["catholic-church","morality","saint"],"id":76556,"author_id":"Thomas+Aquinas"},{"text":"What seems to me white, I will believe black if the hierarchical Church so defines.","author":"Ignatius of Loyola","tags":["catholic-church","fidelity","holy-spirit","obedience","truth"],"id":78956,"author_id":"Ignatius+of+Loyola"},{"text":"In 1231, Pope Gregory ordered the Dominicans to take charge of papal courts and decisions and so prevent mob rule and guarantee that the accused received a fair trial and the right of defence. This was the foundation of the Inquisition, and it was a move to organize, control, and limit violence, disruption, and division. Of course, it often failed and even achieved the opposite of its stated and original purpose, but it's surprising how often in an age of casual and brutal violence a relative moderation and legality was achieved. Civil law was far harsher than canon law, demanding confiscation of a heretic's property and usually death, something the Church had tried to prevent for generations.","author":"Michael Coren","tags":["catholic-church","inquisition","law"],"id":109916,"author_id":"Michael+Coren"},{"text":"A Christian people doesn't mean a lot of goody-goodies. The Church has plenty of stamina, and isn't afraid of sin. On the contrary, she can look it in the face calmly and even take it upon herself, assume it at times, as Our Lord did. When a good workman's been at it for a whole week, surely he's due for a booze on Saturday night. Look: I'll define you a Christian people by the opposite. The opposite of a Christian people is a people grown sad and old. You'll be saying that isn't a very theological definition. I agree...Why does our earliest childhood always seem so soft and full of light? A kid's got plenty of troubles, like everybody else, and he's really so very helpless, quite unarmed against pain and illness. Childhood and old age should be the two greatest trials of mankind. But that very sense of powerlessness is the mainspring of a child's joy. He just leaves it all to his mother, you see. Present, past, future -- his whole life is caught up in one look, and that look is a smile. Well, lad, if only they'd let us have our way, the Church might have given men that supreme comfort. Of course they'd each have their own worries to grapple with, just the same. Hunger, thirst, poverty, jealousy -- we'd never be able to pocket the devil once and for all, you may be sure. But man would have known he was the son of God; and therein lies your miracle. He'd have lived, he'd have died with that idea in his noddle -- and not just a notion picked up in books either -- oh, no! Because we'd have made that idea the basis of everything: habits and customs, relaxation and pleasure, down to the very simplest needs. That wouldn't have stopped the labourer ploughing, or the scientist swotting at his logarithms, or even the engineer making his playthings for grown-up people. What we would have got rid of, what we would have torn from the very heart of Adam, is that sense of his own loneliness...God has entrusted the Church to keep [the soul of childhood] alive, to safeguard our candour and freshness... Joy is the gift of the Church, whatever joy is possible for this sad world to share... What would it profit you even to create life itself, when you have lost all sense of what life really is?","author":"Georges Bernanos","tags":["catholic","catholic-church","catholicism","childhood","christian","christianity","god","joy","life","religion","sonship"],"id":115920,"author_id":"Georges+Bernanos"},{"text":"There are so many priests who enter triumphantly and walk up toward the altar, greeting people left and right, so as to appear sympathetic. Just look at the sad spectacle of some Eucharistic celebrations. ... Why so much frivolousness and worldliness at the moment of the Holy Sacrifice? Why so much profanation and superficiality, given the extraordinary priestly grace that renders us able to make the Body and Blood of Christ substantially present by the invocation of the Spirit? Why do some think that they are obliged to improvise or invent Eucharistic Prayers that conceal the sacred prayers in a wash of petty, human fervor? Are Christ's words insufficient, making it necessary to multiply merely human words? In such a unique and essential sacrifice, is there any need for such a display of imagination and subjective creativity? 'In praying do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do; for they think that they will be heard for their many words', Jesus warns us (Mt 6:7).","author":"Robert Sarah","tags":["banality-of-the-world","catholic","catholic-church","pride","the-new-mass"],"id":117465,"author_id":"Robert+Sarah"}],"pagination":{"page":1,"page_size":10,"total":28,"pages":3,"next":"?page=2\u0026page_size=10"}}