The Church does not dispense the sacrament of baptism in order to acquire for herself an increase in membership but in order to consecrate a human being to God and to communicate to that person the divine gift of birth from God.

The greatest tragedy in the history of Christianity was neither the Crusades nor the Reformation nor the Inquisition, but rather the split that opened up between theology and spirituality at the end of the Middle Ages.

Even if a unity of faith is not possible, a unity of love is.

Lovers are the ones who know most about God; the theologian must listen to them.

Everything in Irenaeus is bathed in a warm and radiant joy, a wise and majestic gentleness. His words of struggle are hard as iron and crystal clear, ... so penetrating that they cannot fail to enlighten the unbiased observer.

We are not only interested in those aspects of the mystery of the Roman Catholic Church which set her apart from the other Christian communities, but also to show how often they are central beliefs by describing what is specifically Catholic in such a way that the partner in dialogue can see, even from his own standpoint, the inner consistency.

To be a child means to owe one's existence to another, and even in our adult life we never quite reach the point where we no longer have to give thanks for being the person we are.