Our judgements of good and evil ... presuppose God as the standard. If there's no God, there's neither good nor evil. There's just nature doing what it does

I find my data first in myself, not first in the poets. For if I did not find it in myself, I would not be able to find it in the poets.

Ethics without virtue is an illusion. What is the highest purpose of ethics? It is to make a person good, that is virtuous.

A saint is Christ's bride, totally attached, faithful, dependent. A saint is also totally independent, detached from idols and from other husbands... A saint is higher than anyone else in the world. A saint is the real mountain climber. A saint is also lower than anyone else in the world. As with water, he flows to the lowest places - like Calcutta.

A God who did not abolish suffering-worse , a God who abolished sin precisely by suffering-is a scandal to the modern mind.

Thus moral theology leads us four steps deeper than law. To fulfill the moral law, we need love. To get love, we need union with God. To get union with God, we need the new birth. And to get the new birth, we need faith.

Of course the more you love the sinner the more you hate and make war on the sin, just as the more you love the person, the more you hate and kill the cancer cells that are killing the person. Compassion for cancer cells does not come from compassion for persons; it comes precisely from lack of compassion for persons.