Each generation, as it seeks to advance the common good, must ask anew: 'What are the requirements that governments may reasonably impose upon citizens, and how far do they extend? By appeal to what authority can moral dilemmas be resolved?'

We were looking for a 'good shepherd,' and instead we got a German shepherd.

Faith was intended precisely for the simple, but the quest for certainty and simplicity becomes dangerous when it leads to fanaticism and narrow-mindedness. When reason as such becomes suspect, then faith itself becomes falsified.

Children truly are the family's greatest treasure and most precious good. Consequently, everyone must be helped to become aware of the intrinsic evil of the crime of abortion. In attacking human life in its very first stages, it is also an aggression against society itself. Politicians and legislators, therefore, as servants of the common good, are duty bound to defend the fundamental right to life, the fruit of God's love.

Being a Christian means having love. That is unbelievably difficult and, at the same time, incredibly simple.

The new Pope knows that his task is to make the light of Christ shine before men and women of world - not his own light, but that of Christ.

A spiritual desert is spreading: an interior emptiness, an unnamed fear, a quiet sense of despair.