For if we are bidden to honor carnal fathers and mothers, how much more the spiritual? ... If this virtue of charity has been overlooked, a man will lose any fruit of salvation in any good he may do.
Pope Gregory VIIWho does not know that kings and rulers sprang from men who were ignorant of God, who assumed because of blind greed and intolerable presumption to make themselves masters of other men, their equals, by means of pride, violence, bad faith, murder, and almost every other kind of crime? Surely the devil drove them on.
Pope Gregory VIIIt is the custom of the Roman Church which I unworthily serve with the help of God, to tolerate some things, to turn a blind eye to some, following the spirit of discretion rather than the rigid letter of the law.
Pope Gregory VII