Pope Pius XII Quotes

But the knowledge and love of our Divine Redeemer, of which we were the object from the first moment of His Incarnation, exceed all that the human intellect can hope to grasp. For hardly was He conceived in the womb of the Mother of God, when He began to enjoy the Beatific Vision, and in that vision all the members of His Mystical Body were continually and unceasingly present to Him, and He embraced them with His redeeming love

Mainly through sins of impurity, do the forces of darkness subjugate souls.

Wine is a splendid thing in and of itself, but it is nonetheless proper to examine the high nutritional and hygienic values of wine from a scientific point of view. We are convinced that scientists will thus perform a service to mankind, since at the same time they will help determine the measure beyond which its use is a misuse for all creation.

The faith of the Church is this: That one and identical is the Word of God and the Son of Mary Who suffered on the Cross, Who is present in the Eucharist, and Who rules in Heaven

When she was thrown into the air by a savage bull in the amphitheatre at Carthage, her first thought and action when she fell to the ground was to rearrange her dress to cover her thigh, because she was more concerned for modesty than pain.

"Render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's and unto God the things which are God's." One would like to add: Give unto man things which are man's; give man his freedom and personality, his rights and religion.

Nothing is lost by peace; everything may be lost by war.

The preaching of the faith has lost nothing of its relevance in our times. The Church has a sacred duty to proclaim it without any whittling-down, just as Christ revealed it, and no consideration of time or circumstance can lessen the strictness of this obligation.

You lose nothing through peace. You can lose everything through war.

For centuries, Jews have been unjustly treated and despised. It is time they were treated with justice and humanity. God wills it and the Church wills it. St. Paul tells us that the Jews are our brothers. They should also be welcomed as friends.

The good of our soul is more important than that of our body; and we have to prefer the spiritual welfare of our neighbor to our bodily comforts. . . If a certain kind of dress constitutes a grave and proximate occasion of sin, and endangers the salvation of your soul and others, it is your duty to give it up.

If a worker is deprived of hope to acquire some personal property, what other natural stimulus can be offered him that will inspire him to hard work, labor, saving and sobriety today, when so many nations and men have lost everything and all they have left is their capacity for work?

There always exists an absolute norm to be preserved

It might be said that society speaks through the clothing it wears. Through its clothing it reveals its secret aspirations and uses it, at least in part, to build or destroy its future.

Henceforth it will be the task of this Sacred Congregation not only to examine carefully the books denounced to it, to prohibit them if necessary, and to grant permission for reading forbidden books, but also to supervise, ex officio, books that are being published, and to pass sentence on such as deserve to be prohibited.

But how can you know anything of the impression made on others? Who can assure you that others do not draw therefrom incentives to evil? You do not know the depths of human frailty. . . Oh, how truly was it said that if some Christian women could only suspect the temptations and falls they cause in others with modes of dress and familiarity in behavior, which they unthinkingly consider as of no importance, they would be shocked by the responsibility which is theirs.

[Parental] authority must be tempered...with loving kindness and patient encouragement. To temper authority with kindness is to triumph in the struggle which belongs to your duty as parents...All those who would advantageously rule over others, must as an essential element, first dominate themselves, their passions, their impressions.

True Christianity today is not different from primitive Christianity ... She remains what she has been since her foundation: always the same.

The day the Church abandons Her universal tongue will be the day before She returns to the Catecombs.

Bodily pain affects man as a whole down to the deepest layers of his moral being. It forces him to face again the fundamental questions of his fate, of his attitude toward God and fellow man, of his individual and collective responsibility and of the sense of his pilgrimage on earth.

How many girls there are who do not see any wrongdoing in following certain shameless styles like so many sheep. They certainly would blush if they could guess the impression they make and the feelings they evoke in those who see them.

The most insidious of sophisms are usually repeated to justify immodesty and seem to be the same everywhere.

To separate tabernacle from altar is to separate two things which by their origin and nature should remain united.

All people and each individual man is called to come into the Church.

True science discovers God in an ever-increasing degree — as though God were waiting behind every door opened by science.

By divine mandate the interpreter and guardian of the Scriptures, and the depository of Sacred Tradition living within her, the Church alone is the entrance to salvation: She alone, by herself, and under the protection and guidance of the Holy Spirit, is the source of truth.

O Mary Mother of Mercy and Refuge of Sinners! We beseech thee to look with pitying eyes on poor heretics and schismatics. Do thou, who art the Seat of Wisdom, enlighten the minds wretchedly enfolded in the darkness of ignorance and sin, that they may clearly recognize the Holy, Catholic, Roman Church to be the only true Church of Jesus Christ, outside of which neither sanctity nor salvation can be found.

Below the knee, halfway down the arm, and two finger widths below the collarbone.

There is no surer means of calling down God's blessing upon the family than the daily recitation of the Rosary.

Some say they are not bound by the doctrine which teaches that the Mystical Body of Christ and the Roman Catholic Church are one and the same thing. Some reduce to a meaningless formula the necessity of belonging to the true Church in order to gain eternal salvation. Others finally belittle the reasonable character of the credibility of Christian Faith. These and like errors, it is clear, have crept in among certain of our sons who are deceived by imprudent zeal for souls or by false science.

All men are brothered in Jesus Christ.

Beyond fashion and its demands, there are higher and more pressing laws, principles superior to fashion, and unchangeable, which under no circumstances can be sacrificed to the whim of pleasure or fancy, and before which must bow the fleeting omnipotence of fashion. These principles have been proclaimed by God, by the Church, by the Saints, by reason, by Christian morality.

The key to seeing why there should be a Eucharistic worship distinct from the Mass is that the Eucharist is Jesus Christ. No less than His contemporaries in Palestine adored and implored Him for the favors they needed, so we should praise, thank Him, and implore Him for what we need.

I am worried by the Blessed Virgin’s messages to Lucy of Fatima. This persistence of Mary about the dangers which menace the Church is a Divine warning against the suicide of altering the Faith, in Her liturgy, Her theology and Her soulI hear all around me innovators who wish to dismantle the Sacred Chapel, destroy the universal flame of the true Faith of the Church, reject Her ornaments and make Her feel remorse for Her historical past.

Just as the divine Redeemer, dying on the Cross, offered Himself as Head of the whole human race to the eternal Father, so also in this "clean oblation" (Mal 1:2), He, as Head of the Church, offers not only Himself but, in Himself, all His mystical members.

One Galileo in two thousand years is enough.

Christian mothers, if only you knew the future of distress and peril, of shame ill-restrained, that you prepare for your sons and daughters in imprudently accustoming them to live hardly clothed and in making them lose the sense of modesty, you should be ashamed of yourselves and of the harm done the little ones whom heaven entrusted to your care, to be reared in Christian dignity and culture.

That which does not correspond to the truth or to the moral norm possesses, objectively, no right either to existence or to propagation or to action.

This practice of adoration is based on strong and solid reasons. For the Eucharist is at once a sacrifice and a sacrament; but it differs from the other sacraments in that it not only produces grace, but contains in a permanent manner the Author of Grace Himself. When, therefore, the Church bids us to adore Christ hidden behind the Eucharistic veils and to pray to Him for spiritual and temporal favors, of which we ever stand in need, she manifests faith in her divine Spouse who is present beneath these veils, she professes her gratitude to Him, and she enjoys the intimacy of His friendship

[A] high minded gallantry in defense of the foundations of Christian culture.

It is absolutely necessary that the Christian community be subject in all things to the Sovereign Pontiff if it wishes to be a part of the divinely-established society founded by our Redeemer.

Private property is a natural fruit of labor, a product of intense activity of man, acquired through his energetic determination to ensure and develop with his own strength his own existence and that of his family, and to create for himself and his own an existence of just freedom, not only economic, but also political, cultural and religious.

Salvation and justice are not to be found in revolution, but in evolution through concord. Violence has ever achieved only destruction, not construction; the kindling of passions, not their pacification; the accumulation of hate and destruction, not the reconciliation of the contending parties; and it has reduced men and parties to the difficult task of building slowly after sad experience on the ruins of discord.

These principles have been proclaimed by God, by the Church, by the Saints, by Christian reason and morals.

God has no intention of setting a limit to the efforts of man to conquer space.

Sport, properly directed, develops character, makes a man courageous, a generous loser, and a gracious victor; it refines the senses, gives intellectual penetration, and steels the will to endurance. It is not merely a physical development then. Sport, rightly understood, is an occupation of the whole man, and while perfecting the body as an instrument of the mind, it also makes the mind itself a more refined instrument for the search and communication of truth and helps man to achieve that end to which all others must be subservient, the service and praise of his Creator.

Let no Christian therefore, whether philosopher or theologian, embrace eagerly and lightly whatever novelty happens to be thought up from day to day, but rather let him weigh it with painstaking care and a balanced judgment, lest he lose or corrupt the truth he already has, with grave danger and damage to his faith.

The Church welcomes technological progress and receives it with love, for it is an indubitable fact that technological progress comes from God and, therefore, can and must lead to Him.