Progress without the reasoned freedom to think and act is regression to slavery.

Respect for the dignity of others includes treating them as rational creatures capable of being persuadad by rational argument, even in the face of frequent evidence to the contrary.

Disguise is central to God's way of dealing with us human beings. Not because God is playing games with us but because the God who is beyond our knowing makes himself known in the disguise of what we can know. The Christian word for this is revelation, and the ultimate revelation came by incarnation. ... God is the master of disguises, in order that we might see.

Optimism is a matter optics, of seeing what you want to see and not seeing what you don't want to see. Hope, on the other hand, is a Christian virtue. It is the unblinking acknowledgment of all that militates against hope, and the unrelenting refusal to despair. We have not the right to despair, and, finally, we have not the reason to despair

My eyes are wide open to the conflicts within the Church, but I don't think you can call it schism.

One would like to believe that people who think of themselves as devout Christians would also behave in a manner that is in according with Christian ethics. But pastorally and existentially, I know that this is not the case, and never has been.

One must never underestimate the profound bigotry and anti-intellectualism and intolerance and illiberality of liberalism.