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A Catholic may sin and sin as badly as anyone else, but no genuine Catholic ever denies he is a sinner. A Catholic wants his sins forgiven - not excused or sublimated.
Fulton J. SheenDuring a frustrating argument with a Roman Catholic cardinal, Napoleon Bonaparte supposedly burst out: โYour eminence, are you not aware that I have the power to destroy the Catholic Church?โ The cardinal, the anecdote goes, responded ruefully: โYour majesty, we, the Catholic clergy, have done our best to destroy the church for the last 1,800 years. We have not succeeded, and neither will you.โ
Ross DouthatI'm a lapsed Quaker. I don't go to meetings any more. But I'm very drawn to Catholicism - all that glitter. I'd love to be a Catholic. I think it would be fantastic - faith, forgiveness, absolution, extreme unction - all these wonderful words. I don't think anyone who was ever born a Catholic hasn't died a Catholic, no matter how lapsed they are.
Kate AtkinsonI wouldn't have known anything about Catholicism if I hadn't been dating Gert. In those days, Catholics were much less ecumenical than they are today. Gert was always of the mind that she wouldn't go to another church except the Catholic Church. So when I would date her in New York City and later when we went to Oxford before we got married we always went to the Catholic church.
Wesley ClarkMy hope that the Church will emerge as a strong leader in society is just that a hope. What I described in The Catholic Moment is not a prophecy but the outline of a possibility. There are no guarantees that my hopes expressed in The Catholic Moment will ever be realised.
Richard John NeuhausI was raised Irish Catholic and went to Holy Names Academy, an all-girl's private Catholic school. I loved the nuns there and I love them to this day.
Kitty KelleyA move of the Spirit of God is coming to the Catholic Church. The youth in particular will be ignited with a fresh fire of zeal and passion for Christ and His Gospel. A radical company of Believers will arise in the Catholic Church during this move, and they will release a flow of God's love and truth into the nations.
Patricia KingBelonging to the Catholic Church gives your support to an organization that conceals and protects child rapists. Again, not as a few isolated incidents, but as a massive, institution-wide culture, a matter of policy even, that extends throughout the organization and reaches all the way to the top. Belonging to the Catholic Church - giving them money, letting them count you in their rolls, sending your children to their schools - gives this behavior your personal thumbs-up, and actively enables it to continue.
Greta ChristinaI grew up in a very Catholic family. Up until puberty, I would go to a Catholic church every week.
Park Chan-wookI believe in God - not in a Catholic God; there is no Catholic God. There is God, and I believe in Jesus Christ, his incarnation. Jesus is my teacher and my pastor, but God, the Father, Abba, is the light and the Creator. This is my Being.
Pope FrancisI was the biggest George Harrison fanatic in the world. He was raised Catholic; my parents are both ex-clergy, so I was raised Catholic, and I admired how he used his faith.
John FugelsangI have never been brought up a Catholic - I mean, a Roman Catholic - we're all Catholics, aren't we? We're Protestant Catholics, whether we're from Methodist or Baptist or what.
Aimee Semple McPhersonThe story wafts across the Atlantic, where it's picked up with glee by Catholic progressives and horror by some Catholic conservatives - and the battle of the blogs is on, full blast. No one bothers to ask whether there's any basis in fact for the assertion that this is going to be a "global-warming encyclical."
George WeigelWe are not only interested in those aspects of the mystery of the Roman Catholic Church which set her apart from the other Christian communities, but also to show how often they are central beliefs by describing what is specifically Catholic in such a way that the partner in dialogue can see, even from his own standpoint, the inner consistency.
Hans Urs von BalthasarI have no question that the Roman Catholic Church teaches that abortion in virtually all circumstances is wrong. I think the church's position at all times in modern history has been that it is unequivocally opposed to abortion.But that's not the question for a Catholic who is a public official. I happen to subscribe to the church's position as a person. Still the question, as Governor Mario Cuomo suggested, is: what is your obligation as a civic leader? I agree entirely with John F. Kennedy. I answer only to my conscience in my public life and that's that.
Bruce BabbittAs a Catholic, you can have two views on capital punishment. You can think, let Caesar do what Caesar needs to do, and the law says you can impose capital punishment, so you impose it. You can [also] be a Catholic who says we can't kill, we can't kill babies and we can't kill adults. If you let a decision be driven by your personal views, then you are not doing what a judge needs to do, which is enforce the laws of the society that you are in. But you can control your own behavior, and that is the choice that the church and God gives us - what kind of people are we going to be.
Sonia SotomayorWe all have views on what our Irishness means to us. Two members of the band were born in England and were raised in the Protestant faith. Bono's mother was Protestant and his father was Catholic. I was brought up Catholic. U2 are a living example of the kind of unity of faith and tradition that is possible in Northern Ireland.
Larry Mullen, Jr.I don't know how you feel, but I'm pretty sick of church people. You know what they ought to do with churches? Tax them. If holy people are so interested in politics, government, and public policy, let them pay the price of admission like everybody else. The Catholic Church alone could wipe out the national debt if all you did was tax their real estate.
George CarlinThere has been this belief among the Catholic community - and this - I'm no expert, this is my opinion - that cafeteria Catholics are wrong.
Jim GaffiganThe Catholic clergy seldom bother to make their arguments plausible; it is plain that they have little respect for human intelligence, and indeed little belief in its existence.
H. L. MenckenIt's very Canadian of me - or maybe it's more the Catholic schoolgirl in me - but I always really want to do a good job.
Samantha BeeTwenty-four years ago I went through a profound conversion of heart and God led me to the Catholic Church. A few years later I felt Him calling me to start a Bible study program.
Gail BuckleyI just pray. And I'm not very religious at all - I was raised Catholic, but probably haven't gone to church since my Holy Communion, when I was about 6 or 7.
Lynsey AddarioI describe myself as a "spiritual sampler," raised Catholic, been Baptist, Methodist, and a Unity member.
Julianne MalveauxWe have been mentored from the very beginning by Catholic folks who are invigorating the best of the monastic spirit.
Shane ClaiborneWe slit the Catholic throat, stoned the poor on such slogans as wish you could hear and love is all we need.
David BowieWherever the bishop shall appear, there let the multitude also be; even as, wherever Jesus Christ is, there is the Catholic Church.
Ignatius of AntiochI think being raised within a Mexican Catholic family made magical realism a very natural part of who I am as a person and as a writer. My parents always told us great stories that often had magical elements and roots within Mexican folklore. Also, I remember my father reading a book to me, when I was very young, about the lives of saints. Those were crazy scary stories! Maybe he was trying to scare me into being a good person. In the end, magical realism offers me untethered freedom to explore human frailty and the way we clumsily cobble together our lives on this strange planet.
Daniel OlivasAesthetics is not an end in itself. But in our culture, which is becoming more multi-sensory and less respectful of God, we have a responsibility to pay attention to the design of the space where we assemble regularly. In the emerging culture, darkness represents spirituality. We see this in Buddhist temples, as well as Catholic and Orthodox churches. Darkness communicates that something serious is happening.
Dan KimballI know many Catholic priests and nuns who use the Buddhist teachings to become better Catholics, and Jews who use them to become better Jews. Why not?! It just takes us towards more deeply recognizing our original nature, which is what we all share after all.
Tenzin PalmoNinety-eight percent of women in childbearing age who are Catholic use contraception. Ok, so in practice the church has not enforced this and now they want the federal government and private insurance to enforce it. It just isn't consistent to me.
Nancy PelosiThe principal end both of my father and of myself in the conquest of India... has been the propagation of the holy Catholic faith.
Ignatius of LoyolaYou have no idea how much nastier I would be if I was not a Catholic. Without supernatural aid I would hardly be a human being.
Evelyn WaughFor years I had been disillusioned by the Church of England's compromising on everything. The Catholic Church doesn't care if something is unpopular.
Ann WiddecombeIf you're going to say you're Catholic, you inform your conscience so that you're activities will conform to what God is telling us through the Church. If God is telling you something outside of that, well, the Church will look at that and say: we think it is true or we don't think it is true. The Church might say: that might be true for you but it has no public normative value.
Francis GeorgeI am Albanian by birth. Now I am a citizen of India. I am also a Catholic nun. In my work, I belong to the whole world. But in my heart, I belong to Christ.
Mother TeresaWe cannot avoid the globalization of knowledge and information. When I was a boy growing up in Kansas, I could never think about a Buddhist, or a Hindu, or Muslim, or even a Protestant - I grew up in such a Catholic ghetto. That's not possible anymore, unless you live in a cave or something. So either we have knowledge of what the other religions and other denominations are saying, and how they tie into the common thread, or we end up just being dangerously ignorant of other people and therefore prejudiced.
Richard RohrCatholic schools in our Nation's education have been paramount in teaching the values that we as parents seek to instill in our children.
Joe BacaI have been judged vehemently suspect of heresy, that is, of having held and believed that the sun in the centre of the universe and immoveable, and that the earth is not at the center of same, and that it does move. Wishing however, to remove from the minds of your Eminences and all faithful Christians this vehement suspicion reasonably conceived against me, I abjure with a sincere heart and unfeigned faith, I curse and detest the said errors and heresies, and generally all and every error, heresy, and sect contrary to the Holy Catholic Church. (Quoted in Shea and Artigas 194)
Galileo GalileiLoyal and substansial Catholic service on the battlefield undermined one of the most longstanding objections to emancipation: namely, that since Catholics owed religious allegiance to a foreign authority in the person of the Pope, their political and patriotic allegiance must necessarily be suspect.
Linda ColleyI was brought up Catholic. I'm lapsed. From the age of three I was with the nuns. Now I'm an atheist. I think religion does a lot for us but I can't quite believe it, alas... It's just a personal choice. I love the idea of heaven though. Who doesn't? It's lovely.
Paul BettanyWe are amphibious creatures, weaponed for two elements, having two sets of faculties, the particular and the catholic.
Ralph Waldo Emerson