A big electric blanket…
What people don’t realize is how much religion costs. They think faith is a big electric blanket, when of course it is the Cross.
« πλ | 2 Aug 2005 »
Quotes — Religion (31 entries)
A time is coming…
A time is coming when men will go mad, and when they see someone who is not mad, they will attack him, saying, “You are mad; you are not like us.”
« πλ | 11 Apr 2006 »
Christ was crucified because…
Christ was crucified because he would have nothing to do with the crowd (even though he addressed himself to all). He did not want to form a party, an interest group, a mass movement, but wanted to be what he was, the truth, which is related to the single individual. Therefore everyone who will genuinely serve the truth is by that very fact a martyr. To win a crowd is no art; for that only untruth is needed, nonsense, and a little knowledge of human passions. But no witness to the truth dares to get involved with the crowd.
« πλ | 21 Mar 2004 »
Four steps deeper than law…
Thus moral theology leads us four steps deeper than law. To fulfill the moral law, we need love. To get love, we need union with God. To get union with God, we need the new birth. And to get the new birth, we need faith.
« πλ | 25 Mar 2006 »
If one’s careful study…
If one’s careful study of the facts shows that the Catholic Church is correct about Jesus—his life, teachings, death, and Resurrection—then why not give the Church the benefit of the doubt and carefully study her reasons for rejecting contraception, homosexual acts, and women’s ordination?
« πλ | 5 Feb 2006 »
If you believe what you like in…
If you believe what you like in the Gospels, and reject what you don’t like, it is not the Gospel you believe, but yourself.
« πλ | 10 Feb 2006 »
Is the Internet real fellowship?
Kneeling, on a kneeler made of oak, in front of a priest with trembling hands handing you the very Body and Blood of Christ which you taste and touch and smell is different than mouse-clicking your way through reality… Is [the Internet] real fellowship? No, I don’t think so. I view it more as [a tool for] co-laboring.
« πλ | 4 Dec 2005 »
Modern culture is nothing but…
Modern persons will never find rest for their restless hearts without Christ, for modern culture is nothing but the wasteland from which the gods have departed, and so this restlessness has become its own deity; and, deprived of the shelter of the sacred and the consoling myths of sacrifice, the modern person must wander or drift, vainly attempting one or another accommodation with death, never escaping anxiety or ennui, and driven as a result to a ceaseless labor of distraction, or acquisition, or willful idiocy. And, where it works its sublimest magic, our culture of empty spectacle can so stupefy the intellect as to blind it to its own disquiet, and induce a spiritual torpor more deplorable than mere despair.
« πλ | 20 Jan 2005 »
On Choice
People often think that Christian morality as a kind of bargain in which God says, ‘If you keep a lot of rules I’ll reward you, and if you don’t I’ll do the other thing.’ I do not think that is the best way of looking at it. I would much rather say that every time you make a choice you are turning the central part of you, the part of you that chooses, into something a little different from what it was before. And taking your life as a whole, with all your innumerable choices, all your life long you are slowly turning this central thing either into a heavenly creature or into a hellish creature: either into a creature that is in harmony with God, and with other creatures, and with itself, or else into one that is in a state of war and hatred with God, and with its fellow-creatures, and with itself. To be the one kind of creature is heaven: that is, it is joy and peace and knowledge and power. To be the other means madness, horror, idiocy, rage, impotence, and eternal loneliness. Each of us at each moment is progressing to the one state or the other.
« πλ | 13 Aug 2003 »
One can no more have a private religion…
One can no more have a private religion than one can have a private sun or a private moon.
« πλ | 18 Oct 2004 »
Other religions are…
Other religions are stories of man’s search for God. The Bible is the story of God’s search for man.
« πλ | 7 Jan 2006 »
Roe v. Wade
America needs no words from me to see how your decision in Roe v. Wade has deformed a great nation. The so-called right to abortion has pitted mothers against their children and women against men. It has portrayed the greatest of gifts—a child—as a competitor, an intrusion, and an inconvenience.
« πλ | 22 Jan 2004 »
Saying one used to be…
Saying one used to be Catholic and is now Christian is like saying, “I used to be a man, but now I’m male.”
« πλ | 26 Nov 2006 »
Science and religion…
Science and religion no more contradict each other than light and electricity.
« πλ | 4 Jan 2006 »
Science only answers…
Science only answers the question, How does it work? Or at most, What’s there? Science asks what and how, philosophy asks why, myth and religion ask who. Who’s in charge here? Who’s the author? That’s what we really long to know.
« πλ | 12 Jan 2006 »
The Church imposes nothing…
The Church imposes nothing; she only proposes, she proposes like a lover to the beloved.
Just like Jesus to us, the Bride Groom…
« πλ | 28 Jun 2005 »
The boxes we build for God…
God is always bigger than the boxes we build for God, so we should not waste too much time protecting the boxes.
« πλ | 6 May 2005 »
The church is not…
Certainly, the church is not primarily a moral institution, but the bearer of a hope.
« πλ | 17 Aug 2006 »
The church is not…
The church is not a museum of saints, but a hospital for sinners.
« πλ | 9 Nov 2004 »
The difficult thing is to…
People have fallen into the foolish habit of speaking of orthodoxy as something heavy, humdrum and safe. There never was anything so perilous or so exciting as orthodoxy… It is always easy to let the age have its head; the difficult thing is to keep one’s own…
« πλ | 2 Jul 2005 »
The gospel of a God found in…
The gospel of a God found in broken flesh, humility, and measureless charity has defeated all the old lies, rendered the ancient order visibly insufficient and even slightly absurd, and instilled in us a longing for transcendent love so deep that—if once yielded to—it will never grant us rest anywhere but in Christ.
« πλ | 19 Jan 2005 »
The question confronting the Church…
The question confronting the Church today is not any longer whether the man in the street can grasp a religious message, but how to employ the media so as to let him have the full impact of the Gospel message.
« πλ | 2 Aug 2006 »
The real conflict is…
The real conflict is not “God vs. no God,” but rather love vs. hate.
« πλ | 11 Jun 2005 »
The unbeliever imagines…
The unbeliever imagines that religion pretends to offer answers, while the believer knows that the only promise it makes is to multiply questions.
« πλ | 29 Nov 2005 »
There is no scientific proof…
There is no scientific proof that only scientific proofs are good proofs; no way to prove by the scientific method that the scientific method is the only valid method.
« πλ | 16 Jan 2006 »
Tradition may be defined as…
Tradition may be defined as an extension of the franchise. Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead. Tradition refuses to submit to the small and arrogant oligarchy of those who merely happen to be walking about.
« πλ | 3 Dec 2005 »
We may think God wants…
We may think God wants actions of a certain kind, but God wants people of a certain sort.
God wants our hearts…
« πλ | 15 Feb 2005 »
What a Christian Means by “Mystery”
A mystery means that a reality is so big that our minds cannot completely surround it. A mystery means that the more we learn something, the more we find that we have yet to learn. It is like walking toward the horizon. Even if we walk for our whole lives, we’ll never arrive at the horizon, but that doesn’t mean that we are not moving. Each day brings us new landscapes, different towns, and encounters with people we didn’t know before. A mystery is much the same: we are moving toward an horizon that cannot be reached, but that continues to yield new wonders to the mind. Mystery is not an invitation to blissful ignorance but rather to never-ending exploration.
« πλ | 9 Jun 2004 »
When we leave Mass…
When we leave Mass, we ought to go out the way Moses descended Mt Sinai: with his face shining, with his heart brave and strong to face the world’s difficulties.
« πλ | 12 May 2005 »
Will surrender to the spirit of the age…
Men will surrender to the spirit of the age. They will say that if they had lived in our day, faith would be simple and easy. But in their day, they will say, things are complex; the Church must be brought up to date and made meaningful to the day’s problems.
« πλ | 3 Jun 2006 »
![[Jerusalem Cross with Heart]](http://cowpi.com/journal/grafiks/jerusalem-cross-heart.gif "Jerusalem Cross with Heart")