Show me your hands. Do they have scars from giving? Show me your feet. Are they wounded in service? Show me your heart. Have you left a place for divine love?
There are not one hundred people in the United States who hate The Catholic Church, but there are millions who hate what they wrongly perceive the Catholic Church to be.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote suggests that people's negative feelings towards the Catholic Church are often based on misconceptions rather than reality.
Fulton J. Sheen's quote highlights a common phenomenon where individuals harbor animosity towards an institution, in this case, the Catholic Church, not due to direct experience or understanding, but because of their misconceptions and biases. It emphasizes the impact of perception on opinion, suggesting that many of the criticisms faced by the Church are not necessarily a reflection of what it is, but rather what people believe it to be, thus calling for a deeper understanding and dialogue.
Themes
In practice
Example use cases
During a discussion about religious tolerance, this quote can be used to illustrate how often misconceptions drive hate.
More from Fulton J. Sheen
All quotes βA woman gets angry when a man denies his faults, because she knew them all along. His lying mocks her affection; it is the deceit that angers her more than the faults.
Many married women who have deliberately spurned the "hour" of childbearing are unhappy and frustrated. They never discovered the joys of marriage because they refused to surrender to the obligation of their state. In saving themselves, they lost themselves!
No one has ever laughed at a pun who did not see in the one word a twofold meaning. To materialists this world is opaque like a curtain; nothing can be seen through it. A mountain is just a mountain, a sunset just a sunset; but to poets, artists, and saints, the world is transparent like a window pane - it tells of something beyond....a mountain tells of the Power of God, the sunset of His Beauty, and the snowflake of His Purity.
The big print giveth, and the fine print taketh away.
Hearing nuns' confessions is like being stoned to death with popcorn.
Similar quotes
How do we transform mere power into justice, mere sentiment into love?
All token Blacks have the same experience. I have been pointed at as a solution to things that have not yet begun to be solved, because pointing at us token Blacks eases consciences of millions, and this is dreadfully wrong.
He asked if i wouldn't like to live completely without problems, say in greece maybe, nice climate, everything provided? i say: "when we find out what we are actually doing and who we actually are, that is the point of living...it may be only a few seconds...a few seconds of significant actions, out of a lifetime.
Indifference is the revenge the world takes on mediocrities.
America has made no reparation to the Vietnamese, nothing. We are the richest people in the world and they are among the poorest. We savaged them, though they had never hurt us, and we cannot find it in our hearts, our honor, to give them help-because the government of Vietnam is Communist. And perhaps because they won.
If it will feed nothing else, it will feed my revenge.