Quotes on Church

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.

If I believe in anything, it is in the dark night of the soul. Awe is my religion, and mystery is its church.

Mozart, Pascal, Boolean algebra, Shakespeare, parliamentary government, baroque churches, Newton, the emancipation of women, Kant, Balanchine ballets, et al. don’t redeem what this particular civilization has wrought upon the world. The white race is the cancer of human history.

Anyone who thinks sitting in church can make you a Christian must also think that sitting in a garage can make you a car.

In the Church, considered as a social organism, the mysteries inevitably degenerate into beliefs.

The style of God venerated in church, mosque, and synagogue seems completely different from the style of the natural universe.

You get a heck of a sound from the church. Can't you hear it in my voice?

For millions of men and women, the church has been the hospital for the soul, the school for the mind and the safe depository for moral ideas.

All too often the church holds up a mirror _x000D_ reflecting back the society around it, rather than a window revealing a _x000D_ different way.

The prayer of listening makes things simple but it also makes us vulnerable, and that is frightening. Listening makes us open to Christ, the Word of God, spoken in all things: in the material world, the Scriptures, the Church, and sacraments and, sometimes most threateningly, in our fellow human beings. To listen at prayer is to take the chance of hearing the voice of Christ in the poor, the weak, those whom we love and those whom we do not love.

I like the silent church before the service begins, better than any preaching.

Fear is the parent of cruelty, and therefore it is no wonder if cruelty and religion have gone hand-in-hand. It is because fear is at the basis of those two things. In this world we can now begin a little to understand things, and a little to master them by the help of science, which has forced its way step by step against the Christian religion, against the churches, and against the opposition of all the old precepts.

Lucky people develop a relationship with a certain kind of art that becomes spiritual, almost religious, and doesn’t mean, you know, church stuff, but it means you’re just never the same.

Today, we need a Church capable of walking at people's side, of doing more than simply listening to them; a Church which accompanies them on their journey.

It may well be a sign of the decadence of the Church and the failure of Christianity that gifts have to be coaxed out of people, and that often they will not give at all unless they get something for their money in the way of entertainment or of goods. Giving which is real giving has a certain recklessness in it.

Too often we treat prayer as the preparation for the work of the church. Do you not see? Prayer IS the work of the church.

I sense that the moment has come to commit all of the Church's energies to a new evangelization... No believer in Christ, no institution of the Church can avoid this supreme duty: to proclaim Christ to all peoples.

If the first mark of a true and living church is love, the second is _x000D_ suffering. The one is naturally consequent on the other. A _x000D_ willingness to suffer proves the genuineness of love.

The Church is designed to nourish the imperfect, the struggling, and the exhausted.

The church lies at the very center of the eternal purpose of God. It is not a divine afterthought.

Do you realize the weight of the one who has invited us to follow him? He is worthy of more than church attendance and casual association; he is worthy of total abandonment and supreme adoration.