#catholicism

But the truth is that there is no more conscious inconsistency between the humility of a Christian and the rapacity of a Christian than there is between the humility of a lover and the rapacity of a lover. The truth is that there are no things for which men will make such herculean efforts as the things of which they know they are unworthy. There never was a man in love who did not declare that, if he strained every nerve to breaking, he was going to have his desire. And there never was a man in love who did not declare also that he ought not to have it. ↗

— G.K. Chesterton

#catholicism #chesterton #christian #christianity #desire

Happiness is not only a hope, but also in some strange manner a memory ... we are all kings in exile. ↗

— G.K. Chesterton

#exile #happiness #home #manners

Catholicism is not a soothing religion. It's a painful religion. We're all gluttons for punishment. ↗

— Madonna Ciccone

#painful #punishment #religion #soothing

The Church does not dispense the sacrament of baptism in order to acquire for herself an increase in membership but in order to consecrate a human being to God and to communicate to that person the divine gift of birth from God. ↗

— Hans Urs von Balthasar

#birth #catholicism #christianity #faith #god

If your life is Christ, then your death will be only more of Christ, forever. If your life is only Christlessness, then your death will be only more Christlessness, forever. That's not fundamentalism, that's the law of non-contradiction. ↗

— Peter Kreeft

#christ #christianity #christlessness #christology #fundamentalism

Could there be any doubt that the Jews would seek to harm the Son of God again, knowing that his body was now readily accessible in the form of defenseless crackers? ↗

— Sam Harris

#catholicism #christian #christianity #god #jesus-christ

Unless you are willing to do the ridiculous, God will not do the miraculous. When you have God, you don’t have to know everything about it; you just do it. ↗

— Mother Angelica

#faith #faith

For a Catholic understanding of the faith there is no reason why the basic concern of Evangelical Christianity as it comes to expression in the three “only's” should have no place in the Catholic Church. Accepted as basic and ultimate formulas of Christianity, they do not have to lead a person out of the Catholic Church. . . . They can call the attention of the Catholic church again and again to the fact that grace alone and faith alone really are what saves, and that with all our maneuvering through the history of dogma and the teaching office, we Catholic Christians must find our way back to the sources again and again, back to the primary origins of Holy Scripture and all the more so of the Holy Spirit. ↗

— Karl Rahner

#ecumenism #evangelicalism #faith-alone #grace-alone #salvation

Catholicism is an obsessive-compulsive faith. ↗

— Ann Patchett

#catholicism #obsessive-compulsive-disorder #run #faith

Ever since her conversion [Barbara] had met sophisticated women who, on the subject of Catholicism, sneered like French village atheists, and expected to be excused from normal good manners, let alone intelligence, on this one subject. ↗

— Muriel Spark

#ignorance #intolerance #intelligence