#church

The wealthy, Jesus says, can only get into heaven through the eye of a needle; the same applies to churches wealthy in numbers and programs. ↗

— Mark Galli

#heaven #money #money

The Lord doesn't want anybody in His house who has to be dragged there. ↗

— Frank D. Gilroy

#god #religion #religion

Rigel, Betelgeuse, and Orion. There was no finer church, no finer choir, than the stars speaking in silence to the many consumptives silently condemned, a legion upon the dark rooftops. The wind came down from the north like a runner in lacrosse, violent and hard, to batter every living thing. They were there, each one alone in conversation with the stars, mining ephemeral love from cold and distant light. ↗

— Mark Helprin

#nature-as-church #numinous #our-place-in-the-universe #revelation #spirituality

The purpose of separation of church and state is to keep forever from these shores the ceaseless strife that has soaked the soil of Europe in blood for centuries. ↗

— James Madison

#organized-religion #politics #religion #separation-of-church-and-state #religion

The story goes that a public sinner was excommunicated and forbidden entry to the church. He took his woes to God. 'They won't let me in, Lord, because I am a sinner.' 'What are you complaining about?' said God. 'They won't let Me in either. ↗

— Brennan Manning

#god #organized-religion #sin #religion

They knew that to put God in the constitution was to put man out. They knew that the recognition of a Deity would be seized upon by fanatics and zealots as a pretext for destroying the liberty of thought. They knew the terrible history of the church too well to place in her keeping or in the keeping of her God the sacred rights of man. They intended that all should have the right to worship or not to worship that our laws should make no distinction on account of creed. They intended to found and frame a government for man and for man alone. They wished to preserve the individuality of all to prevent the few from governing the many and the many from persecuting and destroying the few. ↗

— Robert G. Ingersoll

#politics #religion #separation-of-church-and-state #religion

Those who would renegotiate the boundaries between church and state must therefore answer a difficult question: why would we trade a system that has served us so well for one that has served others so poorly? ↗

— Sandra Day O'Connor

#religion #secularism #separation-of-church-and-state #state #theocracy

Far from seeking to justify, as does the Church, the necessity of torments and afflictions, he cried, in his outraged pity: 'If a God has made this world, I should not wish to be that God. The world's wretchedness would rend my heart. ↗

— Joris-Karl Huysmans

#religion #nature

Immorality is the word we use to describe people that are not sinning the same way we are. ↗

— Shannon L. Alder

#church #hypocrisy #hypocrites #immorality #judgement

He came to put a harlot above a Pharisee, a penitent robber above a High Priest, and a prodigal son above his exemplary brother. To all the phonies and fakers who would say that they could not join the Church because His Church was not holy enough, He would ask, 'How holy must the Church be before you will enter into it?' If the Church were as holy as they wanted it to be, they would never be allowed into it! In every other religion under the sun, in every Eastern religion from Buddhism to Confucianism, there must always be some purification before one can commune with God. But Our Blessed Lord brought a religion where the admission of sin is the condition of coming to Him. 'Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are ill. ↗

— Fulton J. Sheen

#christianity #jesus #religion #sin #spirituality