#priest

When the late Pope John Paul II decided to place the woman so strangely known as “Mother” Teresa on the fast track for beatification, and thus to qualify her for eventual sainthood, the Vatican felt obliged to solicit my testimony and I thus spent several hours in a closed hearing room with a priest, a deacon, and a monsignor, no doubt making their day as I told off, as from a rosary, the frightful faults and crimes of the departed fanatic. In the course of this, I discovered that the pope during his tenure had surreptitiously abolished the famous office of “Devil’s Advocate,” in order to fast‐track still more of his many candidates for canonization. I can thus claim to be the only living person to have represented the Devil pro bono. ↗

— Christopher Hitchens

#beatification #canonisation #deacons #devil #devil-s-advocate

The bishops will govern the Church, the priests will do all the work and the deacons will have all the fun. ↗

— Richard Cardinal Cushing

#church #fun #govern #priests #will

What I think we can do is help individuals understand the church teaching, but also maybe help the church understand the viewpoint of lay men and women about what they want in regard to priests, or how do they want the hierarchy to deal with them? ↗

— William P. Leahy

#also #church #deal #help #hierarchy

At different points in my life, I had grappled with the idea of going into the priesthood - in high school or law school. Where it ends, I'm not quite sure. Perhaps it ends with death, grappling with one's spirituality. ↗

— James McGreevey

#different #different points #ends #going #grappling

There is a kind of thinking in the Church that wants to reduce the priest to a mere functionary, a managing director, where administration rather than doctrine and worship are to determine the form of the Church. ↗

— Arthur Middleton

#church #determine #director #doctrine #form

The priests are debarred from female society, nor is any woman permitted to enter the religious houses. ↗

— Hernando Cortes

#debarred #enter #female #houses #nor

Whatever flaws or personal failings afflict them, it remains the case that the overwhelming majority of priests and politicians are honourable and honest - seeking to live out their beliefs and serve society. ↗

— Keith O'Brien

#beliefs #case #failings #flaws #honest

I shall always be a priest of love. ↗

— David Herbert Lawrence

#i #love #priest #shall

The artistic taste of the Catholic priests is appalling and I am most anxious to have a Catholic church in which everything is genuine and good, and not tawdry and ostentatious. ↗

— Giles Gilbert Scott

#anxious #appalling #artistic #catholic #catholic church

I don't flatter myself with much dependence upon the present disposition of the Eastern Indians, who are many ways liable to be drawn into a rupture with us by the artifices of the French, their own weakness and the influence which the French Missionary Priests have over them. ↗

— William Shirley

#dependence #disposition #drawn #eastern #flatter