My hope that the Church will emerge as a strong leader in society is just that a hope. What I described in The Catholic Moment is not a prophecy but the outline of a possibility. There are no guarantees that my hopes expressed in The Catholic Moment will ever be realised.
A revival does two things. First, it returns the Church from her backsliding and second, it causes the conversion of men and women; and it always includes the conviction of sin on the part of the Church. What a spell the devil seems to cast over the Church today!
I've always had God, but now I want to go back to church for the sense of community and that feeling of positive thinking, a place where I can think about being a better person.
The principle that certain sins should not receive the Church's testimony of forgiveness was probably no novelty at all, but had been applied in various churches; perhaps, however, with no strict consistency.
My grandmother lived on Elizabeth Street in Little Italy, and she used to go to church every day. She'd go in, light a candle, she'd pray, and as a child, that was comforting to me.
I'm very soulful. I grew up singing in church. When I sing a song, I like to feel what I'm singing.
Christians often want to hide behind the walls of the church, where we are comfortable, but sometimes we have to come out of the box.
I had to come out to my mother three times over a twelve-year period, but I first came out to her when I was sixteen. It didn't go over so well, because I grew up in the Pentecostal Church. It was a very strict environment. She has since done a lot of work and has really blown my mind. She has learned about my life and has changed her mind.
The secular world looks to the church and to its chagrin, finds no love, no life, no laughter, no hope and no happiness.
I pastor a very large church in western Australia. We have about - over 2,000 people, which we have a Bible school, community services, a lot of things linked with it. So my life's very full today. Not enough days in the week.
Remarkable is the greater openness of the Catholic Church towards people of other religious traditions and persuasions. The development has not been without problems, since some people have resisted it and others have pushed openness beyond the desirable point.
The church, inserted and active in human society and in history, does not exist in order to exercise political power or to govern the society.
But I'll tell you what, there was a lot of farmland between Falls Church and Washington.
As a youngster, when I was active in church, I had a lot of fun choosing and hanging massive stars and making the cribs. I was also very involved in the Christmas plays, though not as an actor, but I took joy in setting up the props.
A church of dialogue in the contemporary world... a church, taking on the mission of Jesus, which is in the world not to judge humanity, but to love it and to save it.
However, it must always remain a dialogue, and never an imposition of the church's own convictions and methods. Propose, not impose. To serve, and not to dominate.
The tenet of the separation of church and state is an unconstitutional doctrine.
You can be committed to Church but not committed to Christ, but you cannot be committed to Christ and not committed to church.
You know how the church has been hit so hard by the sexual misconduct by clergy, and what's that's done to Catholics, especially here in Boston but elsewhere as well.
We follow the rules laid out in the Bible for running our church.
I heard stories from my mother's mother who was an American Indian. She was spiritual, although she did not go to church, but she had the hum. She used to tell me stories of the rivers.
Kinsey thought that Freud in his own way was as dangerous as the Catholic Church.
When my dad founded our church, he used either a globe or a map of the world behind him. It was symbolic of what Christ said: to go forth and preach hope to the world. We believe in the cross, but we just continued with the globe.
It is the custom of the Roman Church which I unworthily serve with the help of God, to tolerate some things, to turn a blind eye to some, following the spirit of discretion rather than the rigid letter of the law.
Priesthood is not a convenient, historically conditioned form of Church organisation, but is rooted in the Incarnation, in the priesthood and mission of Christ himself.
The Church has always been willing to swap off treasures in heaven for cash down.
If all the rich and all of the church people should send their children to the public schools they would feel bound to concentrate their money on improving these schools until they met the highest ideals.
The stratosphere is my church.
The greatest block today in the way of woman's emancipation is the church, the canon law, the Bible and the priesthood.
It is my belief that everything you need to know about the world can be learned in a church choir.
Each generation of the church in each setting has the responsibility of communicating the gospel in understandable terms, considering the language and thought-forms of that setting.
All politics are local, and so in church.
For two thousand years, the Church has guided the development of music, carefully legislating to fuse artistic talent and aesthetic beauty with the demands of the Faith.
Every day people are straying away from the church and going back to God.
People don't trust government, they don't trust Wall Street, they don't trust the church, they don't trust the media.
I think my election is one of several indications that gay and lesbian folk are being brought more into the center of things. I'd like to think that my election signals my bringing of gay and lesbian folk into the center of the church.
