Francis seems familiar because Catholics have already known him in the Vatican II priests who have been their pastors and sacramental ministers over the years since that council brought new life to an old church. Catholics have known him in the bishops and priests who brought the spirit of the council to their dioceses and parishes.
I grew up in church. I don't know anything different.
I see no faults in the Church, and therefore let me be resurrected with the Saints, whether I ascend to heaven or descend to hell, or go to any other place. And if we go to hell, we will turn the devils out of doors and make a heaven of it.
When I was a young boy, during the aftermath of World War II, Germany was broken and in ruins. Many people were hungry, sick, and dying. I remember well the humanitarian shipments of food and clothing that came from the Church in Salt Lake City.
I was baptized a Baptist, but I'm just Christian, as far as I'm concerned. I could go in any church, doesn't matter if it's Baptist, Protestant, Episcopal, or Catholic.
We went to church every Sunday. I do think it's my duty to give back. That's why I'm involved with St. Jude's Children's Research Hospital and the Make-a-Wish Foundation.
The 'means of grace' are such as Bible reading, private prayer, and regularly worshiping God in Church, wherein one hears the Word taught and participates in the Lord's Supper. I lay it down as a simple matter of fact that no one who is careless about such things must ever expect to make much progress in sanctification.
I went to church as a kid, but it was as much a social thing as anything going to the youth group with the other kids and whatnot. It wasn't until I got out of college that I got on my own religious trip and started finding other things out there as well as philosophies. I've kinda been on my own spiritual path since then.
In the primitive church, it was customary for the Holy Eucharist to be celebrated on the anniversary of the death of a martyr - if possible, on his tomb.
He was of the faith chiefly in the sense that the church he currently did not attend was Catholic.
We thought the church had withdrawn from interfering in Italian politics... but instead there is a terrible resurgence. These are ugly signs for freedom of expression.
As the Church is the aggregate of believers, there is an intimate analogy between the experience of the individual believer, and of the Church as a whole.
I've never been with women, because I'm celibate, as ordered by God, as if I were in a monastery. For me, the church is my wife.
The early Church had nothing but the Old Testament. The New Testament lies hidden in the Old; the Old Testament lies open in the New.
The Church does not pretend to be scientists. It teaches based upon what science tells it.
A good man, is a good man, whether in this church, or out of it.
My family for several generations have been members of the Unitarian Church.
I've been singing forever; I grew up singing in church.
In the post-enlightenment Europe of the 19th century the highest authority was no longer the Church. Instead it was science. Thus was born racial anti-Semitism, based on two disciplines regarded as science in their day - the 'scientific study of race' and the Social Darwinism of Herbert Spencer and Ernst Haeckel.
We were married in Capri almost two years ago and we have made a pact with each other to visit the beautiful island and the church where we were married every year for the rest of our lives.
The Church exists to connect people at the level of their hunger for a new world.
I do feel that federation, loose parallel processes, are less than we've got, less than we could have and, in the very long run, less than what God wants in the Church.
It is sufficient to say, what everybody knows to be true, that the Irish population is Catholic, and that the Protestants, whether of the Episcopalian or Presbyterian Church, or of both united, are a small minority of the Irish people.
There's no doubt that the Christian right has gone to bed with the more conservative elements of the Republican Party. And there's been a melding in their goals when it comes to the separation of church and state. I've always believed in the separation of church and state.
Obviously I don't really go to church any more - no time.
A servant church must have as its priority solidarity with the poor.
Under pressure, people admit to murder, setting fire to the village church or robbing a bank, but never to being bores.
If a church offers no truth that is not available in the general culture - in, for instance, the editorials of the New York Times or, for that matter, of National Review - there is not much reason to pay it attention.
I think if the church did what they were supposed to do we wouldn't have anyone sleeping on the streets.
The audience that I try to reach are members of what I call the church alumni association. Now they are people who have not found in institutional religion a God big enough to be God for their world.
I was a Catholic youth minister for eight years... I'm not Catholic anymore. The church is too misogynistic.
I had to get rid of any idea of hell or any idea of the afterlife. That's what held me, kept me down. So now I just have nothing but contempt for the institution of the church.
Our public schools began as ministries of the church; now it is time to return them to the Lord.
We're not a Church of preservation but rather a Church of proclamation. To achieve this end, we must be open to significant, if not revolutionary, changes in how the Archdiocese with its parishes and ministries is organized, how it's resourced, how it's staffed.
Each of our children during their high school years went to 'early morning seminary' - scripture study classes that met in the home of a church member every school day morning from 6:30 until 7:15.
Priesthood is the means whereby the Lord acts through men to save souls. One of the defining features of the Church of Jesus Christ, both anciently and today, is His authority. There can be no true Church without divine authority.
