I was raised Catholic,I took from that was a sense of theater and drama, and also the idea that there were truths that couldn't actually be uttered directly but really had to be reached through ritual. You come out of those Masses so moved, and you're like, "Why did that happen?" And the truth of it is that it happened through an hour of highly enacted ritual.
If you are willing to bear serenely the trial of being displeasing to yourself, then you will be for Jesus a pleasant place of shelter.
This Apostolic Church never turned from the way of truth nor held any kind of error. It is imperative that nothing of the truths which have been defined be lessened, nothing altered, nothing added, but that they be preserved intact in word and meaning. This is the true rule of faith.
Many who confess their venial sins out of custom and concern for order but without thought of amendment remain burdened with them for their whole life and thus lose many spiritual benefits and advantages.
We've got at least two other streams of that are filled with good, helpful material on meditation - the Catholic stream and the Quaker stream that are not primarily based on meditating on the Scripture.
Catholic Church reasserts its moral authority on contraception: If God believed in birth control, altar boys would have a uterus.
When I look back on my childhood I wonder how I survived at all. It was, of course, a miserable childhood: the happy childhood is hardly worth your while. Worse than the ordinary miserable childhood is the miserable Irish childhood, and worse yet is the miserable Irish Catholic childhood.
Hannah Storm in a horrifying, horrifying outfit today. She's got on red go-go boots and a catholic school plaid skirt. . . way too short for somebody in her 40s or maybe early 50s by now. . . She's got on her typically very, very tight shirt. She looks like she has sausage casing wrapping around her upper body. . . I know she's very good, and I'm not supposed to be critical of ESPN people, so I won't. . . but Hannah Storm. . . come on now! Stop! What are you doing?. . . She's what I would call a Holden Caulfield fantasy at this point.
As the sun shines both on the cedar and the smallest flower, so the Divine sun illumines each soul.
The ideal reader of my novels is a lapsed Catholic and failed musician, short-sighted, colour-blind, auditorily biased, who has read the books that I have read.
To convert somebody go and take them by the hand and guide them.
. . . the average Catholic perceives no connection between religion and morality, unless it is a question of someone else's morality.
Philip could not have wanted to annex England militarily, since this would have opened another costly occupation struggle, and brought France in against him. He might, however, neutralize Elizabth by supporting her internal Catholic enemies, even provoking civil war.
I know many Catholic priests and nuns who use the Buddhist teachings to become better Catholics, and Jews who use them to become better Jews. Why not?! It just takes us towards more deeply recognizing our original nature, which is what we all share after all.
The Catholic Church is an institution I am bound to hold divine but for unbelievers a proof of its divinity might be found in the fact that no merely human institution conducted with such knavish imbecility would have lasted a fortnight.
Do I address issues of the spirit, of the soul, in my work? Yes, definitely. As for being a Catholic poet, I was born in, and into, Catholicism - Eastern Rite Maronite and Melkite Catholicism. Not being Catholic has never been a choice for me - it's in my family, my ancestry, going back centuries. Catholicism, for me, is always here.
I was born in Belgium and moved to Amsterdam when I was 17. I am not a Calvinist Dutchman but a Catholic Belgian. I think that makes a big difference.
I feel like a fox in a henhouse full of Catholic girls.
Let us return from that Table like lions breathing out fire, terrifying to the devil!
And Christ, through His own salvific suffering, is very much present in every human suffering, and can act from within that suffering by the powers of His Spirit of truth, His consoling spirit.