Crossing the Threshold of Hope: Roman Catholic in America: Black and Catholic in America: Hope Despite The Difficulties

Thursday, June 19, 2008

Black and Catholic in America: Hope Despite The Difficulties

Deacon Harold Burke-Sivers, MTS is a deacon in the Archdiocese of Portland, Oregon, and the founder of Aurem Cordis, an apostolate dedicated "to promote the truth and beauty of the gospel by encouraging others to submit themselves freely to the life-giving love of the Trinity and to become living witnesses to that love in the world." Deacon Burke-Sivers gives talks around the country on spirituality, family life, lay vocations, and other topics, and has appeared on "Catholic Answers Live", Eternal Word Television Network (EWTN), and many local television and radio programs. He is the host of the 13-part EWTN series, Behold The Man!, about Catholic spirituality for men. Deacon Burke-Sivers has a BA in economics from Notre Dame and an MTS from the University of Dallas. He, his wife Colleen, and their four children live in Portland, Oregon.

He is also the author of the new foreword to From Slave to Priest, Sister Caroline Hemesath's 1973 biography of Father Augustine Tolton (1854-1897), the first black priest in America. Carl E. Olson, editor of IgnatiusInsight.com, recently interviewed his former classmate and spoke with him about Father Tolton, the history of black Catholics in America, and the unique challenges faced by black Catholics today.

Called Out Of Darkness

Once upon a time, there was an atheist and one day no different than any other day, he had an intellectual and spiritual revelation that made sense of the moral and existential questions that tormented him for years. He found the answer to the profound questions that surround the human condition in one name: Jesus Christ.

I'm that atheist—or I was, for over a decade. I don't live in an intellectually fragmented, morally relative world of scientific materialism anymore. I believe in the dialogue of faith and reason. I believe the man Jesus of Nazareth was the Creator incarnate. He revealed Himself to man and therefore man to himself. It's that simple and that complex. I believe in the scandal of the Cross and the miracle of the Resurrection. I am intellectually convinced that the Catholic Church is testified to by all biblical data, offers a coherent view of Christian history, and possesses the most profound moral framework, spirituality, social ethic, philosophy, and view of the human person. I sincerely believe that the Catholic Church is divinely-established by Christ, against which the gates of hell cannot and will not prevail, thereby possessing an authority that I am bound as a baptized Christian to follow faithfully. My belief is total and I cannot convince anyone of it by reason alone, anymore than any atheist can convince me by reason that there is no God.

What was I searching for? Why did faith come to me? I'm not entirely certain. What I do know is that I didn't find skeptical arguments convincing anymore—the scholarship was thin and their arguments lacking. I found what I didn't expect: a world of logic and coherency in the case for God that swept me off my feet. In February of 2006, I saw the God who knew all the answers to the theological, philosophical, and social issues that plagued my life, issues that I devoted much time musing over or debating about—the problem of evil, the reality of death, the meaning and purpose of human existence, the moral nature of homosexuality, whether two people of the same-sex can genuinely love each other romantically, and the list goes on. I saw the God who made the cosmos, all that is and ever was, and realized that He knew and understood all of my anxieties—why people mistreat homosexuals, why there is suffering, hatred, and violence running rampant in this world, why unborn children are facing a genocide, and why Christians quarrel with one another and have lost credibility as people who know how to love.

This wasn't an entirely wonderful experience. It was an admission that my atheism was a façade and that I had to forsake all that is sinful and seek that which is holy, even leaving someone I believed (and still believe) I was in love with. After mind-numbing research, prayer, and contemplation, I entered the sacramental life of the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church founded by Jesus Christ upon His Apostles—Peter first of all—and guided by the Holy Spirit for the salvation of souls. I believe there is no greater place on this earth than my Father’s House. In fact, there is no greater gift that one can receive in this life than a seat at the Banquet Table of the Lord. Many people will not see this, but I cannot be convinced otherwise. Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit. As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end. Amen.

The Gospel Truth

"Whoever wants to keep his life just for himself will lose it. Only by giving ourselves do we receive our life. In other words: only the one who loves discovers life. And love always demands going out of oneself, it always demands leaving oneself. Anyone who looks just to himself, who wants the other only for himself, will lose both himself and the other. Without this profound losing of oneself, there is no life. The restless craving for life, so widespread among people today, leads to the barrenness of a lost life. 'Whoever loses his life for my sake', says the Lord: a radical letting-go of our self is only possible if in the process we end up, not by falling into the void, but into the hands of Love eternal."

Write Your Representatives!

Take the opportunity to invoke your right to be heard. Write to legislators about pressing issues, such as an end to abortion, helping the poor, solving the immigration issue in respect to our laws and human dignity, providing healthcare reform, etc. Afterward, check their voting records, the bills they championed, speeches they gave, etc and compare it to what they said as they were running for office. Did they keep their promises? If they are not, say, as 'pro-life' as they claimed, don't vote to re-elect them. Vote for another candidate in the primary.

These people should not be unknown names on a ballot. They affect us and the rest of the world directly. 4,000 babies are murdered everyday in this country alone, every 11 seconds someone dies from AIDS, 25,000 people die every day from starvation, in major U.S. cities less than 50% of students graduate. This is unacceptable and we should and must be faithful Catholics in regard to our civic duties as Americans.

The social and economic crises we face will not go away if we do not act. We need to petition our legislators. We also need to petition ourselves to be better citizens, to be involved directly with our families and with our friends. We can be certain the political arena will not in itself change the moral course of our country, but the two, politics and moral choices do meet (and often) and we should demand that when they meet, immorality is not legislated.

Be informed. Be involved. Vote!

Thought-Provoking Quotes

"I saw the truth as it is set into song by so many poets, proclaimed as the final wisdom by so many thinkers. The truth—that love is the ultimate and the highest goal to which man can aspire. Then I grasped the meaning of the greatest secret that human poetry and human thought and belief have to impart: The salvation of man is through love and in love. I understood how a man who has nothing left in this world still may know bliss, be it only for a brief moment, in the contemplation of his beloved. In a position of utter desolation, when man cannot express himself in positive action, when his only achievement may consist in enduring his suffering in the right way—an honorable way—in such a position man can,through loving contemplation of the image he carries of his beloved, achieve fulfillment. For the first time in my life I was able to understand the meaning of the words: the angels are lost in perpetual contemplation of an infinite glory." - Victor Frankl

"Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every 'superstar', every 'supreme leader', every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there—on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam. The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds…there is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly and compassionately with one another and to preserve and cherish that pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known." - Carl Sagan

"To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket- safe, dark, motionless, airless—it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable." - C.S. Lewis

"It is theologically and anthropologically important for woman to be at the center of Christianity. Through Mary, and the other holy women, the feminine element stand at the heart of the Christian religion. And this is not in competition with Christ. To think of Christ and Mary as being in competition means ignoring the essential distinctions between these two figures...That is not a competition, but a more profound kind of intimacy. The Mother and Virgin forms an essential part of the Christian picture of man." - Pope Benedict XVI

"If the machine of government is of such a nature that it requires you to be the agent of injustice to another, then, I say, break the law." - Henry David Thoreau

"Faith and reason are like two wings on which the human spirit rises to the contemplation of truth; and God has placed in the human heart a desire to know the truth—in a word, to know himself—so that, by knowing and loving God, men and women may also come to the fullness of truth about themselves." - Pope John Paul II

"Whoever wants to keep his life just for himself will lose it. Only by giving ourselves do we receive our life. In other words: only the one who loves discovers life. And love always demands going out of oneself, it always demands leaving oneself. Anyone who looks just to himself, who wants the other only for himself, will lose both himself and the other. Without this profound losing of oneself, there is no life. The restless craving for life, so widespread among people today, leads to the barrenness of a lost life. “Whoever loses his life for my sake … ”, says the Lord: a radical letting-go of our self is only possible if in the process we end up, not by falling into the void, but into the hands of Love eternal." - Pope Benedict XVI

"Art accomplishes the creation of something orderly and meaningful out of the raw materials of an essentially random world. It is the human ability to make a small version of an ordered universe. Good art makes us see everything more clearly. It heightens, delights and sends us home from the world with knowledge we didn't have before." - Anne Rice

"The glory of Christianity is to conquer by forgiveness." - William Blake

"No one should be ashamed to admit they are wrong, which is but saying, in other words, that they are wiser today than they were yesterday." - Alexander Pope

"What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans, and the homeless, whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or the holy name of liberty and democracy?" - Mahatma Ghandi

"Many that live deserve death. And some die that deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then be not too eager to deal out death in the name of justice, fearing for your own safety. Even the wise cannot see all ends." - J.R.R. Tolkien

"Mankind must put an end to war or war will put an end to mankind." - John F. Kennedy

"True religion is real living; living with all one's soul, with all one's goodness and righteousness...all religions, arts and sciences are branches of the same tree. All these aspirations are directed toward ennobling man's life, lifting it from the sphere of mere physical existence and leading the individual towards freedom." - Albert Einstein

"The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little." - Franklin D. Roosevelt

"Men decide far more problems by hate, love, lust, rage, sorrow, joy, hope, fear, illusion, or some other inward emotion, than by reality, authority, any legal standard, judicial precedent, or statute." - Marcus Tullius Cicero

"It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it." - Aristotle

"If a nation expects to be ignorant — and free — in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be." - Thomas Jefferson

"There never was a good war or a bad peace." - Benjamin Franklin

"While the deep concern of a woman bearing an unwanted child merits consideration and sympathy, it is my personal feeling that the legalization of abortion on demand is not in accordance with the value which our civilization places on human life. Wanted or unwanted, I believe that human life, even at its earliest stages, has certain rights which must be recognized—the right to be born, the right to love, the right to grow old...once life has begun, no matter at what stage of growth, it is my belief that termination should not be decided merely by desire…when history looks back to this era it should recognize this generation as one which cared about human beings enough to halt the practice of war, to provide a decent living for every family, and to fulfill its responsibility to its children from the very moment of conception." - Ted Kennedy (before he was pro-choice)

"It's an awful truth that suffering can deepen us, give a greater luster to our colors, a richer resonance to our words. That is, if it doesn't destroy us, if it doesn't burn away the optimism and the spirit, the capacity for visions, and the respect for simple yet indispensable things." - Anne Rice

"The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral, begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy. Instead of diminishing evil, it multiplies it. Through violence you may murder the liar, but you cannot murder the lie, nor establish the truth. Through violence you may murder the hater, but you do not murder hate. In fact, violence merely increases hate. So it goes. Returning violence for violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that. Hate multiplies hate, violence multiplies violence, and toughness multiplies toughness in a descending spiral of destruction...the chain reaction of evil — hate begetting hate, wars producing more wars — must be broken, or we shall be plunged into the dark abyss of annihilation." - Martin Luther King, Jr.

"The existentialist…finds it extremely embarrassing that God does not exist, for there disappears with Him all possibility of finding values in an intelligible heaven. There can no longer be any good a priori, since there is no infinite and perfect consciousness to think it. It is nowhere written that ‘the good’ exists, that one must be honest or must not lie, since we are now upon the plane where there are only men. Dostoevsky once wrote ‘if God did not exist, everything would be permitted’; and that, for existentialism, is the starting point. Everything is indeed permitted if God does not exist, and man is in consequence forlorn, for he cannot find anything to depend upon either within or outside himself. He discovers forthwith, that he is without excuse. For if indeed existence precedes essence, one will never be able to explain one’s action by reference to a given and specific human nature; in other words, there is no determinism — man is free, man is freedom. Nor, on the other hand, if God does not exist, are we provided with any values or commands that could legitimize our behavior. Thus we have neither behind us, nor before us in a luminous realm of values, any means of justification or excuse. We are left alone, without excuse. That is what I mean when I say that man is condemned to be free. Condemned, because he did not create himself, yet is nevertheless at liberty, and from the moment that he is thrown into this world he is responsible for everything he does." - Jean-Paul Sartre

"Men go abroad to wonder at the heights of mountains, at the huge waves of the sea, at the long courses of the rivers, at the vast compass of the ocean, at the circular motions of the stars, and they pass by themselves without wondering." - St. Augustine

"Evil has no substance of its own, but is only the defect, excess, perversion, or corruption of that which has substance." - John Henry Newman

"The effect of prayer is union with God, and, if someone is with God, he is separated from the enemy. Through prayer we guard our chastity, control our temper and rid ourselves of vanity. It makes us forget injuries, overcomes envy, defeats injustice and makes amends for sin. It will refresh you when you are weary and comfort you when you are sorrowful. Prayer is the delight of the joyful as well as the solace of the afflicted. Prayer is intimacy with God and contemplation of the invisible." - Pope Benedict XVI

"On every question of construction of the Constitution, let us carry ourselves back to the time when the Constitution was adopted, recollect the spirit manifested in the debates, and instead of trying what meaning may be squeezed out of the text, or invented against it, conform to the probable one in which it was passed." - Thomas Jefferson

"If I take death into my life, acknowledge it, and face it squarely, I will free myself from the anxiety of death and the pettiness of life—and only then will I be free to become myself." - Martin Heidegger

"We are moving toward a dictatorship of relativism which does not recognize anything as for certain and which has as its highest goal one's own ego and one's own desires." - Pope Benedict XVI

"Very few beings really seek knowledge in this world. On the contrary, they try to wring from the unknown the answers they have already shaped in their own minds—justifications, confirmations, forms of consolation without which they can’t go on. To really ask is to open the door to the whirlwind. The answer may annihilate the question and the questioner." - Anne Rice

"To love truth for truth's sake is the principal part of human perfection in this world, and the seed-plot of all other virtues." - John Locke

"The sacred rights of mankind are not to be rummaged for among old parchments or musty records. They are written, as with a sunbeam, in the whole volume of human nature by the hand of the Divinity itself, and can never be erased or obscured by mortal power." - Alexander Hamilton

"It was we, the people; not we, the white male citizens; nor yet we, the male citizens; but we, the whole people, who formed the Union." - Susan B. Anthony

"If you believe what you like in the Gospel, and reject what you don't like, it is not the Gospel you believe, but yourself." - St. Augustine

"The Eucharist is not itself the sacrament of reconciliation, but in fact it presupposes that sacrament. It is the sacrament of the reconciled, to which the Lord invites all those who have become one with him; who certainly still remain weak sinners, but yet have give their hand to him and have become part of his family. That is why, from the beginning, the Eucharist has been preceded by discernment." - Pope Benedict XVI

"That deep emotional conviction of the presence of a superior reasoning power, which is revealed in the incomprehensible universe, forms my idea of God." - Albert Einstein

“An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind.” - Mahatma Gandhi

"Three things are necessary forthe salvation of man: to know what he ought to believe; to know what he ought to desire; and to know what he ought to do." - St. Thomas Aquinas

"What does love look like? It has the hands to help others. It has the feet to hasten to the poor and needy. It has eyes to see misery and want. It has the ears to hear the sighs and sorrows of men. That is what love looks like." - St. Augustine

"Every art and every inquiry, and similarly every action and choice, is thought to aim at some good; and for this reason the good has rightly been declared to be that at which all things aim." - Aristotle

"We are not some casual or meaningless product of evolution. Each of us is the result of a thought of God. Each of us is willed, each of us is loved, each of us is necessary." - Pope Benedict XVI

"People commonly travel the world over to see rivers and mountains, new stars, garish birds, freak fish, grotesque breeds of human; they fall into an animal stupor that gapes at existence and they think they have seen something." - Soren Kierkegaard

"A free people claim their rights as derived from the laws of nature, and not as the gift of their chief magistrate." - Thomas Jefferson

"No matter how long we exist, we have our memories. Points in time which time itself cannot erase. Suffering may distort my backward glances, but even to suffering, some memories will yield nothing of their beauty or their splendor. Rather they remain as hard as gems." - Anne Rice

"The principle runs all through life from top to bottom. Give up yourself, and you will find your real self. Lose your life and you will save it. Submit to death, death of your ambitions and favorite wishes every day and death of your whole body in the end: submit with every fiber of your being, and you will find eternal life. Keep back nothing. Nothing that you have not given away will be really yours. Nothing in you that has not died will ever be raised from the dead. Look for yourself and you will find in the long run only hatred, loneliness, despair, rage, ruin, and decay. But look for Christ and you will find Him, and with Him everything else thrown in." - C.S. Lewis

"What is government itself but the greatest of all reflections on human nature? If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary." - James Madison

"The world needs God. We need God. But what God? In the first reading, the prophet tells a people suffering oppression that: 'He will come with vengeance' (Isaiah 35:4). We can easily suppose how the people imagined that vengeance. But the prophet himself goes on to reveal what it really is: the healing goodness of God. The definitive explanation of the prophet's word is to be found in the one who died on the cross: in Jesus, the Son of God incarnate. His 'vengeance' is the cross: a 'no' to violence and a 'love to the end.' This is the God we need." - Pope Benedict XVI

"Humanity should question itself, once more, about the absurd and always unfair phenomenon of war, on whose stage of death and pain only remain standing the negotiating table that could and should have prevented it." - Pope John Paul II

"The martyr cannot be dishonored. Every lash inflicted is a tongue of fame; every prison a more illustrious abode." - Ralph Waldo Emerson

"God cannot give us a happiness and peace apart from Himself, because it is not there. There is no such thing." - C.S. Lewis

"I love the man that can smile in trouble, that can gather strength from distress, and grow brave by reflection. It is the business of little minds to shrink, but he whose heart is firm, and whose conscience approves his conduct, will pursue his principles unto death." - Thomas Paine

"A just laicism allows religious freedom. The state does not impose religion but rather gives space to religions with a responsibility toward civil society, and therefore it allows these religions to be factors in building up society." - Pope Benedict XVI

"The truth is a snare: you cannot have it, without being caught. You cannot have the truth in such a way that you catch it, but only in such a way that it catches you." - Soren Kierkegaard

"Having a clear faith, based on the creed of the Church, is often labeled today as a fundamentalism...whereas relativism, which is letting oneself be tossed and 'swept along by every wind of teaching,' looks like the only attitude acceptable to today's standards. [For Catholics] an adult faith does not follow the waves of fashion and the latest novelties." - Pope Benedict XVI

"When we are unhurried and wise, we perceive that only great and worthy things have any permanent and absolute existence, that petty fears and petty pleasures are but the shadow of the reality." - Henry David Thoreau

"What do our opponents mean when they apply to us the label 'Liberal?' If by 'Liberal' they mean, as they want people to believe, someone who is soft in his policies abroad, who is against local government, and who is unconcerned with the taxpayer's dollar, then...we are not that kind of 'Liberal.' But if by a 'Liberal' they mean someone who looks ahead and not behind, someone who welcomes new ideas without rigid reactions, someone who cares about the welfare of the people—their health, their housing, their schools, their jobs, their civil rights, and their civil liberties—someone who believes we can break through the stalemate and suspicions that grip us in our policies abroad, if that is what they mean by a 'Liberal,' then I'm proud to say I'm a 'Liberal.'" John F. Kennedy

"The Cross is the approbation of our existence, not in words, but in an act so completely radical that it caused God to become flesh and pierced this flesh to the quick; that, to God, it was worth the death of his incarnate Son." - Pope Benedict XVI

"All mankind... being all equal and independent, no one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty or possessions." - John Locke

"We [women] are the only class in history that has been left to fight its battles alone, unaided by the ruling powers. White labor and the freed black men had their champions, but where are ours?" - Elizabeth Cady Stanton

"What is a poet? An unhappy person who conceals profound anguish in his heart but whose lips are so formed that as sighs and cries pass over them they sound like beautiful music." - Soren Kierkegaard

"America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves." - Abraham Lincoln

"Man is fond of counting his troubles, but he does not count his joys. If he counted them up as he ought to, he would see that every lot has enough happiness provided for it." - Fyodor Dostoevsky

"The Christian feast, the Eucharist, plumbs the very depths of death. It is not just a matter of pious discourse and entertainment, of some kind of religious beautification, spreading a pious gloss on the world; it plumbs the very depths of existence, which it call death...What the tradition sums up in the sentence: The Eucharist is a sacrifice, the presentation of Jesus Christ’s sacrifice on the Cross." - Pope Benedict XVI

"The greatest challenge of the day is: how to bring about a revolution of the heart...we have all known the long loneliness and we have learned that the only solution is love and that love comes with community.” - Dorothy Day

"We think sometimes that poverty is only being hungry, naked and homeless. The poverty of being unwanted, unloved and uncared for is the greatest poverty. We must start in our own homes to remedy this kind of poverty." - Mother Teresa

“God creates out of nothing. Wonderful you say. Yes, to be sure, but he does what is still more wonderful: he makes saints out of sinners.” - Soren Kierkegaard

"Why are there beings at all, instead of Nothing?" - Martin Heidegger

"Every true prayer is a prayer of the Church; by means of that prayer the Church prays, since it is the Holy Spirit living in the Church, Who in every single soul 'prays in us with unspeakable groanings.'" - St. Edith Stein

"Jesus dies because there are forces hostile to truth; his obedience is fidelity to truth in conflict with the tangled web of untruth. But it is precisely by obeying truth that he obeys both the Father and the Scripture that he interprets by virtue of his immediate relationship to God, which he thereby opens anew to his inmost foundation, filling it with a new reality by his living of its word. His relationship to the fundamental ground of being is a relationship of real union with the fundamental truth–that is, 'Sonship': in this relationship to God, the very letter becomes flesh." - Pope Benedict XVI

"If we will disbelieve everything, because we cannot certainly know all things, we shall do much what as wisely as he who would not use his legs, but sit still and perish, because he had no wings to fly." - John Locke

"It is a serious thing to...remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you can talk to may one day be a creature [in Heaven] which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption [in hell] such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare. All day long we are, in some degree, helping each other to one or the other of these destinations. It is in the light of these overwhelming possibilities, it is with the awe and the circumspection proper to them, that we should conduct all our dealings with one another, all friendships, all loves, all play, all politics. There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilizations—these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub and exploit—immortal horrors or everlasting splendors." - C.S. Lewis

"Science can purify religion from error and superstition. Religion can purify science from idolatry and false absolutes." - Pope John Paul II

"History is driven...by culture, by what men and women honor, cherish, and worship; by what societies deem to be true and good and noble; by the expressions they give to these convictions in language, literature, and the arts; by what individuals and societies are willing to stake their lives on." - George Weigel

"Employ your time in improving yourself by other men's writings, so that you shall gain easily what others have labored hard for." - Socrates

"The paradox is really the pathos of intellectual life and just as only great souls are exposed to passions it is only the great thinker who is exposed to what I call paradoxes, which are nothing else than grandiose thoughts in embryo." - Soren Kierkegaard

"The great danger for family life, in the midst of any society whose idols are pleasure, comfort and independence, lies in the fact that people close their hearts and become selfish." - Pope John Paul II

"When freedom does not have a purpose, when it does not wish to know anything about the rule of law engraved in the hearts of men and women, when it does not listen to the voice of conscience, it turns against humanity and society." - Pope John Paul II

"Radical changes in world politics leave America with a heightened responsibility to be, for the world, an example of a genuinely free, democratic, just and humane society." - Pope John Paul II

"An individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for the law." - Martin Luther King, Jr.

"An individual has not started living until he can rise above the narrow confines of his individualistic concerns to the broader concerns of all humanity." - Martin Luther King, Jr.

"I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality. This is why right, temporarily defeated, is stronger than evil triumphant." - Martin Luther King, Jr.

"Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be. This is the interrelated structure of reality." - Martin Luther King, Jr.

"Virtue is its own reward, and brings with it the truest and highest pleasure; but if we cultivate it only for pleasure's sake, we are selfish, not religious, and will never gain the pleasure, because we can never have the virtue." - John Henry Newman

"The unexamined life is not worth living." - Socrates

"It is not because angels are holier than men or devils that makes them angels, but because they do not expect holiness from one another, but from God only." - William Blake

"No man chooses evil bcause it is evil; he only mistakes it for happiness, the good he seeks." - Mary Wollstonecraft

"It is better to keep your mouth closed and let people think you are a fool than to open it and remove all doubt." - Mark Twain

"Where justice is denied, where poverty is enforced, where ignorance prevails, and where any one class is made to feel that society is an organized conspiracy to oppress, rob and degrade them, neither persons nor property will be safe." - Frederick Douglass

"Those thinkers who cannot believe in any gods often assert that the love of humanity would be in itself sufficient for them; and so, perhaps, it would, if they had it." - G.K. Chesterton

"To love means loving the unlovable. To forgive means pardoning the unpardonable. Faith means believing the unbelievable. Hope means hoping when everything seems hopeless." - G.K. Chesterton

"The Declaration of Independence dogmatically bases all rights on the fact that God created all men equal; and it is right; for if they were not created equal, they were certainly evolved unequal. There is no basis for democracy except in a dogma about the divine origin of man." - G.K. Chesterton

"Religious liberty might be supposed to mean that everybody is free to discuss religion. In practice it means that hardly anybody is allowed to mention it." - G.K. Chesterton

"I maintain, therefore, that the common sociological method is quite useless: that of first dissecting abject poverty or cataloguing prostitution. We all dislike abject poverty; but it might be another business if we began to discuss independent and dignified poverty. We all disapprove of prostitution; but we do not all approve of purity. The only way to discuss the social evil is to get at once to the social ideal. We can all see the national madness; but what is national sanity? I have called this book What Is Wrong with the World? and the upshot of the title can be easily and clearly stated. What is wrong is that we do not ask what is right." - G.K. Chesterton

"Out of the darkness of my life, so much frustrated, I put before you the one great thing to love on earth: the Blessed Sacrament…There you will find romance, glory, honor, fidelity, and the true way of all your loves upon earth, and more than that: Death: by the divine paradox, that which ends life, and demands the surrender of all, and yet by the taste of which alone can what you seek in your earthly relationships be maintained, or take on that complexion of reality, of eternal endurance, which every man’s heart desires…" - J.R.R. Tolkien

"The only cure for sagging of fainting faith is Communion. Though always itself, perfect and complete and inviolate, the Blessed Sacrament does not operate completely and once for all in any of us. Like the act of faith it must be continuous and grow by exercise. Frequency is of the highest effect. Seven times a week is more nourishing than seven times at intervals. Also I can recommend this as an exercise: make your Communion in circumstances that affront your taste. Choose a snuffling or gabbling priest or a proud and vulgar friar; and a church full of the usual bourgeois crowd, ill-behaved children—from those who yell to those products of Catholic schools who the moment the tabernacle is opened sit back and yawn—open necked and dirty youths, women in trousers and often with hair both unkempt and uncovered. Go to Communion with them (and pray for them). It will be just the same as a Mass said beautifully by a visibly holy man, and shared by a few devout and decorous people. It could not be worse than the mess of the feeding of the five thousand—after which our Lord propounded the feeding that was to come." - J.R.R. Tolkien

"In the name of liberation from male 'domination', women must not appropriate themselves male characteristics contrary to their own feminine 'originality.' There is a well-founded fear that if they take this path, women will not 'reach fulfillment,' but instead will deform and lose what constitutes their essential richness." - Pope John Paul II

"At the dawn of salvation, it is the birth of a Child which is proclaimed as joyful news: 'I bring you good news of great joy which will come to all people; for to you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord' (Luke 2:10-11). The source of this great joy is the birth of the Savior, but Christmas also reveals the full meaning of every human birth, and the joy which accompanies the Birth of the Messiah is thus seen to be the foundation and fulfillment of joy at every child born into the world." - Pope John Paul II

"The Catholic Church reads the scriptures Eucharistically because for us the prime source of authority is not the text itself, but the crucified and living victim alive in our midst, who is the living interpretative presence teaching us how to undo our violent and evil ways of relating to each other, and how to enter into, together, the way of pentitence and peace. For us the 'Word of God' refers in the first place to a living person and only by analogy to the texts which hear witness to him." - James Alison

"Believing Christians should look upon themselves as a creative minority and help Europe (and America) espouse once again the best of its heritage, thereby being at the service of humankind at large." - Pope Benedict XVI

"The primary thing that he [Jesus] was going to do was to die. He was going to do other things equally definite and objective; we might almost say equally external and material. But from the first to last the most definite fact is that he is going to die...We are meant to feel that Death was the bride of Christ as Poverty was the bride of St. Francis. We are meant to feel that his life was in that sense a sort of love-affair with death, a romance of the pursuit of the ultimate sacrifice. From the moment when the star goes up like a birthday rockety to the moment when the sun extinguished like a funeral torch, the whole story moves on wings with the speed and direction of a drama, ending in an act beyond words." - G.K. Chesterton

"America needs no words from me to see how your decision in Roe v. Wade has deformed a great nation. The so-called right to abortion has pitted mothers against their children and women against men. It has sown violence and discord at the heart of the most intimate human relationships. It has aggravated the derogation of the father's role in an increasingly fatherless society. It has portrayed the greatest of gifts -- a child -- as a competitor, an intrusion, and an inconvenience. It has nominally accorded mothers unfettered dominion over the independent lives of their physically dependent sons and daughters" And, in granting this unconscionable power, it has exposed many women to unjust and selfish demands from their husbands or other sexual partners. Human rights are not a privilege conferred by government. They are every human being's entitlement by virtue of his humanity. The right to life does not depend, and must not be declared to be contingent, on the pleasure of anyone else, not even a parent or a sovereign." - Mother Teresa

"But I feel that the greatest destroyer of peace today is abortion, because it is a war against the child - a direct killing of the innocent child - murder by the mother herself. And if we accept that a mother can kill even her own child, how can we tell other people not to kill one another? How do we persuade a woman not to have an abortion? As always, we must persuade her with love, and we remind ourselves that love means to be willing to give until it hurts. Jesus gave even his life to love us. So the mother who is thinking of abortion, should be helped to love - that is, to give until it hurts her plans, or her free time, to respect the life of her child. The father of that child, whoever he is, must also give until it hurts. By abortion, the mother does not learn to love, but kills even her own child to solve her problems. And by abortion, the father is told that he does not have to take any responsibility at all for the child he has brought into the world. That father is likely to put other women into the same trouble. So abortion just leads to more abortion. Any country that accepts abortion is not teaching the people to love, but to use any violence to get what they want. That is why the greatest destroyer of love and peace is abortion." - Mother Teresa

"Is it not this certainty in the risen Lord that inspires courage, bold prophecies and perseverance in the martyrs through the ages? Is it not this meeting with the living Christ which captivates and converts so many men and women who from the beginning of Christianity leave all they have to follow him and give their lives to serve the Gospel? If Christ has not risen, said the Apostle Paul, then our preaching is in vain and our faith is also in vain (1 Corinthians 15:14). But he has risen!" -Pope Benedict XVI

"Lord, make me an instrument of Your peace. where there is hatred let me sow love, where there is injury let me sow pardon, where there is doubt let me sow faith, where there is despair let me give hope, where there is darkness let me give light, Where there is sadness let me give joy. O Divine Master, grant that I may not try to be comforted but to comfort, not try to be understood but to understand, not try to be loved but to love. Because it is in giving that we receive, it is in forgiving that we are forgiven, and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life." - St. Francis of Assisi

"Many people are very, very concerned with the children of India, with the children of Africa where quite a few die of hunger, and so on. Many people are also concerned about all the violence in this great country of the United States. These concerns are very good. But often these same people are not concerned with the millions who are being killed by the deliberate decision of their own mothers. And this is what is the greatest destroyer of peace today - abortion which brings people to such blindness." - Mother Teresa

"Not one hundred in the United States hate the Roman Catholic Church, but millions hate what they mistakenly think the Roman Catholic Church is." - Bishop Fulton J. Sheen