Catholic Bible 101

"The Church is like Noah's ark that was full of both clean and unclean animals. It must have had an unholy smell, and yet it was carrying eight persons to salvation. The world today is tearing up the photographs of a good society, a good family, a happy, individual personal life. But the Church is keeping the negatives. And when the moment comes when the world wants a reprint, we will have them."

"Show me your hands. Do they have scars from giving? Show me your feet. Are they wounded in service? Show me your heart. Have you left a place for divine love?  "

“You should realize that the community with which you deal is not the one of 42nd Street and Broadway, or Hollywood and Vine. These are the crusts on the great American sandwich. The meat is in between.”

"The only way to win audiences is to tell people about the life and death of Christ. Every other approach is a waste.”

"The big print giveth, and the fine print taketh away. "

"The proud man counts his newspaper clippings, the humble man his blessings." 

"The simple shepherds heard the voice of an angel and found their Lamb; the wise men saw the light of a star and found their Wisdom.”  

“An atheist is a man who has no invisible means of support.”   

“Jealousy is the tribute mediocrity pays to genius.” 

“Show me your hands. Do they have scars from giving? Show me your feet. Are they wounded in service? Show me your heart. Have you left a place for divine love?” 

“There are 200 million poor in the world who would gladly take the vow of poverty if they could eat, dress and have a home like I do”    

“Leisure is a form of silence, not noiselessness. It is the silence of contemplation such as occurs when we let our minds rest on a rosebud, a child at play, a Divine mystery, or a waterfall.” 

“Pride is an admission of weakness; it secretly fears all competition and dreads all rivals.” 

“Love is a mutual self-giving which ends in self-recovery.” 

"Joy is not the same as pleasure or happiness. A wicked and evil man may have pleasure, while any ordinary mortal is capable of being happy. Pleasure generally comes from things, and always through the senses; happiness comes from humans through fellowship. Joy comes from loving God and neighbor. Pleasure is quick and violent, like a flash of lightning. Joy is steady and abiding, like a fixed star. Pleasure depends on external circumstances, such as money, food, travel, etc. Joy is independent of them, for it comes from a good conscience and love of God."  

"There are not more than 100 people in the world who truly hate the Catholic Church, but there are millions who hate what they perceive to be the Catholic Church.  ....As a matter of fact, if we Catholics believed all of the untruths and lies which were said against the Church, we probably would hate the Church a thousand times more than they do." 

"This brings us to our second point: namely, why the Blessed Mother, in the 20th century, should have revealed herself in the significant little village of Fatima, so that to all future generations she would be known as Our Lady of Fatima. Since nothing ever happens out of Heaven except with a finesse of all details, I believe that the Blessed Virgin chose to be known as Our Lady of Fatima as a pledge and a sign of hope to the Moslem people, and as an assurance that they, who show her so much respect, will one day accept her divine Son too. Evidence to support these views is found in the historical fact that the Moslems occupied Portugal for centuries. At the time when they were finally driven out, the last Moslem chief had a beautiful daughter by the name of Fatima. A Catholic boy fell in love with her, and for him she not only stayed behind when the Moslems left, but even embraced the Faith. The young husband was so much in love with her that he changed the name of the town where he live to Fatima. Thus, the very place where our Lady appeared in 1917 bears a historical connection to Fatima, the daughter of Mohammed."

"Truth must be sought at all costs, but separate isolated truths will not do. Truth is like life; it has to be taken on its entirety or not at all. . . . We must welcome truth even if it reproaches and inconveniences us -- even if it appears in the place where we thought it could not be found."

"Nothing is more harmful to a man than his resistance to Grace."

"So much do the will and its sin become wedded together that a soul will say, Let me alone. I made my bed and I will lie in it."

"Those who hate Truth and fear Goodness are not far from the kingdom of God. They are fighting against it, and yet they know theirs is a losing battle. The more violently men hate truth, the more they think about it; the more they fear the goodness that demands perfection, the more they know it is what they really seek."

"Once we accept him, we find we were truly deceived. It was only the skin of the heavenly fruit that seemed bitter. The meat ravishes the soul. . . At first glance, God seems to be taking away our happiness, but in the moment of surrender we discover he has deceived us. He has merely taken away the dross to give us the gold of his eternity."

"Sin was the act by which man refused to see created things for what they were -- stepping stones to God, a means to an end -- and began instead to clutch at them as ends in themselves. That is what sin is, still. As a man loves his sense of humor when he cannnot see the point of a pun, so he loses his humor in its entirety when he ceases to see the point of the universe, which is that all things are revelations, symbols, reminders of God who made them. To take things as ends in themselves is to overrate them, treating them with a solemnity which is not warranted."

"Every person carries in his heart the blueprint of the one he loves."