#catholicism

If there is a true measure of a person's soul, if there is a single gauge of real divinity, of how beautifully a fellow human honors this life, has genuine spiritual fire and is full of honest love and compassion, it has to be right there, in the eyes. The Dalai Lama's eyes sparkle and dance with laughter and unbridled love. The Pope's eyes are dark and glazed, bleak as obsidian marbles. Pat Robertson's eyes are rheumy and hollow, like tiny potholes of old wax. Goldman Sachs cretins, well, they don't use their own eyes at all; they just steal someone else's. ↗

— Mark Morford

#catholicism #dalai-lama #eyes #goldman-sachs #love

Everyone agrees the celibacy rule is just a Church law dating from the 11th century, not a divine command. ↗

— Hans Küng

#celibacy #christianity #church #priesthood #priests

For me it is the virgin birth, the Incarnation, the resurrection which are the true laws of the flesh and the physical. Death, decay, destruction are the suspension of these laws. I am always astonished at the emphasis the Church puts on the body. It is not the soul she says that will rise but the body, glorified. ↗

— Flannery O'Connor

#catholicism #death #incarnation #resurrection #death

By the way, if you get mad at your Mac laptop and wonder who designed this demonic device, notice the manufacturer's icon on top: an apple with a bite out of it. ↗

— Peter Kreeft

#apple #apple-computer-inc #bible #catholicism #christianity

Those who meet Jesus always experience either joy or its opposites, either foretastes of Heaven or foretastes of Hell. Not everyone who meets Jesus is pleased, and not everyone is happy, but everyone is shocked. ↗

— Peter Kreeft

#christ #christianity #heaven #hell #jesus

God gives us not only the truth but also the ability to believe it; not only the new thing to see but also the new eye to see it with. ↗

— Peter Kreeft

#christianity #faith #god #jesus-shock #philosophy

What the Father gives is the capacity to be a self, freedom, and thus autonomy, but an autonomy which can be understood only as a surrender of self to the other. ↗

— Hans Urs von Balthasar

#christ #christianity #christology #god #god-father

What you are is God's gift to you, what you become is your gift to God. ↗

— Hans Urs von Balthasar

#christian-living #christianity #gift #god #inspirational

1883. ...The teaching of the Church has elaborated the principle of subsidiarity, according to which "a community of a higher order should not interfere in the internal life of a community of a lower order, depriving the latter of its functions, but rather should support it in case of need and help to co-ordinate its activity with the activities of the rest of society, always with a view to the common good. ↗

— The Catholic Church

#freedom #seperation-of-church-and-state #freedom

Only the Christian religion, which in its essence is communicated by the eternal child of God, keeps alive in its believers the lifelong awareness of their being children, and therefore of having to ask and give thanks for things. ↗

— Hans Urs von Balthasar

#christ #christian-religion #christianity #god-father #god-son