Pope Benedict XVI on Letting Christ Enter Fully into our Lives

‎If we let Christ enter fully into our lives, if we open ourselves totally to him, are we not afraid that He might take something away from us? Are we not perhaps afraid to give up something significant . . .? Do we not then risk ending up diminished and deprived of our freedom? . . . No! If we let Christ into our lives, we lose nothing, nothing, absolutely nothing of what makes life free, beautiful and great. No! Only in this friendship are the doors of life opened wide. Only in this friendship is the great potential of human existence truly revealed. Only in this friendship do we experience beauty and liberation. And so, today, with great strength and great conviction, on the basis of long personal experience of life, I say to you, dear young people: Do not be afraid of Christ! He takes nothing away, and he gives you everything. When we give ourselves to him, we receive a hundredfold in return.

Pope Benedict XVI, April 24, 2005

Dr. O. A. Brownson on Protestantism Laying Claim to Catholic Truth

That Protestants, that so-called orthodox Protestants at least, profess to hold, and claim as belonging to their Protestantism, many things that are also held by Catholics, nobody denies; but these things are no part of Protestantism, for the Church held and taught them ages before Protestantism was born. They are part and parcel of the one Catholic faith, and belong to Catholics only. Protestants can rightfully claim as Protestant only those things wherein they differ from the Church, which the Church denies, and which they assert; that is, what is peculiarly or distinctively Protestant. We cannot allow them to claim as theirs what is and always has been ours; we willingly accord them their own, but not one whit more. All which they profess to hold in common with us is ours, not theirs. Adopting this rule, which is just and unimpeachable, nothing in fact is theirs but their denials, and as all their denials are, as we have seen, made on no Catholic principle or truth, they are pure negations, and hence Protestantism is purely negative, and consequently is no religion, for all religion is affirmative.

Dr. O. A. Brownson

Pope Benedict XVI on Leading Others to Christ

Anyone who has discovered Christ must lead others to him. A great joy cannot be kept to oneself. It has to be passed on.

Pope Benedict XVI – 2005 World Youth Day

Pope Benedict XV on Devout Appeals to Mary

To Mary, then, who is the Mother of Mercy and omnipotent by grace, let loving and devout appeal go up from every corner of the earth.

Pope Benedict XV – 1917 A.D.

St. Bernadette Soubirous on Loving

I shall spend every moment loving. One who loves does not notice her trials; or perhaps more accurately, she is able to love them. I shall do everything for Heaven, my true home. There I shall find my Mother in all the splendor of her glory. I shall delight with her in the joy of Jesus himself in perfect safety.

St. Bernadette Soubirous

Pope Benedict XVI on Government vs Redemption

Wherever politics tries to be redemptive, it is promising too much. Where it wishes to do the work of God, it becomes not divine, but demonic.

Pope Benedict XVI

Pope Benedict XVI on the Sun Setting over the Entire World

Alexis de Tocqueville, in his day, observed that democracy in America had become possible and had worked because there existed a fundamental moral consensus which, transcending individual denominations, united everyone. Only if there is such a consensus on the essentials can constitutions and law function. This fundamental consensus derived from the Christian heritage is at risk wherever its place, the place of moral reasoning, is taken by … purely instrumental rationality…. In reality, this makes reason blind to what is essential. To resist this eclipse of reason and to preserve its capacity for seeing the essential, for seeing God and man, for seeing what is good and what is true, is the common interest that must unite all people of good will. The very future of the world is at stake.

Pope Benedict XVI – Christmas 2010 Greetings to the Roman Curia

Pope Benedict XVI on his Transition to the Papacy

It was easy to know the doctrine. It’s much harder to help a billion people live it.

Pope Benedict XVI – The Rule of Benedict: Pope Benedict XVI and His Battle with the Modern World

Peter Sean Bradley on Poor Catechesis and Lapsed Catholics

When I find lapsed Catholics in other denominations, what strikes me is how ignorant they are of the faith that they rejected. I’ve been involved at times with Protestant groups, and when I have explained what Catholicism teaches, I get told by lapsed Catholics that they never heard any such thing. On the other hand, my experience with Protestant converts to Catholicism is that they are usually incredibly knowledgeable about their own prior tradition before they ever became Catholics. It’s a sad commentary on the status of catechesis after Vatican II.

Peter Sean Bradley – comment on Called to Communion

Pope Benedict XVI on the Advent liturgy: We cry out with John “Come, Lord Jesus”

While our hearts reach out towards the annual celebration of the birth of Christ, the Church’s liturgy directs our gaze to the final goal: our encounter with the Lord in the splendour of glory. This is why we, in every Eucharist, “announce his death, proclaim his resurrection until he comes again”. We hold vigil in prayer.  The liturgy does not cease to encourage and support us, putting on our lips, in the days of Advent, the cry with which the whole Bible concludes, the last page of the Revelation of Saint John: “Come, Lord Jesus ” (Revelation 22:20).

Pope Benedict XVI – First Vespers of Advent 2010

Pope Benedict XVI on Communion with Christ and His Church

Communion with Christ is being on a journey, a permanent ascent to the true height of our calling. Journeying together with Jesus is always at the same time a traveling together in the “we” of those who want to follow him. It brings us into this community. Because this journey to true life, to being men conformed to the model of the Son of God Jesus Christ is beyond our powers, this journeying is also always a state of being carried. We find ourselves, so to speak, in a “roped party” with Jesus Christ — together with him in the ascent to the heights of God. He pulls us and supports us. Letting oneself be part of a roped party is part of following Christ; we accept that we cannot do it on our own. The humble act of entering into the “we” of the Church is part of it — holding on to the roped party, the responsibility of communion, not letting go of the rope because of our bullheadedness and conceit.

Humbly believing with the Church, like being bound together in a roped party ascending to God, is an essential condition for following Christ. Not acting as the owners of the Word of God, not chasing after a mistaken idea of emancipation — this is also part of being together in the roped party. The humility of “being-with” is essential to the ascent.

Pope Benedict XVI – Palm Sunday Homily 2010

Cardinal Bagnasco on the Pope, the Church, Truth, and Sexual Abuse

Benedict XVI leaves no room for uncertainty or minimization. At this present time in which she feels humiliation, the Church learns from the Pope to not fear the truth, even when it is painful, to not hide it or cover it up. However, this does not mean enduring strategies to discredit (the Church) in general…It is appropriate, then, that we all return to calling things by their names at all times, to identify evil in all of its gravity and in the multiplicity of its manifestations.

Cardinal Angelo Bagnasco

Dr. Francis Beckwith on Evangelicalism

Saint Augustine, whose genius helped rid the Church of the Pelagian and semi-Pelagian heresies, would not be welcomed …as a faculty member at virtually any evangelical seminary, because the Bishop of Hippo accepted the deuterocanonical books as part of the Old Testament canon, the deposit of Sacred Tradition, apostolic succession, the gracious efficacy of the Sacraments, the Real Presence of the Eucharist, baptismal regeneration, and the infusion of God’s grace for justification.

Dr. Francis Beckwith