Flannery O’Connor on being Catholic to the Core

I am a Catholic not like someone else would be a Baptist or a Methodist, but like someone else would be an atheist.

– Flannery O’Connor

Pope Paul VI on Christ Establishing the Church and Sending Her the Holy Spirit

Christ did not found an abstract religion, a mere school of religious thought. He setup a community of apostles, of teachers, with the task of spreading His message and so giving rise to a society of believers: His Church. He promised the Spirit of truth to His Church and then sent Him.

Pope Paul VI (1897-1978AD)

Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen on Judging the Catholic Church by her Members

Judge the Catholic Church not by those who barely live by its spirit, but by the example of those who live closest to it.

Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen

Andrew Preslar on Ecclesial Consumerism

An ecclesial consumerist is someone who chooses a church based upon a list of criteria exclusive of the item: “Is this the Church that Christ founded?”

Andrew Preslar – Called to Communion

Ross Douthat on Man’s Inability to Destroy the Catholic Church

During a frustrating argument with a Roman Catholic cardinal, Napoleon Bonaparte supposedly burst out: “Your eminence, are you not aware that I have the power to destroy the Catholic Church?” The cardinal, the anecdote goes, responded ruefully: “Your majesty, we, the Catholic clergy, have done our best to destroy the church for the last 1,800 years. We have not succeeded, and neither will you.”

Ross Douthat – New York Times

Rev. Herbert H. J. Crees on Critical Thinking

You may have heard it said that Catholics are not allowed to think for themselves; you may even believe it. And as long as you can believe things like that you will remain safely out of reach of any appeal which the Catholic Church could make to your reason. But someone ought to warn you that if you are beginning to think for yourself, you won’t be able to believe it much longer. Your mind, becoming more critical with exercise, will reject this along with a number of other quaint superstitions. Another point you should consider seriously is this: you may be the kind of person who, having once begun to think about a subject, continues to do so logically until he arrives at certain definite conclusions. This phenomenon today is comparatively rare; but if you are that kind of person you will probably accept these conclusions, even though they turn your former opinions upside down, and change your whole outlook. Finally you may decide that these conclusions you have formed are so important that you cannot ignore them, and that you must do something about them. This is one of the penalties of real thinking: and it is a penalty that a man or woman is prepared to face who wishes to live a life which is really human and not just vegetable. If ever you get as far as this in thinking about the Catholic Church, then you will be in very real danger of becoming a Catholic.

By Rev. Herbert H. J. Crees B.A. – To Start You Thinking