Flannery O’Connor on Catholic Belief

If you’re a Catholic you believe what the Church teaches and the climate makes no difference.

Flannery O’Connor

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

Susan Melkus on Truth, Schism, and Jesus Christ

If you have “your truth” and I have “my truth” and for some reason we disagree, and go start our own ‘churches’ … where exactly does Jesus (The TRUTH) fit into the picture?

Susan Melkus

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

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

G.K. Chesterton on “why I am a Catholic”

The difficulty of explaining “why I am a Catholic” is that there are ten thousand reasons all amounting to one reason: that Catholicism is true.

G.K. Chesterton

G.K. Chesterton on Submission to Truth and Authority

We do not really want a religion that is right where we are right. What we want is a religion that is right where we are wrong.

G.K. Chesterton