Fr. Benedict Groeschel, C.F.R. on Unity in Spite of Injury

You must expect that these poor sinners in the Church are going to get hurt and that they are going to hurt each other. To be let down by the Church is not a reason to leave her, any more than to be let down by your family is a reason to give up family life and move to a desert island. Are there any who have not been hurt by members of their family? In his ‘City of God’, St. Augustine wisely observed that it breaks the heart of any good person to see that even in one’s own home one is not in a safe place and that one may be attacked even there by an enemy posing as a friend or even by an enemy who used to be a loved one. If we all gave up on the human race because we have been hurt, we’d have to move to separate planets.

Fr. Benedict Groeschel, C.F.R. – “Arise from Darkness”

St. Thomas More on Remaining True in the Midst of a Storm

You must not abandon the ship in a storm because you cannot control the winds. What you cannot turn to good, you must at least make as little bad as you can.

St. Thomas More (Utopia)

Fr. Vincent Serpa on the Chaos of Protestantism

The Protestant Reformation resulted in the continuous division of churches over the interpretation of Scripture, each new denomination insisting on its own as authentic. But of course, since they all contradict each other, they can’t all be correct. The divisions continue to this day—thousands of them. If this is reformation, I’d hate to see chaos!

Fr. Vincent Serpa – Catholic Answers

Fr. Benedict Groeschel on Declaring the Catholic Faith Boldly and with Conviction

And I have found that when we Catholics, in the spirit of love and charity, declare our faith boldly and with conviction, we are more likely to find kindred spirits. This is how we must comport ourselves if we are to fulfill our Lord’s command in the Gospel of John (17:21), Ut unum sint, that all may be one.

Fr. Benedict Groeschel

Henri de Lubac on Undying Love for the Catholic Church

But she’s still our Mother!

Henri de Lubac – responding to Hans Kung’s complaints of troubles in the Catholic Church at Vatican II

St. Cyprian on the Church being inseperable from the Papacy

There is one God and one Christ, and one Church, and one chair founded on Peter by the word of the Lord. It is not possible to set up another altar or for there to be another priesthood besides that one altar and that one priesthood. Whoever has gathered elsewhere is scattering.

St. Cyprian – Letters 43 (40):5 – A.D. 253

St. Augustine on Believing the Gospel because of the Catholic Church

Such then in number and importance are the precious ties belonging to the Christian name which keep a believer in the Catholic Church, as it is right they should … With you, where there is none of these things to attract or keep me… No one shall move me from the faith which binds my mind with ties so many and so strong to the Christian religion… For my part, I should not believe the gospel except as moved by the authority of the Catholic Church.

St. Augustine (354–430): Against the Epistle of Manichaeus called Fundamental, chapter 4: Proofs of the Catholic Faith

St. Augustine on unity with the Catholic Church

There is nothing more serious than the sacrilege of schism because there is no just cause for severing the unity of the Church.

St. Augustine

Adrian Fortescue on the disappearance of the Church founded by Christ

Further, the idea of a dead past in which the Church was united, and a present in which it is not, means really that the original Church, founded by Christ, has ceased to exist. A society that has become three or more separate societies no longer exists. This is so obvious that no one would think of disputing it, unless he had some controversial axe to grind. Consider the case of any other society, where no one has anything at stake in his view of what happened. In 1914 there was an Austro-Hungarian State. Now, that state broke up into a German-Austrian Republic, a separated Hungary, a Czecho-Slovak Republic, part of Poland, a kingdom of Southern Slavs. What was the result? Where is the original Austro-Hungarian State? It no longer exists.

The Early Papacy – Adrian Fortescue