BEING CATHOLIC

We are Catholic and are Proud of it...

"Christian is my name, and Catholic my surname. The one designates me, while the other makes me specific. Thus am I attested and set apart... When we are called Catholics it is by this appellation that our people are kept apart from any heretical name."
Saint Pacian of Barcelona, Letter to Sympronian, 375 A.D..

"Always remain close to the Catholic Church, because it alone can give you true peace, since it alone possesses Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament, the true Prince of Peace."
Blessed Padre Pio...

"It is because Christ is the sole canon of her preaching that the Church adheres so obstinately and so rigidly to His traditional message. It is for this reason that she can endure no modernism, no fraternizing with the spirit of the age."
Karl Adam, The Spirit of Catholicism...

"The Catholic Church understands its opponents, her opponents do not understand the Catholic Church."
Hilaire Belloc, the Great Heresies...

"People can relate to a crucified Christ displayed in Catholic Churches, as each one of us has a cross to carry. None of us can relate to a risen Christ, as none of us has ever risen from the dead."
Fr. Groeschel...

"Apologetic knowledge of the Catholic Church is deeper than the ocean depth and no one will ever reach the bottom."
Anonymous...

"While Protestants study the menu (the Bible), Catholics enjoy the meal."
Dr Scott Hahn...

"Dogmas of the Catholic Church are interconnected. If one is rejected, such as the infallibility of the Pope, then all are rejected."
Fr. Trujillo...

"Here is the shotgun analogy. Fire a Protestant shotgun and a Catholic shotgun at a wall. The pattern will be the opinions of those within, liberal, conservative, etc. With the Catholic, we always know who is at the center, the Pope and the Magisterium. With the Protestant, how can we determine who is in the center?"
Marcus Grodi, ex Protestant minister, now Catholic...

"You blind guides who strain out the gnat but swallow the camel."
Matthew 23:24...

"The Catholic faith does not teach what we used to think and vainly accused it of."
St. Augustine, Confessions, 6, 11, 400 A.D..

"For those who spread lies about the Catholic Church: their ignorance is their lack of knowledge, their stupidity is their wisdom, and their truth is falsehood."
Author Unknown...

"Heretics bring sentence upon themselves since they by their own choice withdraw from the Church, a withdrawal which, since they are aware of it, constitutes damnation."
St. Jerome Commentaries on Titus, 3, 10 386 A.D..

"Where Peter is, there is the Church."
St Ambrose of Milan, On twelve Psalms 381 A.D..

"A Christian man is Catholic while he lives in the body; cut off, he is made a heretic; the Spirit does not follow an amputated member."
Saint Augustine...

"The Catholic Church Always Has What The World Is Lacking."
G.K. Chesterton...

"When the world goes wrong, it proves that the Church is right."
G.K. Chesterton...

"It is contradictory for a Protestant to accept the Bible and reject the authority of the Catholic Church which gave it to him."
Anonymous...

"In attacking the Catholic Church, Protestants sever their own roots."
Author Unknown...

"Protestant Churches have songs and prayer. Catholic Churches have songs, prayer, and sacrifice."
Dr. Scott Hahn...

"No protestant should quote Scripture at all, for he has no means of knowing which books are inspired; Unless of course, he wants to accept the authority of the Catholic Church for that."
Fr. William Most...

"If you read the Bible with Catholic eyes, things will start popping out at you."
Author Unknown...

"Thanks to the Catholic Church, the authority and the integrity of the Bible was kept intact."
Author Unknown...

"Catholic beliefs for 2000 years have been affirmed by independent study."

"The fullness of truth is in the Catholic Church."

"Our Church is the fastest growing Church in the world. We have one billion Catholics in the world today." (1995)
Fr. Luke Zimmer...

Note! Now there are 1,070,000,000 Catholics as of April 2001. World Christian Encyclopedia

You must all follow the lead of the bishop, as Jesus Christ followed that of the Father; follow the presbytery as you would the Apostles; reverence the deacons as you would God's commandment. Let no one do anything touching the Church, apart from the bishop. Let that celebration of the Eucharist be considered valid which is held under the bishop or anyone to whom he has committed it. Where the bishop appears, there let the people be, just as where Jesus Christ is, there is the Catholic Church. It is not permitted without authorization from the bishop either to baptize or to hold an agape; but whatever he approves is also pleasing to God. Thus everything you do will be proof against danger and valid."
Saint Ignatius of Antioch, Letter to the Smyrneans, 107 A.D..

"From what has been said, then, it seems clear to me that the true Church, that which is really ancient, is one; and in it are enrolled those who, in accord with a design, are just... We say, therefore, that in substance, in concept, in origin and in eminence, the ancient and Catholic Church is alone, gathering as it does into the unity of the one faith which results from familiar covenants, - or rather, from the one covenant in different times, by the will of the one GOD and through the one Lord, - those already chosen, those predestined by GOD who knew before the foundation of the world that they would be just."
Saint Clement of Alexandria, Stromateis, 202 A.D..

"It is therefore, the Catholic Church alone which retains true worship. This is the fountain of truth; this, the domicile of faith; this the temple of GOD. Whoever does not enter there or whoever does not go out from here, he is a stranger to the hope of life and salvation... Because, however, all the various groups of heretics are confident that they are the Christians, and think that theirs is the Catholic Church, let it be known: that is the true Church, in which there is confession and penance, and which takes a salubrious care of sins and wounds to which the weak flesh is subject."
Lactantius, The Divine Institutions, 304 A.D..

"Let us note that the very tradition, teaching, and faith of the Catholic Church from the beginning, which the Lord gave, was preached by the Apostles, and was preserved by the Fathers. On this was the Church founded; and if anyone departs from this, he neither is nor any longer ought to be called a Christian."
St. Athanasius, Letter to Serapion of Thmuis, 359 A.D..

"I should not believe the Gospel except as moved by the authority of the Catholic Church."
 Saint Augustine of Hippo, Against the Letter of Mani, 397 A.D..

"This Church is Holy, the One Church, the True Church, the Catholic Church, fighting as she does against all heresies. She can fight, but she cannot be beaten. All heresies are expelled from her, like the useless loppings pruned from a vine. She remains fixed in her root, in her vine, in her love. The gates of hell shall not conquer her."
Saint Augustine of Hippo, Sermon to Catechumens on the Creed, 6, 14, 395 A.D.

©Compiled by Bob Stanley, November 3, 2000
Updated September 3, 2001.