Poetry has this much, at least, in common with religion, that its standards were fixed long ago, by certain inspired writers, whos...e authority it is no longer lawful to call in question; and that many profess to be entirely devoted to it, who have no good works to produce in support of their pretensions. The catholic poetical church, too, has worked but few miracles since the first ages of its establishment; and has been more prolific, for a long time, of doctors than of saints: It has had its corruptions, and reformation also, and has given birth to an infinite variety of heresies and errors, the followers of which have hated and persecuted each other as cordially as other bigots.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Among the best traitors Ireland has ever had, Mother Church ranks at the very top, a massive obstacle in the path to equality and ...freedom. She has been a force for conservatism, not on the basis of preserving Catholic doctrine or preventing the corruption of her children, but simply to ward off threats to her own security and influence.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Fellow citizens, I have been called upon to conduct this opening meeting of the Osage First Methodist-Episcopalian-Presbyterian-Co...ngregational-Baptist-Catholic-Unitarian-Hebrew Church.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
In the Catholic world, one can leave one's home and wander in various fields, but the tents of the Church are large, its compassio...n great, forgiveness easy. The loss of home in Protestant living is more difficult, yet not shattering, for each man is still a part of the entire community who are bound by an impersonal ethic of love. But in Jewish life, each home is an island unto itself, and the severing of the ties of family and tradition causes a tremor which can never be settled. The position of the Jews through the centuries, a stranger in every land, no voice, no ban their own, deepens this traumatic condition. For not only have they no home as their own as a people, but within each alien culture the strange gods tear away the sons and there is no home in the family.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
She had once been a Catholic, but discovering that priests were infinitely more attentive when she was in process of losing or reg...aining faith in Mother Church, she maintained an enchantingly wavering attitude.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Today's Catholic church seems to reward authoritarian personalities who are clearly ill, violent, sexually obsessed and unable to ...remember the past.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
[Catholicism] offers a much richer pasturage and shade to the fancy, has so many cells with so many different kinds of honey, is s...o indulgent in its multiform appeals to human nature, that Protestantism will always show to Catholic eyes the almshouse physiognomy. The bitter negativity of it is to the Catholic mind incomprehensible. To intellectual Catholics many of the antiquated beliefs and practices to which the Church gives countenance are, if taken literally, as childish as they are to Protestants. But they are childish in the pleasing sense of "childlike",--innocent and amiable, and worthy to be smiled on in consideration of the undeveloped condition of the dear people's intellects. To the Protestant, on the contrary, they are childish in the sense of being idiotic falsehoods. He must stamp out their delicate and lovable redundancy, leaving the Catholic to shudder at his literalness. He appears to the latter as morose as if he were some hard-eyed, numb, monotonous kind of reptile. The two will never understand each other--their centres of emotional energy are too different.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »