Heretics and Heresies (1874)
Context: Every church pretends that it has a revelation from God, and that this revelation must be given to the people through the church; that the church acts through its priests, and that ordinary mortals must be content with a revelation — not from God — but from the church. Had the people submitted to this preposterous claim, of course there could have been but one church, and that church never could have advanced. It might have retrograded, because it is not necessary to think or investigate in order to forget. Without heresy there could have been no progress.
“On the question of marriage, there is a gulf between some people and the Church. The question, therefore, becomes quite simple: Must the world change its attitude, or must the Church change her fidelity to God?”
God or Nothing: A Conversation on Faith (2015)
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Robert Sarah 16
Roman Catholic bishop 1945Related quotes
As quoted in The Ideology of Fascism: The Rationale of Totalitarianism, A. James Gregor, New York and London, The Free Press (1969) p. 106
Undated
Statement (1838), quoted in John Morley, The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. I (1903), p. 155
McCreary County v. American Civil Liberties Union, 545 U.S. 844 (2005) (concurring).
Context: Reasonable minds can disagree about how to apply the Religion Clauses in a given case. But the goal of the Clauses is clear: to carry out the Founders’ plan of preserving religious liberty to the fullest extent possible in a pluralistic society. By enforcing the Clauses, we have kept religion a matter for the individual conscience, not for the prosecutor or bureaucrat. At a time when we see around the world the violent consequences of the assumption of religious authority by government, Americans may count themselves fortunate: Our regard for constitutional boundaries has protected us from similar travails, while allowing private religious exercise to flourish. [... ] Those who would renegotiate the boundaries between church and state must therefore answer a difficult question: Why would we trade a system that has served us so well for one that has served others so poorly?
Pope Francis has utterly failed to tackle the church’s abuse scandal https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/jul/26/pope-francis-catholic-church-abuse-scandal-failed (26 July 2018), The Guardian.
Source: Sister Wendy Beckett, on same-sex marriage, from a Huffington Post interview titled 'Sister Wendy, My Semi-Spiritual Guide' dated 17 November 2007.