“America is preeminently a country of, if not sexual licenses… a country of sexual tolerance, a country of sexual, I… would settle for pluralism, for now. Well, the Holy Mother Church doesn't settle for that. The Holy Mother Church makes rather strict demands. The Holy Mother Church prohibits, by various edicts,… statutes, and pronouncements, all forms of sex that are not specifically devoted to the outcome of procreating further Catholics, and it enforces this with a celibate hierarchy. Now, that's fine, and it is your choice, and… as Mr. Donohue did say, no one has to join that church, but that church, where it can, does try and impose those standards on non-believers and non-members. And there will always seem, to some people, I think, something absurd in the enforcement of such statutes, especially since we know most Catholics don't observe them, by a celibate oligarchy and hierarchy.”

— Christopher Hitchens

2000s, 2000, "Hostility Of America to Religion" (2000)

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Christopher Hitchens 305

British American author and journalist 1949–2011

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“Now it could be… that when religion is attacked in this country, that the Catholic Church comes in for a little more than its fare share. I may say, I've probably contributed somewhat to that, and I'm not ashamed of my part in it; but doesn't the Catholic Church make rather large claims for itself. The Catholic Church claims to hold the keys of Peter. The Holy Father claims to have that power and be the vicar of Christ upon earth. It is said that only through this means and this approach can redemption can be achieved. These are large claims for a human, and fallible, and political, and bureaucratic institution to be making for itself in the age of Hawking.”

Christopher Hitchens (1949–2011) British American author and journalist

2000s, 2000, "Hostility Of America to Religion" (2000)

“While we are saying that the Catholic Church is the mother church, then we have to be true to our name and embrace all.”

John Ribat (1957) cardinal

Source: Cardinal Ribat of PNG: putting the peripheries at the centre http://www.archivioradiovaticana.va/storico/2016/11/18/cardinal_ribat_of_png_putting_the_peripheries_at_the_centre/en-1273170 (2016)

“It was fitting that such a holy Son should have a holy Mother.”

Huldrych Zwingli (1484–1531) leader of the Protestant Reformation in Switzerland, and founder of the Swiss Reformed Churches

Ulrich Zwingli E. Stakemeier, De Mariologia et Oecumenismo, K. Balic, ed., (Rome, 1962), p. 456.

“No one of sound mind is ignorant how destructive, pernicious, scandalous, and seductive to pious and simple minds these various errors are, how opposed they are to all charity and reverence for the holy Roman Church who is the mother of all the faithful and teacher of the faith; how destructive they are of the vigor of ecclesiastical discipline, namely obedience.”

Pope Leo X Exsurge Domine

Exsurge Domine (1520)
Context: No one of sound mind is ignorant how destructive, pernicious, scandalous, and seductive to pious and simple minds these various errors are, how opposed they are to all charity and reverence for the holy Roman Church who is the mother of all the faithful and teacher of the faith; how destructive they are of the vigor of ecclesiastical discipline, namely obedience. This virtue is the font and origin of all virtues and without it anyone is readily convicted of being unfaithful.
Therefore we, in this above enumeration, important as it is, wish to proceed with great care as is proper, and to cut off the advance of this plague and cancerous disease so it will not spread any further in the Lord's field as harmful thorn-bushes.

“In all the Romish [Catholic] countries of Europe, France, Italy, Germany, etc., the God Christ, as well as his mother, are described in their old pictures and statues to be black. The infant God in the arms of his black mother, his eyes and drapery white, is himself perfectly black. If the reader doubts my word he may go to the Cathedral at Moulins—to the famous Chapel of the Virgin at Loretto—to the Church of the Annunciata—the Church at St. Lazaro or the Church of St. Stephen at Genoa—to St. Francisco at Pisa—to the Church at Brixen in Tyrol and to that at Padua—to the Church of St. Theodore at Munich—to a church and to the Cathedral at Augsburg, where a black virgin and child as large as life—to Rome and the Borghese chapel of Maria Maggiore—to the Pantheon—to a small chapel of St. Peters on the right hand side on entering, near the door; and in fact, to almost innumerable other churches in countries professing the Romish religion.”

Godfrey Higgins book Anacalypsis

Vol. I., p. 138.
Anacalypsis (published 1833)

“Sexual union is a holy moment in which a part of Heaven flows into the Earth.”

James Redfield book The Celestine Prophecy

Source: The Celestine Prophecy

“The Holy Christian Church is the principal work of God”

Martin Luther (1483–1546) seminal figure in Protestant Reformation

In The Lord's Service: The Grace of Covenant Renewal Worship, 2003, Jeffrey J. Meyers, Canon, Pr., , p. 285. http://books.google.com/books?id=6CSuYz4zj8wC&pg=PA285&dq=%22for+the+sake+of+which+all+things+were+made%22++luther&hl=en&ei=dcKXTeK3IZCw0QGkzJCBDA&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=3&ved=0CDIQ6AEwAg#v=onepage&q=%22for%20the%20sake%20of%20which%20all%20things%20were%20made%22%20%20luther&f=false
Auslegung vieler schöner Sprüche aus göttlicher Schrift (Exposition of Many Beautiful Verses from Divine Scripture (selection) (1547)), http://books.google.com/books?id=WCToPQAACAAJ&dq=%22Auslegung+vieler+sch%C3%B6ner+Spr%C3%BCche+%22&hl=en&ei=XcOXTbrhFeyD0QGU_YSADA&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CCgQ6AEwAA
Dr. Martin Luther's Sämmtliche Werke, 1853, Frankfurt-on-the-Main, Erlangen, Heyder & Zimmer, vol. 52, p. 324. http://books.google.com/books?id=WsMOAQAAMAAJ&pg=RA1-PA324&dq=%22welches+willen+alles+geschaffen+ist,+darinnen+t%C3%A4glich%22&hl=en&ei=FMqXTcuLH8K60QGtgun3Cw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CCkQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=%22welches%20willen%20alles%20geschaffen%20ist%2C%20darinnen%20t%C3%A4glich%22&f=false
Context: The Holy Christian Church is the principal work of God, for the sake of which all things were made. In the Church, great wonders daily occur, such as the forgiveness of sins, triumph over death... the gift of righteousness and eternal life. (Commentary on Psalm 143:5)

“Three words [explain my conversion] Authority, Sacraments, Unity. Or put it another way: One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church.”

Ulf Ekman (1950) Swedish chaplain

- Twitter response by Ulf Ekman ‏@ulfekman to Anthony Baratta http://twitter.com/ulfekman/status/444114945392005120 @AnthonyBaratta_ on 13 March 2014.

“The real question that now divides the country and which truly divides the House of Commons, is church or no church. People talk of the war in Spain, and the Canada question. But all that is of little moment. The real question is church or no church.”

Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington (1769–1852) British soldier and statesman

Statement (1838), quoted in John Morley, The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. I (1903), p. 155

“I think there is in this country a war on religion. I think there is a desire to establish a religion in America known as secularism. And I know that, based on reports, that the Obama administration gave this a lot of thought – a lot of discussion. This was not some little side issue that no one thought about. They gave it a lot of thought, and they decided to say that in this country that a church — in this case, the Catholic Church — would be required to violate its principles and its conscience and be required to provide contraceptives, sterilization, and morning after pills to the employees of the church. And that came as a shock. As I think it was Mike Huckabee said, "We are now all Catholics."”

Mitt Romney (1947) American businessman and politician

Those of us who are people of faith recognize this is — an attack on one religion is an attack on all religion.
2012-04-03
Romney: Obama wants to ‘establish a religion called secularism’
David
Edwards
The Raw Story
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2012/04/03/romney-obama-wants-to-establish-a-religion-called-secularism/
2012-04-13
2012

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