Quotes about ecclesia | Quotes of famous people

“Almost everywhere and at all times the saying of St. Augustine aptly described the situation: "et paupera et inops est ecclesia — the Church is poor and helpless." The Church was powerful only when the state wanted it to be so or when pious laymen had a burning desire to make it so. In the Middle Ages especially the Church was sedulously oppressed: Popes were frequently imprisoned, made the pawns of secular rulers, persecuted, ridiculed, besieged, plundered, exiled, imprisoned and insulted. What about Canossa? People forget how the story ended, and the words of Gregory VII on his death-bed in exile: "Dilexi iustitiam et odi iniquitatem, propterea morior in exilio [I loved justice and hated injustice, therefore I die in exile]." Finally there came the Babylonian Captivity at Avignon. It is true that all of this looks quite different in the elementary schools of Kazachstan, in McKinley High and to our intellectuals, whose grasp of history is almost nil.
The situation altered very little in the nineteenth century. Once again there was a prisoner in the Vatican, Pius IX, whose body the mob yelling "Al fiume la carogna!" wanted to throw into the Tiber. This brings us to the twentieth century: Mexico City, Moabit, Dachau, Plötzensee, Auschwitz, Struthof, Carcel Modelo, Andrássy-út 66, Sremska Mitrovica, Vorkuta, Karaganda, Magadan, Lubyanka, Ocnele Mare — these are the modern Stations of the Cross of our clergy. (Pg 128)”

Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn (1909–1999) Austrian noble and political theorist

The Timeless Christian (1969)

Love , Death , Hate , People

“Officials could be removed during their year of office by vote of the ecclesia, and periodical opportunities were given for raising complaints…”

James Gow (scholar) (1854–1923) scholar

p, 125
A Companion to School Classics (1888)

“Through the act of eating, the fellow conspirators were transformed into a "we," a gathering which in Greek means ecclesia. Further, they believed that the "we" is also somebody's "I"; they were nourished by shading into the "I" of the Incarnate Word.”

Ivan Illich (1926–2002) austrian philosopher and theologist

The Cultivation of Conspiracy (1998)
Context: The other eminent moment of the celebration was, of course, the comestio, the communion in the flesh, the incorporation of the believer in the body of the Incarnate Word, but communio was theologically linked to the preceding con-spiratio. Conspiratio became the strongest, clearest and most unambiguously somatic expression for the entirely non-hierarchical creation of a fraternal spirit in preparation for the unifying meal. Through the act of eating, the fellow conspirators were transformed into a "we," a gathering which in Greek means ecclesia. Further, they believed that the "we" is also somebody's "I"; they were nourished by shading into the "I" of the Incarnate Word. The words and actions of the liturgy are not just mundane words and actions, but events occurring after the Word, that is, after the Incarnation. Peace as the commingling of soil and waters sounds cute to my ears; but peace as the result of conspiratio exacts a demanding, today almost unimaginable intimacy.
The practice of the osculum did not go unchallenged; documents reveal that the conspiratio created scandal early on. The rigorist African Church Father, Tertullian, felt that a decent matron should not be subjected to possible embarrassment by this rite. The practice continued, but not its name; the ceremony required a euphemism. From the later third century on, the osculum pacis was referred to simply as pax, and the gesture was often watered down to some slight touch to signify the mutual spiritual union of the persons present through the creation of a fraternal atmosphere. Today, the pax before communion, called "the kiss of peace," is still integral to the Roman, Slavonic, Greek and Syrian Mass, although it is often reduced to a perfunctory handshake.