Roman Catholic Church

“ No Church but an aristocratic one could have dominated such a situation. The very qualities which the modern man most resents in the Roman Catholic Church--its authority, its dogmatism, its spiritual powers of intimidation--were the qualities which enabled it to evangelize the vast heathen and barbarian masses. ”

“ Thirdly, it is to the Roman Catholic Church alone to which the essence, attributes, and marks which we have shown à priori to belong necessarily to the Church of Christ apply. Consequently, the Roman Catholic Church is the real cosmos of God in its perfection of being and faculties, and men have no possible alternative but to join it, to submit to its authority, under pain of the death of the intelligence, of being a creature out of joint with the whole system of God’s works, of being in the impossibility of attaining their last end in palingenesia. ”

“ Such is the prayer of the Church Catholic, whether of the Roman or the Anglican branch; it is in spirit and in truth a Christian prayer, fit for faithful mortals to offer on earth to the Lord of men and of angels in heaven. Would that the Church of Rome, preserving, as she has preserved, this prayer in all its original purity, had never been successfully tempted to mingle in the same service, supplications, which rob the one only God of his exclusive honour and glory, as the God "who heareth prayer;" and to rob Christ of his exclusive honour and glory, as our only Mediator and Advocate! ”

“ It was this fearless and powerful spirit, keen and quick to see inferences and intolerant of compromises, that the disturbances of Roman Catholic Emancipation and of the Reform time roused from the common round of pursuits, natural to a serious and thoughtful clergyman of scholarlike mind and as yet no definite objects, and brought him with all his enthusiasm and thoroughness into a companionship with men who had devoted their lives, and given up every worldly object, to save the Church by raising it to its original idea and spirit. ”

“ God is a wall of fire round about her, and her glory in the midst of her. The Roman Church is made glorious by the gifts of the Holy Ghost, by spiritual might and force, by truth, grace, and sanctity. These same divine gifts and powers pervade the whole Catholic Church by virtue of communion with the See of the Vicar of Christ. The burning light of faith, the burning fire of charity, are concentrated within, and diffused all around the Catholic Church, constituting all her glory and all her power, and by these she illumines and inflames the whole world. ”

“ The Catholic Church publishes those startling doctrines which have come down to her from the beginning, which have been held everywhere and by all—the principality of the Roman See, the Power of Forgiveness of Sins, the necessity of Penance, the grace of the Sacraments—and what is the result? The children of wisdom, they whose hearts are tender, enter her sacred fold and are blessed. ”

“ I ask, then, what do all Protestants, save those called Unitarians, believe about Jesus Christ? They believe precisely what the Catholic Church teaches, namely, that He is true God and true man, the Person of the Word of God incarnate, conceived of the Holy Ghost and born of the Virgin Mary; that He is the Messiah, the Redeemer; that by His infinite merits alone is the salvation of mankind possible or obtainable. ”

“ A few adherents of the Old Religion, moving silently and sorrowfully about, as memorials of what had been. 'The Roman Catholics'—not a sect, not even an interest, as men conceived of it—not a body, however small, representative of the Great Communion abroad, but a mere handful of individuals, who might be counted, like the pebbles and detritus of the great deluge, and who, forsooth, merely happened to retain a creed which, in its day indeed, was the profession of a Church. ”

“ The Roman Church, and, by reason of its near and close connection, the Italian Church, as the permanent, immovable seat of the sovereign pontificate, is identified with the prosperity of Christendom. The head and heart of the Catholic Church are there, whereas other members of the great, universal society of Christians are only limbs, however great and powerful they may be. ”

“ Those Anglicans who know the true Church, but do not become Roman Catholics, thinking that they approach very near the Catholic Church, because their prayers and ceremonies are like many prayers and ceremonies of the Catholic Church, and because their creed is the Apostles' Creed. ”

“ These waverers, these men who lack force of character, whose hearts are charged with diluted Catholicism, know and believe, and by listening to sermons and religious instructions can completely convince themselves, that the Catholic Church is divine in her origin, holy in her founder, infallible in her doctrines, apostolic in her organization, glorious and wonderful in her saints. ”

“ This spiritual insight springing from the light of faith is the secret source of Catholic life, the inward principle which prompts the obedience of Catholics to the divine authority of the holy church, and from which is born the consciousness of the soul’s filiation with God, whence flow that perfect love and liberty which always accompany this divine Sonship. ”

“ Let us all meet in the unity of faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God. Suffer that We should invite you to the unity which has ever existed in the Catholic Church and can never fail; suffer that We should lovingly hold out Our hand to you. The Church, as the common mother of all, has long been calling you back to her; the Catholics of the world await you with brotherly love, that you may render holy worship to God together with us, united in perfect charity by the profession of one Gospel, one faith, and one hope. ”

“ He accuses the clergy of avarice, though in Rome he compliments the priests for their personal merits, their 'seriousness, decorum, and fair intelligence.' He declares that 'the Catholic Church is an artful substitute for anything that a human soul ought to desire;' that she is 'the chief hinderance to progress;' that she has 'glorified the blessed Mother into the Almighty;' that she 'mutters spells and practises necromancy at her altars,' and all that kind of thing, which I need not repeat, because we have heard it in almost the very same words scores of times before. ”

“ The Catholics believe that their Church is in possession of the doctrine taught by Christ, and listen to it as they would to Him. Judge from this how strong and lively must be the faith of a Catholic, how firm and immovable, since the voice of their Church is the voice of their Saviour, and the interval of eighteen hundred years disappears as they every day hear the voice of Jesus. There cannot be any division in this Church. ”

“ The Christian religion must be held by us, and the communion of that church which is Catholic, and is called Catholic, not only by its own members, but also by all its enemies. For, whether they will or no, the very heretics themselves and the offspring of schisms, when they talk not with their own friends, but with people outside, call the Catholic Church nothing else but Catholic. ”

“ The method we have pointed out or the Catholic rule produces the conviction of the truth of the church and what she teaches, and shows it to be one’s duty to seek, if he has it not, the grace that inclines the will, illumines the understanding, and regenerates the soul. ”

“ So we say, Mankind feel and always did feel the necessity of an infallible church, of a distinct, positive, dogmatic faith. Therefore they exist, and always did exist. Only in the Catholic Church are these wants realized; therefore the Catholic Church is the true Church of God. ”

“ The Catholic Church is not only a living religion, but the only living religion, the only religion that does, or can, command the homage of science, reason, free thought, and the uncorrupted affections of the heart. The Catholic religion is at once light, freedom, and love—the religion of authority, of the intellect, and of the heart, embracing in its indissoluble unity Peter, Paul, and John. ”

“ And, that we may be able to satisfy the obligation of embracing the true faith and of constantly persevering in it, God has instituted the Church through His only-begotten Son, and has bestowed on it manifest notes of that institution, that it may be recognized by all men as the guardian and teacher of the revealed Word; for to the Catholic Church alone belong all those many and admirable tokens which have been divinely established for the evident credibility of the Christian Faith. ”

“ If the Catholic Church is to lead all men to eternal salvation, and has, for that purpose, received from Christ her doctrine, her means of grace, and her powers, [2] what, for his part, is every one obliged to do? ”

“ The Roman Catholic believes that the Church on earth cannot stand without universal temporal Power. ”

“ The church is the purest, most perfect, and most enlightened revelation of the divine Being, and none other understands what is worship. From a religious stand-point the Catholicism of the Latin peoples is the best, the most rational, and the most perfect. Rome, in spite of her repeated and frightful falls, remains the only legitimate church. ”

“ I believe in the holy Catholic Church, in the Apostles' Creed, is thus interpreted: "I believe that every Catholic individual and nation forms a part of the Catholic society, and that only by virtue of its being a part does it partake of the benefit of the whole, through being subordinated to the laws of the whole." ”

“ One is brought suddenly face to face with the tremendous difference which exists between the Protestant and the Catholic conception of what a church is and what it is for. To the one it is a place where men meet for mutual support and instruction, for united worship; to the other it is a place where men meet God. ”

“ Let us pray for the Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church which is spread from one end of the earth to the other; that God would preserve and keep it unshaken, and free from the waves of this life, until the end of the world, as founded upon a rock; and for the holy parish in this place, that the Lord of the whole world may vouchsafe us without failure to follow after His heavenly hope, and without ceasing to pay Him the debt of our prayer. Let us pray for every episcopacy which is under the whole heaven, of those that rightly divide the word of Thy truth. ”

“ In face of this universal, protracted, bitter, and resolute opposition to Catholicity on the part of so many great states, we find the church, as in the days of the apostles, adding daily to her number “those that should be saved.” Here, too, we find, as in all Christian history, the greatest and sharpest contrasts—those contrasts that it baffles human ingenuity to explain. The Catholic Church is to-day strongest where, according to human calculation, she ought to be weakest, and weakest where she ought to be strongest. ”

“ What we have said will be sufficient, we trust, to stimulate all those who are imbued with the spirit of Catholic faith to greater zeal and effort in the sacred cause of the church, in which the laity have as great an interest as the clergy. ”

“ The preacher continues:
"'Is IT HONEST to accuse Catholics of putting the Blessed Virgin or the saints in the place of God or of the Lord Jesus Christ? You have the answer. You know the place which God claims for himself the 'honor which He will not give to another.' You have heard from the very words of the Roman Catholics themselves the place to which they exalt the spirits of departed men and women." ”

“ If they receive you not, says the Lord unto his disciples, go your ways out into the streets of the same city, and say, Even the very dust of your city, which cleaveth on us, we do wipe off against you; yet know this, that the kingdom of God is at hand. The invincibility of Catholicism grows out of the power of its principle. As of old in enabling the apostles to heal the sick, so at the present day in her varied fortunes the Church approves herself the kingdom of God.
But how is the interior of the Church related to the exterior? The word of the kingdom is the seed of Catholicism. ”

“ O Englishmen, if you would only seriously, and conscientiously examine the real merits of the Catholic Church, you would soon find that she is built upon the pillar of truth, and that she is the admirable work of that wise builder, Jesus Christ, who built His house upon a firm foundation. ”

“ Moreover, we earnestly exhort your charity in the Lord, as far as lies in our power, to announce the all-holy gospel of Christ to all races, baptizing them that believe in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost; training them in the holy Catholic faith, on the same lines on which the faithful are trained by our cherished mother the Church of Rome ”

“ The Catholic Church, that imperishable handiwork of our all-merciful God, has for her immediate and natural purpose the saving of souls and securing our happiness in heaven. Yet in regard to things temporal she is the source of benefits as manifold and great as if the chief end of her existence were to ensure the prospering of our earthly life. And in truth, wherever the Church has set her foot, she has straightway changed the face of things, and has attempered the moral tone of the people with a new civilization, and with virtues before unknown. ”

“ The Catholic Church alone possesses, as her undivided property, the glorious character of Catholic. In her communion alone, numbers of holy apostolic men have abounded in all ages, who, leaving all they possessed or could expect in this world, and burning with zeal for the conversion of souls to God, have dedicated themselves entirely to carry the light of the Gospel to those who " sat in darkness and in the shadow of death," and to bring heathen nations to the knowledge of Jesus Christ. ”

“ No one who is interested in human history, past and present, can ignore the Catholic Church, either as an institution which has been the central figure in the civilized world for nearly two thousand years, decisively affecting its destinies, religious, literary, scientific, social and political, or as an existing power whose influence and activity extend to every part of the globe. ”