A Quote by Eugene Kennedy

Francis seems familiar because Catholics have already known him in the Vatican II priests who have been their pastors and sacramental ministers over the years since that council brought new life to an old church. Catholics have known him in the bishops and priests who brought the spirit of the council to their dioceses and parishes.
I sincerely hope I can contribute to the progress there has been in relations between Jews and Catholics since the Second Vatican Council in a spirit of renewed collaboration.
These [conservative] people, if they're Americans, look back on the last 35 years of our ecclesial experience and take heart from that. The dramatic reform of seminaries continues. The priests and bishops who take their pastoral model from John Paul II will continue to do so, perhaps learning a lesson or two from Francis along the way - and they'll be the overwhelming majority of the Church's ordained ministers ten, twenty, thirty years from now.
We grow up as natural optimists as Americans. Catholic priests were so hopeful as we watched the Vatican II experience. Yet, it's a punch in the belly to see what has happened in the church and the world. Dualistic thinking seems to have taken over the church and our politics to a really neurotic degree.
In the Western Church to which I belong, priests cannot be married as in the Byzantine, Ukrainian, Russian or Greek Catholic Churches. In those churches, the priests can be married, but the bishops have to be celibate. They are very good priests.
Sensible Catholics have for generations been ignoring the views on contraception held by reactionary old men in the Vatican, but alas, since it is the business of all religious doctrines to keep their votaries in a state of intellectual infancy (how else do they keep absurdities seeming credible?), insufficient numbers of Catholics have been able to be sensible.
In Pope Francis's 'Amoris Laetitia' (The Joy of Love), an apostolic exhortation on Catholic family life, he does not make earth-shattering doctrinal changes with regards to divorced Catholics, same-sex married Catholics, or the church's stance on homosexuality.
I have never been brought up a Catholic - I mean, a Roman Catholic - we're all Catholics, aren't we? We're Protestant Catholics, whether we're from Methodist or Baptist or what.
While we destroyed the Centre Party, we have not only brought thousands of priests back into the Church, but to millions of respectable people we have restored their faith in their religion and in their priests. The union of the Evangelical Church in a single Church for the whole Reich, the Concordat with the Catholic Church, these are but milestones on the road which leads to the establishment of a useful relation and a useful co operation between the Reich and the two Confessions.
The revelations of the Cloyne report have brought the government, Irish Catholics, and the Vatican to an unprecedented juncture.
One of the topics that [Pope Francis] wants to raise, according to many Vatican analysts, is given the shortage of - worldwide shortage of priests is the possibility of a married priesthood. But he needs more backing from his bishops right now.
As is well known, the priests are the most evil enemies—but why? Because they are the most impotent. It is because of their impotence that in them hatred grows to monstrous and uncanny proportions, to the most spiritual and poisonous kind of hatred. The truly great haters in world history have always been priests; likewise the most ingenious haters: other kinds of spirit hardly come into consideration when compared with the spirit of priestly vengefulness.
The arrival of DNA testing has brought new dimensions to the investigation of crime. It has brought resolution to old cases where past investigators were unable to uncover the truth. It has brought justice in new cases where once the truth might never have been known.
Perhaps no General Council has been more naturally fitted than the Vatican Council to produce a masterpiece of religious thought and literature. No assembly of men since the time of Christ has ever been so representative of Christian and national thought.
It`s difficult to judge people from 100 years ago by today`s standards. But I go back into the early middle part of the 19th century also. The know-nothings were a Protestant movement, and they rejected Catholics and didn`t want Catholics brought into America.
There's a lot of Republicans who may have in the past been critical of fellow Catholics who they call 'cafeteria Catholics' who don't follow the church's teachings - say, on abortion. But now, are they going to become 'cafeteria Catholics' themselves and not follow the church's teachings on climate change?
My grandfather lived to be 96 years old. He was born in a town outside of Salerno in Southern Italy. He came to New York when he was 20. He lived in the States from age 20 to 96, but he brought his culture with him, he brought his food with him, he brought his language with him, he never spoke a word of English.
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