A Quote by Pope Benedict XVI

Germany has an established and well-furnished Catholicism, often with employed Catholics who handle the church like a labor union. For them, the church is simply the employer.
We're not opposed to Catholics having pride in their church, but that doesn't mean that every church that doesn't join them isn't a church.
I wouldn't have known anything about Catholicism if I hadn't been dating Gert. In those days, Catholics were much less ecumenical than they are today. Gert was always of the mind that she wouldn't go to another church except the Catholic Church. So when I would date her in New York City and later when we went to Oxford before we got married we always went to the Catholic church.
There's an interesting contrast between born Catholics and converts. Converts are often much more rule-directed. Catholicism isn't something that they breathed in from their childhood, so they think that if you don't toe the line on abstract doctrine you can't be part of the Church.
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?
I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish church, by the Roman church, by the Greek church, by the Turkish church, by the Protestant church, nor by any church that I know of. My own mind is my own church.
I know married Catholics in a second union who go to church, who go to church once or twice a year and say I want communion, as if joining in Communion were an award. It's a work towards integration, all doors are open, but we cannot say, 'from here on they can have communion.'
When the problems in Northern Ireland started, it was not a question of Protestantism or Catholicism, because the Catholic church was the only church at that time-it was a nationalist conflict.
[A.J. Muste] was from Michigan and he grew up in the Dutch Reform Church there, which is a fairly strict church. He later came to New York. He was the minister of a labor temple in the - on the East Side. Then he founded, to my knowledge, the first, maybe the only, labor school; that is, Cornell has a labor department and other schools. But this was a school for - entirely for labor organizers, and he was the - the chairman.
People - Catholics and non-Catholics - are amazingly open to begin again in their walk with Jesus and in the Church when they hear clarity and honesty. What they don't put up with, thank God, is dishonesty and cover-up. And so I speak as openly as I possibly can about the difficulties of the Church because we shouldn't be afraid to call out an abuse of the wonderful gift God gives to us of the Church. When we - its members and its leaders - are imperfect we need to change. We need to begin again. That begins with honesty.
I think here is the irony of American history. We don't have an established church. When you have an established church nobody takes religion as seriously as we do here. We have a free market in religion. The religious groups are competing with each other.
Today, we need a Church capable of walking at people's side, of doing more than simply listening to them; a Church which accompanies them on their journey.
The union of church and state put the church under a political control... The church was thoroughly subordinated to the state.
The New Birth church is a church unto itself who has a board and it has a membership. How they choose to handle their leadership issues it's not something that we can control regardless of which side you stay on that issue. It is their church issue and their responsibility and their response. And I'm saying what I always said that we should just keep on praying for the New Birth church family.
We have to separate here the church in its broad sense. We have Catholics, Protestants, Eastern Orthodox churches. The Catholic church is a corporation like a chief executive. A fairly homogenous operation. Today its attitude toward anti-Semitism is much more severe than it's ever been. The Catholic Church today is much less the problem than the other groups.
I'd signed up not just for Christianity but the established Church of England. That has a particular history and I think we rather lost it in the 19th Century, we became so much part of empire and colonialism, the language of the Church Of England still reflects that Victorian time. As the 20th Century developed, not surprisingly people left the church and I can see the church's role in losing people.
If there is no deep yearning for a life that is well pleasing to Him, if there is no stimulating desire to know Him and His Word, church membership is just like a young man falling in love with a furnished apartment and marrying an electric stove, a refrigerator, a vacuum cleaner, a garbage disposal, and a wet mop! That is just about all it amounts to. Let's stop playing church today and start loving Christ and living for Him!
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