“Manly natural religion - it is not joining the Church; it is not to believe in a creed, Hebrew, Protestant, Catholic, Trinitarian, Unitarian, Nothingarian. It is not to keep Sunday idle; to attend meetings; to be wet with water; to read the Bible; to offer prayers in words; to take bread and wine in the meeting house; love a scape-goat Jesus, or any other theological clap-trap.” BelieveHouseJesusWaterNaturalChurchPrayerAtheismOffersCatholicWineMeetingsPositive AtheismBreadSundayWetCreedsTrapsIdleJoiningTheologicalProtestantsGoatsManlyHebrewUnitarianBread And WineScapes Author:Theodore Parker
“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.” ThinkingWorldSeemsGrowsNaturalChurchGrowing UpTakenHappenedDegreesCatholicHopefulPriestsOptimistBellyNeuroticVatican Ii Author:Richard Rohr
“There's a natural tendency for children to, in some sense, inherit the cultural values of their parents. I'm not against that, that's fine, that's wonderful. What I am against is labelling. Nobody ever labels a child a cricketer because his father is a cricketer, but they do label a child a Catholic because his parents are Catholic. I think it's more or less unique. Nobody ever labels a child a socialist or a conservative or a liberal because that's what their parents are.” ThinkingChildrenValuesFatherParentNaturalWonderfulFineUniqueCatholicConservativeTendenciesLabelsSocialistCricketers Author:Richard Dawkins
“If I were not an atheist, I think I would have to be a Catholic because if it wasn't the forces of natural selection that designed fish, It must have been an Italian.” IfsThinkingHas BeensForceNaturalCatholicAtheistFishesItalianSelectionNatural Selection Book:The Salmon of Doubt: Hitchhiking the Galaxy One Last Time Source: The Salmon of Doubt: Hitchhiking the Galaxy One Last Time
“It became quite clear to me that the Natural Law mystique, in Catholic, libertarian or neo-pagan forms, remains basically a set of rhetorical strategies to hypnotize others into the state which Bernard Shaw called "barbarism" and defined as 'the belief that the laws of one's own tribe are the laws of the universe'.” StatesFormLawUniverseBeliefNaturalClearCatholicRemainsStrategyLibertarianDefinedTribesPaganNatural LawBarbarismMystiqueRhetoricalBernard ShawRhetorical Strategies Author:Robert Anton Wilson
“I think anarchy is natural to the Catholic. The Church is pretty anarchistic, you know. Who pays attention to the Pope or the Cardinals?” ThinkingKnowsNaturalChurchPayAttentionCatholicPay AttentionAnarchyPopeCardinals Author:Dorothy Day
“I think there has been an unfortunate tendency for a lot of different groups to forget that distinction between natural law and revealed truth and to say: Our complete agenda is to be enacted into laws governing the entire society. Many different religious groups claim that authority, not only Catholics. A lot of different Protestant groups as well are stepping forward to say: Here is our agenda, it is a moral agenda, ergo it must be enacted into law. I think that the distinction between natural law and more ultimate kinds of doctrine is being lost.” ThinkingKindDifferentNaturalReligiousForgetMoralAuthorityUltimateCatholicUnfortunateNatural Law Author:Bruce Babbitt
“I think it is important that religious leaders of all kinds consciously attempt to distinguish between issues of natural law on which there is consensus among Catholic, Protestant, and Jew and those issues on which there must be a greater degree of tolerance of other peoples' opinions and of the diversity that is characteristic of American society.” ThinkingKindImportantNaturalReligiousLeaderOpinionDiversityCatholicJewToleranceAll KindsConsensusNatural Law Author:Bruce Babbitt
“I think being raised within a Mexican Catholic family made magical realism a very natural part of who I am as a person and as a writer. My parents always told us great stories that often had magical elements and roots within Mexican folklore. Also, I remember my father reading a book to me, when I was very young, about the lives of saints. Those were crazy scary stories! Maybe he was trying to scare me into being a good person. In the end, magical realism offers me untethered freedom to explore human frailty and the way we clumsily cobble together our lives on this strange planet.” ThinkingTryingBookTogetherRememberReadingFatherParentNaturalCrazyStrangeCatholicSaintScaryScareMexicanGood PersonFolkloreBeing A Good PersonHuman Frailties Author:Daniel Olivas
“Young people are threatened... by the evil use of advertising techniques that stimulate the natural inclination to avoid hard work by promising the immediate satisfaction of every desire.” PeopleHardUseYoungDesireEvilNaturalHard WorkCatholicSatisfactionTechniqueAdvertisingThreatenedInclination Author:Pope John Paul II
“I knelt and prayed, and the strongest truth came over me. Didn't matter if God in his heaven was a Catholic or a Protestant God, or the God of the Hindus. What mattered was something deeper and older and more powerful than any such image - it was a concept of goodness based upon the affirmation of life, the turning away from destruction, from the perverse, from man using and abusing man. It was the affirmation of the human and the natural.” IfsMenHumansMatterHeavenNaturalPowerfulGoodnessConceptsDestructionCatholicDeeperStrongestAffirmationProtestants Author:Anne Rice
“It is a dogma of the Roman Church that the existence of God can be proved by natural reason. Now this dogma would make it impossible for me to be a Roman Catholic. If I thought of God as another being like myself, outside myself, only infinitely more powerful, then I would regard it as my duty to defy him.” IfsReasonNaturalChurchPowerfulExistencePowerImpossibleDutyRegardCatholicCatholicismDogmaExistence Of GodRoman Catholic Author:Ludwig Wittgenstein
“The Church's basic moral principle regarding reproductive technologies is this: if a given technology assists the marital embrace in achieving its natural end, it can be morally acceptable, even praiseworthy. However, if it replaces the marital embrace as the means by which the child is conceived, it's not in keeping with God's design.” IfsMeanChildrenEndsGivenNaturalChurchMoralPrinciplesTechnologyAchieveDesignCatholicEmbraceCatholicismAcceptableMoral PrinciplesPraiseworthy Author:Christopher West
“Forgiveness is above all a personal choice, a decision of the heart to go against the natural instinct to pay back evil with evil.” HeartChoicesEvilNaturalDecisionPayCatholicInstinctNatural InstinctPersonal Choice Author:Pope John Paul II
“In the Eucharist, the Son of God comes to meet us and desires to become one with us; eucharistic adoration is simply the natural consequence of the eucharistic celebration, which is itself the Church's supreme act of adoration.” DesireNaturalChurchSonConsequenceCatholicSupremeCelebrationAdorationEucharistEucharisticHoly EucharistEucharistic AdorationNatural Consequences Book:From Eucharistic Adoration to Evangelization Source: From Eucharistic Adoration to Evangelization