Gregory XVI Quotes

'Pastoralia' by George Saunders. Possibly my favorite book. It's one of the weirdest books I've ever read. If Monty Python and Thomas Pynchon had a love child, and it was raised by Frank Zappa on a weird commune, that would be this book.

Generally speaking, the errors in religion are dangerous; those in philosophy only ridiculous.

Anyone who helped [the enemies of Islam] and who entered into a treaty with Satan [i.e., the United States] was an infidel and would no longer be considered a Moslem.

The civil wars which arose some few years ago in Morocco between the Blacks and Whites, merely on account of their complexion, are founded on a pleasant difference. We laugh at them; but, I believe, were things rightly examined, we afford much more occasion of ridicule to the Moors. For, what are all the wars of religion, which have prevailed in this polite and knowing part of the world? They are certainly more absurd than the Moorish civil wars. The difference of complexion is a sensible and a real difference; but the controversy about an article of faith, which is utterly absurd and unintelligible, is not a difference in sentiment, but in a few phrases and expressions, which one party accepts of without understanding them, and the other refuses in the same manner.... Besides, I do not find that the Whites in Morocco ever imposed on the Blacks any necessity of altering their complexion ... nor have the Blacks been more unreasonable in this particular.

A trinity of persons cannot exist in the divine essence whether the persons be supposed to be finite or infinite

Three mountains separated by two valleys will strike a man who sees them from a great distance as a single mountain.... Then, when he stands on the first mountain, he will see the first valley and two mountains, and when he stands on the second mountain he will see two valleys and three mountains. Just so, the Jews before Christ's first advent, like one standing before the first mountain, did not distinguish the first from the later ones, but took the first for all. Christians before the sixth period of the church distinguished between the first and the others because they stood on the first and saw an intervening space ... between the first and final advents, but did not commonly distinguish between the two advents in the sixth period and in final judgment... .

It is a principle innate and co-natural to every man to have an insatiable inclination to the truth, and to seek for it as for hidden treasure

The Mass is the greatest blasphemy of God, and the highest idolatry upon earth, an abomination the like of which has never been in Christendom since the time of the Apostles.

Whoever teaches differently from what I have taught, … condemns God and must remain a child of hell.

No orthodox church ever had power that it did not endeavor to make people think its way by force and flame.

A woman playing God in a passion play is tantamount to paganism.

Voluntary self-directed religion was more dangerous to the Church than any number of infidels

Though it is very important for man as an individual that his religion should be true, that is not the case for society. Society has nothing to fear or hope from another life; what is most important for it is not that all citizens profess the true religion but that they should profess religion.

If heretics be altogether uprooted by death, this is not contrary to Our Lord's command

If religion is about truth, why is it so afraid of error?

Not one of us has betrayed his God or his country. I do confess my guilt, which consists in having, to my shame and dishonor, suffered myself, through the pain of torture and the fear of death, to give utterance to falsehoods imputing scandalous sins and iniquities to an illustrious Order, which hath nobly served the cause of Christianity. I disdain to seek a wretched and disgraceful existence by engrafting another lie upon the original falsehood.

Whosoever changes his religion [Islam] and deviates from it, award him the death sentence

I would beg the wise and learned fathers (of the church) to consider with all diligence the difference which exists between matters of mere opinion and matters of demonstration. ... [I]t is not in the power of professors of the demonstrative sciences to alter their opinions at will, so as to be now of one way of thinking and now of another. ... Demonstrated conclusions about things in nature of the heavens, do not admit of being altered with the same ease as opinions to what is permissible or not, under a contract, mortgage, or bill of exchange.

I will rather be content that my body burn this fire for confession of my faith in Christ than my soul should burn in the fire of Hell for denying the same.

The real significance of the [Spanish] Inquisition lay in the isolation to which it condemned the land, and its benumbing influence on the intellectual development of the people…. It [also] obstructed … commercial relations by imposing absurd and costly regulations at the ports to prevent the slightest chance of the introduction of heretical opinions.

[Spanish] unreasoning religious ardor culminated in the Inquisition, established for the purpose of securing the supreme good of unblemished purity and uniformity of belief. Nothing was allowed to stand in the way of this, and no sacrifice was deemed too great for its accomplishment. All officials, from the king downward, were sworn to its support, and the sinister influence which it exercised was proportioned to the enormous power which it wielded.

Man is a Religious Animal. He is the only Religious Animal. He is the only animal that has the True Religion--several of them. He is the only animal that loves his neighbor as himself and cuts his throat if his theology isn't straight. He has made a graveyard of the globe in trying his honest best to smooth his brother's path to happiness and heaven....

Had Luther and Calvin been confined before they had begun to dogmatize, the states would have been spared many troubles.

… heresy no longer shocks us; at least, it no longer convulses us like something trying to tear the soul of our souls away from us.... And that is why we have no trouble in being kind to heretics, and no repugnance in rubbing shoulders with them.

A heresy and a new error sprang up in England, through pride, vainglory, avarice, and lust, and through many strange sciences so that the men of England went into opposition to the Pope and to Rome …. New laws and statutes were enacted … They destroyed the orders, namely the monks, canons, nuns …. The broke down the monasteries and sold the roofs and bells…. burned the images, shrines, and relics of the Saints … and burned the staff of Jesus, which was in Dublin, performing miracles since the time of Saint Patrick.