Irish Catholic Church Quotes

Government needs to stay out of the religion business altogether.

Zealous groups threaten to infringe civil liberties when they seek government support to impose their own religious views on non-adherents. This has taken many forms, including attempts to introduce organized prayer in public schools, to outlaw birth control and abortion, and to use public tax revenues to finance religious schools.

The power of the state lawfully to control the religious and other activities of children is greater than its power over similar activities of adults

The day that this country ceases to be free for irreligion it will cease to be free for religion—except for the sect that can win political power.

The Constitution treats religious belief as uniquely special, uniquely central to the dignity of the human person, and, for that reason, beyond the power of the state to control.

Whatever you may think of the proposed mosque and community center, lost in the heat of the debate has been a basic question: Should government attempt to deny private citizens the right to build a house of worship on private property based on their particular religion?

The first amendment makes it clear that we are free to practice religion without government interference. The Constitution also establishes the separation of church and state so that the laws we live by our never guided by religious zeal.

The First Amendment freedom of religion is as important today as when the Bill of Rights was first written.

I believe in the Constitution. The Constitution says that government isn't supposed to be infusing religion into our society, and so I asked to have that upheld.

The Establishment Clause prohibits government from making adherence to a religion relevant in any way to a person's standing in the political community.

It is well known that the Soviet Union closely regulates all organizations and movements, including religion.

The Constitution says that government isn't supposed to be infusing religion into our society, and so I asked to have that upheld.

No power of government ought to be employed in the endeavor to establish any system or article of belief on the subject of religion.

The framers of our Constitution meant we were to have freedom of religion, not freedom from religion.

The fact that religion plays such a part in how people vote troubles me, troubles me as a minister's daughter. Because I always felt that the separation of church and state was what our forefathers and foremothers really fought for.

The real point is that totalitarian regimes have claimed jurisdiction over the whole person, and the whole society, and they don't at all believe that we should give unto Caesar that which is Caesar's and unto God that which is God's.

The courts are using the First Amendment to attack religion, when they should be using it to protect religion.

I'm just confused as to where we lost that in America because it is everyone's God-given right to think the way they think and that's fine. That's why our ancestors came here to America, to believe what they want, pray how they want and follow a religion with whoever they want.

Growing up in Britain as a rather loose Jew, the two things that didn't belong together were freedom and religious intensity. In America, they do. The Founding Fathers made a bet that if you didn't force everyone to profess religion in their own particular way, you could protect intellectual freedom, and religion would flourish.

By our form of government, the Christian religion is the established religion; and all sects and denominations of Christians are placed upon the same equal footing, and are equally entitled to protection in their religious liberty.

When state and religion are one, religion becomes a means for the powerful to remain in power.

The phrase 'religious liberty' has become an overused talisman. Most of the invocations lately have nothing to do with actual infringements of free exercise [of religion]. They're about political and cultural dissent from gay rights.

I don’t see a bit of danger from us having an established religion.

I believe in an America where the separation of Church and State is absolute—where no Catholic prelate would tell the President, should he be a Catholic, how to act, and no Protestant minister would tell his parishioners how to vote.... I believe in an America that is officially neither Catholic, Protestant or Jewish ... for while this year it may be a Catholic against whom the finger of suspicion is pointed, in other years it has been, and may someday be again, a Jew—or a Quaker—or a Unitarian—or a Baptist.

When the government says to you that they want to help you be more religious, you want to run away from them as fast as possible.