Robert Farrar Capon Quotes

It is only in the case of the Priestly Code that opinions differ widely; for it tries hard to imitate the costume of the Mosaic period, and, with whatever success, to disguise its own.

A wise architect observed that you could break the laws of architec75tural art provided you had mastered them first. That would apply to religion as well as to art. Ignorance of the past does not guarantee freedom from its imperfections.

We should think about whether canonizations, which are an invention of the Middle Ages, still make sense today.

Are not the daily devotions conducted by these legal ecclesiastics already degenerating into a scanty attendance, and a tiresome formality?

The Jews fastened their religion upon the Western world, not because it was more reasonable than the religions of their contemporaries - as a matter of fact, it was vastly less reasonable than many of them - but because it was far more poetical.

Jews wait for the Lord, Protestants sing hymns to him, Catholics say mass and eat him.

The religion of the Bible is the best in the world. I see the infinite value of religion. Let it be always encouraged. A world ofsuperstition and folly have grown up around its forms and ceremonies. But the truth in it is one of the deep sentiments in human nature.

If you go to church, and like the singing better than the preaching, that's not orthodox.

Religion, it must be understood, is not faith. Religion is the story of faith.

See Christians, Jews, one heavy sabbath keep, And all the western world believe and sleep.

The problem is, even when we preach the Gospel correctly, then we go to this thing on how to invite men and it's not biblical or historical. We get them to jump through some evangelical hoops and say, "yes" to the appropriate questions and we pope-ishly announce them to be saved.

Learn what not to expect. Irish catholic they get sh**** little rings. Irish women get crappy rings. Baptist get the worst because they get the rings under water. When it comes up, it's garbage. Jewish, big rings. Episcopalian big rings. Italians-the best, because they get them off of dead people, and second wives get the biggest rings of all.

If Vulcans had a church, they’d be Catholics.

The man who never fasts is no more in the way to heaven than the man who never prays.

A religion made up solely of heightened religious experiences would not be a religion at all. ...The major religious traditions address the mysteries (with or without entheogens), but they have other business to do: widen understanding, give meaning, provide solace, promote loving-kindness, and connect human being to human being.

This, it may be said, is no more than a hypothesis, but it satisfies the conditions of a legitimate hypothesis, by postulating the operation of no unknown or uncertain cause, but only of that force of precedent which in all times has been so strong to keep alive religious forms of which the original meaning is lost.

It [Catholicism] supplies a multitude of external forms in which the spiritual may be clothed and manifested.

I'm not a religious person. I don't have any desire. To me it's imitative of a conventional culture. I'm all for it for anybody. I totally have a free and open feeling about how other humans want to live their lives. It's just not something that has any real significance for me.

I'm not somebody who goes to church on a regular basis. The specific elements of Christianity are not something I'm a huge believer in.

Organized religions have all the facets of organized crime, except the compassion of organized crime.

I am not, personally, a believer or a religious man in any sense of institutional commitment or practice. But I have a great respect for religion, and the subject has always fascinated me, beyond almost all others (with a few exceptions, like evolution and paleontology).

We may not agree with what religions are trying to teach us, but we can admire the institutional way in which they're doing it.

Man is a Religious Animal. He is the only Religious Animal. He is the only animal that has the True Religion - several of them.

Muslim women had to go out in purdah, that heavy sheet that covers even the eyes. Hindu women had to go out in the doli, a kind of closed sedan chair like a catafalque. My mother always told me about these things with bitterness and rage.

There would have been no Bach had there been no Luther.