Thomas Aquinas Quotes

We are compelled, our faith urging us, to believe and to hold—and we do firmly believe and simply confess—that there is one holy Catholic and Apostolic Church, outside of which there is neither salvation nor remission of sins.

Neither the true faith nor eternal salvation is to be found outside the Holy Catholic Church.

Before everything else, fidelity to the Church: One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic. Jesus did not found several churches, but one single Church.

In fact, there is only one true and holy religion, founded and instituted by Christ Our Lord. Mother and Nurse of the virtues, Destroyer of vice, Liberator of souls, Guide to true happiness, she is called Catholic, Apostolic, and Roman.

I'm one of those cliff-hanging Catholics. I don't believe in God, but I do believe that Mary was his mother.

The Roman Catholic Church isn't going to change its theologies.

We are not able to give approval to those views which, in their collective sense, are called by some "Americanism." But if by this name are to be understood certain endowments of mind which belong to the American people, just as other characteristics belong to various other nations, and if, moreover, by it is designated your political condition and the laws and customs by which you are governed, there is no reason to take exception to the name. But if this is to be so understood that the doctrines which have been adverted to above are not only indicated, but exalted, there can be no manner of doubt that our venerable brethren, the bishops of America, would be the first to repudiate and condemn it as being most injurious to themselves and to their country. For it would give rise to the suspicion that there are among you some who conceive and would have the Church in America to be different from what it is in the rest of the world.

If it should be declared that contraception is not evil in itself, then we should have to concede frankly that the Holy Spirit had been on the side of the Protestant churches in 1930 …. This would mean that the leaders of the Church, acting with extreme imprudence, had condemned thousands of innocent human acts, forbidding, under pain of eternal damnation, a practice which would now be sanctioned. The fact can neither be denied nor ignored that these same acts would now be declared licit on the grounds of principles cited by the Protestants, which popes and bishops have either condemned or at least not approved.

My pope is Benedict.

I'm a Christian, and I believe the Immaculate Conception was how Jesus was born.

I can't believe in Christianity, but I think Jesus was a wonderful teacher.

We are forbidden to neglect the assembling of ourselves together. Christianity is already institutional in the earliest of its documents. The Church is the Bride of Christ. We are members of one another.

The difficulty of explaining ‘why I am a Catholic’ is that there are ten thousand reasons all amounting to one reason: that Catholicism is true.

I mean I think that's a fact and I think that we had a very peculiar type of Catholic Church here in that it was a fortress Church.

Never forget that Hitler was a Catholic.

I think anarchy is natural to the Catholic. The Church is pretty anarchistic, you know. Who pays attention to the Pope or the Cardinals?

Those who are seeking the true religion will never find it outside the Catholic Church alone, because, in every other religion, if they trace it up to the author, they will find some impostor whose imagination furnished a mass of sophisms and errors

There are three means of believing--by inspiration, by reason, and by custom. Christianity, which is the only rational institution, does yet admit none for its sons who do not believe by inspiration. Nor does it injure reason or custom, or debar them of their proper force; on the contrary, it directs us to open our minds by the proofs of the former, and to confirm our minds by the authority of the latter.

The 'Church' is ... catholic because her communion embraces the whole human race.

My mother converted when I was 16. She was the driving force behind religion in our family. So, I'm sure I was heavily influenced by that. But, I also was, and still am, convinced by the Catholic churches historical claims to represent the continuity with the early Church that other forms of Western Christianity lack.

I would not believe in the Gospel, if the authority of the Catholic Church did not bid me to do so.

If you're a Catholic you believe what the Church teaches and the climate makes no difference.

The Holy Father held a special place in the hearts of more than 1 billion Catholics worldwide.

The Catholic Church is a thousand times better than your Protestant Church upon that question [of damnation]. The Catholic Church believes in purgatory - that is, a place where a fellow can get a chance to make a motion for a new trial.

The Head and the body are Christ wholly and entirely. The Head is the only begotten Son of God, the body is His Church; the bridegroom and the bride, two in one flesh. All who dissent from the Scriptures concerning Christ, although they may be found in all places in which the Church is found, are not in the Church; and again all those who agree with the Scriptures concerning the Head, and do not communicate in the unity of the Church, are not in the Church.