Bill Maher Quotes

I think generally, Pope Benedict did a good job cleaning up the way the church handled abusive priests but didn't go far enough in how he handled bishops who enabled them.

I worked as a prosecutor watching Catholic priests charged with sex abuse and saw firsthand how the 'circle the wagons' mentality revictimized the innocent, coddled the guilty, and made matters worse for everyone.

Pope Benedict XVI's resignation is big on buzz but is not the stunning surprise claimed by many pundits. It is rather a further example of the German theology professor's style that informed his years as head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, his term as pope, and the formation of his legacy to the church.

I find it inconceivable that we're meeting for five and a half days, and there isn't one moment on the agenda to deal with the greatest crisis we've ever had in the church since 1789.

It scares the Church hierarchy. Church leadership never recoiled in horror from pedophilia, yet it recoils in horror from outspoken nuns..

The revelations of the Cloyne report have brought the government, Irish Catholics, and the Vatican to an unprecedented juncture.

My pope is Benedict.

But I make a distinction between the doctrines of the Church, which matter, and the structure invented by half a dozen Italians who got to be pope and which is of very little use to anybody.

Since God has been pleased to give us the Papacy, let us enjoy it.

Wherever the bishop shall appear, there let the multitude also be; even as, wherever Jesus Christ is, there is the Catholic Church.

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

In the Pro-Eligendo Pontefice Mass, despite knowing that [ Joseph Ratzinger] was a candidate [to become Pope], he wasn't stupid, he didn't care to "make-up" his answer, he said exactly the same thing [that we needed to clean up the dirt of the Church]. He was the brave one who helped so many open this door. So, I want to remember him because sometimes we forget about this hidden works that were the foundations for "taking the lid off the pot."

During a frustrating argument with a Roman Catholic cardinal, Napoleon Bonaparte supposedly burst out: “Your eminence, are you not aware that I have the power to destroy the Catholic Church?” The cardinal, the anecdote goes, responded ruefully: “Your majesty, we, the Catholic clergy, have done our best to destroy the church for the last 1,800 years. We have not succeeded, and neither will you.”

The Catholics have a Pope. Protestants laugh at them, and yet the Pope is capable of intellectual advancement. In addition to this, the Pope is mortal, and the church cannot be afflicted with the same idiot forever. The Protestants have a book for their Pope. The book cannot advance. Year after year, and century after century, the book remains as ignorant as ever.

I still hope. I wouldn't be in this position if I didn't. I love the church. I love the Bible. But I think we're in a time where we're desperately in need of a great reformation.

If you're going to say you're Catholic, you inform your conscience so that you're activities will conform to what God is telling us through the Church. If God is telling you something outside of that, well, the Church will look at that and say: we think it is true or we don't think it is true. The Church might say: that might be true for you but it has no public normative value.

I think at every moment in the last probably 100 years, when the institutional church had the opportunity to do the right thing, they did the wrong thing. They're a dying institution in many parts of the world because they refuse to ordain women or married people. And now they're a dying institution because some of their members did enormous harm to young people and instead of responding aggressively with humility, and with love, and with the confession of wrongdoing, they tried to spin it as though they were a political party, and that's just deplorable.

I tell priests to flee from clericalism because clericalism distances people. May they flee from clericalism and I add: it's a plague in the Church.

It is not doubted, and you know it, that Ireland and all those islands which have received the faith, belong to the Church of Rome; if you wish to enter that Island, to drive vice out of it, to cause law to be obeyed and St Peter's Pence to be paid by every house, it will please us to assign it to you.

When the church takes affairs of the state more seriously than they do Jesus, Pax Romana becomes its gospel and the president becomes the Son of God.

The root of the whole evil lay, particularly in Schonerer's opinion, in the fact that the directing body of the Catholic Church was not in Germany, and that for this very reason alone it was hostile to the interests of our nationality.

Anytime a church squabbles over minor things you can be certain they do not have a clear picture of what they need to be.

My church [Catholisism] is hurting from arrogance and from its indifference to the suffering of children that were abused and the inclination of the leadership to protect the institution, rather than the children.

For years I had been disillusioned by the Church of England's compromising on everything. The Catholic Church doesn't care if something is unpopular.

Let us never forget that it is the Lord who guides the Church. He is the one who makes our apostolates fruitful.