James McBride Quotes

Ecclesiastical establishments tend to great ignorance and corruption

My eyes are wide open to the conflicts within the Church, but I don't think you can call it schism.

It bums me out tremendously what the church has become, and if it's got me bummed, imagine what Jesus Christ must be feeling.

The quality of the Lord's church on earth, cannot be seen by any man, so long as he lives in the world, still less how the church in process of time has turned aside from good to evil.

I think most of our religious institutions are pretty corrupt, so they're not reliable. I think the Christian religion that I was brought up with has very little to do with Christ, really, and more an institutions that have built up around the church.

As long as the house of The Holy Spirit remains a haven for criminals the reputation of the church will remain in ruins.

We can't be guided - because we're so far from it. We've so destroyed it. We're so far from that that we can't use it. I mean, Jim Bakker heard from God. What a good job he did!

I have never pretended to be the best Scientologist, but I openly and vigorously defended the church whenever it was criticized, as I railed against the kind of intolerance that I believed was directed against it. I had my disagreements, but I dealt with them internally.

I went to Catholic school in and out. I'm what you call a recovering Catholic. I have many major issues with the church.

There's nobody who doesn't have problems with the church, because there's sin in the church. But there's no other place to be a Christian except the church.

Pomp corrupts church officials

Ecclesiastical establishments tend to great ignorance and corruption, all of which facilitate the execution of mischievous projects.

With shame be it spoken: by her fall, the Church's liberties have been sacrificed for the sake of temporal advantages. The road to her ruin lay through the sinuous paths of riches: she has been prostituted in the streets to princes; she has conceived iniquity and will bring forth oppression to the undeserving.

If I were to look at the church of Jesus Christ in America today, I would say our greatest problem is not that we lack the resources to do things, not that we lack the models, the programs, and the plans, but that we lack conformity to the image of Jesus Christ.

I think for us - and for a lot of people in the Church of Satan - we definitely like ruffling people's feathers and poking fun at organized religion a little bit.

America's problem isn't too much religion or too little of it. It's bad religion: the slow-motion collapse of traditional Christianity and the rise of a variety of destructive pseudo-Christianities in its place.

A sign of a culture that has lost its faith - Moral collapse follows upon spiritual collapse.

Listen Jesus to the warning I give. Please remember that I want us to live. But it's sad to see our chances weakening with every hour. All your followers are blind, too much heaven on their minds. It was beautiful, but now it's sour. Yes, it's all gone sour.

Priests, like all of us, are affected by culture. When the culture is sick, every element in it becomes infected. While it is no excuse for this scandal, it is no surprise that Boston, a seat of academic, political and cultural liberalism in America, lies at the center of the storm.

But at my back from time to time I hear The sound of horns and motors, which shall bring Sweeney to Mrs. Porter in the spring. O the moon shone bright on Mrs. Porter And on her daughter They wash their feet in soda water.

I believe what Jesus said, but Jesus never said priests couldn't be fools.

A nation dies culturally and spiritually first. Its money and its army are the last to go, but go they do once the light goes out in the nation's soul.

The Papacy was corrupt for whole centuries: especially from about 880 to 1050 and (with a short decent pontificate at rare intervals) 1290 to about 1660. No 'primacy' in any other organized religion has so disgraceful a record.

Most people today in our churches are lost, and they demonstrate that they are lost because their entire Christianity is nothing more than, 'They made a decision.'