Simon Hoggart Quotes

The Roman Church has never erred, nor can it err until the end of time.

It is the custom of the Roman Church which I unworthily serve with the help of God, to tolerate some things, to turn a blind eye to some, following the spirit of discretion rather than the rigid letter of the law.

I think there are a number of bishops - and I put Cardinal Mahony in that category - who listen too much to his lawyer and not enough to his heart.

There was a time when papal encyclicals were treated as virtual pronouncements of papal infallibility. There are still a small minority of Catholics who cite Pope Paul VI's 1968 document Humanae Vitae - which outlawed artificial birth control - as the word of God.

The faith of the church must be tried by God's word, and not God's word by the church; neither yet my faith.

It is plain to me that our prelates, in granting indulgences, do commonly blaspheme the wisdom of God.

Boy buggering in both Islam and Catholicism is okay with the Pope as long as it isn't reported by the liberal press.

All priests whatsoever made and ordained by any authority derived or pretended to be derived from the see of Rome shall, before the tenth day of December, depart out of the kingdom of Ireland.

I totally respect the pope, and I totally respect the Catholic bishops and cardinals on doctrine.

Real Christianity is based upon God's word given to us through the scriptures, and His word is final.

The problem for Rome, then, is how and when the intervention should be done with a sense of the possibility of going too far in limiting the freedom of theologians. This is not an easy time - neither for Rome nor for the theologians.

In the John Paul II days, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger had the advantage of staying in his cupboard - the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith - exchanging views only with the Pope, and speaking publicly only through carefully written missives on doctrinal issues.

The Bible is God's Word expressed and revealed to his creature, man.

It's hard for the Catholic Church to accept change. When the mass was no longer said in Latin, loyalists went into mourning for years.

Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.

I feel much freer now that I am certain the pope is the Antichrist.

The law is God's first word; the gospel is God's final word.

I like the catholicity in time: our tradition is one of 2,000 years.

The Catholic Church is an innately conservative rock - they call themselves the 'rock of Peter' - and its resistance to change is, ironically, what has kept it constant throughout the ages.

He knows the tax code as thoroughly as the pope knows the Lord's Prayer.

There is a very well-defined procedure that allows the Vatican to raise issues with a particular theologian about something that does not appear in conformity with the Catholic faith. It is not always easy to make this determination.

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

St. Pope John XXIII called for the Second Vatican Council because he understood, as no Holy Father had in a long time, religion spoke to and found its language and symbols - its entire sense of the sacramental nature of existence - in the imagination that reveals not just the penalties of living, but the wonder and awe of our existence.

The Bible is God's sacred Word of truth.