Kurt Vonnegut Quotes

There is no harm in anybody thinking that Christ is in bread. The harm is in the expectation of His presence in gunpowder.

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

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.

Neither was there any heresy, or diversity of opinion, or disputing about the matter, till the pope had gathered a council to confirm this transubstantiation: wherefore it is most likely that this opinion came up by them of latter days.

I would not call myself Catholic anymore, but I went to 16 years of Catholic school: grade school, high school and college.

'The Fifth Gospel' is set entirely inside the Vatican and told from the perspective of a Catholic priest. I'm not Catholic myself, yet authenticity and factual accuracy are very important to me, so the novel required an enormous amount of research.

I'm not Catholic, but I have a great deal of respect for Pope John Paul. I think that he has stood firm on the moral issues, and I admire him greatly.

I went to a school run by Catholic nuns. They were really strict.

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.

If anyone says that the holy Catholic Church was not moved by just causes and reasons that laymen and clerics when not consecrating should communicate under the form of bread only, or has erred in this, let him be anathema [excommunicated.]

Like the graduates of some notorious boot camp, my brothers and sisters and I look back with a sort of perverse glee at the rigors of our Catholicism. My oldest sister, Mary, was so convinced of the church's omnipotence that when she walked into a Protestant church with some high-school friends, she was sure its walls would crash down on her head.

I didn't grow up in the Catholic church, but I went to a Catholic high school and a Catholic college, and the Jesuit priests are not saints floating around campus.

Roman Catholicism: a hundred million people bowing down before a flesh-hating, elderly celibate.

When I think how much my Protestant brothers and sisters are missing in not having Christ's Real Presence in the Eucharist; when I kneel before the Eucharist and realize I am as truly in Christ's presence as the apostles were but that my Protestant brothers and sisters don't know that, don't believe that - I at first feel a terrible gap between myself and them. What a tremendous thing they are missing!

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.

I'm disappointed that my own Catholic Church has decided that capital punishment is wrong. Which is pretty hypocritical if you think about it, because they wouldn't even have a religion if it wasn't for capital punishment.

In the Catholic Church, there are many other things which most justly keep me in her bosom. The consent of peoples and nations keeps me in the Church; so does her authority, inaugurated by miracles, nourished by hope, enlarged by love, established by age. The succession of priests keeps me, beginning from the very seat of the Apostle Peter, to whom the Lord, after His resurrection, gave it in charge to feed His sheep (Jn 21:15-19), down to the present episcopate.

Catholics are against abortions. Catholics are against homosexuals. But, I can't think of anyone who has less abortions than homosexuals!

Everything we see in a Catholic church is there for a single purpose: to tell a love story.

Now Pope Francis on his overnight flight back to Italy explains how contraception can be justified. This is the pope, the Vicar of Christ, the Catholic Church explaining how contraception could be justified. And then he rips into capitalism and the American immigration policies while at the Mexican border before getting on his plane to go back to Italy.

I think Pope Francis is a guy who comes from a certain place in the world, and that shapes how he processes things. He's like a liberation theology guy, but I think that what he's done is focused the Catholic Church where it should be - on the poor.

Pope John Paul II was fascinated by the United States. And I think he was initially surprised at the vigor of the Catholic Church in the United States. Maybe some of the press that we had gotten he found wasn't true. No, I think he suspected the church in the United States. Did he challenge us to some things? Sure, he did. But, no, I always - I think there was a good alliance. There was a good gel there.

My hobby is extreme Catholic behavior - before the Reformation.

I think Catholicism took root very quickly in Ireland because it's a very superstitious religion, the holy ghost, the holy spirit, it has a goddess, very visual, the music.

I consider the official Catholic attitude on divorce, birth control, and censorship exceedingly dangerous to mankind.