Clerical Authority Quotes

That none be permitted to preach, or interpret the Scriptures, unless he be a priest, or deacon at the least, admitted thereunto according to the laws of this realm

If any one saith, that all Christians have power to administer the word, and all the sacraments; let him be anathema.

Jesus Christ never preached there should be celibate priests. The only reason the church has this is because it's a mechanism of power and control. You can control priests who are celibate.

Your country needs religious leaders and religious politicians

The present crisis in the Islamic world may stem from too many loud and conflicting voices, all claiming religious authority.

The men that call for Reformation, may pretend cause or colour of cause both in matters of doctrine & fact, why they may hate the Bishops, which in no sorte may bee applyed to hir Majestie.

I never liked the Hierarchy of the Church … but if the Clergy combine, they will have their influence on Government

The problem is that those of us who were born into Islam and who don't want to live according to scripture - we don't have what the Jews have, which is a rabbinical tradition that allows you to ask questions. We also don't have the church tradition that the Christians have.

If all Church power vests in the clergy, then the people are practically bound to passive obedience in all matters of faith and practice; for all right of private judgment is then denied.

It is clearly absurd that it should be possible for a woman to qualify as a saint with direct access to the Almighty while she may not qualify as a curate.

It will not be legal for the … citizens to give, sell, or mortgage any burgage or tenement that they hold or shall hold in the same city to a church or to a religious person without the license and consent of the aforesaid bishop and his successors.

In arguing too, the parson own'd his skill, For e'en though vanquish'd he could argue still; While words of learned length and thundering sound Amaz'd the gazing rustics rang'd around; And still they gaz'd, and still the wonder grew That one small head could carry all he knew.

A wicked Capuchin [a politically sophisticated priest] has disarmed me with his rosary, and thrust nothing less than six electoral crowns into his cowl.

Liberty of thinking, and of expressing our thoughts, is always fatal to priestly power, and to those pious frauds on which it is commonly founded.

What, but the rapacity of the only men who exercised their reason, the priests, secured such vast property to the church, when a man gave his perishable substance to save himself from the dark torments of purgatory.

The Ayatollah of the Assembly.

We have good and bad archbishops.

What made al-Awlaki so influential is that, unlike a number of leaders of al Qaeda such as Osama bin Laden, he was a cleric, so he could present himself as a leading religious figure. Second, because al-Awlaki had spent much of his adult life in the States, he communicated with his followers in colloquial, accessible American English.

The church wasn't an organization in the first century. They weren't writing checks or buying property. The church has matured and developed over the years. But for some reason, the last thing to change is the structure of leadership.

Those who are considered clerics, grown fat on the alms of princes, now oppress princes' sons...You and all kings of particular regions have everything to fear from the effrontery of such a prince of priests when he sets out to depose us who have been divinely honored by the imperial diadem and solemnly elected by the princes with the approval of the whole church at a time when faith and religion were flourishing....

There will soon be no more priests... They may wait awhile, perhaps a generation or two, dropping off by degrees. A superior breed shall take their place. A new order shall arise and they shall be the priests of man, and every man shall be his own priest.

The clergy believe that any power confided in me will be exerted in opposition to their schemes, and they believe rightly.

The populace judges of the power of God by the power of the priests.

In the hands of the clergy, politics and jurisprudence, as well as other sciences, remained branches of theology, and were treated according to the principles prevailing in the latter. The dogmas of the church were at the same time political axioms, and Bible quotations had the validity of law in every court. Even after the formation of a special class of jurists, jurisprudence long remained under the tutelage of theology

When you get to 15 and most of your teachers are priests, there's bound to be a conflict.