Universal Church Quotes

I use both the 'I' and the 'we.' For on many, many matters, I am not simply expressing ideas that have happened to occur to Joseph Ratzinger, but I am speaking out of the common life of the Church's communion.

Vatican II declares the Church... as necessary for salvation.

The universal Church of the faithful is one outside of which none is saved.

Wherever the bishop appears, there let the people be, even as wheresoever Christ Jesus is, there is the catholic church.

The Synod of Bishops has existed for forty years. In that long span of time it has been for all of us a good school for introducing us to the universal dimension of the Church.

When I walk up the piazza of Santa Croce I feel as if it were not a Florentine nor an European church but a church built by and for the human race.

The holy universal Church teaches that it is not possible to worship God truly except in Her.

The true church is not made of creeds and forms, nor is it contained in walls of wood and stone; the heart of man is its temple and the Spirit of truth is the one guide into all Truth. When men learn to turn within to the Spirit of truth, who is in each one for his light and inspiration, the differences between the churches of man will be eliminated, and the one church will be recognized.

The Popish theory, which assumes that Christ, the Apostles and believers, constituted the Church while our Saviour was on earth, and this organization was designed to be perpetual.

When my dad founded our church, he used either a globe or a map of the world behind him. It was symbolic of what Christ said: to go forth and preach hope to the world. We believe in the cross, but we just continued with the globe.

What the universal Church holds, not as instituted [invented] by councils but as something always held, is most correctly believed to have been handed down by apostolic authority. Since others respond for children, so that the celebration of the sacrament may be complete for them, it is certainly availing to them for their consecration, because they themselves are not able to respond.

The 'Church' is ... catholic because her communion embraces the whole human race.

The Church, during the apostolic age, did not consist of isolated, independent congregations, but was one body, of which the separate churches were constituent members, each subject to all the rest, or to an authority which extended over all.

There's so many gifts from the faith to appreciate and it strikes people differently, but the one-ness of the Church wherever you are, Raleigh, San Diego, Alabama. Every place we were was home because the Catholic Church is the same everywhere.

We adore Thee most holy Lord Jesus Christ, here in all Thy Churches, which are in the whole world, because by Thy holy cross, Thou hast redeemed the world

We, each and all, bishops, priests, and deacons of the holy Roman church, congregated in the city of Pisa for the purpose of ending the schism and of restoring the unity of the church, on our word of honor promise God, the holy Roman church, and this holy council now collected here for the aforesaid purpose, that, if any one of us is elected pope, he shall continue the present council and not dissolve it, nor, so far as is in his power, permit it to be dissolved until, through it and with its advice, a proper, reasonable, and sufficient reformation of the universal church in its head and in its members shall have been accomplished.

It is impossible, Bible in hand, to limit Christ's Church to one's own little community. It is everywhere, in all parts of the world; and whatever its external form, frequently changing, often impure, yet the gifts wherever received increase our riches.

The religion of art, like the religion of politics, was born from the ruins of Christianity. Art inherited from the old religion the power of consecrating things and endowing them with a sort of eternity; museums are our temples, and the objects displayed in them are beyond history. Politics--or more precisely, Revolution--co-opted the other function of religion: changing human beings and society. Art was an asceticism, a spiritual heroism; Revolution was the construction of a universal church.

When we say Church of All Nations, it's a vision given to me, that the church will touch all the world.

The Catholic faith never changes. But the language and mode of manifesting this one faith can change according to peoples, times and places.

I thank Missio, (Pontifical Mission Societies), the primary instruments for cooperation in the universal Church's universal mission in the world. Through their action, the proclamation of the Gospel bears witness to Christ and is lived out in service of our neighbour through justice for the poorest, education in isolated villages, medical care in remote areas, freedom from poverty, the reintegration of the marginalised, support for the development of peoples, the breaking down of ethnic divisions and respect for life in all its stages.

Higher education holds itself out as a kind of universal church, outside of which there is no salvation.

But I have to add - and this answers your other question - this catholicity in time and in space is only meaningful for me if there is, at the same time, a concentration on the Gospel.

It's a blessing to know that the church and the gospel are the same no matter where I go. I can find a church and know the services and feel at home there.

We must not reduce the bosom of the universal church to a nest protecting our mediocrity.