Gregory XVI Quotes

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

The Church has opposed every innovation and discovery from the day of Galileo down to our own time, when the use of anesthetics in childbirth was regarded as a sin because it avoided the biblical curse pronounced against Eve.

Where conservative Catholics have the power to resist what seem like false ideas or disastrous innovations they must do so.

The custom of the Church has very great authority and ought to be jealously observed in all things.

Sir, we must beware of needless innovation, especially when guided by logic.

I am disgusted with innovation, in whatever guise, and with reason, for I have seen very harmful effects of it.

To do something innovative means that you reject reason.

The Pope is a mere tormentor of conscience. The assembly of his greased and religious crew in praying was altogether like the croaking of frogs, which edified nothing at all.

I know that the pope's infallible, but that doesn't mean he can't make mistakes.

We also wanted to change the story - change the approach to the 21st century on energy, on education, on transportation, on infrastructure, generally, and it laid the groundwork for that. And one of the reasons I'm doing this trip is not only to say what we did worked, but to say we should do more of this.

Isn't the essential pillar of Catholicism papal infallibility? Well, then how can the church ever change its mind about anything unless God gets confused one day? Not all religions claim the direct authority of God speaking to their leader. You know, I'm an atheist, but I'm a Puritan atheist.

All serious innovation is only rendered possible by some accident enabling unpopular persons to survive.

The Psalms offer us a way of joining in a chorus of praise and prayer that has been going on for millennia and across all cultures. Not to try to inhabit them, while continuing to invent non-psalmic 'worship' based on our own feelings of the moment, risks being like a spoiled child who, taken to the summit of Table Mountain with the city and the ocean spread out before him, refuses to gaze at the view because he is playing with his Game Boy

It behaves more like a tribe than a democratic institution...responding to custom rather than reason and using its own liturgy and language for the conduct of its domestic affairs.

The bible belt is oral territory and therefore despised by the literati.

I don't have the power to issue papal decrees.

There are two kinds of truth; the truth that lights the way and the truth that warms the heart. The first of these is science, and the second is art. Without art science would be as useless as a pair of high forceps in the hands of a plumber. Without science art would become a crude mess of folklore and emotional quackery.

Just as we are often moved to merriment for no other reason than that the occasion calls for seriousness, so we are correspondingly serious when invited too freely to be amused.

I am not myself apt to be alarmed at innovations recommended by reason. That dread belongs to those whose interests or prejudices shrink from the advance of truth and science.

I'm not a very serious Jew. I don't wear the protective religious headgear. They only wear that because 40% of all religious thoughts escape through the head.

Muslim women had to go out in purdah, that heavy sheet that covers even the eyes. Hindu women had to go out in the doli, a kind of closed sedan chair like a catafalque. My mother always told me about these things with bitterness and rage.

Where the bishop is present, there is the Catholic Church

The essence of religion is inertia; the essence of science is change. It is the function of the one to preserve, it is the function of the other to improve. If, as in Egypt, they are firmly chained together, either science will advance, in which case the religion will be altered, or the religion will preserve its purity, and science will congeal.

Give heed to the cause of the holy Roman Church, mother of all churches and teacher of the faith, whom you by the order of God, have consecrated by your blood. Against the Roman Church, you warned, lying teachers are rising, introducing ruinous sects, and drawing upon themselves speedy doom. Their tongues are fire, a restless evil, full of deadly poison. They have bitter zeal, contention in their hearts, and boast and lie against the truth.

Let's just shoot in black and white. Don't explain why. Have no reason for it. Just do it because it's interesting.