Donald Wuerl Quotes

It was in that bubble after Vatican II when it seemed like the best time ever to grow up Catholic. It was a time when the church was so connected to the world.

Vatican II was a force that seized the mind of the Roman Catholic Church and carried it across centuries from the 13th to the 20th.

I was raised Catholic at a time when Vatican II was just taking hold.

I hear around me reformers who want to dismantle the Holy Sanctuary, destroy the universal flame of the Church, to discard all her adornments, and smite her with remorse for her historic past.

I always say that people should not rush to change religions. There is real value in finding the spiritual resources you need in your home religion.

None of us feels the true love of God till we realize how wicked we are. But you can't teach people that - they have to learn by experience.

The audience that I try to reach are members of what I call the church alumni association. Now they are people who have not found in institutional religion a God big enough to be God for their world.

There was only one decline in church attendance, and that was in the late 1960s when the Vatican said it was not a sin to miss Mass. They said Catholics could act like Protestants, and so they did.

I'm not a big fan of religion for that reason. But I am a true believer in God, and I have great faith, and I think that a spiritual connection with something is a really important part of our experience. That doesn't necessarily have anything to do with the church.

I think that 'Little Angels' provides the gateway into that conversation about faith and about the Lord and about God's love for us. Remembering that the angels are just the messengers and the message is the message of love.

I believe that miracles happen every day. Every person is a miracle. Every moment is a miracle. If only we can open our eyes, we'll see God's love everywhere.

Plenty of people are raised Catholic and then aren't Catholic anymore, like any religion.

Having grown up Protestant, I was unfamiliar with St. Francis. Then I watched the movie 'Brother Sun, Sister Moon'... I just became fascinated with the character of St. Francis. What I saw in that movie was a man who had fallen in love with God, someone for whom God was everything.

'Touched by an Angel' started my calling to be the messenger, and on a weekly basis, I was able to deliver the message of God's love to the world.

Pope Benedict XVI's resignation is big on buzz but is not the stunning surprise claimed by many pundits. It is rather a further example of the German theology professor's style that informed his years as head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, his term as pope, and the formation of his legacy to the church.

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

Reformation names the disunity in which we currently stand. We who remain in the Protestant tradition want to say that Reformation was a success.

What I am teaching is religiousness, a quality. Religion is a dead dogma, fixed principles, frozen fossils. What I am teaching to you is a living, flowing religiousness - an experience like love.

This … legitimately assembled in the Holy Ghost, forming a general council and representing the Catholic Church militant, has its power immediately from Christ, and every one, whatever his state or position, even if it be the Papal dignity itself, is bound to obey it in all those things which pertain to the faith and the healing of the said schism, and to the general reformation of the Church of God … It further declares that any one, whatever his condition, station or rank, even if it be the Papal, who shall contumaciously refuse to obey the mandates, decrees, ordinances or instructions which have been, or shall be issued by this holy council, or by any other general council, legitimately summoned, which concern, or in any way relate to the above mentioned objects, shall, unless he repudiate his conduct, be subject to condign penance and be suitably punished, having recourse, if necessary, to the other resources of the law...

We need a pope to oversee not simply a modernization of the church but its total transformation.

It's not anti-Catholic to question, nor is it anti-Catholic to be honest about the previous shortcomings of the church, because that is the only way we can ensure its strength and dignity moving forward. It is, however, very Catholic to forgive each other and to never stop loving each other.

The church needs a pope who can call us to conversion and lead us to take seriously what Jesus did.

The Church emphasis responsibility more than rights.

Clericalism contributed its full share to this downward progress [of Spain]. The intensity of the Spanish character, which can do nothing by halves, lent an enormous power for evil to the exaggerated religious ardor of the people. In the earlier Middle Ages no other European nation had been so tolerant as Spain in its dealings with the Jew and the infidel, but, under the careful stimulation of the Church, this tolerant spirit had passed away with the fourteenth century, and in its place there had gradually arisen a fierce and implacable hatred of all faiths outside of Catholicism. This fanaticism gave to the priesthood preponderating power, which it utilized for its own behalf, in disregard of the public welfare

The church is always trying to get other people to reform; it might not be a bad idea to reform itself a little, by way of example.