Church-State Conflict Quotes

To think that a Catholic bishop must answer to a civil authority over matters of faith is abominable. It is abhorrent to me, to other Catholics, and to every member of every faith community.

I think religion has often played a very positive role. Take western civilization, the Catholic Church has played an honorable role in helping those in need. In contrast, the US carried out a virtual war against the church in central America in the 1980's primarily because prime elements in the church were working with great courage and honor to help those in need. And to organize them to help themselves.

The Left has always been anti-religious, and especially anti-Christian.

All true democratic movements have been branded anti-religious.

The church state-wall must be kept high and impregnable. We could not approve the slightest breach.

To say that religion cannot stand without a state establishment is not only contrary to fact (as has been proved already) but is a contradiction in phrase.

Will no one rid me of this turbulent priest?

That Solidarity was a religious movement no one, least of all the Soviets, can deny. In November 1981, Pravda denounced 'religious fanaticism' as a grave challenge to socialism; failure to contain it, Pravda said, was at the root of the problems in Poland.

The most popular argument in all these papers was the assertion ... that Christianity had grown and prospered in spite of the opposition of the State.

There the union of Church and State tends strongly to paralyze some of the members of the body of Christ. Here there is no such influence to destroy spiritual life and power.

The Church's role should be separated from the state's role.

When church and state are separate, the effects are happy, and they do not at all interfere with each other: but where they have been confounded together, no tongue nor pen can fully describe the mischiefs that have ensued.

Separation of church and state is the big club pulled out to beat back the Christians .

The past history of the Christian Church should be a solemn warning to us never to permit an alliance to be formed between the priesthood and the civil magistracy—between church and state powers.

If the liberties of the American people are ever destroyed, they will fall by the hands of the clergy.

The secularization or appropriation of ecclesiastical property by the State - a thing not at present to be thought of, yet, nevertheless, inevitable in the future, when the State shall assume its true educational mission—will place a vast sum of wealth in the hands of the nation.

I am opposed to the Federal Government spending any money to sustain church schools ….

Although both Church and State are ordinances of God, yet they must not be commingled …. Accordingly we condemn the policy of those who would have the power of the State employed "in the interest of the Church" and who thus turn the Church into a secular dominion; as also of those who, aiming to govern the State by the Word of God, seek to turn the State into a Church.

Religion's voice has been taken away. It was taken away by Lyndon Johnson in the 1970s because of a dispute he had, I think, with the church. And this was his way of silencing the church.

Typical Christmas observances in schools tend towards indoctrination and degenerate into meaningless ritual; weaken the witness of the church when it surrenders its peculiar functions to any agency of the state; and puts the public school into competition with the church.

The 1950s felt so safe and smug, the '60s so raw and raucous, the revolutions stacked one on top of another, in race relations, gender roles, generational conflict, the clash of church and state - so many values and vanities tossed on the bonfire, and no one had a concordance to explain why it was all happening at once.

To hell with the Church when it becomes a State and the hell with the State when it becomes a Church.

Everyone should avoid familiarity or friendship with anyone suspected of belonging to masonry or to affiliated groups. Know them by their fruits and avoid them. Every familiarity should be avoided, not only with those impious libertines who openly promote the character of the sect, but also with those who hide under the mask of universal tolerance, respect for all religions, and the craving to reconcile the maxims of the Gospel with those of the revolution. These men seek to reconcile Christ and Belial, the Church of God and the state without God.