Church Crisis Quotes

It's very difficult to determine whether this is the fault of the world that has abandoned the Church, or the Church that does not know how to relate to the world.

The world is perishing for lack of the knowledge of God and the Church is famishing for want of His Presence.

I find it inconceivable that we're meeting for five and a half days, and there isn't one moment on the agenda to deal with the greatest crisis we've ever had in the church since 1789.

You know how the church has been hit so hard by the sexual misconduct by clergy, and what's that's done to Catholics, especially here in Boston but elsewhere as well.

The priesthood is not dying, but the clerical state is dead. It needs to be buried, preferably with a Viking funeral in Boston Harbor so nobody can miss the spectacle of its passing.

Certainly the institutional church is ill. It's hemorrhaging young people at an astronomical rate.

We have to find a new balance; otherwise even the moral edifice of the church is likely to fall like a house of cards, losing the freshness and fragrance of the Gospel.

After the apostolic seat was made vacant by the death of our lord pope Gregory XI, who died in March, we assembled in conclave for the election of a pope, as is the law and custom, in the papal palace, in which Gregory had died.... Officials of the city with a great multitude the people, for the most part armed and called together for this purpose by the ringing of bells, surrounded the palace in a threatening manner and even entered it and almost filled it. To the terror caused by their presence they added threats that unless we should at once elect a Roman or an Italian they would kill us. They gave us no time to deliberate but compelled us unwillingly, through violence and fear, to elect an Italian without delay. In order to escape - danger which threatened us from such a mob, we elected Bartholomew, archbishop of Bari [Urban VI], thinking that he would have enough conscience not to accept the election, since every one knew that it was made under such wicked threats. But he was unmindful of his own salvation and burning with ambition, and so, to the great scandal of the clergy and of the Christian people, and contrary to the laws of the church, he accepted this election which was offered him, '

Church growth strategies are the death gurgle of a church that has lost its way.