Clergy Role Quotes

That none be permitted to preach, or interpret the Scriptures, unless he be a priest, or deacon at the least, admitted thereunto according to the laws of this realm

A married vicar is likely to regard his vocation as a job - a tough and ill-paid one, to be sure - but a priest is seen as a pillar of the community, answerable only to his parishioners and his God, rather than to a wife and children.

Priests, Bishops, and Popes … are neither different from other Christians nor superior to them.

I think I used to not know if I could be a good pastor because I think I had some things in mind that I thought were part of being a pastor that don't necessarily have to be.

Never was there a more injurous mistake than to say it was thebusiness only of the clergy to care for souls.

The clergy are ready and willing to marry anybody and everybody, age to youth, vice to virtue, and no questions asked, as a certain class of advertisements put it. Yet the clergy set their faces most sternly against divorce. To protest against such discordant unions as they again and again ratify would be an interference with the liberty of the subject. But to oppose anything that facilitates divorce is a most serious interference with the liberty of the subject.

The office of presbyters is a permanent one.

The world looks to the priest, because it looks to Jesus! No one can see Christ; but everyone sees the priest, and through him they wish to catch a glimpse of the Lord! Immense is the grandeur of the Lord! Immense is the grandeur and dignity of the priest!

[On the Vietnam War:] I leave all morality up to you clergymen.

Surely our clergy need not be surprised at the daily increasing distrust in the public mind of the efficacy of prayer.

The Church of Christ is constituted in two orders, the clergy and the people, the one having the care of the Church that all may be ruled for the salvation of souls; the other contains kings, princes, and nobles who have to carry on secular government that all things may lead to the peace and unity of the Church.

The clergy is in the same business as actors, just a different department.

It will, I believe, be everywhere found, that as the clergy are, or are not what they ought to be, so are the rest of the nation.

The people of God want pastors, not clergy acting like bureaucrats or government officials.

A doctor’s door should never be closed, a priest's door should always be open.

Parsons are soules waggoners.

Rulers who wished to subvert the public liberty, may have found an established Clergy convenient auxiliaries. A just Government instituted to secure & perpetuate it needs them not.

It does not befit a bishop or a presbyter to go into the affairs of the people's government, but to be always engaged in the affairs of the Church

When I started out, people were afraid of parish priests. Now they're afraid of newspaper editors.

And a third thing is the understanding of the Church as a community, a communion which is just a hierarchy but the people of God, whose servants are the priests and bishops.

I think a bishop who doesn't give offence to anyone is probably not a good bishop.

What is the function that a clergyman performs in the world? Answer: He gets his living by assuring idiots that he can save them from an imaginary hell.

The pulpit is a clergyman's parade; the parish is his field of active service.

If you need help, look to clergy who do not spout their own beliefs but direct you in sincerity by using the Bible.

It is the business of a virtuous clergyman to censure vice in every appearance of it.