Pastoral Resources

The traditional Christian attitude toward human personality was that human nature was essentially good and that it was formed and modified by social pressures and training.

The failure of Christianity in the areas west from Sicily was even greater, and was increased by the spread of Arab outlooks and influence to that area, and especially to Spain.

Science is Christian, not when it condemns itself to the letter of things, but when, in the infinitely little, it discovers as many mysteries and as much depth and power as in the infinitely great.

The medieval Church believed that the resurrection of Christ marked a new time for all of humanity.

The next challenge for Christianity is to remind Europeans that we are called to seek the truth.

To be frank, I suspect that today there is little respect for Christianity as source of moral teaching about goodness.

Clearly a big challenge for Christianity is how to remain in contact with the millions of people who look for God but do not come to Church.

At the centre of Christianity is community; we are gathered by the Lord around the altar.

I believe that my own Christian faith does indeed make universal claims.

Indeed if we Christians so tell our story that Judaism is silenced, then we have not spoken rightly of Christ.

What Christ gives us is quite explicit if his own words are interpreted according to their Aramaic meaning. The expression 'This is my Body' means this is myself.

The Christian of the future will be a mystic or he will not exist at all.

A tendency could not but arise to reconcile with Christian profession a good many modes of life, enjoyments, occupations, social actions and customs, from which the first Christians had recoiled.

For the standard of Christian life was to be strained to a higher pitch; more fasting was required, and more careful separation from the manners and enjoyments of the world; celibacy and martyrdom had great value set upon them, and second marriages were prohibited.

Of course the case of the Christian Church planted among the nations must differ, in various ways, from that of any sect forming in connection with religious awakening in a territory of professing Christianity.

The real 'action' in the liturgy in which we are all supposed to participate is the action of God himself. This is what is new and distinctive about the Christian liturgy: God himself acts and does what is essential.

Our Christian conviction is that Christ is also the messiah of Israel. Certainly it is in the hands of God how and when the unification of Jews and Christians into the people of God will take place.

The Christian faith can never be separated from the soil of sacred events, from the choice made by God, who wanted to speak to us, to become man, to die and rise again, in a particular place and at a particular time.

Christianity is in its nature revolutionary.

We may be sure that out of the ruins of our capitalist civilization a new religion will emerge, just as Christianity emerged from the ruins of the Roman civilization.