Quotes from Eugene Kennedy

Most ecclesiastical relics are fixed in time at the moment of their manufacture. That is why they are offered for veneration in casings that resemble pocket watches. They have lost their claim to mystery because they are so clearly the products of time.

Hierarchical formulations died because their wedding cake levels posited a multiply fractured cosmos that does not match the Space Age revelation of a unified universe in which the earth is clearly in, rather than separated from, the heavens. Hierarchical representations do not reflect what either the world or we are like.

The object of religion is the imagination, that deep and inexhaustible font of our understanding and symbolizing our deepest possibilities.

The seminary of the future must relate itself to flesh-and-blood men, or it provides a framework that only talks about the people of God but never really shares life with them.

Can you enjoy those moments of life that are utterly simple.

Friendship is something whose depth fits human aspirations and fulfills human possibilities. It has heft to it, as a gold-piece does and a gambling chip does not.

Bishops may often feel but cannot express the sting and throb of submitting themselves to Roman commands because the latter are always presented as tests of their loyalty to the Pope and of their absolute acceptance of his teaching authority, or Magisterium.

9/11 allowed us to witness the ordinary face of goodness in the love that those about to die brought with them to work that day. It is fitting that we refer to a large segment of the church year as Ordinary Time because it describes the look of the true faith that, as we read of the Kingdom, is spread about us.

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.

Pope Francis has aimed a blow at what the whole hierarchical system is built on: a graded system with the higher clergy in the skyboxes, the devoted religious in festival seating, as they say of the crowds at rock concerts, and, on the bottom, the laity in standing room only.

We not only romanticize the future; we have also made it into a growth industry, a parlor game and a disaster movie all at the same time.

Wherever you find 'men together' - writing the rules, as at exclusive golf or other men's clubs, businesses, and lodges where they wear elaborate robes and funny hats - women are kept completely outside if possible and, when grudgingly admitted, to highly restricted areas or token status.

Our human experience, like the World War II Ultra code-breaking machine, catches the heavy traffic of messages about what we really do and what is done to us every day.

Is childhood ever long enough, or a happy time, or even a beautiful summer day? All of these carry the seeds of the same fierce mystery that we call death.

This is the homely heart of Incarnation, this meeting of God in man with men and women, this simple face of divine graciousness in ordinary life rather than in the hymns of church fathers or in the dry elaborations of theologians.

The real test of friendship is: Can you literally do nothing with the other person? Can you enjoy together those moments of life that are utterly simple? They are the moments people look back on at the end of life and number as their most sacred experiences.

Countless human beings wear masks which they hope will cover up what they dislike about themselves.

Mercy is a source of life because we breathe our own spirits through it into the lives of others.

To be human is nothing less than to be caught in the great congested pilgrimage of existence and to join ourselves freely to it in the face of the evidence of its never-ending troubles.

John (the Baptist) stands as prophets do to this very day, as an unyielding presence unsettling us and leaving us not quite sure of how we feel about him. ... And yet John seems hard to know, hard to like even though we stand back in admiration of him. We react the same way to most absolute figured.

re: Matthew 4) " 'Give in for now': what a strange thing for Jesus to say to a steadfast and protesting prophet; and yet what a comforting thing for those of us who cannot live in fiercely absolute ways. ... Jesus the Lord enters our life as it is and calls us not away but more deeply into it.

re: Matthew 7:21 - "Knowing the correct password - saying 'Master, Master', for instance - isn't going to get you anywhere with Me. What's required is serious obedience doing what my Father wills.") "This is a passage for all those who understand, as Jesus has said, that belief in Him is proved in ordinary life rather than in extraordinary practices, and that the good Shepherd whose simple garb matches his mission, stands at the center of the true Kingdom.

re: Matthew 8) "[Jesus'] almost refusal to allow the complications of men to interfere with the loving work of God." [for the leper} "...this is not a media event, it is a personal experience...he is in effect, to minimize the wonder by returning to the ordinary rituals." "One wonders still at the cleanness of the incident...God's spirit hovers now as it always has over simpler scenes; He is found directly more often in truthful human exchanges than in convoluted efforts to escape humanity.

Benedict's spending down his energy was a function of his fighting against the Space/Information Age's relentless pressure on the concept of hierarchy, the restoration of which he had, following John Paul II, made a central part of the program that has come to be known as the reform of the reform.