Quotes About Church

The Church never endorsed the notion of the divine right of kings. That was first proclaimed by James I of England (1566–1625), a Protestant after whom the King James Version of the Bible is named. Instead, the Catholic Church always asserted that its authority was greater than that of monarchs.

half of Americans belonged, and today about 70 per cent are affiliated with a local church.

Nevertheless, this too is a myth. The Catholic Church actually thrives on Protestant competition and is far more successful and effective when forced to confront it.

The need for loans often was so great and so widespread that Italian banks opened branches all across the Continent. Although many bishops, monastic orders and even the Roman hierarchy ignored the ban on usury, opposition to interest lingered. As late as the Second Lateran Council in 1139, the Church 'declared the unrepentant usurer condemned by the Old and New Testaments alike and, therefore, unworthy of ecclesiastical consolations and Christian burial'.

Subsequent revolutions have in like manner regarded the Church as Public Enemy number 1, precisely because it creates a realm of value and authority outside the reach of the state. It

because there was no place where I felt more at home in a public assembly than in this old church

The only thing removed by Rockefeller were the worn carpets, which he donated to the needy through a local church.

However, twelve former Sea Org members told me that Miscavige had assaulted them; twenty-one have told me or testified in court that they have witnessed one or more assaults on other church staff members by their leader.

The church claims that the document is a forgery.

Scientologists are trained to believe that whatever happens to them is somehow their fault, so much of the discussion in the Hole centered on what they had done to deserve this fate. The possibility that the leader of the church might be irrational or even insane was so taboo that no one could even think it, much less voice it aloud.

Every day people are straying away from the church and going back to God.

People are leaving the church and going back to God.

Almost everything that Jesus taught, all His ideas, had been set down before in the Old Testament. Then came the largest riddle of all. If Jesus were to return to the earth she was certain He would go to a synagogue rather than a church. Why could people worship Jesus and hate His people?

a bishop should not be condemned except with seventy-two witnesses… a cardinal priest should not be condemned except with forty-four witnesses, a cardinal deacon of the city of Rome without thirty-six witnesses, a subdeacon, acolyte, exorcist, lector, or doorkeeper except with seven witnesses.

Most men, however, do not consider such issues in explicit terms. They absorb their ideas—implicitly, eclectically, and with many contradictions—from the cultural atmosphere around them, building into their souls without identifying it the various ideological vibrations emanating from school and church and arts and media and mores.

The church needs to be so clear about its identity as the body of Christ that everything it does generates a gravitational pull toward the heart.

The church doesn't lose its kids when they go to college. We start losing them in middle school. We lose children in the church when we send them out of worship to children's church or Sunday school. This is one reason why Jesus kept insisting, "Let the little children come to me."[222

It is more important that our churches have tables that are relationally correct than liturgically correct. Rules aren't "truth"; we don't follow out of slavish obedience to something absolute. We follow preestablished rules because we want to signal our love of community….

When I was a kid, the county in which I lived was dry. That is, you had to buy your booze from a bootlegger in order to keep the church people happy.

I can't stay long. I told my mother I was attending an evening Mass with Henry and Evie at St. Patrick's Cathedral. Henry put a hand to his chest in faux shock. You used the Lord to lie to them? I'll just stand over here in case you're struck by lightning.

Well, you've done it now, was her sisterly opening shot. Jaine rubbed between her eyebrows; a definite headache was forming. After the exchange with David, she waited to see where this one was going. I won't be able to hold up my head in church. Really? Oh, Shelley, I'm so sorry, Jaine said sweetly. I didn't realize you have the dreaded Limp Neck disease. When were you diagnosed?

The position that God promised the church is to influence the society. We are to govern the attitude and the conduct and the motivation of the human race.

The biggest cause of society's change today is that people no longer believe in orthodox religion. They go to church, but they no longer believe in God.

Churches are having a limited impact on society because they fail to understand that the goal of the church is not the church itself but the kingdom.