Quotes About Clergy

worshipped was that of Mammon. It is difficult to estimate the size of monastic occupation. At the time it was believed that the clergy owned one third of the land, but it may be safe to presume that the monks controlled one sixth of English territory.

In 1076 he decreed that none of the English clergy would be allowed to marry.

A bumper of good liquor will end a contest quicker than justice, judge, or vicar.

The clergymen call us sinners, conceived and born in sin. Bah! What confounded nonsense that is. Is it a sin to love, to feel the need for love, not to be able to live without love? I consider a life without love a sinful and immoral state.

Nothing can be more contrary to religion and the clergy than reason and common sense.

There is little question Islamist terrorists and molesting clergy have both played a role in the rise of atheism in our time. No atheist activist is nearly as effective in alienating people from God and religion as are evil 'religious' people.

There was a third brother who became a curate, but I don't know much about him…

It is difficult to imagine Fanny [Price] engaged with poultry, or supervising apple-picking... her role as [as a clergyman's wife] suggested by Jane Austen was to be a gently moralizing one. She would strengthen Edmund's moral purposes and supply the shrewd assessment of the people around him which he clearly lacked.

And so, as often happens when men of God disagree, a war erupted.

Therefore I come to the inevitable conclusion that it is now that we must give the most decisive and merciless battle to the obscurantist clergy and crush its resistance with such cruelty that they won't forget it for several decades.17 On only one point was Lenin sensitive: he feared an anti-Semitic backlash if Jews were seen to be running this "pogrom in reverse" against Russian Christians, so an ethnic Russian had to be nominally in charge of crushing the Church.

Ought not a Minister to have, First, a good understanding, a clear apprehension, a sound judgment, and a capacity of reasoning with some closeness. . . . Is not some acquaintance with what has been termed the second part of logic, (metaphysics), if not so necessary as [logic itself], yet highly expedient? Should not a Minister be acquainted with at least the general grounds of natural philosophy? JOHN WESLEY, ADDRESS TO THE CLERGY

The Clergy is the greatest hindrance to faith.

The universities only ought to turn out men who are experts in the Holy Scriptures, men who can become bishops and priests, and stand in the front line against heretics, the devil, and all the world. But where do you find that?

A measure more generally adopted by the clergy was the Truce of God, by which bishops forbade fighting in their dioceses over the week-end and on a number of church holidays.

another cogent reason for prohibiting clerical marriage. Married priests were too liable to transmit to their sons their ecclesiastical offices and the church property under their care.

If unity lies in the Apostolical succession, an act of schism is from the nature of the case impossible; for as no one can reverse his parentage, so no Church can undo the fact that its clergy have come by lineal descent from the Apostles. Either there is no such sin as schism, or unity does not lie in the Episcopal form or in the Episcopal ordination.

The bullet that has hit us Muslims today left the gun centuries ago when we let the clergy decide that knowledge and education were not important.

If you want to lose your faith, make friends with a priest.

The Clergy is the greatest hindrance to faith.

Second, because of their ignorance, some refused to believe a child who tried to tell them about the abuse. Indeed, in some circumstances, the abused child was beaten by a parent for having the nerve to suggest their beloved clergy would do something so heinous, so abuse piled on top of abuse.

The abuses by individual clergy in religious organizations are evil; the persistent cover ups by religious organizations, which empowered clergy pedophiles to get ever more victims, is worse; but the Roman Catholic hierarchy's lobbying against access to justice for all child sex abuse victims is about as cynical as it gets.

For example, it is commonplace for the states to impose mandatory reporting requirements on professionals who have regular contact with children and suspect abuse. An obvious category would be clergy. The Catholic Church's bishops, however, invested in lobbying to obtain exemptions for clergy so that they would not have to report child abuse (knowing as it did that many of its priests were in fact abusing children).

The Vatican even today, under the popular Pope Francis, continues to prevaricate as it says that bishops should report abuse…if the law requires it. This year, the Italian bishops disclosed that they will not report clergy abuse to the authorities, because Italy does not require it. The Vatican knows full well that the law often does not require clergy to report, because its own bishops lobby to ensure it doesn't!

You must believe in God in spite of what the clergy say.