Quotes About Clergy

Yet, although many priests were extremely poor, the Church as an institution was not only very rich but also powerful. It paid no taxes, voluntarily contributing instead a grant to the state every five years, and, as the amount of this grant was decided in the quinquennial Church Assemblies, the clergy were able to exercise a considerable influence over the policies of the Government.

Every single step toward the clarification of this argument has been opposed root and branch by the clergy.

I say there is no modern evil which cannot be justified by these ancient texts; and there is nowhere in Christendom a clergy which cannot be persuaded to cite them at the demand of ruling classes.

In every village there is a candle, the teacher; and an extinguisher, the clergy.

Chapter1 M. Myriel

The Puritans are conventionally considered more "moderate" than the Pilgrims. This is like calling al-Qaeda more moderate than ISIS. The Massachusetts Bay Colony Puritans were no less mad... They forbade Church of England clergy from setting foot in their new American theocracy in Boston and Salem, hung Quakers, and passed a law to hang any Catholic priests who might dare show up.

Pray we for the Clergy; that they may rightly divide, that they may rightly walk; that while they teach others, themselves may learn.

I have lost my pains, which meseemed I had right well bestowed, thinking to have converted this man; for that, an he go to the court of Rome and see the lewd and wicked life of the clergy, not only will he never become a Christian, but, were he already a Christian, he would infallibly turn Jew again.

Among our own people also the church sorely needs clergy in close touch with the ordinary life of the laity, living the life of ordinary men, sharing their difficulties and understanding their trials by close personal experience.

Clergymen and people who use phrases without wisdom sometimes talk of suffering as a mystery. It is really a revelation.

My views on wealth redistribution were shaped largely by knowledge elites who earned their living by words and ideas--professors, writers, and movement leaders. Like most of the broadminded clergy I knew, I reasoned out of modern naturalistic premises, employing biblical narratives narrowly and selectively as I found them useful politically. The saving Grace of God on the cross was not in my mix of life changing ideas.

Since much of American taxes prior to 1763 went to support the local clergy, one humorist suggested the opportunity to vote on that. If the minister was turned out, he could open a tavern and preach to his customers if he served them liquor.

The Germans in this multicultural border region were mainly members of the upper class: teachers, lawyers, factory owners, and clergy. My father's family (architect and brickyard owner) was well-to-do until the political upheavals resulting from World War I occurred (collapse of the old Austrian Habsburg

The clergy spoke with the moral force of religion. The American Baptist Convention's tradition encouraged individual freedoms in theology, church practice and morality. In an article on abortion that he wrote in 1967, Howard Moody stated: "It is a violation of every Protestant ethical stance to support with civil law any matter of personal morality….

An ounce of mother is worth a pound of clergy.

Not that she took to the usual ministrations that followed her husband's death. When a cleric suggested to Victoria that "Henceforth you must remember that Christ Himself will be your husband," the queen declared, "This is what I call twaddle!"73

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.

Someone who's asking questions of the clergy, that he doesn't have the answers to, I think that's a universal predicament.

Issues like immigration, police brutality, and other onerous laws put in place by local and state governments are prime avenues for active clergy to work with their parishioners on the issues that affect their daily lives.

Broadcast radio was entering its own golden age during the Depression, with live programming on stations all through the day. Local stations needed singers, musicians, announcers, and whipcord personalities, along with Christian clergy to give prayers and pundits to speak on world affairs.

The Scriptures were in the hands of the clergy only, and they had every opportunity to insert whatsoever they pleased; thus we find them full of interpolations. Johann Solomo Semler, one of the most influential theologians of the eighteenth century, speaking of this, says: "The Christian doctors never brought their sacred books before the common people; although people in general have been wont to think otherwise; during the first ages, they were in the hands of the clergy only." [463:2]

Catholicism has the clerical equivalent to a nut allergy - even a small exposure to change, and the whole thing will go into anaphylactic shock.

It's funny to hear priests and nuns argue with each other.

If all Church power vests in the clergy, then the people are practically bound to passive obedience in all matters of faith and practice for all right of private judgment is then denied.