Pope Benedict XVI Quotes
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In the 20th century, in the darkest period of German and European history, an insane racist ideology, born of neopaganism, gave rise to the attempt, planned and systematically carried out by the regime, to exterminate European Jews. The result has passed into history as the Shoah.
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Christianity is not a highly complicated collection of so many dogmas that it is impossible for anyone to know them all; it is not something exclusively for academicians who can study these things, but it is something simple: God exists and God is close in Jesus Christ.
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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.
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Christ offers more! Indeed he offers everything! Only he who is the Truth can be the Way and hence also the Life.
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When the danger is great, one must not run away.
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Germany has an established and well-furnished Catholicism, often with employed Catholics who handle the church like a labor union. For them, the church is simply the employer.
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Although the particular inclination of the homosexual person is not a sin, it is more or less strong tendency ordered to an intrinsic moral evil, and thus the inclination itself must be seen as an objective disorder.
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While we rejoice in the new possibilities open to humanity, we also see the dangers arising from these possibilities, and we must ask ourselves how we can overcome them.
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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.
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As the source of our new life in Christ, the Holy Spirit is also, in a very real way, the soul of the Church, the love that binds us to the Lord and to one another, and the light that opens our eyes to see all around us the wonders of God's grace.
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Attempts to construct an ethic from the rules of evolution, or from psychology and sociology, end up being simply inadequate.
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The abuse of faith has to be resisted precisely.
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I wrote the text of the resignation. I cannot say with precision when, but at the most two weeks before. I wrote it in Latin because something so important you do in Latin. Furthermore, Latin is a language in which I know well how to write in a more appropriate way.
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We pray that the Lord may help us to produce His light in ourselves, even in dark days, so that we might be light for others, illuminating the world and life in this world.
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The atheist believes a world marked by so much injustice, innocent suffering, and cynicism of power cannot be the work of a good God.
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To me, it really seems visible today that ethics is not something exterior to the economy, which, as technical matter, could function on its own; rather, ethics is an interior principle of the economy itself, which cannot function if it does not take account of the human values of solidarity and reciprocal responsibility.
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The counterweight to the dominion of evil can consist in the first place only in the divine-human love of Jesus Christ that is always greater than any possible power of evil.
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Pray for me, that I may not flee for fear of the wolves.
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It is true that the Muslim world is not totally mistaken when it reproaches the West of Christian tradition of moral decadence and the manipulation of human life. … Islam has also had moments of great splendor and decadence in the course of its history.
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Both need each other: The agnostic cannot be content to not know, but must be in search of the great truth of faith; the Catholic cannot be content to have faith, but must be in search of God all the time, and in the dialogue with others, a Catholic can learn more about God in a deeper fashion.
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All the great works of art, the cathedrals - the Gothic cathedrals and the splendid Baroque churches - are a luminous sign of God, and thus are truly a manifestation, an epiphany of God.
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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.
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Each generation, as it seeks to advance the common good, must ask anew: 'What are the requirements that governments may reasonably impose upon citizens, and how far do they extend? By appeal to what authority can moral dilemmas be resolved?'
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An important function of theology is to keep religion tied to reason and reason to religion. Both roles are of essential importance for humanity.