Cardinal Francis George Quotes

I expect to die in bed, my successor will die in prison and his successor will die a martyr in the public square. His successor will pick up the shards of a ruined society and slowly help rebuild civilization, as the church has done so often in human history

A healthy culture is open enough to respect other cultures without being destroyed by them.

In the parable of the Good Samaritan (Lk 10: 25-37), Jesus taught us that every stranger in need is our neighbor. Refugees as well as immigrants command the Church’s care.

It is everyone’s responsibility to help others overcome hunger, ill health or loneliness.

Miracles are eternity breaking into time and are evidence of God’s will for our salvation.

The church, if she is faithful to her Lord, will not only proclaim who he is but will act to become herself the womb, the matrix, in which a new world can gestate and be born.

The church has no corner, no monopoly on work for the poor and for the elimination of economic and political injustice. The work of charity is ecumenical and universal both in its scope and its workers.

Racism, whether personal, social, institutional or structural, contradicts the purpose of the incarnation of the Word of God in the womb of the Virgin Mary. Racism contradicts God’s will for our salvation.

Both the Church and the Eucharist have their source and receive their present vitality from the events celebrated in Holy Week: the Last Supper of Jesus with his apostles, his atoning passion and death on Good Friday and his bodily resurrection on Easter Sunday

The Second Vatican Council, much influenced by Newman’s thinking, spoke of the assent of the mind and will to Catholic doctrine, even if all dimensions of a doctrine are not understood. Without such assent, we try to meet God on our terms rather than His. This is futile at best and spiritually destructive at worst.

The danger of modern spirituality, even as exemplified in St. Therese of Lisieux, is that simplicity can slide into sentimentality, a subjective caricature of objective love. Without a sense of history and of God’s self-revelation in time as well as in one’s heart, without the social discipline of the liturgical year and of approved devotions, modern religion degenerates.

It is always amazing to me how anyone who holds the faith can ask what we “get out” of the Mass. What we “get out” is the risen Christ. What he does is explode our tiny ways and small minds to bring them into a dimension of existence that is sometimes resisted because it can be terrifying. The risen Christ is not a “nice man”; he is certainly not the sentimentalized Jesus who never makes demands that bring us beyond our very selves and turn the world inside out.

The purgation of all the effects of sin and our growth in personal holiness, may continue after death until we are ready to live with God forever. A justified soul in purgatory is something like a child playing in the back yard. Her mother calls her to say that she should wash her face and hands because her grandmother is at the front door. The child knows her grandmother loves her and will embrace her; but the child still has to wash up, has to be prepared for that embrace.

Many blacks, Hispanics, Asians and Native Americans are socialized and educated in institutions which devalue the presence of people of color and celebrate only the contributions of whites....Thus, people of color can come to see themselves...primarily through the eyes of that dominant culture....Seeing few men and women from their own culture or class in leadership roles, they begin to apply to themselves the negative stereotypes about their group that the dominant culture chooses to believe.

Almsgiving, fasting and prayer are all ways to empty ourselves, to create a space in our lives where God can do what he wants with us. When we give alms, we not only help the poor; we also create an empty space in our pocketbooks. With less money, we are less free to follow our own designs and more open to search for God’s will for us. When we fast, we create a space in our bodies, a void in our stomachs. Emptying ourselves physically leaves us more attuned to God Spiritually. When we pray, we empty our minds and hearts and give God time and space to fill us with his grace.

Analogies can easily be multiplied, if one wants to push a thesis; but the point is that the greatest threat to world peace and international justice is the nation state gone bad, claiming an absolute power, deciding questions and making ‘laws’ beyond its competence. Few there are, however, who would venture to ask if there might be a better way for humanity to organize itself for the sake of the common good. Few, that is, beyond a prophetic voice like that of Dorothy Day, speaking acerbically about ‘Holy Mother the State,’ or the ecclesiastical voice that calls the world, from generation to generation, to live at peace in the kingdom of God.

The Catholic Church also opposes any effort to make it easier to deport children; last week, the archbishop of Chicago, Cardinal Francis E. George, said he had offered facilities in his diocese to house some of the children, and on Monday, bishops in Dallas and Fort Worth called for lawyers to volunteer to represent the children at immigration proceedings. “We have to put our money where our mouth is in this country,” said Kevin Appleby, the director of migration policy for the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. “We tell other countries to protect human rights and accept refugees, but when we get a crisis on our border, we don’t know how to respond.” Republicans have rejected calls by Democrats for $2.7 billion in funds to respond to the crisis, demanding changes in immigration law to make it easier to send children back to Central America. And while President Obama says he is open to some changes, many Democrats have opposed them, and Congress is now deadlocked.

The Guardian’s Paul Vallely has given a decent account of how Cardinal George Pell, appointed by Francis, began a review of the bank’s operations. Pell had successfully overhauled the Church’s finances in Sydney and Melbourne. The Australian son of a former heavyweight boxer, Pell is a political and doctrinal conservative who speaks aggressively and does not believe in man-made climate change. He is a cult hero among conservative Catholics. You can imagine what the Lavender Mafia think of him. Vallely notes grudgingly that, “For all his conservatism, Pell had for years been a vocal critic of the Roman Catholic bureaucracy and its corruption.” Pell moved quickly, and made enemies. A straight dealer to the point of unbearable bluntness, especially in the delicately perfumed and gold-embroidered world of the Holy See, Pell probably didn’t anticipate getting tripped up by dirty tactics: in this case, stories leaked to the media about—you guessed it—clerical abuse. The press reports were coincidentally timed, arriving just as Pell’s reforms of the bank began to take hold. It was alleged that Pell was soft on child abuse, thanks to offhand comments he had made years before, in typically ribald and direct Australian fashion. It was suggested that he may himself have some questions to answer about covering up abuse. Then the allegations widened, to direct accusations of historic sex abuse, at which point Pell had to put his work at the bank on hold. Now Pell is back in Australia, trying to clear his name, and his reforms are stalling, just as the intriguers intended. This is how efforts to clean up the Roman Catholic Church usually end.

Jesus gave us the means to find our way back to his Father, whom he taught us to call our Father. Jesus, the new Adam, went to his death on the sixth day to recreate us by redeeming us from sin and Satan.

Through his preaching and healing, through the pattern of discipleship he called people to follow, through his bodily resurrection from the dead, the Lord Jesus literally embodies for us a new way of life, which conforms to the will and reign of God.

We meet God in the created, visible, tangible surroundings of the home, the neighborhood and the workplace. We encounter God in and through our spouse, children, brothers and sisters, the family next door, the shopkeeper on the corner, our teachers, the stranger on the street. In short, we meet God in and through people of every color, ethnic background, religion, class and gender. God is active in and through the people, places and circumstances that constitute our ordinary daily life.

A sign of our conversion to God’s ways, even as we fight to conquer an enemy, is our ability to love our enemies.

History has shown that it is always the dispossessed, those whose lives are easily overlooked, who are subjected to the worst abuses of scientific research.

When the government fails to protect the consciences of its citizens, it falls to religious bodies to defend them.

Only Jesus can give meaning to our lives.

Forgiveness comes in as a condition for being free.

God's job, in a sense, is to forgive. That's what he does again and again – he offers us mercy, he offers us forgiveness. The risen Christ gave that gift of forgiveness of sins to the apostles right away after his resurrection. God forgives our sins, in the Paschal mystery of Christ.

When the Church looks at people, they see persons with relationships, and therefore responsibilities, to others.

God is involved with us, whether we recognize it or not – because God is God.

If young people get caught early on in habits that enslave — drugs or sexual promiscuity or gangs — they’re never free. Christ died to make us free.

Those who gather at his cross and by his empty tomb, no matter their nationality, are on the right side of history.

God sustains the world, in good times and in bad. Catholics, along with many others, believe that only one person has overcome and rescued history: Jesus Christ, Son of God and Son of the Virgin Mary, savior of the world and head of his body, the church.

There is nothing “progressive” about sin, even when it is promoted as “enlightened.

The Gospel is a message of freedom, and the Catholic way of life trains people in habits that protect that freedom from slavery to various addictions, etc. My own conviction is that we must be completely clear about the Gospel and how it is to change us.

In the beginning was the Word...And in the end, God will be all in all. In between, in the meantime, we speak and write, encourage and admonish, pray and pass the time of day.

A disciple of Jesus Christ must share the gifts he or she has received. The church is formed in sharing the gifts of Christ. Sharing the spiritual gifts is called evangelizing. Sharing the material gifts is called stewardship. Both are necessary to the life of the authentic disciple of Jesus Christ.

The Mass is an act of worship which strengthens our hope of salvation in Jesus Christ by making his self-sacrifice on the cross sacramentally present. It is Christ we preach, crucified and risen from the dead.

Our good works are not just results and signs of our being justified but causes of our growth in holiness.

Our love can be no more partial than Jesus’ love for all those he died to save.

If our love is deep and broad enough, we will be pained by obstacles to unity and will work harder to overcome them.

What a spiritual and eternal engendering is and how it contrasts with a biological and temporal engendering is part of the mystery of the Godhead; but the eternal engendering is real and so is the name: Father. Because we are “in Christ”, and only to the extent we are “in Christ”, his Father really and not just metaphorically becomes our Father.

Jesus died with nothing at all and preached that the poor are blessed. He condemned those who have riches and are content that others remain poor.

The parish is an oasis of hope, the hospital a symbol of loving care, and both give flesh to the mission of the Church to preach the Gospel to the poor.

It is Christ who baptizes, who confirms, who offers himself in the Eucharist, who forgives sins in the sacrament of penance, who heals the sick, who unites a man and a woman in marriage, who ordains bishops, priests and deacons. My faith, which comes from the apostles, gives me absolute certitude about Jesus Christ and what he has done to save us and continues to do through the ages.

The Church organizes charitable assistance to help the poor because she wants no one to be left behind.

How different might our preparation for Christmas be if, along with our prayers of the season and our search for appropriate gifts for those we love, we added a visit to a place and a neighborhood where we would not at first feel completely at home. Then we would have to listen, and when we listen we can hear a call.

Jesus did not come back from the grave as a ghost. Nor was it a simple resuscitation of a corpse. Jesus reversed death.

Jesus rose bodily from the dead. His whole person is with God, but he is still in contact with the world, with each of us. Jesus is with the Father and the Holy Spirit, but he is constantly acting on us in the world. Free of all the bonds of space and time, the risen Jesus can be wherever he wants to be; and he wants to be with us.

Space and time limit our activity; but they are as subject to God as are we. God is the Lord of history, and the call to celebrate a Jubilee is a call to enter again into God’s space and time and to be set free by him. Jubilees send us on pilgrimage, because God makes space and places in it holy. Jubilees celebrate anniversaries, because God makes time holy.

That is the question for all believers — What will we tell God when he asks what we have done with his gifts?

We have to move forward together into a future that is not at all secure except for our certitude that God’s love is constant.

The world moving through time is also made up of space. Height, depth, breadth, the directions of the compass and of movement, distances both great and small are the dimensions of space in which the universe exists.

Unity is always a sign that the Holy Spirit is active; and the desire for full, visible unity among Christians is a sign that the Spirit is reminding us of Christ’s will for his people.

Unity means full communion, the mutual and visible sharing of all the gifts Christ gave his people.

Prayer and witness will eventually have their influence on people and on laws.

God is a Blessed Trinity; and all our prayers and our teaching and our lives begin and end in the name of God, who is Father, Son and Holy Spirit. It is Jesus, our Savior, who introduces us to his Father and makes it possible, because we are in him through baptism, to call his Father our Father.

The sanctification of space and time, first announced in the beginning of the book of Genesis, is seen in its completion in the final pages of the Apocalypse, the last book of the Bible. In the Apocalypse, the tree of life, the cross of Christ, sends forth living waters to sanctify the world in space; and the tree of life has twelve fruits, each produced for a month, to sanctify the world in time.

In Christ, we learn who we are and what is our destiny as human beings.

Christ is shepherd of his flock, the head and bridegroom of his Church; but Christ is also King of the Universe.

We discover where we are in our journey toward holiness in examining our conscience. Such an examination helps us to see us as God sees us.

Because Jesus has risen from the dead, he is not bound by the laws of space and time. He is perfectly free and can be anywhere he wants to be. He wants to be with us, and he gives himself to us under the form of bread and wine each time we receive him in Holy Communion.

For many today, life is short of hope. Some look for hope in all the wrong places, because the disciples of Jesus are not always effective in pointing to him, speaking of him, inviting others to come to know and love him in the Church.

In the past generation, opinion has shifted toward hope for the salvation of all; but how many of us have a short list of those we’d like to see in hell? This desire is not, it goes without saying, a sign of spiritual good health! We are to pray for our enemies, and our prayer should include a petition for their eternal salvation.

Service to the poor, if it is selfless, sets free both the poor who are served and their servants.

Modern” prayer becomes, instead, a form of inviting God to cooperate with us in the task of re-making the world according to values we recognize as important. We don’t ask; we express our dreams to God and count him lucky to hear them.

Love, even of enemies, patience, humility, surrender to God, gratitude—all these are Gospel virtues.

Finally, only love is enough and, as St. Francis wrote seven centuries ago, a loving heart creates a courteous person, a civil man or woman.

The development of devotion to the Lord in his Eucharistic presence is not a “falling away” from some imagined pristine purity; it is evidence of a greater appreciation of who the Eucharist is.

The Eucharist is a mystery of faith; to dismiss Eucharistic adoration is to weaken the faith.

We receive our very self back as a gift once we are strong and free enough to give our self to another.

A critique is not always a rejection.

Our understanding of the Gospel can develop from within and from circumstances; it can not simply be subject, however, to external political pressures. When that has happened, the Church has betrayed her Lord.

People who suffer have much to teach everyone.

The Church is a source of hope and not a burden.

Without tolerance of differences, society becomes brittle and violent, interest groups become enclaves and people are trapped in worlds limited to their own prejudices.

The Church, in the name of Christ, tells us to love others and enjoy our cultural and racial and personal differences as gifts. Unity in society is possible when differences are recognized as gifts to be shared.

Seeing Christ himself in the vision of faith, we recognize our Lord, the head of the Church, which has a mission as universal as the love of God and the salvific action of Christ.

We speak of whom we love; we cannot not speak of Jesus Christ. Not to know Him is the greatest poverty; not to serve Him is to be less than free. The Gospel can never be imposed; but the Gospel demands to be presented and offered.

Only in God’s action can past tragedy and present violence issue into a future peace.

God makes us holy in our different roles and responsibilities.

In the warmth of the mother’s smile, the child learns trust in God, the giver of all gifts, and in other people. Women form the human race as something more than a merely human project. When what is particular to them is demeaned, threatened and suppressed, humanity itself is in danger.

If God is inside our nature and our history, he can take over our lives. What is an opportunity for believers—finding freedom in surrendering our lives and our selves to God—is overwhelming and demeaning for others. And it is true that to invite Jesus into one’s life is to be changed. Christ breaks down our defenses, including the habits of ordinary life.

To bless is to bring God’s grace into every dimension of creation.

All of God’s work is a blessing, and when the Church blesses she does so because, through Christ, she is the instrument God uses to make the world holy.

Marriage in the Church changes all of us who are believers. This is why marriage, along with the sacrament of Holy Orders, is called a social sacrament. It changes everyone’s life, not just the lives of those who enter into a particular marriage covenant. Everyone therefore has a stake in the success of a marriage.

The Psalms are tremendously important as prayers. They express so many sentiments that are always part of one's relationship to God, even though they are 3,000 years old.

The Eucharist is the most priceless gift we have received from the Lord, his very own Body and Blood. Its celebration is our highest, most perfect, from of worship of God. It should be manipulated by no one, for any purpose.

Along with the faithful who participate in the Eucharist, the world itself is changed each time the Mass is celebrated.

Because Catholics emphasize the universality of God and his call to holiness for all peoples, the notion of universalism overrides that of nationalism in Catholic theology.

In the depths of despair, St. Jude moves in and shows the face of Jesus.

The saints have always pointed us to Jesus. Some people experience the mercy of God through the context of their devotion to the saints.

Religious freedom cannot be reduced to freedom of worship, nor even freedom of private conscience. Religious freedom means that religious groups, as well as religious individuals, have a right to exercise their influence in the public square, and that any attempt to reduce that fuller sense of religious freedom, which has been part of our history in this country for more than two centuries, to a private reality of worship and individual conscience, as long as you don’t make anybody else unhappy, is not in our tradition. It was the tradition of the Soviet Union, where Lenin permitted freedom of worship to be placed into the constitution … but not freedom of religion.

The question of freedom lies at the heart of modern society’s deepest conflicts, because it always lies at the heart of who we are as creatures made in the image and likeness of a God who loves us freely.

We can’t depend on institutions to carry the Church. Institutions can become weakened or disappear. But we can always have strong people.

We work with people who are different in language, race, culture and economic development, but, even with different expressions, we have the same faith. To be missionary is to recognize that—if you’re Catholic—the horizon is universal.

Every place is missionary.

Jesus' properly ordered human freedom is not a block to the divine freedom but an icon of it.

Father, Son and Holy Spirit are one God. Each Person of the Blessed Trinity is totally given to the others. Their “sharing” is perfect. The presence of one divine Person means the presence of all three in our lives. Each is God, yet there is only one God, because each Person is perfectly and simply a relation to the other two. God is perfect self-giving, perfect generosity.

Like and in God the Father, the bishop as life giver is the locus of authority in his local Church. Like and in God the Son, the bishop as servant gathers the baptized into Eucharistic assembly and sends them on mission to transform the world. Like and in God the Holy Spirit, the bishop unites, encourages challenges, comforts and strengthens the people confided to his pastoral care.

We are related to God, who is Creator and Savior and Sanctifier, and then related to everyone God loves; so we must see others, in some sense, as brothers and sisters, as members of the one human family, no matter what other differences there might be.