Cardinal Heaven Quotes

In our materialistic civilization, man thinks almost exclusively of his own narrow interests. He sees God as the one who ought to provide him with what consumption does not give him. God is utilized to satisfy selfish demands. If he does not answer prayer, they abandon him. Some even go so far as to blaspheme his holy name. The religion that ought to connect heaven and earth then runs the risk of becoming a purely narcissistic space.

A Pope usually worked fourteen-hour days, seven days a week, and died of exhaustion in an average of 6.3 years. The inside joke was that accepting the papacy was a cardinal's 'fastest route to heaven.

He said to the cardinal, "I'm a peasant, not instructed in the ways of heaven. But I have never broken my word. And you, a Cardinal of the Catholic Church, with all your holy garments and crosses of Jesus, lied to me like a heathen Moor. Your sacred office alone will not save your life.

Look, Father, I don't think you're being straight with me. I want to join your Church and I'm going to join your Church, but you're holding too much back. I've had a long talk with a Catholic-a very pious, well-educated one, and I've learned a thing or two. For instance, that you have to sleep with your feet pointing East because that's the direction of heaven, and if you die in the night you can walk there. Now I'll sleep with my feet pointing any way that suits Julia, but d'you expect a grown man to believe about walking to heaven? And what about the Pope who made one of his horses a Cardinal? And what about the box you keep in the church porch, and if you put in a pound note with someone's name on it, they get sent to hell. I don't say there mayn't be a good reason for all this, but you ought to tell me about it and not let me find out for myself.

But, to affirm that the Sun is really fixed in the center of the heavens and the Earth revolves very swiftly around the Sun is a dangerous thing, not only irritating theologians and philosophers, but injuring our holy faith and making the sacred scripture false. Freedom of belief is pernicious, It is nothing but the freedom to be wrong.

To assure someone that if enough nuns sing enough Masses then her dead child will go to heaven is trickery as low as passing a false coin as good. To buy a pardon from the pope, to force the pope to annul a marriage, to make him set aside kinship laws, to watch as he fleeces his cardinals, who charge the bishops, who rent to the priests, who seek their tithes from the poor – all these abuses would have to fall away if we agreed that a soul can come to God without any intervention. The crucifixion is the work of God. The church is the work of man.

I am not mad: I would to heaven I were! For then, 'tis like I should forget myself: O, if I could, what grief should I forget! Preach some philosophy to make me mad, And thou shalt be canonized, cardinal;

There is no period in history when it would have been better to be alive than today. People who fantasise about a romantic past imagine themselves living in Pharaoh’s court, Caesar’s palace, Plato’s athenaeum, a medieval knight’s manor, a king’s castle, a queen’s château, an emperor’s citadel, a cardinal’s cathedral. But the cold, hard reality is that 99.99 per cent of all the people who ever lived existed in what we would today consider squalid poverty.

I asked the earth and it answered, “I am not He”; and all things that are in the earth made the same confession. I asked the sea and the deeps and the creeping things, and they answered, “We are not your God, seek higher.” I asked the winds that blow, and the whole air with all that is in it answered, “Anaximenes was wrong; I am not God.” I asked the heavens, the sun, the moon, the stars, and they answered, “Neither are we God whom you seek.” And I said to all the things that throng about the gateways of the senses: “Tell me of my God, since you are not He. Tell me something of Him.” And they cried out in a great voice: “He made us.” My question was my gazing upon them, and their answer was their beauty. Man is a silent, incarnate word of God. The moon, the stars, the sun, the sea, the firmament are the visible proof of the existence and omnipotence of God, who created them out of sheer love. These creatures are the powerful, mysterious voice of God.

The Cardinal was bent over his writing desk, the room unchanged save for the light of what appeared a small antique oil lamp. And there were illuminated letters in the book before him, tiny figures fitted into the capitals, the whole gleaming as he let his hand, quivering, turn the page. "Ah, think of it," he said, smiling as he saw Tonio, "written language the possession of those who took such pains to preserve it. I am forever entranced with the forms in which knowledge is given us, not by nature, but by our fellow man.

In 1616, a pope and a cardinal inquisitor reprimanded Galileo, warning him to curtail his forays into the supernal realms. The motions of the heavenly bodies, they said, having been touched upon in the Psalms, the Book of Joshua, and elsewhere in the Bible, were matters best left to the Holy Fathers of the Church.

The reader will now be prepared to understand how it is that the Pope's Grand Council of State, which assists him in the government of the Church, comes to be called the College of Cardinals. The term Cardinal is derived from Cardo, a hinge. Janus, whose key the Pope bears, was the god of doors and hinges, and was called Patulcius, and Culsius "the opener and the shutter." This had a blasphemous meaning, for he was worshipped at Rome as the grand mediator. Whatever important business was in hand, whatever deity was to be invoked, an invocation first of all must be addressed to Janus, who was recognised as the "God of gods," in whose mysterious divinity the characters of father and son were combined, and without that no prayer could be heard-the "door of heaven" could not be opened.

There are Christians whose three cardinal doctrines are (1) once saved always saved; (2) perfection on earth is impossible; (3) my future sins are already forgiven. These are less of a doctrinal system and more of a plan for excusing carnality. This kind of Christianity is matched by its evil opposite, which holds three truths to be scripturally evident above all else: (1) faith without works is dead; (2) nobody goes to heaven without true holiness; (3) we have free will. These are less of a doctrinal system and more of a declaration of intent to pursue righteousness by works. Any of these propositions might underwrite a healthy life of faith if placed in their proper contexts. But taken by themselves, or combined with other emphases that reinforce their dangers without balancing them out, they are disastrous.

Christ had made bishops and a Pope - but never a cardinal. Even the name held more than a hint of illusion - cardo, a hinge - as if they were the hinges on which he gates of Heaven were hung. Hinges they might be, but the hinges were useless metal, unless anchored firmly into the living fabric of the Church, whose stones were the poor, the humble, the ignorant, the sinning and the loving, the forgotten of the princes, but never the forgotten f God.

Therefore the Buddha for a temporary purpose made these (uninitiated) observe the Five Precepts similar to the Five Virtues[FN#327] of the outside doctrine, in order to enable them to escape the three (worst) States[FN#328] of Existence, and to be reborn among men. (He also taught that) those who cultivate[FN#329] the tenfold virtue[FN#330] of the highest grade, and who give alms, and keep the precepts, and so forth, are to be born in the Six Celestial Realms of Kama[FN#331] while those who practise the Four[FN#332] Dhyanas, the Eight Samadhis,[FN#333] are to be reborn in the heavenly worlds of Rupa[FN#334] and Arupa. For this reason this doctrine is called the doctrine for men and Devas. According to this doctrine Karma is the origin of life.[FN#335] [FN#327] The five cardinal virtues of Confucianism are quite similar to the five precepts of Buddhism, as we see by this table: VIRTUES.—-PRECEPTS. 1. Humanity.—-1. Not to take life. 2. Uprightness.—-2. Not to steal. 3. Propriety.—-3. Not to be adulterous. 4. Wisdom.—-4. Not to get drunk. 5. Sincerity.—-5. Not to

the revolutions of the planets in heaven derive their constancy from her; and the poles and the cardinal points are allotted their eternal fixedness from her. (In Crat. 79.8-28)

Thus [the altar] brings heaven into the community assembled on earth, or rather it takes the community beyond itself into the communion of saints of all times and places. We might put it this way: the altar is the place where heaven is opened up.

The rites teach and form us as we worship the Father in spirit and in truth. The liturgy takes us beyond the life of every day and leads us into the life of eternity. Through the liturgy, we always have one foot in heaven. But the liturgy also sends us back to daily life with the perspective and courage necessary to transform this world.

The most important number, of course, is not available to us: how many human beings, conceived, born, raised and spending any number of years of life here make it to eternal life in heaven? The fundamental importance of that number is the reason for the Church’s missionary activity.

Why pray for the dead? Why have Masses offered for them? Because our faith tells us death is not the last event of our lives. Beyond death there is judgment. After judgment there is heaven (with purgatory as a place of final preparation for the vision of God) or hell. Death, judgment, heaven and hell: these are the four last things that, like the events of September 11, remind us that life is not a soap opera. Our actions have eternal consequences.

After death, we are not alone. We are still part of the Church, the Church of the saints in heaven, of the souls in purgatory and of believers on earth, which remembers us and keeps us in prayer.

If your husband died, and he loved cardinals, and on the anniversary of his death you happen to walk out to his memorial and you find a cardinal sitting on it, you are allowed to take this as a sign. Don’t let some voice inside you tell you that the cardinal’s presence there is a coincidence. Not unless you understand the word coincidence, which means two things occupying one place, in terms of the deeper and better term, synchronicity. “If you smile at me,” a line

St. Paul calls all disciples of Jesus Christ strangers in any land that is not the kingdom of heaven.

The poor are our passport to God’s kingdom. The poor are not objects to be helped but guides to be followed. The rich must walk the path of salvation in the footsteps of the poor, who will be first in the Kingdom of Heaven.

He comes next to a consideration of the passions. 'Endeavour' may be defined as a small beginning of motion; if towards something, it is desire, and if away from something it is aversion. Love is the same as desire, and hate is the same as aversion. We call a thing 'good' when it is an object of desire, and 'bad' when it is an object of aversion. (It will be observed that these definitions give no objectivity to 'good' and 'bad'; if men differ in their desires, there is no theoretical method of adjusting their differences.) There are definitions of various passions, mostly based on a competitive view of life; for instance, laughter is sudden glory. Fear of invisible power, if publicly allowed, is religion; if not allowed, superstition. Thus the decision as to what is religion and what superstition rests with the legislator. Felicity involves continual progress; it consists in prospering, not in having prospered; there is no such thing as a static happiness—excepting, of course, the joys of heaven, which surpass our comprehension. Will is nothing but the last appetite or aversion remaining in deliberation. That is to say, will is not something different from desire and aversion, but merely the strongest in a case of conflict. This is connected, obviously, with Hobbes's denial of free will. Unlike most defenders of despotic government, Hobbes holds that all men are naturally equal. In a state of nature, before there is any government, every man desires to preserve his own liberty, but to acquire dominion over others; both these desires are dictated by the impulse to self-preservation. From their conflict arises a war of all against all, which makes life 'nasty, brutish, and short'. In a state of nature, there is no property, no justice or injustice; there is only war, and 'force and fraud are, in war, the two cardinal virtues'. The second part tells how men escape from these evils by combining into communities each subject to a central authority. This is represented as happening by means of a social contract. It is supposed that a number of people come together and agree to choose a sovereign, or a sovereign body, which shall exercise authority over them and put an end to the universal war.

God’s creating word sets the laws of the heavens and the earth. As natural events unroll according to God’s law and plan, so rational human life is directed by the commandments of God, represented by the primal commandment given to Adam. The refusal to obey this commandment is a refusal to accept the laws which underlie the workings of the world. In Genesis, sin is not simply a personal bad choice; it is a cosmic disaster.

God shows those in hell all the love they are willing to accept: his justice. To us on earth, God shows his loving mercy. To those in heaven, God shows his face, which is beyond all imagining, the face of love that has no limit and never ends.

At the Last Supper, Christ gave us in an unbloody manner his self-sacrifice, to be consummated the next day on Calvary. He also gave us the apostolic college to make visible the communion that, with the Eucharist, constitutes the Church. From ecclesial communion in the Eucharist comes the impulse for the Church’s mission. By the grace of the Holy Spirit, the Church announces everywhere the work of the Son, testifying to him, making him truly present in the celebration of the Eucharist in all the languages of the earth. Each time the Eucharist is celebrated, the world changes. The love of God, mediated in the Eucharist, has the power to shape right order and harmony in all other relationships, both personal and social, strengthening them in anticipation of heaven.

Someone has said that 'the saints consecrate the world,' and this is true. But they do more than this, as Raoul Plus points out: It is the saints who preserve the world. They are the true, the only conservatives in the sense that the world owes its preservation to them. They are also the true, the only liberals in the best sense of that abused word, the magnanimous, great-souled people whose minds are big enough to include heaven and whose hearts are large enough to hold all the world -- plus God.

It’s those very setbacks, detours, trials, and life transitions that become steppingstones on the path to your brilliant destination. All the while, your intuition orchestrates amazing miracles and signs around you. The key is to trust your gut and the signs crossing your path. Some of the divine signs include: • Red Cardinal Birds • Rainbows • Butterflies • Deer • Angelic Encounters • Vivid dreams of departed loved ones, friends, & pets • Triple Digits • White Feather • Plus, so much more

It is, after all, a cardinal principle of orthodox Christology that the integrity of Christ’s humanity entails that he possesses a full and intact human will, and that this will is in no wise diminished or impaired by being “operated,” so to speak, by a divine hypostasis whose will is simply God’s own willing. So, if human nature required the real capacity freely to reject God, then Christ could not have been fully human. According to Maximus, however, Christ possesses no gnomic will at all, and this because his will was perfectly free.

A Pope usually worked fourteen-hour days, seven days a week, and died of exhaustion in an average of 6.3 years. The inside joke was that accepting the papacy was a cardinal’s “fastest route to heaven.

Cardinal Joseph Bernardin had it right: Heaven’s a place you’ve never visited but once you’re there you immediately feel at home.

About the River Clarion Along its shores were, may I say, very intense cardinal flowers. And trees, and birds that have wings to uphold them, for heaven’s sakes– the lucky ones: they have such deep natures, they are so happily obedient. While I sit here in a house filled with books, ideas, doubts, hesitations.

Our Grandfathers which art in chaos, Fallow be thy names. Thy kingdom scour, Thy will devour the earth, and hell, and heaven.’ Here at the end of everything, this is all the comfort or reassurance I have left to offer anyone. May it prove to be enough for my brother, and for me.

I think Cardinal Joseph Bernardin had it right: Heaven’s a place you’ve never visited but once you’re there you immediately feel at home.

Through his observation of the seasons and his reading of the classics, Copernicus believed that the sun, not the earth, belonged at the center of things. He also guessed what trouble that swap might cause, which was why he delayed publication of his work until his death was imminent. Although the church was undergoing its own revolution at the time, both Protestants and Catholics agreed on Copernicus. “Who will venture to place the authority of Copernicus above that of the Holy Spirit?” John Calvin howled out loud, while Martin Luther simply called the man a fool.8 Some fifty years later, when Galilei Galileo surveyed the heavens through the telescope he had made, he concluded that Copernicus had been right. After a high-handed campaign to convert the pope to his cosmology, Galileo was ordered to appear before the Inquisition, where he was reminded that the issue was not scientific merit but obedience. In his defense, Galileo quoted the words of Cardinal Baronio, who said, “The Bible tells us how to go to heaven, not how the heavens go.”9