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“Sin is called… ‘a stain on the soul.’ A stain is a blot or ugly mark which destroys what is bright and comely. A stain is caused by contact with soiling and unsuitable things. Sin dims or blots out the brightness of perfected human nature; it blots out the wisdom and grace of God in the soul. It is therefore a stain upon the soul. We speak here of grave sin, not of the actual sin which is called venial. A stain remains after the contact that caused it has ceased. So also the stain of serious sin remains in the soul after the act of sin has been completed. This stain is not removed except by a new act of returning by recovered grace to the unsmirched beauty of the soul.” (Msgr. Paul J. Glenn, A Tour of the Summa, p. 162).
St. Robert Bellarmine, On Councils, Book 1, Chap. 19: “[The primacy of the popes at councils] is proven from the Apostolic Council, in Acts 15, in which Jerome affirms Peter to have presided in a letter to Augustine, which is 11 among the letters of Augustine. Likewise from that [council] it is gathered that Peter rises first, speaks first, defines the matter first, and all, as Jerome said, followed his position.”
Pope St. Celestine: “… success in everything else will follow if priority is given to preserving the things of God…” (To Theodosius II, 5th century)
St. Athanasius: “When he extended his hands upon the cross, he overthrew ‘the ruler of the power of the air, who is at work in the sons of disobedience’ (Eph 2:2) and cleared the way to heaven for us.” (Letter 40 to Adelphius)
St. Basil, Letter 156: “Indeed, when I look round, I seem to have no one on my side. I can but pray I may be found in the number of those seven thousand who have not bowed the knee to Baal. I know the present persecutors of us all seek my life; yet that shall not diminish ought of the zeal which I owe to the Churches of God.”
Pope Pius XI (1937): “Whoever identifies, by pantheistic confusion, God and the universe, by either lowering God to the dimensions of the world, or raising the world to the dimensions of God, is not a believer in God.” (Mit Brennender Sorge #7)
St. Basil, Letter 159: “For if, to me, to live is Christ, [Philippians 1:21] truly my words ought to be about Christ, my every thought and deed ought to depend upon His commandments, and my soul to be fashioned after His.”
St. Robert Bellarmine, De Amissione Gratiae et Statu Peccati, Book 4, Chap. 11: “… although the image of God properly resides in the soul, nevertheless by reason of the soul the whole man is rightly said to be made to the image of God.”
“… whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God.” (James 4:4)
Hermas (A.D. 140): “They had need to come up through the water, so that they might be made alive; for they could not otherwise enter into the kingdom of God.”
St. Louis De Montfort (1710): “While St. Dominic was preaching the Rosary in Carcassone, a heretic made fun of the miracles and the fifteen mysteries of the Holy Rosary, and this prevented other heretics from being converted. As a punishment God suffered fifteen thousand devils to enter the man’s body. His parents took him to Fr. Dominic to be delivered… St. Dominic started to pray and begged everyone who was there to say the Rosary out loud with him, and at each Hail Mary Our Lady drove one hundred devils out of the heretic’s body and they came out in the form of red hot coals.” (The Secret of the Rosary, p. 30.)
Pope St. Celestine I (431): “… pray that the faith may be granted to infidels; that idolaters may be delivered from the errors of their impiety; that the light of truth may be visible to the Jews, and the veil of their hearts may be removed; that heretics may come to their senses through a comprehension of the Catholic faith; that schismatics may receive the spirit of renewed charity…”
Jesus said: “If anyone abides not in me, he shall be cast forth as a branch, and shall wither, and they shall gather him up, and cast him into the fire, and he burns.” (John 15:6)
Pope Pius IX: “… let us hold most firmly that, in accordance with Catholic teaching, there is ‘one God, one faith, one baptism’ (Eph. 4:5); it is unlawful to proceed further in inquiry.” (Singulari Quadam, Dec. 9, 1854)
St. Alphonsus (1755): “The atmosphere of the world is noxious and pestilential. Whosoever breathes it easily catches spiritual infection. Human respect, bad example, and evil conversations are powerful incitements to earthly attachments and to estrangement of the soul from God. Everyone knows that the damnation of numberless souls is attributable to the occasions of sin so common in the world.”
St. John Chrysostom, Hom. xxi on John: “... it was fitting that He [Christ] should not begin to work wonders from His early years: for men would have deemed the Incarnation to be imaginary and would have crucified Him before the proper time.”
St. Gregory Nazianzen, Carmen De Vita Sua, AD 382: “Seeing many people in this present age writing words without measure which flow forth easily, and expending a great deal of time on their efforts for which no reward awaits – or only empty chatter…”
St. Irenaeus (born A.D. 130), on meeting St. Polycarp (born A.D. 69) who knew the Apostles: “I remember the events of those days more clearly than those which happened recently, for what we learn as children grows up with the soul and is united to it, so that I can speak even of the place in which the blessed Polycarp sat and disputed… the discourses which he made to people, how he reported his discussions with John and with the others who had seen the Lord, how he remembered their words, and what were the things concerning the Lord which he had heard from them, and about their miracles, and about their teaching, and how Polycarp had received them from the eyewitnesses of the word of life, and reported all things in agreement with the Scriptures. I listened eagerly even then to these things through the mercy of God which was given me.” (quoted in Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History)
St. Peter Canisius, Summa Doctrinae Christianae, 16th century, Three Kinds of Good Works: “There is no work more commended in Holy Scripture, none… more necessarily is to be exercised in this life than prayer. The prayer of him that humbles himself shall pierce the clouds [Sirach 35:21]. Also, it behooves us always to pray [Luke 18:1], namely, with a zealous disposition of heart, and without hypocrisy or respect for the praise of men, that is to say, in spirit and truth.”
St. Irenaeus, Against Heresies, Book 3, Chap. 3, A.D. 180: “Since, however, it would be very tedious in such a volume as this, to reckon up the successions of all the Churches, we do put to confusion all those who… assemble in unauthorized meetings; [we do this, I say] by indicating that tradition derived from the apostles, of the very great, the very ancient, and universally known Church founded and organized at Rome by the two most glorious apostles, Peter and Paul; as also [by pointing] out the faith preached to men, which comes down to our time by means of the successions of the bishops. For it is a matter of necessity that every Church should agree with this Church [i.e. of Rome], on account of its preeminent authority, that is, the faithful everywhere...”
“Ananias, with Saphira his wife, sold a piece of land, And by fraud kept back part of the price of the land… But Peter said: Ananias, why hath Satan tempted thy heart, that thou shouldst lie to the Holy Ghost, and by fraud keep part of the price of the land?... Thou has not lied to men, but to God. And Ananias hearing these words, fell down, and gave up the ghost. And there came great fear upon all that heard it.” (Acts 5:1-5)
Errors of the Modernists #22: “Revelation, constituting the object of Catholic faith, was not completed with the apostles.” – Condemned by Pope Pius X
Pope St. Gregory VII: “… without doubt… we shall punish heavily and most severely him who having an unjust case shall try to defend it…” (Nov. 24, 1078)
Pope Pelagius II: “Those who were not willing to be at agreement in the Church of God, cannot remain with God; although given over to flames and fires… there will not be for them that crown of faith, but the punishment of faithlessness…”
St. Alphonsus (1755): “The proud are hateful before God; He cannot bear them. As soon as the angels yielded to pride, He banished them from paradise and sent them into hell, far distant from his presence. The words of God must be fulfilled: Whosoever, says the Lord, shall exalt himself, shall be humbled (Matt. 23:12).”
St. Euplius, before his martyrdom, said: “Brethren, love the Lord with all your hearts; for He never forgets those who love Him. He remembers them during life and at the hour of their death, when He sends His angels to lead them to His heavenly country.”
“During the sixth and seventh centuries, the Church of Ireland stood in the full beauty of its bloom. The spirit of the Gospel operated amongst the people with a vigorous and vivifying power; troops of holy men, from the highest to the lowest ranks of society, obeyed the counsel of Christ, and forsook all things, that they might follow Him. There was no country in the world, during this period, which could boast of pious foundations or of religious communities equal to those that adorned this far-distant land.” (Laux, Church History, p. 182)
St. Thomas Aquinas: “Everything that begins to be or ceases to be does so through motion or change. Since, however, we have shown that God is absolutely immutable, He is eternal, lacking all beginning or end. Those beings alone are measured by time that are moved. For time, as is made clear in Physics IV, is ‘the number of motion.’ But God, as has been proved, is absolutely without motion, and is consequently not measured by time. There is, therefore, no before and after in Him.” (Summa Contra Gentiles, Book I, Chap. 15)
“… a Spaniard well known in the town was leaving Cartegena with a loose woman. Claver’s words, ‘I am sorry to see you travelling with the Devil,’ checked him like an arrow to the heart. He got no farther than Turbaco. That night he was knocking at Claver’s door. He fell on his knees and told the story of his disordered life.” (Fr. Angel Valtierra, Peter Claver – Saint of the Slaves, 1960, pp. 210-211.)
St. Ambrose, The Duties of Clergy, A.D. 391: “The Church was redeemed at the price of Christ’s blood. Judean or Greek, it makes no difference; but if he has believed he must circumcise himself from his sins so that he can be saved... for no one ascends into the kingdom of heaven except through the Sacrament of Baptism.”
Maximus the Confessor: “No one who enjoys indulging the flesh will be able to pass over to Him, or who takes greater pleasure in the deceptions of the world than in His blessed glory; neither will such a person be able to stand next to Him who conquered the world [John 16:33], since he himself has been defeated by the world…”
Pope Leo XII, Quod hoc ineunte (# 8), May 24, 1824: “We address all of you who are still removed from the true Church and the road to salvation. In this universal rejoicing, one thing is lacking: that having been called by the inspiration of the Heavenly Spirit and having broken every decisive snare, you might sincerely agree with the mother Church, outside of whose teachings there is no salvation.”
Pope Gregory III, A.D. 739: “… it is written that small is the gate and narrow is the road that leads on to life.”
St. Louis De Montfort (1710): “… no one can possibly be saved without the knowledge of Jesus Christ – and yet a man who knows absolutely nothing of any of the other sciences will be saved as long as he is illumined by the science of Jesus Christ.” (The Secret of the Rosary, p. 65)
“For all that is in the world is the concupiscence of the flesh, and the concupiscence of the eyes, and the pride of life, which is not of the Father, but is of the world” (1 John 2:16).
St. Cyprian (252): “An ever-burning Gehenna and the punishment of being devoured by living flames will consume the condemned; nor will there be any way in which the tormented can ever have respite or the torments end… weeping will be useless, and prayer ineffectual.”
Pope St. Leo the Great, Sermon 9, 444: “Who then would not tremble at this doom of eternal torment? Who would not dread evils which are never to be ended?”
Pope St. Leo the Great, Sermon 9, 444: “For the Lord will come in His glorious Majesty, as He Himself has foretold, and there will be with Him an innumerable host of angel-legions radiant in their splendor. Before the throne of His power will all the nations of the world be gathered; and all the men that in all ages and on all the face of the earth have been born, shall stand in the Judge’s sight. Then shall be separated the just from the unjust, the guiltless from the guilty…”
Maximus the Confessor: “For divine justice has judged that those who reduce human existence to this present life, and who take pride in wealth, bodily health, and various honors, and who believe that these things alone constitute blessedness, reckoning the good things of the soul as having no value, will not be deemed worthy of receiving a share in the divine and eternal good things, to which they gave absolutely no thought, owing to their overwhelming interest in material things…”
Maximus the Confessor: “For that which is moved is not a beginning, but from a beginning, that is, from whatever set it into motion.”
“On another occasion Claver was in the main square inveighing against sexual vice. A Spanish woman of the streets laughed at him and yelled insults when he began his customary reading of the Gospel. The saint held up his crucifix and said: ‘Since you wish to go to Hell, here is the Divine Judge to pronounce judgment.’ The woman, terrified, was overcome, and brought her repentance to Claver. This conversion caused a great stir.” (Fr. Angel Valtierra, Peter Claver – Saint of the Slaves, 1960, p. 211.)
Pope St. Innocent I (414): “But that which Your Fraternity asserts the Pelagians preach, that even without the grace of Baptism infants are able to be endowed with the rewards of eternal life, is quite idiotic.”
Jacinta: “If they hurt us, we are going to heaven. But those that hurt us, poor people, are going to hell.” (Oct. 13, 1917, regarding those who might hurt them on their way to the apparition site – Our Lady of Fatima, p. 144)
St. Francis De Sales (1602): “Thus we do not say that the Pope cannot err in his private opinions, as did John XXII; or be altogether a heretic, as perhaps Honorius was. Now when he (the Pope) is explicitly a heretic, he falls ipso facto from his dignity and out of the Church…”
St. Boniface (A.D. 716): “Temporal things pass swiftly away, but the eternal that never fade will soon be upon us. All the treasures of this world, such as gold, silver, precious stones of every hue, succulent and dainty food and costly garments, melt away like shadows, vanish like smoke, dissolve like foam on the sea.”
Pope Gregory II, A.D. 722: “The report of your loyalty to Christ and of your steadfast answers to the heathen when they urged you to return to the worship of idols that you would rather die than break faith with Christ once you had accepted Him filled us with great joy.”
Isaiah 66:2 – “All these things my hand has made, and so all these things came to be, declares the Lord. But this is the one to whom I will look: he who is humble and contrite in spirit and trembles at my word.”
St. Ignatius (110): “Do not err, my brethren: the corrupters of families will not inherit the Kingdom of God. And if they who do these things according to the flesh suffer death, how much more if a man corrupt by evil teaching the faith of God, for the sake of which Jesus Christ was crucified? A man so foul will depart into unquenchable fire; and so also will anyone who listens to him.”
Padre Pio (1913): “A woman who is frivolous as regards dress can never be clothed in the life of Jesus Christ and she loses adornment of soul once this idol enters into her heart. Let these women adorn themselves, as St. Paul would have it (1 Tim. 2:9), modestly and sensibly in seemly apparel…” (Letter to Padre Agostino, 8/2/1913)
St. Augustine (428): “The salvation that belongs to this religion was never wanting to anyone who was worthy of it; and anyone to whom it was wanting was not worthy of it.”
Pope St. Gregory I: “For a man is made similar to the apostate angel when he disdains to be similar to men. Thus after possessing the merit of humility, Saul at the summit of power was inflated with the swelling of pride. He was indeed preferred through humility, but was indeed made reprobate through pride, as the Lord bears witness when he says: ‘Was it not when you were little in your own eyes that I set you as head of the tribes of Israel?’ And a little further below: ‘Now in a marvelous manner when he seemed little before himself he was great before the Lord, but indeed when he seemed great before himself he was little before the Lord.’”
St. Optatus (367): “You cannot deny that you are aware that in the city of Rome the Episcopal chair was given first to Peter; the chair in which Peter sat, the same who was head… of all the Apostles.”
St. Louis De Montfort (1706): “Make for me, if you will, a new road to go to Jesus, and pave it with all the merits of the blessed, adorn it with all their heroic virtues, illuminate and embellish it with all the lights and beauties of the angels, and let all the angels and saints be there themselves, to escort, defend and sustain those who are ready to walk there; and yet in truth, I say boldly, and I repeat that I say truly, I would prefer to this new, perfect path the immaculate way of Mary.” (True Devotion to Mary #158)
St. Justin Martyr (148): “… every man will receive the eternal punishment or reward which his actions deserve. Indeed, if all men recognized this, no one would choose evil even for a short time, knowing that he would incur the eternal sentence of fire.”
Padre Pio (1914): “… it afflicts my heart to see so many souls apostatizing from Jesus. What freezes the blood close to my heart is the fact that many of these souls become estranged from God solely because they are deprived of the divine word. The harvest is great but the laborers are few. Who is then to reap the harvest in the fields of the Church when it is almost ripe? Will it be scattered on the ground by reason of the scarcity of the workers? Will it be reaped by Satan’s emissaries who are, unfortunately, both numerous and extremely active?” (Letter to Padre Agostino, 4/20/1914)
St. Ambrose (382): “There are not enough hours in the day for me to recite even the names of all the various sects of heretics.”
St. Athanasius, On the Incarnation (#5), AD 318: “… they have become insatiable in sinning. For there were adulteries everywhere and thefts, and the whole earth was full of murders and plunder. And as to corruption and wrong, no heed was paid to law, but all crimes were being practiced everywhere, both individually and jointly. Cities were at war with cities, and nations were rising up against nations; and the whole earth was rent with civil commotions and battles; each man vying with his fellows in lawless deeds. Nor were even crimes against nature far from them, but, as the Apostle and witness of Christ says: For their women changed the natural use into that which is against nature: and likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the women, burned in their lust one toward another, men with men working unseemliness, and receiving in themselves that recompense of their error which was meet.”
St. Gregory Nazianz (380): “Where are they who revile us for our poverty and pride themselves in their riches? They who define the Church by numbers and scorn the little flock?”
“At one point in the Church’s history, only a few years before Gregory’s [Nazianzen’s] present preaching (383 A.D.), perhaps the number of Catholic bishops in possession of sees, as opposed to Arian bishops in possession of sees, was no greater than something between 1% and 3% of the total. Had doctrine been determined by popularity, today we should all be deniers of Christ and opponents of the Spirit.” (W.A. Jurgens, The Faith of the Early Fathers, Vol. 2, p. 39.)
“In the time of the Emperor Valens (4th century), Basil was virtually the only orthodox Bishop in all the East who succeeded in retaining charge of his see… If it has no other importance for modern man, a knowledge of the history of Arianism should demonstrate at least that the Catholic Church takes no account of popularity and numbers in shaping and maintaining doctrine: else, we should long since have had to abandon Basil and Hilary and Athanasius and Liberius and Ossius and call ourselves after Arius.” (W.A. Jurgens, The Faith of the Early Fathers, Vol. 2, p. 3.)
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