The Roman Catholic Church Early On Simply Adapted The Hierarchical Structure Of The Roman Empire And Confused The Whole Thing. Vertical Attention And Hierarchy Were So Entangled, That When The French Killed The King During The Revolution, They Lost Much Of Their Vertical Attention Too.
Hierarchy, As In The Catholic Church, Has To Do With Power, And Vertical Attention Has To Do With Longing.
It Was Not Necessarily The Best Of Times In America When Catholics And Protestants Were Suspicious Of And Hated One Another; But At Least They Were Taking Their Beliefs Seriously, And The More Or Less Satisfactory Accommodations They Worked Out Were Not Simply The Result Of Apathy About The State Of Their Souls.
I Didn't Have A Clue. I Grew Up Protestant In Connecticut At The Saugatuck Congregational Church. We Didn't Talk About The Devil. That's Catholicism. And So, That Was My Safety Net. And I Always Say, It's Probably A Good Thing They Didn't Hire A Catholic Child, Who May Have Heard About The Devil, The Things That Were In The Closet. And No One Wanted To Discuss Them.
I'd Been To Saint Petersburg Before, But There's Been A Change In People's Minds. Maybe It's A Fashionable Thing, But People Have Returned To The Churches. I Went To A Russian Orthodox And A Catholic Church - Both Of The Queues, Enormous!
The Catholic Priest, From The Moment He Becomes A Priest, Is A Sworn Officer Of The Pope.
The Roman Catholic Church, Had It Captured Me, As It Nearly Did, Would Have Sent Me On Some Mission Of Danger And Sacrifice And Utilised Me As A Martyr; The Church Established By Law Transformed Me Into An Unbeliever And An Antagonist.
An Ignorance Of Marx Is As Frequent Among Marxists As An Ignorance Of Christ Is Among Catholics.
Saint Paul Asks His Disciple Timothy To "aim At Faith" (2 Tim 2:22) With The Same Constancy As When He Was A Boy (cf. 2 Tim 3:15). This Invitation Is Directed To Each Of Us, That None Of Us Grow Lazy In The Faith. It Is The Lifelong Companion That Makes It Possible To Perceive, Ever Anew, The Marvels That God Works For Us.
