Peter de Rosa > Quotes

“Thus down the ages, millions suffered and died. Bad art and disastrous theology had prepared the way for Hitler and his ‘final solution’.”
― Peter de Rosa, Vicars of Christ - The Dark Side of the Papacy: International Best-Seller - Update on Sex Abuse Scandal in the Church

“In this way, Gregory sowed broadside seeds that, when they bloomed, brought about the end of Christendom and the Reformation. The Bishop of Trier saw the danger. He charged Gregory with  destroying the unity of the church. The Bishop of Verdun said the pope was mistaken in his unheard-of arrogance. Belief belongs to one’s church, the heart belongs to one’s country. The pope, he said, must not filch the heart’s allegiance. This was precisely what Gregory did. He wanted all; he left emperors and princes nothing. The papacy, as he fashioned it, by undermining patriotism, undermined the authority of secular rulers; they felt threatened by the Altar. At the Reformation, in England and elsewhere, rulers felt obliged to exclude Catholicism from their lands in order to feel secure.”
― Peter de Rosa, Vicars of Christ - The Dark Side of the Papacy: International Best-Seller - Update on Sex Abuse Scandal in the Church

“In 1936, Bishop Berning of Osnabrüch had talked with the Führer for over an hour. Hitler assured his lordship there was no fundamental difference between National Socialism and the Catholic Church. Had not the church, he argued, looked on Jews as parasites and shut them in ghettos? ‘I am only doing,’ he boasted, ‘what the church has done for fifteen hundred years, only more effectively’. Being a Catholic himself, he told Berning, he ‘admired and wanted to promote Christianity’.”
― Peter de Rosa, Vicars of Christ - The Dark Side of the Papacy: International Best-Seller - Update on Sex Abuse Scandal in the Church