Brian J. Gail > Quotes

“Thomas Aquinas once famously said there are only two kinds of people in the world, Bill, sinners who think they’re saints; and saints who think they’re sinners.” “That’s good, Father. Tell Maggie that.”
― Brian J. Gail, Fatherless

“more active than ever before in humankind, precisely because the unholy spirit is more active than ever before in humankind.” “Such is the mercy of God,” John said quietly.”
― Brian J. Gail, Fatherless

“This is how He has always dealt with humankind. One of our popes wrote in the forties: ‘It is a great mystery that the salvation of the many depends on the holiness of the few.”
― Brian J. Gail, Motherless

“. “Then Your Holiness, how is it that you say repeatedly that the Church is on the verge of a new springtime?” “The two are not mutually exclusive. They are mutually dependent,” he replied enigmatically.”
― Brian J. Gail, Fatherless

“The reason only the pure of heart can be peacemakers is because it is only the authentic peacemaker who can be persecuted. The true peacemaker understands the work of true and lasting peace is the work of repairing the disunity brought about by sin. The true peacemaker understands that this work necessarily requires that they must be persecuted by a world that rejects the very notion of sin, and, by extension, the need for a Redeemer. At its core, this persecution is merely yet another face of the demonic. GK Chesterton saw this clearly. Toward the end of his life he wrote that in the final analysis the great ideological battles in the modern and post modern ages are not between the progressive and the traditionalist, the statist and the republican, the collectivist and the capitalist, but between the Catholic Church and her enemies. He said if the Catholic Church is for something, her enemies are against it; if she is against it, they are for it. In our time, the persecution has begun anew. Mother saw this coming and prepared us for it. She told us the Church in our children’s generation would be ‘smaller and holier’ because the persecution would grow in intensity. We are already seeing this, are we not?”
― Brian J. Gail, Motherless

“The secular system now views medicine in salvation terms. Man can be reengineered to eradicate his genetic defects. It sees the Church, particularly its moral teachings, as anachronistic and obstructionist. This has the practical effect of eliminating the question of what ought to be done and replacing it with a much simpler question: what can be done? This”
― Brian J. Gail, Motherless

“As John Paul II once famously said, ‘Descartes got it precisely backwards. It’s not ‘I think therefore I am; It’s rather I am, therefore I think.’’ What I think he’s saying here is that”
― Brian J. Gail, Fatherless

“the child but on what is happening to its mother. This, of course, is the beginning of the depersonalization of the child.”
― Brian J. Gail, Fatherless

“Your Holiness, what do you see as the great existential challenges of our age?” The pope looked at him with what John thought was some degree of surprise, and said soberly, “The depletion and exploitation of God’s creation, the inequitable distribution of goods, the clash of cultures, the desire of man to recreate himself in his own image, and an all-pervasive global culture of death that extends from the womb and now hangs over all peoples as a sword of Damocles.”
― Brian J. Gail, Fatherless

“mother’s best friends. And she never failed to deliver a brief glimpse of eternity in every meeting, every conversation.”
― Brian J. Gail, Fatherless

“We are called to be the love of God in the modern world. These people are our brothers and sisters in Christ. They must feel God’s love, and it is our responsibility to love them as God has loved us.”
― Brian J. Gail, Fatherless

“So he can create disorder within divinely created order,” The”
― Brian J. Gail, Fatherless

“My precious young friends, the Bread of Life and Love is inseparable from the Gospel of Life and Love. The more there is devotion to the one, the more there is devotion to the other. The more damage to the one, the more damage to the other.” He paused and thundered, “We cannot have a holy Church with unworthy and sacrilegious Communions! We cannot have holy families with unworthy and sacrilegious Communions! We cannot have a holy people with unworthy and sacrilegious Communions! And make no mistake, America will not preserve its cherished freedoms unless we Catholics cherish and preserve the Eucharist.”
― Brian J Gail, Motherless

“They sought to establish a scientific basis for determining the beginning of life. In doing so they based their argument not on what is happening to”
― Brian J. Gail, Fatherless

“Western civilization had allowed its moral energy to be systematically drained by sexual license; and it now lacked the intellectual, emotional, and yes, spiritual toughness to face the great crises confronting it.”
― Brian J. Gail, Fatherless

“Motherhood has three intrinsic dimensions: it is genetic, gestational, and social. It”
― Brian J. Gail, Motherless

“There are two quite distinctive views of the power of modern biotechnology: the Catholic view, which sees healing in terms of its Founder’s mission and gives primacy to the soul’s destiny; and the secular view, which seeks only relief from suffering and measures progress by the quality of man’s material life.”
― Brian J. Gail, Motherless

“And because she mourned, she was meek. I can remember when we were growing up, friends would visit and they would tell mother what they thought was wrong with Holy Mother Church. ‘She doesn’t respect women.’ ‘She got the birth control question wrong.’ ‘Priests should be permitted to marry.’ ‘She should dial down the moral truth message—no one wants to hear it—and concentrate on social justice, which is what Christ really came to teach us.’ Mother would always listen politely. Invariably, when the friend would finish she would just look at them and simply say, ‘Oh.’ This would often confound them; they would repeat their critique. She’d nod again and say, ‘Oh.’ It was her way of letting them know, in perfect meekness, she had indeed understood and she was not prepared to argue”
― Brian J. Gail, Motherless

“Honey, I think you should talk to Fr. Sweeney before you get in too deep. I don’t like this thing. I smell sulfur.”
― Brian J. Gail, Motherless

“the Faith, even with friends. She believed the Faith was to be lived. And she lived it with a meekness that belied her exquisite mind and passionate Irish heart. She understood it to be the ‘pearl of great price’ that none of us deserve, but all of us who receive it must give an accounting for. And this allowed her to live a life of gratitude, which, itself, bears the unique imprint of meekness.”
― Brian J. Gail, Motherless

“Medical science didn’t wait for the child to develop into a discardable fetus. It declared it a nonperson by virtue of its pending implantation.”
― Brian J. Gail, Fatherless

“As John Paul II once famously said, ‘Descartes got it precisely backwards. It’s not ‘I think therefore I am; It’s rather I am, therefore I think.’’ What I think he’s saying here is that philosophical error draws man away from a fundamental harmony with Original Design, if you will, and the consequences are usually catastrophic. Witness the ‘bloody century.”
― Brian J. Gail, Fatherless

“Hal, think about nullification, just for a moment” Pause. “What better way than through a false religion?” The old man’s eyes narrowed. “I mean there are many, many good Muslim men and women, but what else to call its core doctrine of eternal reward in the Hadith? It’s not about the pure joy of being in God’s presence; it’s about the basest of sensual pleasures: food and drink and sex. What are we to make of that?”
― Brian J. Gail, Motherless

“God chose man, the species, for the Incarnation of His only Son. This and this alone is the source of his inherent dignity. This dignity begins at conception and ends with natural death. Man’s task is simply to preserve the dignity. He confers nothing.”
― Brian J. Gail, Motherless