Justin P

“If you're going to do a thing, you should do it thoroughly. If you're going to be a Christian, you may as well be a Catholic. ”
― Muriel Spark

“[There is a] kind of all-embracing universality evident in Mother Teresa’s prayer: “May God break my heart so completely that the whole world falls in.” Not just fellow nuns, Catholics, Calcuttans, Indians. The whole world. It gives me pause to realize that, were such a prayer said by me and answered by God, I would afterward possess a heart so open that even hate-driven zealots would fall inside... [My] sense of the world as a gift, my sense of a grace operative in this world despite its terrors, propels me to allow the world to open my heart still wider, even if the openness comes by breaking—for I have seen the whole world fall into a few hearts, and nothing has ever struck me as more beautiful.”
― David James Duncan

“To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it.”
― G.K. Chesterton

“It's a beautiful religion and I wish I understood it more. No, I don't want to understand it all. It's beautiful because it's always a mystery. Sometimes I say I don't believe in God and Jesus and Mary. I'm a bad Catholic because I miss mass once in a while and I grumble when, at confession, I get a heavy penance for something I couldn't help doing. But good or bad, I am a Catholic and I'll never be anything else.
Of course, I didn't ask to be born Catholic, no more than I asked to be born American. But I'm glad it turned out that I'm both these things.”
― Betty Smith, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn