... We were terrified beyond all else by the disastrous state of human society today. For who can fail to see that society is at the present time, more than in any past age, suffering from a terrible and deep-rooted malady which, developing every day and eating into its inmost being, is dragging it to destruction? You understand, Venerable Brethren, what this disease is—apostasy from God, than which in truth nothing is more allied with ruin ...
Pope St. Pius X, E SUPREMI
AMBITION----CHRIST----COMMUNION OF SAINTS----CONFESSION----CONTEMPLATION
CONVERSION----DOGMAS OF THE FAITH----GOD----GRATITUDE TO GOD
MARY: THE NECESSITY OF DEVOTION TO---SALVATION: NO SALVATION OUTSIDE OF THE CHURCH
SIN----THE SOUL----TRADITION, TRUTH----VAINGLORY----WEALTH----THE WORLD----YOUTH
AMBITION
The only true riches are those that make us rich in virtue. Therefore, if you want to be rich, beloved, love true riches. If you aspire to the heights of real honor, strive to reach the kingdom of Heaven. If you value rank and renown, hasten to be enrolled in the heavenly court of the Angels.
Pope St. Gregory the Great
CHRIST
The Child, the Lord Jesus Christ ... Word in our flesh, Wisdom in infancy, Power in weakness, and in true Man, the Lord of Majesty.
Pope St. Leo the Great
COMMUNION OF SAINTS
What do they not see, who see Him Who sees all things?
Pope St. Gregory the Great
CONFESSION
To do penance is to bewail the evil we have done, and to do no evil to bewail.
Pope St. Gregory the Great
CONTEMPLATION
The greatness of contemplation can be given to none but those who love.
Pope St. Gregory the Great
We ascend to the heights of contemplation by the steps of action.
Pope St. Gregory the Great
CONVERSION
There are in truth three states of the converted: the beginning, the middle, and the perfection. In the beginning they experience the charms of sweetness; in the middle the contests of temptation; and in the end the fullness of perfection.
Pope St. Gregory the Great
DOGMAS OF THE FAITH
The faith by which we live shall never vary in any age . . . for one is the faith which sanctifies the Just of all ages.
Pope St. Leo the Great
The Church of Christ, therefore, is one and the same forever.
Pope Leo XIII
... We are not, therefore, teachers of a doctrine drawn from human minds, but-----conscious of our charge-----we ought to embrace and follow that which Christ Our Lord taught and Whose teaching, by a solemn commandment, He committed to His Apostles and to their successors ... Moreover, since We are very certain that this doctrine which we must safeguard in all its integrity is Divinely revealed, We repeat the words of the Apostle of the Nations: "But though we, or an Angel from Heaven, preach to you a Gospel besides that which we have preached to you, let him be anathema" (Galatians 1: 8).
Pope Pius XII
We anathematize those who presume to teach or explain any other creed.
Pope Vigilius
Is the hierarchy perhaps free to teach what they find most to their liking on matters of religion, or what they expect will be most pleasing to the proponents of certain current views opposed to all doctrine? Certainly not! The prime duty of the episcopate is to transmit strictly and faithfully the original message of Christ, the sum total of the truths which He revealed and confided to the Apostles as necessary for salvation.
Pope Paul VI
The sacred deposit of truth must be safeguarded. It is absolutely vital that the Church never for an instant lose sight of the holy patrimony of truth inherited from the Fathers ... This is the certain and unchangeable doctrine to which the faithful owe obedience.
Pope John XXIII
I accept with sincere belief the doctrine of faith as handed down to us from the Apostles by the orthodox Fathers, always in the same sense and with the same interpretation.
Pope St. Pius X
If anyone according to wicked heretics in any manner whatsoever, by any word whatsoever, at any time whatsoever, or in any place whatsoever illicitly removes the boundaries firmly established by the holy Fathers of the Catholic Church ... in order to seek for novelties and expositions of another faith ... and, briefly, if it is customary for the most impious heretics to do anything else, should anyone through diabolical operation crookedly and cunningly act contrary to the pious preachings of the orthodox teachers of the Catholic Church, that is, its papal and conciliar proclamations, to the destruction of sincere confession unto the Lord our God, and persist without repentance unto the end: let such a person be condemned forever, and let all the people say: So be it! So be it!
Pope St. Martin I
The preaching of the faith has lost nothing of its relevance in our times. The Church has a sacred duty to proclaim it without any whittling-down, just as Christ revealed it, and no consideration of time or circumstance can lessen the strictness of this obligation.
Pope Pius XII
"Progress" of dogmas is, in reality, nothing but corruption of dogmas ... I absolutely reject the heretical doctrine of the evolution of dogma, as passing from one meaning to another, and different from the sense in which the Church originally held it. And likewise, I condemn every error by which philosophical inventions, or creations of the human mind, or products elaborated by human effort and destined to indefinite progress in the future are substituted for that Divine Deposit given by Christ to the faithful custody of the Church . . . Condemned and proscribed is the error that dogmas are nothing but interpretations and evolutions of Christian intelligence which have increased and perfected the little seed hidden in the Gospel.
Pope St. Pius X
The faithful must shun the opinion that dogmatic formulas cannot signify truth in a determinate way, but only offer changeable approximations to it. Those who hold such an opinion do not escape dogmatic relativism and they corrupt the concept of the Church's infallibility concerning truth ... Relativism, which justifies everything and treats all things as of equal value, assails the absoluteness of Christian principles. There is no doubt that the meaning of dogmas declared by the Church is determinate and unalterable!
Pope Paul VI
Those wretches tainted with the error of Indifferentism and Modernism hold that dogmatic truth is not absolute, but relative: that is, that it must adapt itself to the varying necessities of the times and the varying dispositions of souls, since it is not contained in an unchangeable revelation, but is, by its very nature, meant to accommodate itself to the life of man.
Pope Pius XI
A great safeguard is the entire faith, the true faith, in which neither anything whatever can be added by anyone nor anything taken away; for, unless faith be one, it is not the faith.
Pope St. Leo the Great
Let nothing of the truths that have been defined be lessened, nothing altered, nothing added, but let them be preserved intact in word and in meaning.Pope Gregory XVI
We declare that no one is permitted to introduce, or to describe, or to compare, or to study, or otherwise to teach another faith. Whoever presumes to introduce or teach or pass on another creed . . . or whoever presumes to introduce a novel doctrine . . . We declare to be anathematized.
Pope St. Agatho the Wonderworker
Under no circumstances can we conceive of the possibility of change, of evolution, or of any modification in matters of faith. The Creed remains always the same.Pope Paul VI
From the time the Christian religion began to be spread, she has held unchangeable and taught uncorrupted throughout the world the doctrines which she has received once and for all from her patron and founder, Saint Peter.
Pope St. Nicholas the Great
The proposition that the principal articles of the Apostles' Creed did not have the same meaning for the Christians of the earliest times as they have for Christians of our time is hereby condemned and proscribed as erroneous.
Pope St. Pius X
True Christianity today is not different from primitive Christianity ... She remains what she has been since her foundation: always the same.
Pope Pius XII
It is an error to believe that Christ did not teach a determined body of doctrine applicable to all times and to all men, but rather that He inaugurated a religious movement adapted, or to be adapted, to different times and different places.Pope St. Pius X
Christ's commandment to hear the Church . . . is binding on all men, in every period, and every country.
Pope Pius XI
God ordained for every man one and the same means of salvation.Pope St. Leo the Great
All people and each individual man is called to come into the Church.
Pope Pius XII
Truth, which is simple and one, admits of no variety.
Pope St. Leo the Great
Beyond a doubt, they perish eternally who do not keep the Catholic faith entire and unchanged.Pope Gregory XVI
It never was, is, or shall be lawful for Catholic Christians to teach any doctrine except that which they have received once and for all time; and it always was, is, and shall be their duty to condemn those who do . . . To detect the frauds and avoid the snares of heretics as they arise, and to continue whole and sound in the Catholic faith, we must, God help us, fortify our own belief in two ways: first, by the authority of Divine law, and then by the tradition of the Catholic Church . . . Since the canon of Scripture is complete, and more than sufficient of itself for everything, what need is there to join with it the authority of the Church's interpretation? . . . For this reason: because, owing to the depth of Holy Scripture, not everyone accepts it in one and the same sense ... Therefore, it is very necessary that the rule for the proper understanding of the Prophets and Apostles be framed in accordance with the standard of ecclesiastical and Catholic interpretation. Moreover, in the Church itself, every possible care must be taken to hold fast to that faith which has been believed everywhere, always, and by everyone. For that is truly and in the strictest sense "Catholic" which comprehends all universality . . . He is a true and genuine Catholic who loves the truth of God, who loves the Church, who loves the Body of Christ, who esteems Divine religion and the Catholic faith above everything: above the authority, the regard, the genius, the eloquence, the philosophy of every man whatsoever. He is a genuine Catholic who continues steadfast and well-founded in the faith, who resolves that he will believe those things-----and only those things-----which he is sure the Catholic Church has held universally and from ancient times . . . It is therefore an indispensable obligation for all Catholics who are eager to prove that they are true sons of Holy Mother the Church to adhere to the holy faith of the Fathers, to preserve it, to die for it, and, on the other hand, to detest the profane novelties of profane men, to dread them, to harass them, and to attack them.
St. Vincent of Lerins
As for you, let that which you have heard from the beginning abide in you. If that abides in you which you have heard from the beginning, you shall also abide in the Son.
1 St. John 2: 24
As long as you live, and have breath in you, let no man change you!
Ecclesiasticus 33: 21
The Catholic Church today possesses intact the living heritage of the original Apostolic tradition. We must instill the firm desire and resolution to guard this deposit about which Saint Paul speaks.
Pope Paul VIGOD
God being infinite beauty, the soul united to Christ draws upon himself the admiring and tender gaze of the Angels, who, were they capable of any passion, would be filled with envy at his lot.
Pope St. Pius X
GRATITUDE TO GOD
We must take to heart, brothers, from what we were created, who we were and what kind of creatures we were when we entered the world, as if from a tomb and from utter darkness. Having prepared for us bountifully before we were born, He Who fashioned us and created us brought us into His world. Since, then, we owe all this to Him, we ought to give Him thanks for everything.
Pope St. Clement I
MARY: THE NECESSITY OF DEVOTION TO
The foundation of all our confidence is found in the
Blessed
Virgin Mary. God has committed to her the treasury of all good
things, in order that everyone may know that through her are
obtained every hope, every grace, and all salvation. For this is
His will: that we obtain everything through Mary.
Bl.
Pope Pius IX
Mary is this glorious intermediary; she is the mighty
Mother of
God.
Pope Leo XIII
Every grace which is communicated to this world has a
threefold
origin: it flows from God to Christ, from Christ to the Virgin,
and from the Virgin to us . . . Nothing comes to us except through
the mediation of Mary, for such is the will of God. Thus, just as
no man goes to the Father but by the Son, so likewise no one goes
to Christ except through His Mother. Whosoever will not have
recourse to her is trying to fly without wings . . . O Virgin Most
Holy, no one abounds in the knowledge of God except through thee;
no one, O Mother of God, attains salvation except through thee!
Pope
Leo XIII
For, since it is the will of Divine Providence that
we should
have the God-Man through Mary, there is no other way for us to
receive Christ except from her hands.
Pope St. Pius X
The Child is not found without Mary, His Mother . . .
If, then, it
is impossible to separate what God has united, it is also certain
that you cannot find Jesus except with Mary and through Mary.
Pope St. Pius X
Sweet heart of Mary, be my salvation!
Bl. Pope Pius IX
One cannot talk about the Church if Mary, the Mother of the Lord,
is not present with His brothers. Only Mary could make one heart
and one mind of Jesus' Apostles, as though Christ wanted to show
us that He entrusted to His Mother's maternal care the mission of
making the Church a single family. Yes, in Mary we have the bond
of communion of all of us who, through faith and Baptism, are
disciples and brothers of Jesus.
Pope John Paul II
Everyone of the multitudes, therefore, whom the evil
of
calamitous circumstances has stolen away from Catholic unity,
must be born again to Christ by that same Mother whom God has
endowed with a never-failing fertility to bring forth a holy
people.
Pope Leo XIII
Bearing in her womb the Savior, Mary can also be said to have
borne all those whose life the Savior's life enshrined. All of
us, then, as many as are knit to Christ . . . have come forth
from
Mary's womb: one body, as it were, knit together with its Head.
Pope St. Pius X
He will not taste death forever who, in his
dying moments,
has recourse to the Blessed Virgin Mary.
Pope Pius XI
All those who seek Mary's protection will be
saved
for all eternity.
Pope Benedict XV
O Mary, thou art the noblest, the most exalted and
purest,
the fairest, the holiest of all things created! I desire a
greater and more tender love of thee, and this thou must obtain for me, because love of thee is a great
sign of predestination, and a grace granted by God to those who
shall be saved.
Pope Pius VII
O Mother of Perpetual Help, confidence in thee is a certain pledge
of everlasting salvation.
Bl. Pope Pius IX
Hail, Mary, gracious Mother of Mercy; who would not
love
thee? Thou are out certain salvation!
Pope Pius XII
What will it cost you, O Mary, to hear our prayer? What will it
cost you to save us? Has not Jesus placed in your hands all the
treasures of His grace and mercy? You sit crowned as Queen at the
right hand of your Son: your dominion reaches as far as the
heavens, and to you are subject the earth and all creatures
dwelling thereon. Your dominion reaches even down into the abyss
of Hell, and you alone, O Mary, save us from the hands of Satan.
Pope Pius XI
Mary, not one of thy devout servants has ever perished; may I,
too, be saved!
Pope Benedict XV
Who, O Lady, ever faithfully employed your all powerful aid and was
abandoned by you?
Pope St. Eutychian
For if we are bidden to honor carnal fathers and mothers,
how much more the spiritual? . . . If this virtue of charity has been
overlooked, a man will lose any fruit of salvation in any good he may
do.
Pope St. Gregory VII
To desire grace without recourse to the Virgin Mother is to desire to
fly without wings.
Pope Pius XII
SALVATION: NO SALVATION OUTSIDE OF THE
CHURCH
The Church is One, Holy, Catholic, Apostolic, and Roman: unique, the
Chair founded on Peter ...Outside her fold is to be found neither the
true faith nor eternal salvation, for it is impossible to have God for
a Father if one has not the Church for a Mother. Ven.
Pope Pius IX
If any man be outside the Church, he will be excluded from the
number of sons, and will not have God for Father since he has not the
Church for Mother.
Pope Leo XII
This Church, thus marvelously founded, assuredly could not cease
with the death of its Founder, nor of the Apostles who led the way in
its propagation, for to it the commission was given of bringing all men
to eternal salvation: all men, without distinction of time or place ...
Now, no one is in this One Church, and no one perseveres in it unless
he acknowledges and obediently accepts the power and authority of Peter
and his legitimate successors.
Pope Pius XI
He Who reigns on high, to Whom is given all power in Heaven and on
earth, has entrusted His Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church, outside
which there is no salvation, to one person on earth alone, namely: to
Peter, the Prince of the Apostles,
and to Peter's successor, the Roman Pontiff, to be governed
by him with the fullness of power.
Pope St. Pius V
Neither sanctity nor salvation can be found outside the Holy, Catholic,
Apostolic, Roman Church.
Bl. Pope Pius IX
Before everything else, fidelity to the Church: One, Holy, Catholic,
and Apostolic. Jesus did not found several churches, but one single
Church.
Pope John XXIII
He who is separated from the Catholic Church will not have life.
Pope Gregory XVI
It is a sin to believe that there is salvation outside the Catholic
Church!
Bl. Pope Pius IX
If any man does not enter the Church, or if any man departs from it,
he is far from the hope of life and salvation.
Pope Pius XI
What is the road which opens for us the way to Jesus Christ? ... The
answer, valid yesterday as it is today and for all time to come, is:
the Church.
Pope Pius XII
Where is the road which leads us to Jesus Christ? It is before our
eyes: it is the Church. It is our duty to recall to everyone, great and
small, the absolute necessity we are under to have recourse to this
Church in order to work out our eternal salvation.
Pope St. Pius X
There is only one universal Church of the faithful, outside of which no one can be saved.
Pope Innocent III
It is necessary for each individual to become a living part of the
Church ... to face even death so as not to lose the faith ... Whoever
does not preserve the faith of the Father and the Son does not have
life and salvation.
Pope Pius XII
In Holy Mother Church lies all hope of eternal salvation ... If anyone
is outside the Ark of Noah, he will perish in the overwhelming flood.
Pope Benedict XV
The Church is rich with heavenly doctrine ... sailing like a ship on
the high seas of this world, preserving those who come to her safe and
sound, while the world outside perishes.
Bl. Pope Pius IX
We are compelled in virtue of our faith to believe and maintain that
there is only one Catholic Church, and that one Apostolic. This we
firmly believe and profess without qualification. Outside this Church
there is no salvation and no remission of sins ... For at the time of
the Deluge there existed only one Ark, the figure of the one Church.
And we read that all things existing upon the earth outside this Ark
perished.
Pope Boniface VIII
It must be held as a matter of faith that outside the Apostolic
Roman Church no one can be saved, that the Church is the only Ark of
Salvation, and that whoever does not enter it will perish in the Flood.
The Ship of the Church is guided by Christ and by His Vicar ... It alone carries the disciples and receives Christ. Yes, it is tossed on the sea but, outside it, one would perish immediately. Salvation is only in the Church; outside it, one perishes.
Pope John Paul I
We believe with our hearts and confess with our lips but one Church, not that of heretics, but the Holy, Roman, Catholic, and Apostolic Church, outside of which we believe that no one is saved.
Pope Innocent III
This is the faith of the Catholic Church out of which no one can be saved.
Pope Benedict XIV
Therefore, let those who wish to be saved come to this pillar, to this foundation of truth which is the Church ...We will never spare Ourselves from any pains whatsoever ... to bring back those who are ignorant and in error to this one and only way of truth and salvation. Moreover, let all those who oppose Us remember that heaven and earth will pass away, but that not one of Christ's words can pass away, nor can anything be changed in the doctrine which the Catholic Church has received from Jesus Christ to pre- serve, to protect, and to preach. Ven. Pope Pius IX
O glorious St. Peter ... who wast honored by Jesus Christ with singular privileges and in particular with the leadership of the other Apostles and the primacy of the whole Church, of which thou wast made the foundation stone, do thou obtain for us the grace of a lively faith that shall not fear to profess itself openly, in its entirety and in all its manifestations, even to the shedding of blood ... Obtain for us, likewise, a sincere loyalty to our Holy Mother the Church; grant that we may ever remain most closely and sincerely united to the Roman Pontiff who is the heir of thy faith and authority: the one, true, visible head of the Catholic Church, that mystical Ark outside which there is no salvation.
Pope Benedict XV
SIN
A sin that is not quickly blotted out by repentance is both a sin and a cause of sin.
Sin becomes more scandalous when the sinner is honored for his position.
Pope St. Gregory the Great
THE SOUL
The soul is the inner face of man, by which we are known, that we may be regarded with love by our Maker.
Pope St. Gregory the Great
TRADITION, TRUTH
Let them innovate in nothing, but keep the traditions.
Pope St. Stephen I
Nothing can ever pass away from the words of Christ, nor can anything be changed in the doctrine which the Catholic Church received from Christ to guard, protect, and preach.
Ven. Pope Pius IX
It is therefore necessary to receive these Divine oracles integrally, in the same sense in which they have been kept, and are still being kept, by this Roman Chair of Blessed Peter. Mother and Mistress of all the churches, She has always kept whole and inviolate, and taught to the faithful, the faith given by the Lord Jesus Christ, showing all the faithful the way of salvation and the doctrine of uncorrupted truth.Ven. Pope Pius IX
The Church must persist in the teaching transmitted to her by Christ.
Pope John Paul II
The nature of the Catholic faith is such that nothing can be added to it, nothing taken away. Either it is held in its entirety or it is rejected totally. This is the Catholic faith which, unless a man believes faithfully ann firmly, he cannot be saved.
Pope Benedict XV
This Apostolic Church never turned from the way of truth nor held any kind of error. It is imperative that nothing of the truths which have been defined be lessened, nothing altered, nothing added, but that they be preserved intact in word and meaning. This is the true rule of faith.
Pope St. Agatho the Wonderworker
Diabolical error decks itself out with ease in lying colors with some appearance of truth, so that the force of pronouncement is corrupted by a very brief addition or change, and the confession of faith which should have resulted in salvation, by a subtle transition leads to death!Pope Clement XIII
The present or "current" teaching of the Church does not admit of a development that is either a reversal or a contradiction.
Pope John Paul II
Heretical teachers pervert Scripture and try to get into Heaven with a false key, for they have formed their human assemblies later than the Catholic Church. From this previously-existing and most true Church, it is very clear that these later heresies, and others which have come into being since then, are counterfeit and novel inventions.
Pope St. Clement I
Let nothing novel be introduced!
Pope Pius XII
The devil is always discovering something novel against the truth.
Pope St. Leo the Great
Wherefore, by the authority of Apostolic power, We declare inventors of novel notions, which as the Apostle Paul has said are of no edification, but rather are practiced to beget most foolish questions, are to be deprived of the communion of the Church.
Pope St. Innocent I
I have neither permitted, nor shall I permit, the things which have been settled by the holy fathers to be violated by any innovation.
Pope St. Leo the Great
Let nothing new be introduced, but only what has been handed down.
Pope Benedict XV
Let whoever attempts to disseminate anything other than what we have received be anathema. Let no approach be open to the pernicious plans of undermining, let no pledge of revising any of the old definitions be granted, for what has deserved to be cut away . . . is clearly destined to eternal fire.
Pope St. Simplicius
It is not lawful to differ even by a single word from the evangelical and apostolic doctrine, or to think otherwise than as the blessed Apostles and our fathers learned and taught concerning the Holy Scriptures.
Pope St. Leo the Great
Nothing new is allowed, for nothing can be added to the old. Look for the faith of the elders, and do not let our faith be disturbed by a mixture of new doctrines.
Pope St. Sixtus III
This being the state of the question, novelty should cease attacking antiquity!Pope St. Celestine I
Absolute truth must be unchangeable!
Pope St. Pius X
VAINGLORY
We should let God be the One to praise us and not praise ourselves. For God detests those who commend themselves. Let others applaud our good deeds.
Pope St. Clement I
WEALTH
Don't be anxious about what you have, but about what you are.
Pope St. Gregory the Great
THE WORLD
This world and the world to come are two enemies. We cannot therefore be friends to both, but we must decide.
Pope St. Clement I
YOUTH
Let us teach the young in the school of the fear of the Lord.
Pope St. Clement I
The soul of youth is ... a most holy sanctuary.
Pope St. Pius X
No sacrifice is more acceptable to God than zeal for souls.
Pope St. Gregory the Great
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