“If you believe what you like in the Gospels, and reject what you don’t like, it is not the Gospel you believe, but yourself.”
For many people today, practical atheism is the normal rule of life...If this attitude becomes a general existential position, then freedom no longer has any standards, then everyting is possible and permissible.
Certainly, it is difficult to make the demands of the Gospel understandable to secularized people. But this pastoral difficulty must not lead to compromises with the truth.
No one is forced to be a Christian. But no one should be forced to live according to the "new religion" as though it alone were definitive and obligatory for all mankind.
To live without faith, without a patrimony to defend, without a steady struggle for truth – that is not living, but existing.
Distinctions Matter
Distinctions Matter Forward
Missale Romanum
Pre-1951 Calendar