“They said they have no intelligence, and I don't believe that, ... The Vatican refuses totally to cooperate with us.”
Carla del Ponte
“For Catholics before Vatican II, the land of the free was pre-eminently the land of Sister Says-except, of course, for Sister, for whom it was the land of Father Says.”
Wilfrid Sheed
“After the Second Vatican Council, the impression arose that the pope really could do anything in liturgical matters, especially if he were acting on the mandate of an ecumenical council. Eventually, the idea of the givenness of the liturgy, the fact that one cannot do with it what one will, faded from the public consciousness of the West. In fact, the First Vatican Council had in no way defined the pope as an absolute monarch. On the contrary, it presented him as the guarantor of obedience to the revealed Word. The pope's authority is bound to the Tradition of faith, and that also applies to the liturgy. It is not "manufactured" by the authorities. Even the pope can only be a humble servant of its lawful development and abiding integrity and identity. . . . The authority of the pope is not unlimited; it is at the service of Sacred Tradition. . . . The greatness of the liturgy depends - we shall have to repeat this frequently - on its unspontaneity.”
Pope Benedict XVI
“New York's Fulton Street is the Vatican City of fish markets.”
David Michaelis
“The problem is authority. But these Vatican officials seem unable to understand authority except as authoritarianism.”
David Tracy
“[It was before Vatican II and the liberalization of church doctrine.] You weren't meant to eat meat on Friday in deference to Christ, who died on Friday. If you did, you went to hell, ... That way, Hitler would be in hell alongside someone who ate meat on Friday. I thought there was no justice there.”
Christopher Durang
“Outside of Italy, Catholics and churchmen have a very kind of mystical view of the Vatican and especially the conclave,”
David Gibson
