“The problem is authority. But these Vatican officials seem unable to understand authority except as authoritarianism.”
David Tracy
“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
“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
“New York's Fulton Street is the Vatican City of fish markets.”
David Michaelis
“Pope urges end to Syria bloodshed. How about an end to child sex abuse in the Catholic Church?”
Muhammed Haider
“Law's very prominent presence in the Vatican this week is reopening a lot of old wounds,”
Paul Steidler
“They said they have no intelligence, and I don't believe that, ... The Vatican refuses totally to cooperate with us.”
Carla del Ponte
