A quotable square

Fr. Richard John Neuhaus's "The Public Square" column in the November 2003 First Things has a lot of quotable bits, including:

"There may be a shortage of priests, but there is no shortage of priests who would like to be bishops." - RJN

"Dialogue in love is accompanied by dialogue in truth, for love without truth is empty, dishonest, and ultimately deceitful." - Walter Cardinal Kasper

"I believe, all things considered, morally and politically, Pius XII acted appropriately and made the right decisions." - Sir Martin Gilbert (not really a great quotation, but an important one)

"Courage, I would propose, characterizes rather all our priests...who live their celibate chastity with fidelity and joy; courage characterizes our married couples who generously and obediently live out their vows; courage is found in our young people and unmarried adults who follow the teaching of Jesus, the Bible, and the Church on the beautiful virtue of chastity; courage is found in those writers—priests, religious, lay, Catholic and non-Catholic—who defend such a countercultural virtue as celibacy in a world that feels one cannot be happy or whole without sexual gratification." -- Archbishop Timothy Dolan

"Let our ideas be clear; let us present them in all their rigor. This is a condition of honesty. Let us serve them with all our might. This is the exercise of our courage. But just as we leave a margin on our writing paper for revisions, for corrections, for things not yet found, for the truth for which we can still only hope, let us leave around our ideas the margin of fraternity." -- Yves Cardinal Congar

"This is the lesson that all of us, Jews and non-Jews, may learn from recent history: that religion is, by and large, a force for good, and that it does not become less good when it emerges from the home and temple and assumes its rightful place in society." - Gertrude Himmelfarb

This last, in particular, would likely leave many people blinking in stunned confusion at so complete a rejection of received cultural wisdom.

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