This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Polish-born Pope, Improved Catholic Church's Relations with Judaism, Islam the Eastern Orthodox Church and Anglican Communion, praised for his orthodox Catholic stances
"Limitation of one's freedom might seem to be something negative and unpleasant, but love makes it a positive, joyful and creative thing. Freedom exists for the sake of love. "
"Love between man and woman cannot be built without sacrifices and self-denial. "
"Love consists of a commitment which limits one's freedom - it is a giving of the self, and to give oneself means just that: to limit one's freedom on behalf of another. "
"Love is never defeated, and I could add, the history of Ireland proves it."
"Man always travels along precipices. His truest obligation is to keep his balance."
"Man is called to a fullness of life which far exceeds the dimensions of his earthly existence, because it consists in sharing the very life of God. The loftiness of this supernatural vocation reveals the greatness and the inestimable value of human life even in its temporal phase."
"Marriage is an act of will that signifies and involves a mutual gift, which unites the spouses and binds them to their eventual souls, with whom they make up a sole family - a domestic church. "
"Never again war! Never again hatred and intolerance!"
"None can sense more deeply than you artists, ingenious creators of beauty that you are, something of the pathos with which God at the dawn of creation looked upon the work of his hands."
"Once again, through myself, the Church, in the words of the well-known declaration Nostra Aetate, deplores the hatred, persecutions and displays of anti-Semitism directed against the Jews at any time and by anyone. I repeat, by anyone."
"Not all are called to be artists in the specific sense of the term. Yet, as Genesis has it, all men and women are entrusted with the task of crafting their own life: in a certain sense, they are to make of it a work of art, a masterpiece."
"Modern Society will find no solution to the ecological problem unless it takes a serious look at its lifestyles."
"Peace is a good to be promoted with good: it is a good for individuals, for families, for nations and for all humanity; yet it is one which needs to be maintained and fostered by decisions and actions inspired by good."
"Radical changes in world politics leave America with a heightened responsibility to be, for the world, an example of a genuinely free, democratic, just and humane society."
"Pervading nationalism imposes its dominion on man today in many different forms and with an aggressiveness that spares no one. The challenge that is already with us is the temptation to accept as true freedom what in reality is only a new form of slavery."
"Original sin is not only the violation of a positive command … but … attempts … to abolish fatherhood, destroying its rays which permeate the created world, placing in doubt the truth about God who is Love and leaving man with only a sense of the master-slave relationship. "
"Religion can purify science from idolatry and false absolutes."
"Science develops best when its concepts and conclusions are integrated into the broader human culture and its concerns for ultimate meaning and value. Scientists cannot, therefore, hold themselves entirely aloof from the sorts of issues dealt with by philosophers and theologians. By devoting to these issues something of the energy and care they give to their research in science, they can help others realize more fully the human potentialities of their discoveries. They can also come to appreciate for themselves that these discoveries cannot be a genuine substitute for knowledge of the truly ultimate. Science can purify religion from error and superstition; religion can purify science from idolatry and false absolutes. Each can draw the other into a wider world, a world in which both can flourish."
"Social justice cannot be attained by violence. Violence kills what it intends to create."
"Stupidity is also a gift from God, but one mustn't misuse it."
"The Church calls everyone to make faith a reality in their lives, as the best path . . . for attaining true freedom, which includes the recognition of human rights and social justice."
"The goods of this world are originally meant for all. The right to private property is valid and necessary, but it does not nullify the value of this principle. Private property, in fact, is under a social mortgage."
"The great danger for family life, in the midst of any society whose idols are pleasure, comfort and independence, lies in the fact that people close their hearts and become selfish."
"The cemetery of the victims of human cruelty in our century is extended to include yet another vast cemetery, that of the unborn."
"The Church's social doctrine is not a third way between liberal capitalism and Marxist collectivism, nor even a possible alternative to other solutions less radically opposed to one another: rather, it constitutes a category of its own."
"The ethos of redemption is realized in self-mastery, by means of temperance, that is, continence of desires. "
"The earth will not continue to offer its harvest, except with faithful stewardship. We cannot say we love the land and then take steps to destroy it for use by future generations. "
"The fear of making permanent commitments can change the mutual love of husband and wife into two loves of self-two loves existing side by side, until they end in separation."
"The family, as the fundamental and essential educating community, is the privileged means for transmitting the religious and cultural values which help the person to acquire his or her own identity. Founded on love and open to the gift of life, the family contains in itself the very future of society; its most special task is to contribute effectively to a future of peace."
"The future starts today, not tomorrow."
"The globalized organization of work, profiting from the extreme privation of developing peoples, often entails grave situations that mock the elementary demands of human dignity."
"The obligation to earn one's bread by the sweat of one's brow also presumes the right to do so. A society in which this right is systematically denied, in which economic policies do not allow workers to reach satisfactory levels of employment, cannot be justified from an ethical point of view, nor can that society attain social peace."
"The lust of the flesh directs these desires [of personal union], however, to satisfaction of the body, often at the cost of a real and full communion of persons. "
"The Holy Land needs bridges, not walls."
"The individual today is often suffocated between two poles represented by the State and the marketplace. At times it seems as though he exists only as a producer and consumer of goods, or as an object of State administration."
"The historical experience of socialist countries has sadly demonstrated that collectivism does not do away with alienation but rather increases it, adding to it a lack of basic necessities and economic inefficiency."
"The Pope must be a moral force."
"The saint is not a sinless man, without weakness, a man who is not subject to temptation, but the saint, someone who knows how to take God's hand, has the courage really to look at themselves and see their imperfections, but also have trust in God, in His mercy, and manages, despite its own weaknesses, themselves drawn from all the hidden beauty that is just a mirror image of divine beauty. Saint walking on very solid ground, struggling with various problems, struggling with his weakness, and yet full of hope. "
"The truth is not always the same as the majority decision."
"The Jewish religion is not extrinsic, but in a certain way intrinsic to our own religion. Therefore, we have a relationship which we do not have with any other religion. You are our dearly beloved brothers, and, in a certain way, it can be said that you are our elder brothers."
"The United Nations organization has proclaimed 1979 as the Year of the Child. Are the children to receive the arms race from us as a necessary inheritance?"
"The worst prison would be a closed heart."
"There are people and nations, Mother, that I would like to say to you by name. I entrust them to you in silence, I entrust them to you in the way that you know best."
"This is the so-called civilization of 'consumption' and 'consumerism' ... One quickly learns that the more one possesses the more one wants."
"To a Jewish audience: You are our dearly beloved brothers, and in a certain way, it could be said that you are our elder brothers. "
"To all of you and to each one of you, young and old, weak and powerful, I appeal: embrace peace as the great unifying value of your lives. Wherever you live on this planet I earnestly exhort you to pursue in solidarity and sincere dialogue: Peace as a value with no frontiers: North-South, East-West, everywhere one people united in only one Peace."
"There are two victims in every abortion: a dead baby and a dead conscience... There is no obligation in conscience to obey such laws [laws which seek to legitimate abortion and euthanasia]; instead there is a grave and clear obligation to oppose them by conscientious objection."
"This inscription awakens the memory of people whose sons and daughters were destined for total extermination. This people draws its origin from Abraham, our Father in faith. The very people that received from God the commandment, thou shalt not kill, itself experienced in a special measure what is meant by killing. It is not permissible for anyone to pass by this inscription with indifference."
"To all the members of the Church, the people of life and for life, I make this most urgent appeal, To choose life involves rejecting every form of violence: the violence of poverty and hunger, which afflicts so many human beings; the violence of armed conflict; the violence of criminal trafficking in drugs and arms; the violence of mindless damage to the natural environment. "
"To every person of good will, eager to work tirelessly in the building of a new civilization of love, I say once more: Offer forgiveness and receive peace!"