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XVI QUOTES

XVI QUOTES

1 " In Astrology, the moon, among its other meanings, has that of " the common people," who submit (they know not why) to any independent will that can express itself with sufficient energy. The people who guillotined the mild Louis XVI died gladly for Napoleon. The impossibility of an actual democracy is due to this fact of mob-psychology. As soon as you group men, they lose their personalities. A parliament of the wisest and strongest men in the nation is liable to behave like a set of schoolboys, tearing up their desks and throwing their inkpots at each other. The only possibility of co-operation lies in discipline and autocracy, which men have sometimes established in the name of equal rights. "

2 " We think of 1789 as the date of the French Revolution, and the storming of the Bastille as its defining event. Yet as late as halfway through 1792, most of the familiar images of the revolution had yet to occur. Louis XVI was still king, and the Assembly was negotiating a new constitutional arrangement for the monarchy, not so different from Britain's Glorious Revolution of 1688. "

3 " For the Church, the option for the poor is primarily a theological category rather than a cultural, sociological, political, or philosophical one. God shows the poor " his first mercy." This divine preference has consequences for the faith life of all Christians, because we are called to have " this mind...which was in Jesus Christ" (Phil. 2:5). Inspired by this, the Church has made an option for the poor, which is understood as a " special form of primacy in the exercise of Christian charity, to which the whole tradition of the Church bears witness." This option - as Benedict XVI has taught - " is implicit in our Christian faith in a God who became poor for us, so as to enrich us with his poverty." This is why I want a Church that is poor and for the poor. They have much to teach us. Not only do they share in the sensus fidei, but in their difficulties they know the suffering Christ. We need to let ourselves be evangelized by them. The new evangelization is an invitation to acknowledge the saving power at work in their lives and to put them at the center of the Church's pilgrim way. We are called to find Christ in them, to lend our voice to their causes, but also to be their friends, to listen to them, to speak for them, and to embrace the mysterious wisdom that God wishes to share with us through them. "