Quotes about Priests

In 1965, in the Council's "Decree on the Ministry and Life of Priests" (Pres-byterorum ordinis, 10), the Church proposed a new institutional form, called the "personal prelature." Such an institution could accommodate both clergy and lay members cooperating to accomplish specific pastoral tasks.

Priests are set up by the pope and his followers to sacrifice Christ, not to teach the people.

Therefore, blessed be God and the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ who has hidden the way of truth from the wise and prudent and revealed it unto simple laymen and little priests who choose rather to obey God than men, who in acts generically good and acts neutral have the life of Christ before their eyes and obey prelates so far as these acts, modified by circumstances, can be reasonably put into practice for edification through the imitation of Christ.

Priests are the very offspring of God and share in his likeness. Our lineage is from heaven, which makes us hybrids of heaven and earth, though the scales tip in the direction of heaven. We are more connected to heaven than is the rest of creation. We are children priests or, since our Father is the king, we are royal priests who can enjoy his companionship as he actually enjoys ours.

Let us pray for all good and faithful priests who dedicate themselves to their people with generosity and unknown sacrifices.

That God cannot lie, is no advantage to your argument, because it is no proof that priests can not, or that the Bible does not.

There was a time when people accepted magical experiences as natural. There were no priests then, and no one went chasing after the secrets of the occult.

You are priests, not social or political leaders. Let us not be under the illusion that we are serving the Gospel through an exaggerated interest in the wide field of temporal problems.

In the Western Church to which I belong, priests cannot be married as in the Byzantine, Ukrainian, Russian or Greek Catholic Churches. In those churches, the priests can be married, but the bishops have to be celibate. They are very good priests.

In the United States, there is constant news on this topic, but less than 1 percent of priests are guilty of acts of this type. The constant presence of these news items does not correspond to the objectivity of the information nor to the statistical objectivity of the facts.

In the Church, priests also are sinners. But I am personally convinced that the constant presence in the press of the sins of Catholic priests, especially in the United States, is a planned campaign, as the percentage of these offenses among priests is not higher than in other categories, and perhaps it is even lower.

The Gospel having spread itself into Persia, the pagan priests, who worshipped the sun, were greatly alarmed, and dreaded the loss of that influence they had hitherto maintained over the people's minds and properties.