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I was brought up as a Catholic and went to church every week and took the sacraments. It never really touched the core of my being.

I enjoy ritual and ceremony. What I don't like is when it's badly done or sloppily done. This is actually a theological issue - the forms we adopt, the actions we take, the way we do things, are, as it were, a sacrament.

Every sacrament meeting ought to be a spiritual feast.

If somebody wants to go to church because they like the ritual of it and want to sit in silence for a while one time a week, then that's great. If someone wants to go because they believe that God them and Jesus rose after three days, then that's great, too.

The Church must introduce the individual Christian into an encounter with Jesus Christ and bring Christians into His presence in the sacrament.

The beauty of the Catholic church is that it has a sacramental structure that can hold its own with the best out of any tradition. It has a mystical system and content that can hold its own with the best out of Tibet... its an amazing tradition, but I think you need to be critical.

For faithful Catholics, communion is not just a nice ritual: It is the body and blood of Jesus Christ, and the ultimate sign of our willingness to be incorporated into the church.

We can see that the sacramental presence of the Lord in the Eucharist is an essential gift for us and give us also the possibility to love the others and to work for the others.

I have a profound belief in the power of the Sacraments. I believe that in a Divine way the use of them teaches the teachable their inward meaning and therefore I think we need be in no hurry to attempt to teach new converts all that we think we know about them.

And there is a difference between the essence of a Sacrament and its use.