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It's very difficult to determine whether this is the fault of the world that has abandoned the Church, or the Church that does not know how to relate to the world.

I'm not sure that Jesuits ever produce faithful Catholics. Because they're too fierce. It is Sturm und Drang, and it is guilt - it is all that battlefield stuff.

Vatican II declares the Church... as necessary for salvation.

There was only one decline in church attendance, and that was in the late 1960s when the Vatican said it was not a sin to miss Mass. They said Catholics could act like Protestants, and so they did.

For many years, the work advanced but slowly. One denomination after another embarked in the undertaking; and now, American missionaries are seen in almost every land and every clime.

I am shy to admit that I have followed the advice given all those years ago by a wise archbishop to a bewildered young man: that moments of unbelief 'don't matter,' that if you return to a practice of the faith, faith will return.

The Jesuits had learned that a Christian mission to China could never succeed if it were not in a position to show and convince the Chinese intelligentsia of the superiority of the European culture.

I was raised Catholic at a time when Vatican II was just taking hold.

Canon law itself says for one case of guilt, a priest can be dismissed from the clerical state. One.

I was brought up Roman Catholic. I'm not even baptized.