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Social sin is the crystallization ... of individuals' sins into permanent structures that keeps sin in being and makes its force to be felt by the majority of people.

Oscar Romero

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Oscar Romero
Felt
Individuals
Makes
Keeps
People
Structure
Majority
Sin
Crystallization
Force
Structures
Individual
Sins
Social
Permanent

More quotes by Oscar Romero

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You can tell the people that if they succeed in killing me, that I forgive and bless those who do it. Hopefully, they will realize they are wasting their time. A bishop will die, but the church of God, which is the people, will never perish.
Oscar Romero
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No confession brings perfection.
Oscar Romero
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Let us not tire of preaching love it is the force that will overcome the world. Let us not tire of preaching love. Though we see that waves of violence succeed in drowning the fire of Christian love, love must win out it is the only thing that can.
Oscar Romero
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We are prophets of a future not our own.
Oscar Romero
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When the church hears the cry of the oppressed it cannot but denounce the social structures that give rise to and perpetuate the misery from which the cry arises.
Oscar Romero
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If God accepts the sacrifice of my life, may my death be for the freedom of my people. A bishop will die, but the Church of God, which is the people, will never perish. I do not believe in death without resurrection. If they kill me, I will rise again in the people of El Salvador.
Oscar Romero
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As a pastor, I am bound by a divine command to give my life for those whom I love, and that includes all Salvadorans, even those who are going to kill me.
Oscar Romero
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God is not satisfied with appearance. God wants the garment of justice. God wants his Christians dressed in love.
Oscar Romero
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Peace is not the product of terror or fear. Peace is not the silence of cemeteries. Peace is not the silent result of violent repression. Peace is the generous, tranquil contribution of all to the good of all. Peace is dynamism. Peace is generosity. It is right and it is duty.
Oscar Romero
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The church would betray its own love for God and its fidelity to the gospel if it stopped being . . . a defender of the rights of the poor . . . a humanizer of every legitimate struggle to achieve a more just society . . . that prepares the way for the true reign of God in history.
Oscar Romero
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A church that suffers no persecution but enjoys the privileges and support of the things of the earth - beware! - is not the true church of Jesus Christ. A preaching that does not point out sin is not the preaching of the gospel. A preaching that makes sinners feel good, so that they are secured in their sinful state, betrays the gospel's call.
Oscar Romero
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We must not seek the child Jesus in the pretty figures of our Christmas cribs. We must seek him among the undernourished children who have gone to bed at night with nothing to eat, among the poor newsboys who will sleep covered with newspapers in doorways.
Oscar Romero
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True liberty does violence to self and, like Christ, who disregarded that he was sovereign becomes a slave to serve others.
Oscar Romero
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Beautiful is the moment in which we understand that we are no more than an instrument of God we live only as long as God wants us to live we can only do as much as God makes us able to do we are only as intelligent as God would have us be.
Oscar Romero
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Even when they call us mad, when they call us subversives and communists and all the epithets they put on us, we know we only preach the subversive witness of the Beatitudes, which have turned everything upside down.
Oscar Romero
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Our responsibility as Christians makes us tremble.
Oscar Romero
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One must not love oneself so much, as to avoid getting involved in the risks of life that history demands of us, and those that fend off danger will lose their lives.
Oscar Romero
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Let us not forget: we are a pilgrim church, subject to misunderstanding, to persecution, but a church that walks serene, because it bears the force of love.
Oscar Romero
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We must overturn so many idols, the idol of self first of all, so that we can be humble, and only from our humility can learn to be redeemers, can learn to work together in the way the world really needs.
Oscar Romero
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I will not tire of declaring that if we really want an effective end to violence we must remove the violence that lies at the root of all violence: structural violence, social injustice, exclusion of citizens from the management of the country, repression. All this is what constitutes the primal cause, from which the rest flows naturally.
Oscar Romero