The first thing to say about politics is that politics is not the first thing.

Where orthodoxy is optional, orthodoxy will sooner or later be proscribed.

Genuine tolerance does not mean ignoring differences as if differences made no difference. Genuine tolerance means engaging differences within a bond of civility and respect.

Politics is chiefly a function of culture, at the heart of culture is morality, and at the heart of morality is religion.

Socialism is the religion people get when they lose their religion.

I do believe that those who compare the religious Right to the Nazis have fallen victim to polemical heat prostration.

If the cause of poverty is marginalization, the cure is inclusion.

Every day of the year is a good day to think more deeply about Good Friday, for Good Friday is the drama of the love by which our every day is sustained.

In the gay (Catholic) community, it would seem, the maxim is: love the sin and love the sinner, but hate anyone who calls it a sin or him a sinner.

Optimism is a matter optics, of seeing what you want to see and not seeing what you don't want to see. Hope, on the other hand, is a Christian virtue. It is the unblinking acknowledgment of all that militates against hope, and the unrelenting refusal to despair. We have not the right to despair, and, finally, we have not the reason to despair