I’m a Muslim But Here’s Why I Admire the Catholic Church

Tamer Nashef  

http://www.strangenotions.com/im-a-muslim-but-heres-why-i-admire-the-catholic-church/

Misunderstanding about the Catholic Church

Archbishop Sheen once said:  
"Many people hate the Catholic Church and her teachings, 
but I do not believe I could find five people who really hate her and her teachings for what they really are.  
They hate what they think are the Church and her teachings."

Church is always fresh, bold and large-minded

People think they know the Church. They think she is a very ancient system that has become sclerotic over time, that gets progressively more insulated and rigid, that forms a sort of armor that smothers one’s personal life. That is the impression of many people. Few people manage to recognize instead that there is something fresh and also bold and large-minded here, something that offers escape from the stale habits of one’s life. But precisely those who have gone through the experience of modernity see this.

—Joseph Ratzinger (Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI), Salt of the Earth

Why we say the Church is holy

The Church is therefore holy, though having sinners in her midst, because she herself has no other life but the life of grace. If they live her life, her members are sanctified; if they move away from her life, they fall into sins and disorders that prevent the radiation of her sanctity. This is why she suffers and does penance for those offenses, of which she has the power to free her children through the blood of Christ and the gift of the Holy Spirit.

--Venerable Pope Paul VI

Where the Church is, there is Christ

"It is not possible to find Jesus outside the church," Pope Francis said in his Mass homily for the memorial of St George, his patron saint, on April 23. "It is the mother church who gives us Jesus, gives us identity," he said. The Pope also said: "The great Paul VI said it is 'an absurd dichotomy' to want to live with Jesus without the church, to follow Jesus outside the church, to love Jesus without the church."

「不可能在教會之外找到耶穌。」這是教宗方濟在他主保聖人聖喬治在4月23日紀念日彌撒中的講道重點。教宗這樣解釋：「是（慈）母教會給我們耶穌，給我們身份。」他還表示：教宗保祿六世說期望沒有教會，但與耶穌同生，或者在教會外，跟隨耶穌，或者不要教會，但愛耶穌，皆是荒謬的分歧。

Not behind, but beyond the times

‎"CHRISTIANITY is always out of fashion because it is always sane; and all fashions are mild insanities. ...The Church always seems to be behind the times, when it is really beyond the times; it is waiting till the last fad shall have seen its last summer. It keeps the key of a permanent virtue.”

~G.K. Chesterton: 'The Ball and the Cross.'

"Everything about our modern world we think is good is there because of the Church." "The only reason we care about the poor is because Christianity has won. The only reason the rights of women and children are important is because the Church has made them important. The only reason we have science is because the Church taught us how to think." "Yours is the Church that built up the best in modern culture." --Mike Aquilina, Yours Is the Church: How Catholicism Shapes the World

New saints needed, not new managers

What we can do is infinitely inferior to Him who does.

True 'reform' does not mean to take great pains to erect new facades…Real 'reform' is to strive to let what is ours disappear as much as possible so what belongs to Christ may become more visible.

Saints, in fact, reformed the Church in depth, not by working up plans for new structures, but by reforming themselves. What the Church needs in order to respond to the needs of man in every age is holiness, not management.

--Card Joseph Ratzinger (Benedict XVI), Ratzinger Report

THE CHURCH THAT WE NEED

We do not really want a religion that is right where we are right. We want a religion that is right where we are wrong. We do not want, as the newspapers say, a church that will move with the world. We want a church that will move the world.

- G. K. Chesterton