You tell me: Can you live crushed under the weight of the present? Without a memory of the past and without the desire to look ahead to the future by building something, a future, a family? Can you go on like this? This, to me, is the most urgent problem that the Church is facing.

The worship of the golden calf of old has found a new and heartless image in the cult of money and the dictatorship of an economy which is faceless and lacking any truly human goal.

A person who thinks only about building walls, wherever they may be, and not building bridges is not Christian. This is not in the Gospel.

The confessional is not a torture chamber, but the place in which the Lord's mercy motivates us to do better.

Gun owners are not buying firearms because they anticipate a confrontation with the government. Rather, we anticipate confrontations where the government isn't there - or simply doesn't show up in time.

A parliamentary democracy that has developed its delicate balances over hundreds of years will not give up its sovereign rights.

To me, politics is about the future.

Money is power, and in that government which pays all the public officers of the states will all political power be substantially concentrated.