A just laicism allows religious freedom. The state does not impose religion but rather gives space to religions with a responsibility toward civil society, and therefore it allows these religions to be factors in building up society.
Joseph Ratzinger
2
Although the particular inclination of the homosexual person is not a sin, it is a more or less strong tendency ordered to an intrinsic moral evil, and thus the inclination itself must be seen as an objective disorder.
Joseph Ratzinger
3
Although the particular inclination of the homosexual person is not a sin, it is more or less strong tendency ordered to an intrinsic moral evil, and thus the inclination itself must be seen as an objective disorder.
Joseph Ratzinger
4
An Adult faith does not follow the waves of fashion and the latest novelties.
Joseph Ratzinger
5
Celibacy is not a matter of compulsion. Someone is accepted as a priest only when he does it of his own accord.
Joseph Ratzinger
6
Dear brothers and sisters, after the great Pope John Paul II, the cardinals have elected me - a simple, humble worker in the vineyard of the Lord.
Joseph Ratzinger
7
Find the Lord, find the saints of the times, but also find the not canonized, simple persons who are really in the heart of the Church.
Joseph Ratzinger
8
Having a clear faith, based on the creed of the church is often labeled today as fundamentalism. Whereas relativism, which is letting oneself be tossed and swept along by every wind of teaching, look like the only attitude acceptable to today's standards.
Joseph Ratzinger
9
Having a clear faith, based on the creed of the church, is often labeled today as a fundamentalism... Whereas relativism, which is letting oneself be tossed and 'swept along by every wind of teaching,' looks like the only attitude acceptable to today's standards.
Joseph Ratzinger
10
Our Christian conviction is that Christ is also the messiah of Israel. Certainly it is in the hands of God how and when the unification of Jews and Christians into the people of God will take place.
Joseph Ratzinger
11
Standards of conduct appropriate to civil society or the workings of a democracy cannot be purely and simply applied to the Church.
Joseph Ratzinger
12
The abuse of faith has to be resisted precisely.
Joseph Ratzinger
13
The Cross is the approbation of our existence, not in words, but in an act so completely radical that it caused God to become flesh and pierced this flesh to the quick; that, to God, it was worth the death of his incarnate Son.
Joseph Ratzinger
14
The fact that the church is convinced of not having the right to confer priestly ordination on women is now considered by some as irreconcilable with the European Constitution.
Joseph Ratzinger
15
The fact that the Lord can work and act even with insufficient means consoles me, and above all I entrust myself to your prayers.
Joseph Ratzinger
16
The real "action" in the liturgy in which we are all supposed to participate is the action of God himself. This is what is new and distinctive about the Christian liturgy: God himself acts and does what is essential.
Joseph Ratzinger
17
The wrath of God is a way of saying that I have been living in a way that is contrary to the love that is God. Anyone who begins to live and grow away from God, who lives away from what is good, is turning his life toward wrath.
Joseph Ratzinger
18
Today we bury his remains in the earth as a seed of immortality. Our hearts are full of sadness, yet at the same time of joyful hope and profound gratitude.
Joseph Ratzinger
19
We are moving toward a dictatorship of relativism which does not recognize anything as for certain and which has as its highest goal one's own ego and one's own desires.
Joseph Ratzinger
20
We can learn from him that suffering and the gift of himself is an essential gift we need in our time.
Joseph Ratzinger
21
We must have great respect for these people who also suffer and who want to find their own way of correct living. On the other hand, to create a legal form of a kind of homosexual marriage, in reality, does not help these people.
Joseph Ratzinger
