Henri de Lubac Quotes

The Gospel is full of paradoxes, by which the mind is at first troubled. The Savior teaches with great simplicity, yet he says also, "Blessed is he that shall not be scandalized in me." And it is a question, at least, whether all substantial spiritual doctrine must not of necessity take a paradoxical form.

The most unbending thoughts are the most vulnerable to change.

It is […] the very opposite of a "closed society". Like its founder it is eternal and sure of itself, and the very intransigence in matters of principle which prevents its ever being ensnared by transitory things secures for it a flexibility of infinite comprehensiveness, the very opposite of the harsh exclusiveness which characterizes the sectarian spirit.[…] The Church is at home everywhere, and everyone should be able to feel himself at home in the Church. Thus the risen Christ, when he shows himself to his friends, takes on the countenance of all races and each hears him in his own tongue.

To seek sincerity above all things is perhaps, at bottom, not to want to be transformed; it is to cling to yourself, to have a morbid love of yourself, just as you are, that is to say, false. It is to refuse release.

She is the Catholic Church: neither Latin nor Greek, but universal.[…] Nothing authentically human, whatever its origin, can be alien to her. "The heritage of all peoples is her inalienable dowry." In her, man's desires and God's have their meeting-place, and by teaching all men their obligations she wishes at the same time to satisfy and more than satisfy the yearnings of each soul and of every age; to gather in everything for its salvation and sanctification.

The Church, trusting in the Holy Spirit that leads her, trusts also all the peoples that she comes to free. That is no sign of naïveté on her part. She […] knows […] that all men are one in community of their divine origin and destiny; and that suffices to give her confidence in face of all the theories engendered by pride and egoism.[…] Besides, does not the only efficacious way to bring out the hidden truth and to avoid extinguishing the good that would break forth lie in a systematic desire to study sympathetically those forms of thought that are most remote from us, and in this study to pay particular attention to privileged cases, however rare they may be? It is at its highest reaches that humanity must be understood; the plains—or the depressions—will always be explored soon enough.

For a spiritual and metaphysical crisis, only a remedy of the same nature is appropriate.

Christian tradition has always looked on heaven under the analogy of a city. Coelestis urbs Jerusalem.[…] It is a city compact like a single house; a close-knit society, gathered like one family under a singe roof […] but at the same time extended to the uttermost.[…] Among those who are received within this heavenly city there is a more intimate relationship than subsists among the members of a human society, for among them there is not only outward harmony, but true unity […], the very consummation of unity, both the image and the result of the unity of the Divine Persons among themselves.[…] The Christian mysticism of unity is trinitarian. The likeness, which in every created soul must be the completion of the divine Image, is not that of a Spinozist God; it is that of a God of Love, of the God whose being is Love.

The denser the ignorance, the more enlightened it thinks itself to be.

No one has the right to say with Cain: "Am I my brother's keeper?" [Gen 4:9] No one is a Christian for himself alone.

The fear of falling a prey to error must never prevent us from getting to the full truth. To overstep the limit, to go beyond, would be to err through excessive daring; but there are also errors of timidity which consist precisely in stopping short, never daring to go any further than half-truths.<p>Love of truth never goes without daring. And that is one of the reasons why truth is not loved.

The moral value of the different systems varies very considerably. So does their spiritual depth; but in this connection the achievements of Greek thought, though it reached a very high level, cannot be compared with the heights of Indian thought. Sometimes understanding is imprisoned in myth, and sometimes it is turned inwards in pure reflexion—or what seems to be. Yet running all through these many differences there is always agreement about the basis of the problem and its presuppositions: the world from which escape must be sought is meaningless, and the humanity that must be outstripped is without a history.

Everybody has his filter, which he takes about with him, though which, from the indefinite mass of facts, he gathers in those suited to confirm his prejudices. And the same fact again, passing through different filters, is revealed in different aspects, so as to confirm the most diverse opinions.<p>Rare, very rare are those who check their filter.

If heretics no longer horrify us today, as they once did our forefathers, is it certain that it is because there is more charity in our hearts? Or would it not too often be, perhaps, without our daring to say so, because the bone of contention, that is to say, the very substance of our faith, no longer interests us? Men of too familiar and too passive a faith, perhaps for us dogmas are no longer the Mystery on which we live, the Mystery which is to be accomplished in us. Consequently then, heresy no longer shocks us; at least, it no longer convulses us like something trying to tear the soul of our souls away from us.... And that is why we have no trouble in being kind to heretics, and no repugnance in rubbing shoulders with them.<p>In reality, bias against ‘heretics’ is felt today just as it used to be. Many give way to it as much as their forefathers used to do. Only, they have turned it against political adversaries. Those are the only ones with whom they refuse to mix. Sectarianism has only changed its object and taken other forms, because the vital interest has shifted. Should we dare to say that this shifting is progress?<p>It is not always charity, alas, which has grown greater, or which has become more enlightened: it is often faith, the taste for the things of eternity, which has grown less. Injustice and violence are still reigning; but they are now in the service of degraded passions.

To see in Catholicism one religion among others, one system among others, even if it be added that it is the only true religion, the only system that works, is to mistake its very nature, or at least to stop at the threshold. Catholicism is religion itself. It is the form which humanity must put on in order finally to be itself.