It is further an admitted historical truth, which no one denies, that such an institution putting forth such a claim has been present among mankind f… - Hilaire Belloc

The Catholic Church is an institution I am bound to hold divine — but for unbelievers a proof of its divinity might be found in the fact that no merely human institution conducted with such knavish imbecility would have lasted a fortnight.

The wealthy took advantage within the heart of civilization itself of this external revolt against order; for it is always to the advantage of the wealthy to deny general conceptions of right and wrong, to question a popular philosophy and to weaken the drastic and immediate power of the human will, organized throughout the whole community. It is always in the nature of greatwealth to be insanely tempted (though it should know from active experience how little wealth can give), to push on to more and more domination over the bodies of men — and it can do so best by attacking fixed social restraints.

For one's native place is the shell of one's soul, and one's church is the kernel of that nut.