"Faith is always a path. As long as we live we are on the way, and on that account faith is always under pressure and under threat. And it is healthy that it can never turn into a convenient ideology. That it does not make me hardened and unable to follow the thoughts of my doubting brother and to sympathize with him. Faith can only mature by suffering anew, at every stage in life, the oppression and the power of unbelief, by admitting its realities and then finally going right through it, so that it again finds the path opening ahead for awhile."
Cardinal Ratzinger, God and the World
"I distribute the virtues quite diversely; I do not give all of them to
each person, but some to one, some to others... I shall give principally
charity to one; justice to another; humility to this one, a living
faith to that one... And so I have given many gifts and graces, both
spiritual and temporal, with such diversity that I have not given
everything to one single person, so that you may be constrained to
practice charity towards one another... I have willed that one should
need another and that all should be my ministers in distributing the
graces and gifts they have received from me."
The Catechism of the Catholic
Church #1937, quoting the Dialogue of Jesus to St. Catherine of Siena
"Q. How many ways are there to God?
A. As many as there are
people. For even within the same faith each man's way is an entirely
personal one. We have Christ's word: I am the way. In that respect,
there is ultimately one way, and everyone who is on the way to God is
therefore in some sense also on the way of Jesus Christ. But this does
not mean that all ways are identical in terms of consciousness and will,
but, on the contrary, the one way is so big that it becomes a personal
way for each man."
Cardinal Ratzinger, Salt of the Earth
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