Quotes from James Carroll

Forgiveness as the response to the inevitability of failure. Suffering understood as part of life. Trust as the other side of anguish. A permanent thankfulness.

Communion over loneliness. Death not an end, but a beginning. At home in the absolute—and absolutely unknown—future.

The theological denigration of women was a major revision of the assumptions that had informed the Christian movement from the gospels forward. Jesus himself modeled an egalitarian respect toward women: In Christ, 'there is neither male nor female.

Jesus was the only point. Imitation was the point.

A power structure that is accountable only to itself will always end by abusing the powerless. If exposed, it will ask, paternalistically, to be allowed to repair the damage on its own.

Not satisfied with endlessly pulling drowning men from the torrents rushing past, Day went upstream to see who was throwing the poor bastards into the water in the first place—and

Asceticism was not necessary for holiness.

Therefore, in the presence of my dear family, in the presence of my Church, and in the presence of the imagined communion of my readers, I have told this story in the hope of forgiveness, and as a promise.

The nobility of what humans could be capable of, if only they weren't human.

The Spirit of the Lord GOD is upon me, because the LORD has anointed me to bring good tidings to the afflicted; he has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted.

Asked to describe the Holy One, Jesus told the story of the father whose bond with his son, no matter the son's unworthiness, was unbreakable.

The expectation that he will come again—in fulfillment of all human longing at the end of time. "Parousia" is the technical name for this expectation; "eschatology.