"You need to know what you believe… You need to understand it like a good musician knows the piece he is playing…You need God’s help if your faith is not going to dry up like a dewdrop in the sun, if you want to resist the blandishments of consumerism…I bless you and pray each day for all of you."

"The Church must not settle down with what is merely comfortable and serviceable at the parish level, she must arouse the voice of the cosmos and, by glorifying the Creator, elicit the glory of the Cosmos itself, making it also glorious, beautiful, habitable and beloved. Next to the saints, the art which the Church has produced is the only real ‘apologia’ for her history… The Church is to transform, improve, ‘humanise’ the world—but how can she do that if at the same time she turns her back on beauty, which is so closely allied to love? For together, beauty and love form the true consolation in this world, bringing it as near as possible to the world of the resurrection. The Church must maintain high standards, she must be a place where beauty can be at home; she must lead the struggle for that ‘spiritualisation’ without which the world becomes ‘the first circle of hell’."