Henri de Lubac quotes
[D]oes not the mutual love of two beings complete them both, and call forth in each of them higher and more irreducible qualities? That is, in proportion as this love tends the more to true unity, because it is more spiritualized, so are these qualities more fully, more strictly personal.
Henri de Lubac
In the interests of refuting such chaotic concepts as those which see a divine Church only in a "Church of the saints", an entirely invisible society which is nothing but a pure abstraction, we must not fall into the contrary error. The Church "in so far as visible" is also an abstraction, and our faith should never make separate what God from the beginning has joined together: [...] in ecclesiology just as [...] in Christology, [...] dissociation of the divine and the human [...] is fatal. If necessary, the experience of Protestantism should serve us as sufficient warning. Having stripped it of all its mystical attributes, it acknowledged in the visible Church a mere secular institution; as a matter of course it abandoned it to the patronage of the state and sought a refuge for the spiritual life in an invisible Church, its concept of which had evaporated into an abstract ideal.
Henri de Lubac
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.
Henri de Lubac
The Church's method is not syncretist any more than it is naïve. Syncretism is artificial, generally the work of rulers or literary men, and presupposes declining faith. It is an insult to the living God. In the energetic language of the prophets, syncretism is fornication. In the spiritual order it is barren, like the political system or philosophy from which it springs. It lowers and vulgarizes all the elements it combines[...]. But here again the history of the Church can teach us. Christianity rejected Gnosticism, a representative of the syncretist system; but such an uncompromising boldness has not hindered her in carrying out her work of assimilation with a breadth of vision that is more clearly manifest every day.
Henri de Lubac
Decadence, instability, disintegration, corruption, reversal of attitude, all that arises through the simple fact of one's going on existing without self-criticism, self-renewal, constant self-adaptation, without letting anything in one die, through the simple fact of gradually settling down in the vantage point one occupies, the good conscience one enjoys. Such is the permanent danger of all spiritual life. It is an inevitable deterioration which can only be overcome-and painfully at that-by a watchful mustering of strength-unless it be effortlessly vanquished by a wonderful gift of grace....Whence the necessity of paradox: or rather the perpetual flavor of paradox that truth has, when it is freshly expressed, for the man who clings to a truth when it is in the process of turning into a lie.
Henri de Lubac
