The Archives

Sin, Repentance and Forgiveness

Be penitent, therefore, and be converted, that your sins may be blotted out.

- St. Peter, Acts of the Apostles 3:19, c. 30

Give me strength, O God, to expiate my offenses, to overcome my temptations, to subdue my passions, and to acquire the virtues proper to my state.

- Clement XI, A Universal Prayer, c. 1715

There is, alas, a spirit of hedonism abroad today which beguiles men into thinking that life is nothing more than the quest for pleasure and the satisfaction of human passions. This attitude is disastrous.

- John XXIII, Mater et Magistra, May 15, 1961

Learn to submit yourselves, laying aside the arrogant and proud stubbornness of your tongue.

- St. Clement, Letter to the Corinthians, c. 95

Why do those whose strength is in iniquity take pride in their ill-doing?

- St. Nicholas I, Letter to Emperor Michael III, 863

Every sin brings with it a disturbance of the universal order, which God arranged in unspeakable wisdom and infinite love.

- Paul VI, Indulgentiarum Doctrina, January 1, 1967

Pride inflates man; envy consumes him; avarice makes him restless; anger rekindles his passions; gluttony makes him ill; comfort destroys him; lies imprison him; murder defiles him... the very pleasures of sin become instruments of punishment in the hands of God.

- Innocent III, On the Misery of Human Condition, c. 1204

Nothing is better able to restrain the movements of the soul, better able to subject to right reason the natural appetites, than penance.

- Pius XII, Homily on the Canonization of St. Mariana de Jesus  de Paredes, July 9, 1950

No circumstance, no purpose, no law whatsoever can ever make licit an act with is intrinsically illicit, since it is contrary to the Law of God which is written in ever human heart, knowable by reason itself and proclaimed by the Church.

- John Paul II, Evangelium Vitae, March 25, 1995