Francis George (January 16, 1937 – April 17, 2015) was an American cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church and Archbishop Emeritus of Chicago. A member of the Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate, George was created a cardinal by Pope John Paul II in 1998. He was Bishop of Yakima (1990–1996), Archbishop of Portland, Oregon (1996–1997), the eighth Archbishop of Chicago (1997–2014) and served as president of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops from 2007 to 2010.
Born: January 16th, 1937
Died: April 17th, 2015
Categories: Cardinals, Non-fiction authors, Roman Catholics, 2010s deaths
Quotes: 8 sourced quotes total
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They've run out of tricks in the bag, if you like.
It's hard to discover that you're hated.
Know that I will keep you in my prayers; please keep me in yours.
Belief in God's presence and action in American public life, in social events, in education, in civic celebrations and political discussions, which for two hundred years had been considered broadly beneficent, changed radically on September 11, 2001.
I expect to die in my bed, my successor will die in prison, and his successor will die a martyr in the public square. His successor will help to pick up and rebuild the shards of a ruined church and society, as the Church has done so much in the past time and again.
Some have recently argued that pluralism by its very nature demands civic secularism. There seems to be no logical reason why respect for the beliefs of more than a quarter billion Americans, 90 percent of whom declare themselves to be religious, should require us now to eschew the public expression of religion, even in discussing political affairs that have moral foundations or implications.
In the long run, any attempt to reduce the complexity of the relations among the sacred, the properly secular, and the profane is doomed to failure, although each such effort can cause great human hardship in the short run. But in both the short and the long run, the Church, or the synagogue, or the mosque or the temple, is where you go when you want to be connected to the One who relates to everyone and every people. If the Church is where one goes to be truly free, how does the Church contribute to our understanding of who we are and what we should do in the activities that shape the world we live in, that fill the theater of secularity?
There are only two kinds of arguments for euthanasia. The first is based on owning your life. Already in the last century, some philosophers and novelists began to talk of suicide as the ultimate act of self-control or self-possession. That is, of course, an illusion, for death is the surrender of all control or possession; and killing oneself is always an act of despair. It means a person has given up all hope. The second kind of argument is based on escaping from suffering. In actual fact, pain control is so far advanced now that suffering can be alleviated in almost all cases. The fear of suffering, however, creates a strong case for accepting a “right to die”. Right or no right, we will all die. The basic question, therefore, is always: since I must die, what is the meaning of life?