Quotable & Notable

“We want only to reform the church, not to destroy it.”

-- Ida Raming, one of seven women ordained a priest during a ceremony aboard a boat in the Danube River in 2002. She attended the international Women’s Ordination Worldwide conference in Ottawa, Canada, July 22-24.

“I’m not casting doubt on the power of prayer, although I’ve never been sure I was getting through. But if God told President Bush to send American troops to Iraq, he sent an entirely different message to the pope.”

-- Former Sen. George McGovern speaking at the Missoula (Mont.) World Affairs Council on President Bush’s decision to invade Iraq

“Jesus called me on my cell phone/No roaming charges were incurred/He told me that I should go out in the world/And spread his glorious word”

-- Lyrics from “Altar Boyz,” an off-Broadway musical about a Christian boy band

“When you have to deal with a beast you have to treat him as a beast. It is most regrettable but nevertheless true.”

-- President Harry Truman responding Aug. 11, 1945, to the Rev. Dr. Samuel McCrae Cavert, general secretary of the body that would become the National Council of Churches, who had told Truman in an Aug. 9 telegram that many Christians were “deeply disturbed” over the use of atomic bombs against Japanese cities

“It was bigger than my village.”

-- Ali al-Sorowiy, an Iraqi man whose 13-year-old son was in New York last month to have shrapnel scars removed from his face, recalling a trip to Wal-Mart

National Catholic Reporter, August 12, 2005