Quotable & Notable

“It’s like an appointment with a dietician. The Palestinians will get a lot thinner, but won’t die.”

-- Dov Weissglass, adviser to acting Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, discussing Israel’s economic siege of the Palestinian Authority, now under the leadership of Hamas

“Each family is mourning at least one loss.”

-- Bishop Precioso Cantillas of Maasin, Philippines, who surveyed damage to villages in his diocese hit by mudslides Feb. 17 on southern Leyte Island

“I haven’t seen so many Catholics in one place since my last visit to the U.S. Supreme Court.”

-- New York Times columnist David Brooks addressing the closing luncheon of the Catholic Social Ministry Gathering, an annual conference Catholic diocesan and national social ministry organizations

“We are not the Democratic Party at prayer. We are not the religious caucus of the Republican Party.”

-- John Carr, head of the U.S. bishops’ Secretariat for Social Development and World Peace at the of the Catholic Social Ministry Gathering

“We are not called to win competitions or arguments in favor of ‘our product’ in some religious marketplace.”

-- Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams speaking on Christian identity and religious plurality at the Ninth Assembly of the World Council of Churches in Porto Alegre, Brazil

National Catholic Reporter, March 3, 2006