Richard Rohr

Men and women are most alike at their most mature and soulful levels. Men and women are most different only at their most immature and merely physical levels.

— Richard Rohr

Most Christian 'believers' tend to echo the cultural prejudices and worldviews of the dominant group in their country, with only a minority revealing any real transformation of attitudes or consciousness. It has been true of slavery and racism, classism and consumerism and issues of immigration and health care for the poor.

— Richard Rohr

If our love of God does not directly influence, and even change, how we engage in the issues of our time on this earth, I wonder what good religion is.

— Richard Rohr

We Catholics must admit that there is a constant temptation among us to avoid the lectionary and the Word of God for private and pious devotions that usually have little power to actually change us or call our ego assumptions into question.

— Richard Rohr

Your heart has to be prepared ahead of time through faith and prayer and grace and mercy and love and forgiveness so you can keep your heart open in hell, when hell happens.

— Richard Rohr

Your heart has to be prepared ahead of time through faith and prayer and grace and mercy and love and forgiveness so you can keep your heart open in hell, when hell happens.

— Richard Rohr

God does not love you because you are good, God loves you because God is good.

— Richard Rohr

Power should be entrusted only to those who do not seek it.

— Richard Rohr

The human ego prefers anything, just about anything, to falling, or changing, or dying. The ego is that part of you that loves the status quo—even when it's not working. It attaches to past and present and fears the future.

— Richard Rohr

We worshiped Jesus instead of following him on his same path. We made Jesus into a mere religion instead of a journey toward union with God and everything else. This shift made us into a religion of 'belonging and believing' instead of a religion of transformation.

— Richard Rohr

Religion has not tended to create seekers or searchers, has not tended to create honest, humble people who trust that God is always beyond them. We aren’t focused on the great mystery. Religion has, rather, tended to create people who think they have God in their pockets, people with quick, easy, glib answers. That’s why so much of the West is understandably abandoning religion. People know the great mystery cannot be that simple and facile.

— Richard Rohr

Group-think is a substitute for God-think. The belief is that God is found only by our group. The next step is to establish that identification with our group as the only way to serve God.

— Richard Rohr

The world, the system, moves forward out of fear. That’s why they have to threaten us to play the game. We’re threatened with loss of job, money, reputation, or prestige. It’s all based on fear.

— Richard Rohr

Prayer must lead us beyond mind, words, and ideas to a more spacious place where God has a chance to get in.

— Richard Rohr

So much is happening on earth that cannot be fixed or explained, but it can be felt and suffered. I think a Christian is one who, along with Jesus, agrees to feel, to suffer the pain of the world.

— Richard Rohr

Much of my criticism of religion comes about when I see it not only affirming the system of normalcy but teaching folks how to live there comfortably. It just increases our “stuckness” in the old world. As does a lot of poor psychotherapy. Cheap religion teaches us how to live successfully in a sick system.

— Richard Rohr

God created us for love, for union, for forgiveness and compassion and, yet, that has not been our storyline. That has not been our history.

— Richard Rohr

We looked too long for God and truth through words alone. The fruit for humanity has been rather limited, it seems to me - especially when I observe every day the extraordinary amount of unhappy and angry people in well educated and 'religious' countries.

— Richard Rohr

When 'happiness' eludes us - as, eventually, it always will - we have the invitation to examine our programmed responses and to exercise our power to choose again.

— Richard Rohr

The theological virtue of hope is the patient and trustful willingness to live without closure, without resolution, and still be content and even happy because our Satisfaction is now at another level, and our Source is beyond ourselves.

— Richard Rohr