Quotes about Tradition

In most Christian circles you will rarely hear fasting mentioned, and few will have read anything about it. And yet it's mentioned in Scripture more times even than something as important as baptism (about seventy-seven times for fasting to seventy-five for baptism).

Every Catholic faced with a great need starts a novena. There is good precedent for this. The apostles stayed in the Cenacle for nine days after the Ascension of Jesus Christ, praying for the descent of the Holy Spirit. That was the first novena. Novenas are started nine days before the feast of some favorite saint or they can be made at any time.

there has never been a revival of religion so long as the order of service has been strictly followed. ...we are to be led by the Holy Spirit.

In this outward and physical ceremony we attest once again to the inner and spiritual strength of our Nation. As my high school teacher, Miss Julia Coleman, used to say: 'We must adjust to changing times and still hold to unchanging principles.'

As long ago as 1860 it was the proper thing to be born at home. At present, so I am told, the high gods of medicine have decreed that the first cries of the young shall be uttered upon the anesthetic air of a hospital, preferably a fashionable one.

I may be old-fashioned in my ideas, but women run around too much these days to suit me. They meet all kinds of crazy fish.

Christmas means a great deal to me. I was reared in a family that celebrated Christmas to some extent, but I married into a family that celebrated Christmas in a big way. And my wife always made a big thing of Christmas for the children. We have five children, and we had a terrific time at Christmas.

The chef that grew up with the grandma who cooks tends to always beat the chef that went to the culinary institute. It's in the blood.

There can be no freedom without order, and there is no order without virtue. Now, that's a simple enough formulation, but it's an insight found not only in the writings of Founding Fathers like Washington or great political thinkers like Edmund Burke; it is also found in a great part of our Judeo-Christian tradition.

The consciousness of being borne up by a spiritual tradition that goes back for centuries gives one a feeling of confidence and security in the face of all passing strains and stresses.

Christendom has often achieved apparent success by ignoring the precepts of its founder.

What is conservatism? Is it not the adherence to the old and tried against the new and untried?