Jean Guitton Quotations

The tolerance of the skeptic… accepts the most diverse and indeed the most contradictory opinions, and keeps all his suspicions for the “dogmatist.”

When I read the documents relative to the Modernism, as it was defined by Saint Pius X, and when I compare them to the documents of the II Vatican Council, I cannot help being bewildered. For what was condemned as heresy in 1906 was proclaimed as what is and should be from now on the doctrine and method of the Church. In other words, the modernists of 1906 were, somewhat, precursors to me. My masters were part of them. My parents taught me Modernism. How could Saint Pius X reject those that now seem to be my precursors?

It was the final session of the Council, the most essential, in which the Pope [Paul VI] was to bestow upon all humanity the teachings of the Council. He announced this to me on that day with these words, ‘I am about to blow the seven trumpets of the Apocalypse.’

Thought is fugitive; the mind does not repeat itself; if you do not catch the whisperings of the oracle as they come to you, they are lost forever. You must-and this is absolutely essential-convince yourselves that what is offered you this very moment will never be offered again.

The intention of Paul VI with regard to what is commonly called the Mass, was to reform the Catholic liturgy in such a way that it should almost coincide with the Protestant liturgy - but what is curious is that Paul VI did that to get as close as possible to the Protestant Lord's supper... there was with Paul VI an ecumenical intention to remove, or at least to correct, or at least to relax, what was too Catholic, in the traditional sense, and, I repeat, to get the Catholic Mass closer to the Calvinist Mass.

Originality exists in every individual because each of us differs from the others. We are all primary numbers divisible only by ourselves.

We are all primary numbers divisible only by ourselves.