"Not to oppose error is to approve it; & not to defend truth is to suppress it, &, indeed, to neglect to confound evil men — when we can do it — is no less a sin than to encourage them" — Pope St. Felix III.
"In our time more than ever before, the chief strength of the wicked lies in the cowardice & weakness of good men.... All the strength of Satan's reign is due to the easy-going weakness of Catholics" — Pope St. Pius X, Dec. 13, 1908.
"The preservation of the faith & the salvation of souls are the supreme law of the Church" - Pope Pius XII, Address to the Roman Rota, November 2, 1944.
"He who does evil because he has been commanded does not perform an act of obedience but rather of rebellion; he upsets the order: he neglects obedience to God in order to obey men" — St. Bernard of Clairvaux, The Complete Works of St. Bernard, Charpentier, Book I, Ep.VII.
St. Thomas Aquinas: "When there is a proximate danger for the faith, prelates must be questioned even publicly by their subjects."
"Disobedience is not schism, no matter how obstinate it is, for as long as it does not contain a rebellion against the authority of the Pope or of the Church" — St. Thomas of Aquinas, Summa Theologica, IIa IIae, Q.39, A.1 ad.8.
St. Robert Bellarmine, De Romano Pontifice, II, 30: "... for men are not bound, or able to read hearts; but when they see that someone is a heretic by his external works, they judge him to be a heretic pure & simple, & condemn him as a heretic."
"The declared enemies of God and His Church, heretics and schismatics, must be criticized as much as possible, as long as truth is not denied. It is a work of charity to shout: 'Here is the wolf!' when it enters the flock or anywhere else — St. Francis de Sales, Introduction to the Devout Life
"Peter has no need of our lies or flattery. Those who blindly and indiscriminately defend every decision of the supreme Pontiff are the very ones who do most to undermine the authority of the Holy See — they destroy instead of strengthening its foundations" — Melchior Cano, Theologian of the Council of Trent.
Fr. Le Floc, Rector, French Seminary, Rome, 1926: "This heresy which is now being born, will become the most dangerous of all: the exaggeration of the respect due to the pope & the illegitimate extension of his infallibility."
"Although it is evidently established by you that Peter is a heretic, you are not bound to denounce him...." — Error Condemned by Pope Alexander VII, Denzinger 1105.
"To adhere to a false Bishop of Rome is to be out of communion with the Church" — Saint Cyprian of Carthage, rejecting the claims of the Novatian & Donatist Antipopes in Rome.
"Wrong is wrong even if everybody is doing it, & right is right even if nobody is doing it" — St. Augustine of Hippo.
"...where the power to command is wanting, or where a law is enacted contrary to reason, or to the eternal law, or to some ordinance of God, obedience is unlawful, lest while obeying man, we become disobedient to God" - Pope Leo XIII, Encyclical Libertas Præstantissimum, June 20, 1888.
"Finally, one cannot consider as schismatics those who refuse to obey the Roman Pontiff because they would hold his person suspect or because of widespread rumors, doubtfully elected" — Wernz-Vidal, Canon Law Commentary, Iuris Canonicum, Rome, Gregorian Univ., 1937, Vol. II, p. 398.
Non-Catholic Quotes
"At one point in the Church’s history, only a few years before Gregory Nazianz’s present preaching (+380 A.D.), perhaps the number of Catholic bishops in possession of sees, as opposed to Arian bishops in possession of sees, was no greater than something between 1% and 3% of the total. Had doctrine been determined by popularity, today we should all be deniers of Christ and opponents of the Spirit.… In the time of the Emperor Valens (4th century), Basil was virtually the only orthodox Bishop in all the East who succeeded in retaining charge of his see… If it has no other importance for modern man, a knowledge of the history of Arianism should demonstrate at least that the Catholic Church takes no account of popularity and numbers in shaping and maintaining doctrine: else, we should long since have had to abandon Basil and Hilary and Athanasius and Liberius and Ossius and call ourselves after Arius" — Fr. William Jurgens.
