From the Quotation of the day mailing list, 2008-03-23:
"The Catholic faith [i.e., the ideal Christian faith], while it condemns no temperament as incapable of salvation, flatters none as being less in peril than any other. In the same way [a Christian] has to make his public confession of belief in a church which is not confined to his sort, to those with whom by nature he feels at home, for in it there is neither Jew nor German, East nor West, boy nor girl, smart nor dumb, boss nor worker, Bohemian nor bourgeois, no elite of any kind; indeed there are not even Christians there, for Christianity is a way, not a state, and a Christian is never something one is, only something one can pray to become." -- W.H. Auden, poet.
http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2002/09/2
3/020923crat_atlarge?currentPage=2]
(submitted to the mailing list by Mike Krawchuk)