Mistaken quotes

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You always hear the quote “Preach the Gospel always, use words when necessary” as coming from St. Francis. If you do a small bit of web surfing you’ll find he never said that, but that it was attributed to him because it sumed up he’s ministry. I was just wondering what other famous Saints or other Catholics have quotes out there that aren’t even theirs. :confused: 🙂

This is more out of curiousity than anything else. And I am sure there are tons, I was just looking for specific examples like the one above. Thanks!
 
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picasso_13:
You always hear the quote “Preach the Gospel always, use words when necessary” as coming from St. Francis. If you do a small bit of web surfing you’ll find he never said that, but that it was attributed to him because it sumed up he’s ministry.
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Wasn’t it St. Augustine who said this?
 
“I was just wondering what other famous Saints or other Catholics have quotes out there that aren’t even theirs.”

St. Augustine: “Roma locuta est, causa finita est.” Attributed to Sermo 131.
 
Heck, I just found out recently that the prayer of St. Francis wasn’t really created by him. I believe it was created by some French guy. :confused:
 
I know that NOWHERE in the Bible does it say, ‘God helps those who help themselves.’ :nope:

Helping yourselves is not trusting in GOD!

Edwin
Glory be to Jesus Christ! Glory to Him Forever!
 
The Prayer of St. Francis was written, or so I was told, in the 1920s for a Third Order conference. The preach the gospel “quote” I seem to remember hearing in a a different context said by a famous news person - can’t remember who. Something about telling the truth.

The other mis-quote “God helps those…” is, I think, from Aesop. The story was about a man whose cart was stuck in the mud. He entreated the gods to help him, but nothing happened. He finally put his shoulder to the wheel. Then the gods sent sunshine to dry up the mud. Moral: The gods help those who help themselves.
 
This is quite an important concept.As beautiful as it is, the Prayer of S Francis was used by Margaret Thatcher when her Conservatives took office in England and of course, she had no right to the words and they are cheapened.

Other less explosive mistaken attributions…John Wesley with “Cleanliness is next to godliness” it’s not in the Bible, neither is “God tempers the wind to the shorn lamb”(Sterne’s Sentimental Journey ?) and of course a whole theology seems based upon “hate the sin but love the sinner” which has little biblical backing.

Have you also come across the oddity that the Christmas Carol “Away in a Manger” is w r o n g l y connected to Martin Luther.?
There isn’t a German original-it was written for some kind of festival in a Lutheran church.Carols through poetic licence maybe truncate and alter the stories quite significantly, it never says in the Scripture that the wisemen came to Jesus when He was still in the manger.

Finally another one-thrown like a bomb when a troublemaker feels like it-“The smoke of Satan has entered the Church” Now was it Paul VI, when did he say it, what do people really think he meant because it’s one hell of a claim (I couldn’t resist that)

but don’t quote me !
This is not so relevant but I don’t like the setting “Make me a channel of your peace”-no one ever seems sure of how to sing it and it’s too standard-ingredient-folk-mass for me…sorry Sebastian.
 
This has really had me thinking!

Jesus Himself is not immune from having words put wrongly into His mouth…chief culprit in our own time is films which sometimes require a type of warning if you don’t want vulnerables to get the wrong idea!
George Stevens in his ponderous Bible film "The Greatest Story Ever Told " at times gives us a protohumanistic Saviour, definitely afraid of the word God and actually preaching S Paul’s Corinthian Epistle to the disciples. Maybe the old man just had to get the passage in somewhere!

I am told that somewhere in the East there is a saying ascribed to Jesus on a building about the world being a bridge…of course it’s not in the Bible and I’ve no idea why it was written there.

Be careful when people think that Jesus was so rude even to His Mother at twelve years old in the Temple.It just is not so that youthful Jesus used the phrase “woman” prefacing His admittedly mysterious words about His Father’s Business.The mistake conflates that scene with the Marriage Feast where Jesus is very grown up and says something to His Mother that is possibly the equivalent of “Lady”-it’s not even anywhere near disrespectful, but it’s a very human tussle when He is a little alarmed by her solicitude.

Just one other received idea about S Paul…it’s the paintings that involve him on horseback. The Damascus road in Scripture does not say he fell off his mount categorically-but sometimes on the Feast of his Conversion people are told this detail as if the book said so.
 
The one involving Jesuits and youth? "Give me a boy when he is seven years old…"I’ve heard people say that it’s Hitler rather perhaps S Ignatius Loyola
 
Then there’s the confusion with the quote that’s either

Pray as if everything depended on God; work as if everything depended on you.

or

Pray as if everything depended on you; work as if everything depended on God.

Either way it’s interesting, but I like the second way better - pray like crazy, then work with a light heart.

Betsy
 
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