(Updated May 29, 2025)
This Quote Archive is on the reality of the “Judas Within” the one true Church (the Catholic Church), and how it must be borne by the faithful during our earthly pilgrimage. It includes many quotes from past epochs that exemplify this struggle with the “Judas Within,” as well as explain it theologically.
Each Archive is a treasury of original source quotes on various topics relevant to the Catholic Faith, and addressed in Becoming Catholic articles. They are intended to help people explore the “gold, silver, and precious gems” that have been mined and sifted from the sources of the Great Tradition by Eternal Christendom as a labor of love for our readers, and all seekers of Truth. They are periodically updated as more research is completed.
St. Basil (330-379) | EAST
St. Basil, Letter 164: To Ascholius, Bishop of Thessalonica (374)1
In fact, we ascribe to ourselves and our sins the blame for such extensive spreading of the power of the heretics. For, almost no part of the world has escaped the conflagration of heresy…But, what are our conditions? Charity has grown cold. The doctrine of the Fathers is being destroyed; shipwreck in the faith is frequent; the mouths of the pious are silent; people, driven from the houses of prayer, out in the open fields lift up their hands to the Lord in heaven. Truly, the afflictions are heavy, but nowhere is there martyrdom, because those who inflict the evils upon us have the same name as we do. For these reasons do you yourself beseech the Lord and join with you in prayer in behalf of the churches all the noble athletes of Christ, in order that, if some time still remains for the existence of the world, and all things are not being driven 325 | 326 together in the opposite direction [i.e. destruction], God, being reconciled to His churches, may lead them back again to the ancient peace.
St. Augustine (354-430) | WEST
St. Augustine, Letter 208: To Lady Felicia (423)
(§2) I exhort you, therefore, not to be too much troubled by those offenses which for this very reason were foretold as destined to come, that when they came we might remember that they had been foretold, and not be greatly disconcerted by them. For the Lord Himself in His gospel foretold them, saying, “Woe unto the world because of offenses! For it must needs be that offenses come; but woe unto that man by whom the offense comes!” (Matt. 18:7). These are the men of whom the apostle said, “They seek their own, not the things that are Jesus Christ’s” (Phil. 2:21). There are, therefore, some who hold the honorable office of shepherds in order that they may provide for the flock of Christ; others occupy that position that they may enjoy the temporal honors and secular advantages connected with the office. It must needs happen that these two kinds of pastors, some dying, others succeeding them, should continue in the Catholic Church even to the end of time, and the judgment of the Lord. If, then, in the times of the apostles there were men such that Paul, grieved by their conduct, enumerates among his trials, “perils among false brethren” (1 Cor. 11:26), and yet he did not haughtily cast them out, but patiently bore with them, how much more must such arise in our times, since the Lord most plainly says concerning this age which is drawing to a close, “that because iniquity shall abound the love of many shall wax cold” (Matt. 24:12-13). The word which follows, however, ought to console and exhort us, for He adds, “He that shall endure to the end, the same shall be saved” (Matt. 24:13).
(§3) Moreover, as there are good shepherds and bad shepherds, so also in flocks there are good and bad. The good are represented by the name of sheep, but the bad are called goats: they feed, nevertheless, side by side in the same pastures, until the Chief Shepherd, who is called the One Shepherd, shall come and separate them one from another according to His promise, “as a shepherd divides the sheep from the goats” (Matt. 25:32). On us He has laid the duty of gathering the flock; to Himself He has reserved the work of final separation, because it pertains properly to Him who cannot err. For those presumptuous servants, who have lightly ventured to separate before the time which the Lord has reserved in His own hand, have, instead of separating others, only been separated themselves from Catholic unity; for how could those have a clean flock who have by schism become unclean?
(§4) In order, therefore, that we may remain in the unity of the faith, and not, stumbling at the offenses occasioned by the chaff, desert the threshing-floor of the Lord, but rather remain as wheat till the final winnowing [Matt. 3:12], and by the love which imparts stability to us bear with the beaten straw, our great Shepherd in the gospel admonishes us concerning the good shepherds, that we should not, on account of their good works, place our hope in them, but glorify our heavenly Father for making them such; and concerning the bad shepherds (whom He designed to point out under the name of Scribes and Pharisees), He reminds us that they teach that which is good though they do that which is evil [Matt. 3:12]…
(§6) Hence we understand both that the good shepherds are those who seek not their own, but the things of Jesus Christ, and that the good sheep, though imitating the works of the good shepherds by whose ministry they have been gathered together, do not place their hope in them, but rather in the Lord, by Whose blood they are redeemed; so that when they may happen to be placed under bad shepherds, preaching Christ’s doctrine and doing their own evil works, they will do what they teach, but will not do what they do, and will not, on account of these sons of wickedness, forsake the pastures of the one true Church. For there are both good and bad in the Catholic Church, which, unlike the Donatist sect, is extended and spread abroad, not in Africa only, but through all nations; as the apostle expresses it, “bringing forth fruit, and increasing in the whole world” (Col. 1:6). But those who are separated from the Church, as long as they are opposed to it cannot be good; although an apparently praiseworthy conversation seems to prove some of them to be good, their separation from the Church itself renders them bad, according to the saying of the Lord: “He that is not with me is against me; and he that gathers not with me scatters” (Matt. 12:30).
(§7) Therefore, my daughter, worthy of all welcome and honor among the members of Christ, I exhort you to hold faithfully that which the Lord has committed to you, and love with all your heart Him and His Church who suffered you not, by joining yourself with the lost, to lose the recompense of your virginity, or perish with them. For if you should depart out of this world separated from the unity of the body of Christ, it will avail you nothing to have preserved inviolate your virginity…Committing to Him your heart, your vow, and your sacred virginity, and your faith, hope, and charity, you will not be moved by offenses, which shall abound even to the end; but, by the unshaken strength of piety, shall be safe and shall triumph in the Lord, continuing in the unity of His body [the Church] even to the end.
