How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #4
For the first time, [Francis] noticed a moth-hole in the Pope's cassock. The cassock itself was almost threadbare. The carpet in the audience room was worn through in spots. Plaster had fallen from the ceiling in several places. But dignity had overshadowed poverty. Only for a moment after the wink did Brother Francis notice hints of poverty at all. The distraction was transient. (11.46)
Francis notices the dual nature of the Church. It's stuck on earth like the rest of us, and subject to the laws of wear and tear. But for Francis, it manages to extend itself beyond those earthy binds, achieving an almost supernatural status.
Quote #5
[Thon Taddeo] huffed impatiently. "The incongruity. Men as you can observe them through any window, and men as historians would have us believe men once were. I can't accept it. How can a great and wise civilization have destroyed itself so completely?"
"Perhaps," said Apollo, "by being materially great and materially wise, and nothing else." (12.78-79)
As we enter the next generation, society tries to obtain its long-lost glory. But the Church—represented here by Marcus Apollo—sees itself as the barrier between the future and those long-lost catastrophes. Apollo's warnings are directed toward the society Thon Taddeo represents, not just Taddeo himself.
Quote #6
There was objective meaning in the world, to be sure: the nonmoral logos or design of the Creator; but such meanings were God's and not Man's, until they found an imperfect incarnation, a dark reflection, within the mind and speech and culture of a given human society, which might ascribe values to the meanings so that they become valid in a human sense within the culture. (14.2)
Dom Paulo believes that the knowledge of science is a "dark reflection" of God's design. Paulo's idea is very similar to Plato's "Theory of Forms," and is Paulo's attempt to marry religion and science.