Daily Inspiration Quote by Pat Buckley

A clergyman admitting religion can go “both good and bad” is a small act of rhetorical disarmament. Pat Buckley isn’t trying to dunk on faith; he’s trying to rescue it from its own institutional tendencies. The line works because it splits two things people often treat as synonymous: the machinery of religion (rules, hierarchy, gatekeeping, public identity) and the felt experience of spirituality (conscience, meaning, awe, moral repair). By conceding religion’s capacity for harm, he preempts the easy critique that clergy only defend the brand. He also signals a pastoral priority: the person over the system.

The subtext is an argument about power. “Religion” here carries the baggage of coercion and exclusion: shame as social control, doctrine as a weapon, belonging as conditional. Buckley’s “both good and bad” is deliberately blunt, a way of naming institutional failure without litigating every scandal or sectarian wound. In many modern contexts - especially in Ireland and the broader West - this reads as an attempt to hold onto the ethical and communal resources of faith while acknowledging the wreckage left by religious authority.

“Spirituality that counts” shifts the evaluation metric. Instead of asking, “Is the institution correct?” he asks, “Is the inner life enlarging or diminishing the human?” It’s a plea for authenticity over orthodoxy, and a strategic olive branch to skeptics: you can reject religious control without rejecting the hunger for transcendence. That distinction is how religion survives its credibility crisis - by relocating its claim from certainty to sincerity.