“I have said again and again, I am not here to run for cardinal, and I am not going to get into discussions of how I feel about all my church’s beliefs and my church’s doctrines … because all that does in my view is play into religious bigotry.” (When questioned in September 1994 on the church’s exclusion of women from the priesthood.)
“At a campaign press conference, I had been challenged to explain my Mormon faith, to square my beliefs with my politics. Nothing is closer to my center than my faith, nothing more offensive than to have it questioned. ‘I’m Mormon, true blue, through and through,’ I said.” (Writing in the Boston Globe in June 1998.)
“How Mormon am I? You know, the principles and values taught to me by faith are values I aspire to live by and are as American as motherhood and apple pie. My faith believes in family, believes in Jesus Christ. It believes in serving one’s neighbor and one’s community. It believes in military service. It believes in patriotism; it actually believes this nation had an inspired founding. It is in some respects a quintessentially American faith.”(From a September 2005 Atlantic article dubbing Romney the republican party’s “next big thing.”)
“There are some who would have a presidential candidate describe and explain his church’s distinctive doctrines. To do so would enable the very religious test the founders prohibited in the Constitution. No candidate should become the spokesman for his faith. For if he becomes president he will need the prayers of the people of all faiths.” (In his “Faith in America” address in December 2007.)
“I am shaped by the Judeo-Christian values which I have and hope that those will hold me in good stead as they have so far.” (Responding, last October, to an Iowa supporter who asked why he wouldn’t push back against pastor Robert Jeffress’s Mormonism-is-a-cult remark.)