List of points

You were praying before a crucifix, and you made this resolution: it is better to suffer for the truth, than for truth to suffer because of me.

So often it seems impossible for the truth to be true! Above all because it always has to be lived consistently.

If you are annoyed at being told the truth, then… why do you ask?

—Is it perhaps that you want to be answered with your own “truth” so your errant ways can be justified?

You say that you have a great respect for the truth… Is that why you always place yourself at such a “respectful” distance from it?

Don’t behave like a fool. No one is ever a fanatic for wanting to know better every day, and love more, and defend with greater conviction the truth he has to know, love and defend.

On the other hand — I say this without fear — those who oppose this reasonable behaviour in the name of a false liberty become sectarian.

It is as easy now as it was at the time of Jesus Christ to say No, to deny or to put to one side the truth of faith. You who call yourself a Catholic have to start from Yes.

Later, after some study, you will be able to explain the reasons for your certainty, and that there is no contradiction — there can be none — between Truth and science, between Truth and life.

Please don’t abandon the task, don’t deviate from the way, even though you have to live with people who are full of prejudices: as if you thought the basis of arguments or the meaning of words were fixed by their behaviour or by their assertions.

—Do try to get them to understand you… but if you don’t manage it, carry on anyway.

You will find people who, because of their dull stubbornness, will be very difficult to convince… But, apart from those cases, it is worthwhile clearing up discrepancies, and clearing them up with all the patience that might be needed.

Do you object to my repeating in the same way the same essential things without taking into account the latest fashionable trends? —Look, a straight line has been defined in the same way for centuries, because it is the clearest and briefest definition. Other definitions would be more obscure and complicated.

You didn’t want to believe it, but you had to yield to the evidence, to your cost. Those statements you made simply and with a sound Catholic sense have been twisted maliciously by enemies of the faith.

It is true that “we have to be simple as doves… and wise as serpents.” Don’t talk at the wrong time or out of place.

No one, even with a good intention, should be allowed to falsify historical or biographical facts. —But it is a great mistake to put on a pedestal enemies of the Church who have spent their days persecuting her. Be sure of this: historical truth does not suffer because a Christian does not wish to collaborate in the construction of a pedestal which should not exist. Since when is hatred to be set up as a model?

The spreading of Christian teaching need not provoke antagonism, or harm those who do not know our doctrine. Caritas omnia suffert! — love bears all things. If one proceeds with charity, anyone who might otherwise have been opposed to Christianity and been deceived by error may easily and honestly end up committing himself to it. —However, there can be no giving ground in dogma in the name of a naive “breadth of belief”, for if anyone acted in this way he would risk putting himself out of the Church. Instead of winning a benefit for others he would harm himself.