Official Catholics

I have another piece of advice, my children, about public affairs, although it may be superfluous because if you have my spirit it is unlikely that you will act this way. The point is this: never be official Catholics, Catholics who use religion as a springboard, not to leap towards God but to rise to positions of importance and obtain things they covet like honours, wealth and power. Speaking of people like this, a level-headed person used to say with good humour, perhaps exaggerating, that they set their eyes on heaven, and their hands on anything they can find.

The tyranny of small groups with a particular affiliation

Such Catholics make a profession of calling themselves Catholics, and it is a profession in which they have the right to admit some people and reject others. They want to deny the principle of personal responsibility, the principle on which all Christian morality is based. After all, a person who is unable to make use of his legitimate freedom has no right to a reward for his good actions, nor can he be punished for his bad actions or omissions.

They deny the principle of personal responsibility, and they expect all the Catholics of a country to form a solid bloc and relinquish all their free opinions in temporal matters in order to support en masse a single party, a single political group, of which they ̶ the official Catholics ̶ are masters, with the consequence that the party is also officially Catholic.