Holy intransigence and the cardinal virtues

Above all, exercise prudence so as to act with true charity and prevent a false zeal from spoiling the holiness of your intransigence. You need to be like a steel mallet, powerful and hard, but wrapped in a quilted cloth so as not to wound.

Prudence

True charity, the kindness that stems from prudence, will enable you to speak with discernment, at the right moment and in the right way. It will make you sensitive to your neighbours’ needs and circumstances, though not giving way when it would be wrong to do so. And at the same time it will confirm your faith, enliven your hope, and lead you to give thanks to God for having kept you in the fullness of his truth.

Justice

Justice is needed to treat each person as he or she deserves, without generalisations or superficial simplifications which do great harm and create many obstacles to harmony among people. Always remember, my children, that you cannot be truly just unless you listen to the facts on both sides of the case, and know as well the individuals who are stating those facts.

Fortitude

We need to be fortes in fide (1 Pet 5:9), firm in the faith, to defend the faith valiantly, to resist and teach others to resist the facile temptation of novelty, of seeking to promote or regard as dogma things which are just theories propounded by specialists. Seeking progress in the knowledge and expression of faith and morals is a good thing, so long as it always accepts the ecclesiastical magisterium. But we should not be so irresponsible as to give free rein to any idea whatsoever, or to propagate things which are merely working hypotheses, at times very provisional and lacking any foundation.

Sound doctrine

There are people, my daughters and sons, who put strange and confused ideas into circulation and then, as an attempt to disclaim all responsibility, have recourse to the ingenuous argument of the greedy child: having eaten the entire pot of jam, he makes the excuse that he didn’t know that so much sweetness could do any harm. What the Catholic faithful need above all is sound, unambiguous doctrine, without getting into arguments.

Being realistic

At the same time, it is not a question of creating a religion for uneducated people, but of being realistic and realising that very often people’s knowledge is at the level of the fellow who was asked “What do you know about St Isidore of Seville?”, and answered, “St Isidore? Ah, yes, he was the founder of the Giralda.”

Temperance

The virtue of temperance will cause you never to be exaggerated, to avoid being swayed by anger, not to be fanatics. A child of God in his Work cannot follow the example of those who recommend hitting your adversary on the head “to save him from limping”.