Understanding even towards those who don’t wish to understand

Be understanding, even towards those people who seem incapable of understanding others and judge them rashly. The best help for them will be your upright charity and example, when they see that you struggle to overcome the bad inclinations and tendency to error that we all have, and that with God’s grace you succeed.

It does not matter whether they are souls far from God or are “good people” who misunderstand. Their prejudices arise precisely because of a lack of contact and the absence of an honest dialogue that would help them to see what they don’t understand. We should not be the ones who reject such a dialogue; and if they reject it, we will not hold it against them, because their misunderstanding sanctifies us. A sensible patient feels no antipathy towards the scalpel the surgeon uses in treating him.

Dialogue with those who do not know our religion and those who have left the Catholic faith

Your affection, your sincere, honest dealings, should be offered both to people who don’t know the Faith and to those who have left the Church. We will always receive them and – without yielding on matters of doctrine, because it is not ours – we will be yielding with the individuals, and we will invite them to work side by side with us, at the heart of our endeavours. We will put them at the centre of what we most love on earth, and give them the wonderful opportunity to become God’s hands and arms, to do his Work in the world.