A. The Many Ways of the Holy Ghost
No one can set limits to the inexhaustible variety of God’s ways within souls. It would be absurd to attempt to reduce such a complex matter to schemata. One cannot, then, in this matter, go beyond indicating some errors to be avoided and some prudent attitudes to be proposed.
Every conversion is a fruit of the action of the Holy Ghost, Who speaks to each one according to his necessities, sometimes with majestic severity and at other times with maternal suavity, yet never lying.
B. Nothing Should Be Hidden
Thus, in the journey from error to truth, the soul does not have to contend with the crafty silences of the Revolution nor with its fraudulent metamorphoses. Nothing it ought to know is hidden from it. Truth and goodness are thoroughly taught to it by the Church. Progress in goodness is not secured by systematically hiding from men the ultimate goal of their formation, but by showing it and rendering it ever more desirable.
TFP Student Action Traditional Marriage Caravan in Maryland, one of many Traditional Marriage Campaigns they did throughout 2012.
The Counter-Revolution must not, then, disguise its whole breadth. It must adopt the eminently wise rules laid down by Saint Pius X as the normative code of behavior for the true apostle: “It is neither loyal nor worthy to hide Catholic status, disguising it with some equivocal banner, as if such status were damaged or smuggled goods.”¹ Catholics should not “veil the more important precepts of the Gospel out of fear of being perhaps less heeded or even completely abandoned.”² To this the Holy Pontiff judiciously added:
A procession of the Blessed Sacrament in Charlotte, North Carolina. Photo by JD
No doubt it will not be alien to prudence, when proposing the truth, to make use of a certain temporization when it is a matter of enlightening men who are hostile to our institutions and entirely removed from God. Wounds that have to be cut into, as Saint Gregory said, should first be touched with a delicate hand. But such skill would take on the aspect of carnal prudence if made a constant and common norm of conduct. This is all the more so since in this way one would seem to have very little regard for Divine grace, which is conferred not only upon the priesthood and its ministers but upon all the faithful of Christ, so that our words and acts might move the souls of these men.³
¹ Saint Pius X, letter to Count Medolago Albani, President of the Socioeconomic Union of Italy, November 22, 1909, Bonne Press, Paris, vol. 5, p. 76.
² Saint Pius X, encyclical Jucunda sane, March 12, 1904, Bonne Presse, Paris, vol. 1, p. 158.
³ Ibid.
Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira, Revolution and Counter-Revolution (York, Penn.: The American Society for the Defense of Tradition, Family, and Property, 1993), Ch. VIII, Pg. 98- 99.
