The things you tell me about the church are painful, very painful. The only response would be to behave like Bernanos's country priest, leaning against the mantelpiece in the castle, listening to all of it and not responding...
But could anything ever have prevented the church from being the church? A saint like Francis to be its child? To have such a saint as John of the Cross, Charles de Foucauld, and the immense multitude of lovers of poverty and the cross that I know?
Let us press close to it, for we will manage to find a place where its heart beats.
(Card. Charles Journet /1891–1975/, correspondence)
