“It is hard to imagine where the Gospel would have got to or in what state it would have reached us if, per impossible, it had not been composed, preserved and commented on within the great Catholic community—hard to picture the deformation and mutilation it would have suffered both as to text and as to interpretation….history speaks forcefully enough. There is no counting the number of aberrations which have been based upon an appeal to the Gospel, or the number of those who have, in consequence of them, toppled over into ‘atheistic and impious doctrines, or stupid and ridiculous beliefs.’
We owe our praise, therefore, to this great Mother of ours for the divine mystery which she communicates to us… This chaste Mother pours into us and sustains a faith which is always whole and which neither human decadence nor spiritual lassitude can touch, however deep they may go…This wise Mother steers us clear of sectarian excesses and the deceptive enthusiasm which is always followed by revulsion; she teaches us to love all that is good, all that is true, all that is just, and to reject nothing which has not been tested… She scatters the darkness in which men either slumber or despair or—pitifully—‘shape as they please their fantasies of the infinite.’ Without discouraging us from any task she protects us from the deceptive myths of the Churches made by the hand of man…she is initiated into His secrets and teaches us whatever pleases Him.”
-Henri De Lubac in The Splendor of the Church.
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