List of points

Face up to the problems of this world with a sense of the supernatural, and following the principles of ethics. They do not threaten or undermine your personality: they channel it.

—In this way you will bring to your behaviour a living strength which will win people over; and you will be confirmed in your progress along the right path.

God Our Lord wants you to be holy, so that you can make others holy. For this to be possible you need to look at yourself with courage and frankness; you need to look at the Lord Our God; then, and only then, you need to look at the world.

Encourage your noble human qualities. They can be the beginning of the building of your sanctification. At the same time, remember what I have already told you before, that when serving God, you have to burn everything, even “what people will say”, and even what they call reputation, if necessary.

You need formation, because you need a profound sense of responsibility, if you are to foster and encourage the activity of Catholics in public life. And you will then do so with the respect that everyone’s freedom deserves, reminding each and every one that they have to be consistent with their faith.

Through your professional work, which you bring to completion with all the human and supernatural perfection possible, you can — and should! — give Christian standards in the places where you carry out your profession or job.

As a Christian you have a duty to act and not stand aloof, making your contribution to serve the common good loyally and with personal freedom.

We children of God, who are citizens with the same standing as any others, have to take part fearlessly in all honest human activities and organizations, so that Christ may be present in them.

Our Lord will ask a strict account of each one of us if through neglect or love of comfort we do not freely strive to play a part in the human developments and decisions on which the present and future of society depend.

With a sense of profound humility — strong in the name of our God, and, as the Psalmist says, not “in the numbers of our chariots and of our horses” — we have to make sure, without regard for human considerations, that there are no corners of society where Christ is not known.

Freely, according to your own interests and talents, you have to take an active, effective part in the wholesome public or private associations of your country, in a way that is full of the Christian spirit. Such organizations never fail to make some difference to people’s temporal or eternal good.

Struggle to make sure that those human institutions and structures in which you work and move with the full rights of a citizen, are in accordance with the principles which govern a Christian view of life.

In this way you can be sure that you are giving people the means to live according to their real worth; and you will enable many souls, with God’s grace, to respond personally to their Christian vocation.

It is a Christian’s duty, and a citizen’s duty, to defend and promote, out of piety and general culture, those monuments that are found along streets and highways — the wayside crosses, the statues of Our Lady, and the like. And we should reconstruct those which have been destroyed by vandalism, or the passage of time.

We have to stand out boldly against those “damning freedoms” — those daughters of licence, granddaughters of evil passions, great granddaughters of original sin — which come down, as you can see, in a direct line from the devil.