List of points

Order, authority, discipline… They listen, if they do at all, with cynical smiles, claiming that they — both men and women — are defending their freedom.

They are the very people who later pretend that we should respect their erring ways or adapt to them; with their scurrilous protests, they do not understand that their behaviour is not — it cannot be — accepted by the authentic freedom of the rest.

Authority. This does not consist in the one above yelling at the one below, and he in turn to the one further down.

In such a way of behaving — a caricature of authority — apart from an evident lack of charity and of decent human standards, all that is achieved is that the one at the top becomes isolated from those who are governed, because he does not serve them. Rather it could be said that he uses them!

Those who enjoy privilege thanks to money, ancestry, rank, position or intelligence… and abuse it by humiliating those who are less fortunate, show that they are fatuous and proud.

Forbearance is proportional to authority. A simple judge has to condemn — even if he takes into account extenuating circumstances — the convicted criminal who has admitted being guilty. The sovereign power of the country may sometimes grant a pardon or amnesty. God always forgives a contrite soul.

Don’t get annoyed. Irresponsible behaviour often denotes poor formation or a lack of intelligence, rather than want of good spirit.

Teachers and directors should be expected to fill in those gaps with the responsible fulfilment of their duties.

—You should examine yourself… if you are in such a position.

Mediocre men, mediocre in mind and in Christian spirit, surround themselves by foolish people when they are in power. They are falsely persuaded by their vanity that in this way they will never lose control.

Sensible men, however, surround themselves with learned people who live a clean life as well as possessing knowledge, and become, through their help, men who can really govern. They are not in this matter deceived by their humility, for in making others great they themselves are made great.

You are in a position of authority and you go by what people say? You are a doddering old man! —First of all you should worry about what God will say; then, very much in the second place, and sometimes not at all, you may consider what others might think. “Whoever acknowledges me before men”, says the Lord, “I too will acknowledge him before my Father who is in heaven. But whoever disowns me before men, I will disown him before my Father who is in heaven.”