Timely Indeed: An Inspired Letter to a Despairing Catholic from the Author of ‘Action’ Jean Oussett

I have just read one of the best clarion calls I have ever read to help rally the faithful, with holy and supernatural hope, to action and not to despair in the present crisis of faith. It is a call to assist Christ in His Passion by not abandoning the Church, His Body, during her passion. To comfort Him in His Mystical Body as He is mocked and viciously bruised and abandoned by all but a few. I particularly appreciated Jean Ousset’s hailing of the courageous Veronica, who fought her way through the crowd of the curious, the jeerers, and the legionaires, and valiantly made her way to Jesus whose adorable and wounded face was covered with blood and spittle and she gently wiped His face with her veil so tenderly and carefully so as not to aggravate His raw wounds that were beginning to blister. So, it is with the Church today, counseled the great French writer and activist. We must not add to the sufferings of Christ by mocking the Church or bitterly resenting her agony.   Has there ever been an age when everything was glorious and peaceful in the Church? Every generation of Catholics, who loved the Church, had to contend with evils from within as well as from without. Some are called to the ultimate sacrifice. Let us not stone the Judases with bitter invective if we ourselves cannot stay awake in the garden “during the dark night.” Such is the gist of this letter of fraternal pathos, written to a subscriber who asked to be removed from Ousset’s mailing list because he had had enough and was losing his Faith.

Excerpted from The Remnant: Sir: We admit that all this is true; what you have done is no longer rare.  Others besides yourself have described the tragedy of the Church in France, and it is for this very reason that we have been impelled not only to reply to your letter, but also to publish our reply.

It is not a pleasant task replying to your letter, especially as an adequate reply would demand an entire volume, and even then one would not be certain of finding the exact answer to your own personal problem.

Remain silent? I could never accept such a solution, not, I assure you, because I want to run after a lapsed subscriber, but because the warm feelings you have for us, so evident in your letter, call for more than a prudent, disillusioned silence.  In my opinion they call for a reply as brutal as the anger which consumes you.  Moreover, a reply would be needed if only to point out that anger is a bad counselor, for you are, beyond doubt, eaten up with anger.  Read full letter, translated some years ago for The Remnant by Michael Davies, here.