I must admit to you, my dear Jean Madiran, that I have been tempted more than once to leave the Catholic Church wherein I was born. If I have not done so, I give thanks to God and to the good peasant’s common sense with which he has blessed me. The Church—I murmur to myself at this moment—is like a sack of wheat infested with weevils. However numerous the parasites are—and at first glance, they are swarming!—they have not sterilized all the kernels. Some, no matter how few, remain fertile. They will sprout and the weevils will die once they have devoured all the others. Bon appétit, gentlemen, you are eating your own death.
Meanwhile, we suffer from famine, starving for the supernatural. The number of priests who distribute the bread of the soul to us dwindles at an alarming rate. In the hierarchy, things are even worse. And at the very top, whence we might expect some solace, they are disastrous.
