To see in Catholicism one religion among others, one system among others, even if it be added that it is the only true religion, the only system that… - Henri de Lubac

In a non-transcendent society, the reduction of man to his "social relationships" will work inevitably to the prejudice of his personal interiority, and will beget a tyranny of some kind, however novel. Moreover, have we not already the right to think, short as is our experience of this sort of thing, that it provides our analysis with its first confirmation? When Marx's followers eventually become aware of this, they will have no longer any inclination to extol that "total revolution" that they suppose themselves to have achieved in human intelligence before implanting it in society. They will have no longer any inclination to sing of their deliverance from "metaphysical agony" and from the "obsession of God". They will have to return to "those accursed eternal questions", as Dostoievski called them.

Credulity, sectarianism, and sloth are three natural tendencies of man. Too often he canonizes them under nobler names.

Decadence, instability, disintegration, corruption, reversal of attitude, all that arises through the simple fact of one's going on existing without self-criticism, self-renewal, constant self-adaptation, without letting anything in one die, through the simple fact of gradually settling down in the vantage point one occupies, the good conscience one enjoys. Such is the permanent danger of all spiritual life. It is an inevitable deterioration which can only be overcome—and painfully at that—by a watchful mustering of strength—unless it be effortlessly vanquished by a wonderful gift of grace.…<p>Whence the necessity of paradox: or rather the perpetual flavor of paradox that truth has, when it is freshly expressed, for the man who clings to a truth when it is in the process of turning into a lie.