We never recover from the abandonment of the principles

We never recover from the abandonment of the principles

The greatest misfortune for a century or for a country is the abandonment or lessening of the truth.

We can get up from everything else; we never rise from the sacrifice of principles.

Characters may reflect at given moments, and public manners may receive some attacks of vice or bad example; but nothing is lost so long as the true doctrines remain upright in their integrity.

With them all is rebuilt sooner or later, men and institutions, because we are always able to return to good when we have not left the truth.

What would take away even the hope of salvation would be the desertion of principles, beyond which nothing solid and lasting can be built.

So the greatest service a man can render to his fellows, to periods of failure or obscuration, is to affirm the truth without fear, even though it would not be listened to; for it is a furrow of light that he opens through intelligences; and if her voice fails to dominate the sounds of the moment, at least she will be gathered in the future as the messenger of salvation.

Most Rev. Charles-Émile Freppel (1827-1891) - Bishop of Angers