Carlo Carretto
1910-1988
“How much I must criticize you, my church, and yet how much I love you!
You have made me suffer more than anyone and yet I owe more to you than to anyone. I should like to see you destroyed and yet I need your presence. You have given me much scandal and yet you alone have made me understand holiness.
Never in this world have I seen anything more compromised, more false, yet never have I touched anything more pure, more generous or more beautiful.
Countless times I have felt like slamming the door of my soul in your face – and yet, every night, I have prayed that I might die in your sure arms!
No, I cannot be free of you, for I am one with you, even if not completely you. Then to where would I go? To build another church? But I could not build one without the same defects, for they are my defects.
And again, if I were to build another church, it would be my church, not Christ’s church.
No, I am old enough, I know better.”
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Carlo Carretto (1910-1988), Italian writer, author of Letters From the Desert and many other spiritual volumes, was a mystic, desert hermit for many years, and member of the Little Brothers of Jesus. He modeled himself upon the desert contemplative, Blessed Charles de Foucauld.
“The Church is intolerant in principle because she believes; she is tolerant in practice because she loves. The enemies of the Church are tolerant in principle, because they do not believe, and intolerant in practice because they do not love.” —Fr. Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange
Catholic Critique 