The gentleness of his disposition made Blessed Francis averse to disputing,
either in private or public, in matters of religion. Rather, he loved to
hold informal and kindly conferences with any who had wandered from the
right way; and by this means he brought back countless souls into the
Catholic Church. His usual method of proceeding was this. He first of all
listened readily to all that his opponents had to say about their religion,
not showing any sign of weariness or contempt, however tired he might be
of the subject. By this means he sought to incline them to give him in his
turn some little attention. When, if only out of mere civility, he was
given in his turn an opportunity of speaking, he did not lose a moment of
the precious time, but at once took up the subject treated by the heretic,
or perhaps another which he considered more useful, and deduced from it
briefly, clearly, and very simply the truth of the Catholic belief, and
this without any air of contending, without a word which breathed of
controversy, but neither more nor less than as if dealing in a catechetical
instruction with an Article of the Faith.
If interrupted by outcries and contemptuous expressions, he bore the
annoyance with incredible patience, and, without showing himself disturbed
in the least, continued his discourse as soon as ever an opportunity was
given to him.
"You would never believe," he said, "how beautiful the truths of our holy
Faith appear to those who consider them calmly. We smother them when we
try to dress them up, and we hide them when we aim at rendering them too
conspicuous. Faith is an infused, not a natural, knowledge; it is not a
human science, but a divine light, by means of which we see things which,
in the natural order, art invisible to us. If we try to teach it as human
sciences are taught, by ocular demonstrations and by natural evidence, we
deceive ourselves; Faith is not to be found where human reason tries only
to support itself by the experience of the senses.
"All the external proofs which can be brought to bear upon our opponents
are weak, unless the Holy Spirit is at work in their soul's, teaching them
to recognise the ways of God. All that has to be done is to propose to
them simply the truths of our Faith. To propose these truths is to compel
men to accept them, unless, indeed, they resist the Holy Spirit, either
through dullness of understanding, or through uncircumcision of the heart.
The attaching over much importance to the light of natural reason is a
quenching of the Spirit of God. Faith is not an acquired, but an infused
virtue; it must be treated with accordingly, and in instructing heretics we
must beware of taking to ourselves any part of the glory which belongs to
God alone.
"One of the greatest misfortunes of heretics is that their ministers in
their discourses travesty our Faith, representing it as something quite
different from what it really is. For example, they pretend that we have
no regard for Holy Scripture; that we worship the Pope as God; that we
regard the Saints as divinities; that we hold the Blessed Virgin as being
more than Jesus Christ; that we pay divine worship to images and pictures;
that we believe souls in Purgatory to be suffering the selfsame agony and
despair as those in Hell; that we deprive the laity of participation in
the Blood of Jesus Christ; that we adore bread in the Eucharist; that we
despise the merits of Jesus Christ, attributing our salvation solely to the
merit of our good works; that auricular confession is mental torture; and
so on, endeavouring by calumnies of this sort to discredit our religion
and to render the very thought of it odious to those who are so thoroughly
misinformed as to its nature. When, on the contrary, they are made
acquainted with our real belief on any of these points, the scales fall
from their eyes, and they see that the fascination and cajolery of their
preachers has hidden from them the truth as to God's goodness and the
beauty of God's truth, and has put darkness before them in the place of
light.
"It is true that at first they may shrug their shoulders, and laugh us to
scorn; but when they have left us, and, being alone, reflect a little on
what we have told them, you will see them flutter back like decoyed birds,
saying to us, 'We should like to hear you speak again about those things
which you brought before us the other day.' Then they fall, some on the
right hand, others on the left, and Truth, victorious on all sides, brings
them by different paths to know it as it really is."
He gave me many instances of conversions he had himself made in this manner
during his five years' mission in the Chablais.
He gave them to show how useful this mode of proceeding was, and how far
more helpful to souls than mere controversy can be.