Page 165 - 聖母軍團員手冊（英文版，2014年5月-2022年1月更新版）

Legion HANDBOOK D10944_1 26/02/2014 15:53 Page 160

160 GOVERNMENT OF THE LEGION CHAPTER 28
(b) Differences of opinion are many, one of the chief
functions of the councils being to adjust such differences. The
consideration of new works, efforts after higher standards,
disciplinary interests in general, discussion of defects—all
these necessarily tend to create differences of opinion which
may develop unpleasantly.
(c) Where the members are numerous, it is only too easy to
find among them a few persons who, though excellent
workers, are of the type commonly termed “cranks.” These
exercise on an assembly a most unhappy influence. Their
working abilities win for them a following. They bring about an
atmosphere of disputation with its sequel of ill-feeling. In the
end the body which should be the model to those below it, an
object-lesson in fraternity and in the method of conducting
business, is found setting a bad example to all legion aries. The
heart is pumping acid through the Legion circulation.
(d) False loyalties so often operate, that is, a tendency to tilt
against some neighbouring or higher council, which is alleged
(Oh how easily a plausible case is made and wins acceptance!)
to be exceeding its powers or acting unworthily.
(e) “Never do men come together in considerable numbers,
but the passion, self-will, pride, and unbelief, which may be
more or less dormant in them one by one, bursts into a flame
and becomes a constituent of their union. Even when faith
exists in the whole people, even when religious men combine
for religious purposes, still when they form into a body, they
evidence in no long time the innate debility of human
nature; and in their spirit and conduct, in their avowals and
proceedings, they are in grave contrast to Christian simplicity
and straightforwardness. This is what the sacred writers mean
by the ‘world,’ and why they warn us against it; and their
description of it applies in its degree to all collections and
parties of men, high and low, national and professional, lay
and ecclesiastical.” (Bl. John Henry Newman: In the World)
These are startling words, but they come from a very
profound thinker. St. Gregory Nazianzen says the same thing
in different terms. When analysed, what seems so strange a
statement resolves itself into this: that the “world” is lack of
charity; that charity is weak in us; that this weakness is
covered to some extent by ties of relationship, intimacy,