Page 254 - 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 249

CHAPTER 37 SUGGESTIONS AS TO WORKS 249
conversion to the Church. Visitors to town will be inter ested
in the Legion (which otherwise they might not see), and may
be induced to start it in their own places.
Legionaries are encouraged, however, not to wait passively
for people to come to them at the Barrow. They should not
hesitate to approach people in the vicinity, not necessarily for
the purpose of selling more literature, but in order to establish
a contact, which can be used as described in the preceding
paragraph.
It should be unnecessary to remind legionaries that the
persever ing following up of the introductions and friendships
initiated is a necessary part of the whole work.
The proposal to start such a work will always elicit the
objection that exceptionally well-versed Catholics would be
required to do it, and are not available. It is true that special
knowledge of Catholic Doctrine would be most useful. But
the lack of this need not deter legionaries from starting. For
the personal appeal will be the great consideration. As Bl.
John Henry Newman says: “Persons influence us, voices melt
us, deeds inflame us. We are not converted by syllogisms.”.
In a word, earnestness and sweetness are more important
than deep knowledge. The latter is inclined to lure those who
possess it into deep water and tortuous channels which lead
nowhere, whereas a candid confession of one’s weakness: ‘I do
not know, but I can find out’, will keep a discussion on
bedrock.
It will be found that the vast bulk of the difficulties which
are voiced spring from a great ignorance, and that the
ordinary legion ary is well able to deal with them. Less simple
points will be brought to the praesidium or to the Spiritual
Director.
Attacks on the Church on the score of evil-doing, persecu -
tion, and lack of zeal could be argued indefinitely, and hope -
lessly confuse the issue. An element of truth may underlie
some charges, and thus add complication to confusion. To
satisfy the hostile critic on these and all other minor points of
dispute is completely impossible, even if great erudition is
enlisted in the task. The course to be taken by the legionary
must be that of persistently reducing the discussion to its very
simplest elements: that of insisting that God must have left to
the world a message — what men call a religion: that such