have the reputation----'"

Here Benedetto broke off, saying;

"Only some unimportant words follow."

And he continued his discourse.

"I answer those who wrote to me, thus: Tell me, why have you appealed to
me who profess to be a Catholic? Do you perhaps think me a superior of
the superiors in the Church? Will you, perhaps for that reason, rest in
peace upon my word, if my word be different from what you call the word
of the Church? Listen to this allegory. Thirsty pilgrims draw near to a
famous fountain. They find its basin full of stagnant water, disgusting
to the taste. The living spring is at the bottom of the basin; they
do not find it. Sadly they turn for aid to a quarryman, working in
a neighbouring quarry. The quarryman offers them living water. They
inquire the name of the spring. 'It is the same as the water in the
basin,' he replies. 'Underground it is all one and the same stream. He
who digs will find it.' You are the thirsty pilgrims, I am the humble
quarryman, and Catholic truth is the hidden, underground current. The
basin is not the Church; the Church is the whole field through which the
living waters flow. You have appealed to me because you unconsciously
recognise that the Church is not the hierarchy alone, but the universal
assemblage of all the faithful, _gens sancta;_ that from the bottom of
any Christian heart the living waters of the spring itself, of truth
itself, may rush forth. Unconscious recognition, for were it not
unconscious you would not say, the Church opposes this, the Church
stifles that, the Church is growing old, the Church has Christ on her
lips and not in her heart.

"Understand me well. I do not pass judgment upon the hierarchy; I
respect the authority of the hierarchy; I simply say that the Church
does not consist of the hierarchy alone. Listen to another example.
In the thoughts of every man there is a species of hierarchy. Take
the upright man. With him certain ideas, certain aims, are dominant
thoughts, and control his actions. They are these: to fulfil his
religious, moral, and civil duties. To these various duties he gives
the traditional interpretations which have been taught him. Yet this
hierarchy of firmly grounded opinions does not constitute the whole man.
Below it there are in him a multitude of other thoughts, a multitude
of other ideas, which are continually being changed and modified by the
impressions and experiences of life. And below these thoughts there i