3. The Answer, in the Apostle Saint Paul

Yes, Holy Father ‑ we continue ‑Saint Peter teaches us that it is neces­sary "to obey God rather than men" (Acts 5:29). You are assisted by the Holy Ghost and you are even com­forted ‑ under the conditions defined by Vatican I ‑ by the privilege of infallibility. But this does not prevent the weakness to which all men are sub­ject from influencing and even deter­mining Your conduct in certain mat­ters or circumstances. One of these ‑perhaps par excellence ‑ is diplom­acy. And it is here that Your policy of distention with the Communist gov­ernments is situated.

And what, then, to do? The number of lines in the present declaration is insufficient to permit the listing here of all the Fathers of the Church, Doc­tors, Moralists, and Canonists ‑many of them raised to the honor of the altar ‑ who affirm the legitimacy of the resistance. This resistance is not separation, it is not revolt, it is not harshness, it is not irreverence. On the contrary, it is fidelity, it is union, it is love, it is submission.

"Resistance" is the word we choose on purpose, for it is the one employed in the Acts of the Apostles by the Holy Ghost Himself in order to characterize the attitude of St. Paul. St. Peter, the first Pope, had taken disciplinary measures regarding the continuity in Catholic worship of some practices re­maining from the old Synagogue, and St. Paul saw in this a grave risk of doctrinal confusion and of harm to the faithful. He then stood up against St. Peter and "resisted him to his face" (Gal. 2: 11). In this ardent and in­spired move of the Apostle of the Gen­tiles, St. Peter did not see an act of rebellion, but rather one of union and fraternal love. Knowing well in what he was infallible and in what he was not, St. Peter submitted to the argu­ments of St. Paul. The Saints are models for Catholics. Accordingly, in the sense in which St. Paul resisted, our state is one of resistance.

And in this, our conscience finds peace.