A man who was visiting Rome for the first time, was admitted to an audience with Pope Gregory XVI. His Holiness asked him what he thought of St. Peter’s. He replied: “I confess that, looked at from without, the vast edifice impressed me unfavorably, but when I entered within, still more after I had spent some hours there, I felt an immense admiration for it.” “It is just the same,” the Holy Father remarked, “with many doctrines of the Catholic Church. Regarded superficially they seem strange and unattractive, but when one looks below the surface and enters into the spirit of the Church’s teaching, prejudices vanish and her doctrines commend themselves to the sincere inquirer.”
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