While reading Saint John Vianney’s sermon (the 2nd Sermon of the 3rd Sunday after the Epiphany)… I came upon several sentences that destroy Invincible Ignorance… I recall some bad will False Trads here in France, deluded, who tried to transform the Curé d’Ars into a despicable apostate like those weak individuals are.

FR = “Les chrétiens és souffriront en effet des tourments infiniment plus rigoureux que les infidèles. La raison en est que ces étrangers seront és en partie parce qu’ils n’ont jamais entendu parler de Jésus-Christ et de sa religion ; qu’ils ont vécu et qu’ils sont morts dans l’ignorance.”  

ENG = “Christians who are damned will suffer torments infinitely more rigorous than the infidels.  The reason is that these strangers will be damned because they never heard talking about Jesus Christ and his religion; that they lived and died in ignorance.”

FR = “…il est donc bien juste, dis-je, que la justice de Dieu se fasse sentir plus rigoureusement sur eux que sur ces pauvres infidèles qui ont péché, en partie, sans connaître le mal qu’ils faisaient, et sans savoir celui qu’ils outrageaient, sans connaître la bonté et l’amour d’un Dieu pour ses créatures. Si les idolâtres, nous disent les saints, sont és pour avoir transgressé les lois de Dieu qu’ils ne connaissaient pas, des lois qu’ils n’ont pas connues (1), quelle sera donc la punition des chrétiens qui sentent si bien le mal qu’ils font, les devoirs qu’ils ont à remplir ?”   

ENG = “…it is therefore really just, that God’s justice shall be sent more rigorously on them [bad Christians who are damned] than on those poor infidels who sinned, in part, without knowing the evil they were doing, and without knowing he who they were offending… If the idolaters, the saints tell us, are damned because of having trespassed the laws of God that they didn’t know, laws that were not recognized by them, what will be the punishment of Christians who really sense the evil they are doing, the duties they have to accomplish ?”…

Jérémy