Belloc - Mother Church

The Faith is never truly held unless it is held in challenge. The young man must get rid of what he has been merely taught and then rediscover it for himself. If he doesn't do that it isn't really his. It's not worth having.

The Faith, the Catholic Church, is discovered, is recognized, triumphantly enters reality like a landfall at sea which first was thought a cloud. The nearer it is seen, the more it is real, the less imaginary: the more direct and external its voice, the more indubitable its representative character, its 'persona', its voice. The metaphore is not that men fall in love with it: the metaphor is that they discover home ... It is the very mould of the mind, the matrix to which corresponds in every outline the outcast and unprotected contour of the soul. It is Verlaine's 'Oh! Rome - oh! Mere!' And that not ony to those who ahd it in childhood and have returned, but much more - and what a proof! - to those who come upon it from the hills of life and say to themselves, 'Here is the town.'