Karl Adam on Intellectual Freedom

One paragraph that really struck me in reading "The Spirit of Catholicism" is a discussion of intellectual freedom in the Catholic Church. I can think of a few politicians (and others) who may benefit from reading this text:

"As the authorised preacher of the truth, the church will never cease to give her authoritative witness to it and to oblige all consciences to accept it. Yet she does not seek to overpower conscience, but to convince it. She seeks internal, not merely external assent. And when a man cannot give this internal assent she leaves his conscience to the mercy of God and sets him free. That is not fanaticism or severity, but a service to truth and sincerity. For the Church cannot and may not endure that there should be some among her members who are Catholics only in name. She requires that all such men should draw the logical consequence from their new state of conscience and leave the Church. And in this she protects the sincerity of their consciences as much as she guards the sincerity of her own being. The Church does no injury to free-thinking laymen or theologians when she excludes them from communion with her children. On the contrary such people do an injury to the Church if they remain in her communion when they have lost her faith." (p. 198)