Light On Dark Water

…forgives everything more readily than an attack on truth. She knows that if a man falls, but leaves the truth unimpaired, he will find his way back again. But if he attacks the vital principle, then the sacred order of life is demolished.

–Romano Guardini, The Spirit of the Liturgy

I came to this realization long ago and it became one of my fundamental principles, in a sense preceding the doctrines of faith. But it seems a common error in our time to be unable to distinguish between the failure to live up to a principle and the denial of the principle.