Leo XIII.'s Message to the Twentieth Century:

The greatest misfortune is never to have known Jesus Christ. Christ is the fountain-head of all good. Mankind can no more be saved without His power than it can be redeemed without His mercy. When Jesus Christ is absent human reason fails, being bereft of its chief protection and light: and the very end is lost sight of for which, under God's providence, human society has been built up. To reject Dogma is simply to deny Christianity. It is evident that they whose intellects reject the yoke of Christ are obstinately striving against God. Having shaken off God's authority, they are by no means freer, for they will fall beneath some human sway. God alone is life. All other beings partake of life, but they are not life. Christ, from all eternity and by His very nature, is "the Life," just as He is "the Truth," because He is God of God. If any one abide not in Me, he shall be cast forth as a branch, and shall wither, and they shall gather him up and cast him into the fire, and he burneth (John xv. 6). Once remove all impediments and allow the spirit of Christ to revive and grow in a nation, and that nation shall be healed. The world has heard enough of the so-called "rights of man." Let it hear something of the rights of God. The common welfare urgently demands a return to Him from whom we should never have gone astray: to Him who is the Way, the Truth and the Life,--and this on the part not only of individuals but of society as a whole.