"three things an intelligent preacher should never speak about"

"there are three things an intelligent preacher should never speak about, and which an up-to-date Christian should think about as seldom as possible, although one has to recite the Creed each Sunday (but there are so many myths therein; and besides, one can always repeat a formula—even in the vernacular—without stopping to think about it).
     "The first thing to leave in oblivion is obviously the other world (since there isn't any).
     "The second thing to leave in oblivion is the cross (it is only a symbol of the momentary sacrifices demanded by progress).
     "The third thing to leave in oblivion is sanctity—if it is true that sanctity has its principle, at the center of the soul (even if the saint remains plunged in the activities of the world) in a radical break with the world (in the Gospel sense of the word) and with the false god of the world, its mythical god, 'the Emperor of this world.'"

     Jacques Maritain, The peasant of the Garonne:  an old layman questions himself about the present time, trans. Michael Cuddihy and Elizabeth Hughes (New York:  Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1968 [1966]), 57-58.