"Where there is no Election, there is no history."

Jean-Marie Cardinal Lustiger, The promise, trans. Rebecca Howell Balinski, Msgr. Richard Malone, Jean Duchesne, & Rivka Karplus (Grand Rapids, MI:  William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2007), 104.  I have not read this book, but was put on to it by Pierre d'Ornellas, "L'évêque et l'histoire," Communio: revue catholique internationale 33, no. 3 (mai-juin 2008):  58 (53-62).  The material on election that follows this in the article and book appears on p. 32 in the English translation.