“A flag stands for a nation, and the hand that carries it would retain it at the cost of a thousand deaths rather than let it be seized and desecrated by the enemy. It may be a small thing to violate a cloth that is red and white and blue, but it is no small thing to desecrate that for which it stands. So, likewise, in the terrestrial Paradise, the famous tree in which God reposed all the knowledge of good and evil, was a symbol, a moral limit which God imposed on the sovereignty of man to prove his obedience and love. To say it was only a fable is to miss the great truth that things may not only be, but may also signify, like a handshake or a smile.” Archbishop Fulton Sheen