 Do not pass close to this contemporary without paying him close attention".The Catholic theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar, who was appointed cardinal by Pope John Paul II (but died in 1988 before his investiture), dismissed Escrivá's principal work, "The Way", as "a little Spanish manual for advanced Boy Scouts" and argued that it was quite insufficient to sustain a major religious organization.However, the monk and spiritual writer Thomas Merton declared that Escrivá's book "will certainly do a great deal of good by its simplicity, which is the true medium for the Gospel message".