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I have noted again and again, that egotism and sin stop the process of purification and cause a person to possibly stagnate in the spiritual life, or go backwards, which will happen after some time of stagnation.
Also, in these posts, I have referred to the fact that those who refuse to be purified are not doing good works in the Lord, but only in and for the self.
The one and greatest weakness of the Catholic Church is the multitude of people doing ministries without first being holy.
Without holiness, one is not doing God's work, but merely building up one's own kingdom. Why?
We work out of our predominant faults until we let God in to wrench those out of us. Only in complete detachment from sin and detachment from self can we honestly state we are working in the Will of God. When one's will is finally joined with God's after the purification of the Dark Night, one can work in the Kingdom freely, with and in God, doing what He wants to do.
This problem is obvious in heretical sects, where some people are convinced they are doing God's work, while the entire focus of their ministries is a lie.
If one is truly doing God's work, one would be allowing God to purify one's mind, soul, and body, leading to a conversion to the Catholic Church.
This was the way of Blessed Cardinal Newman and Henry Cardinal Manning. This was the way of St. Augustine, St. Francis and St. Ignatius, all converted once, and then converted in the second conversion to follow the path of purification and allow God to live in them.
St. Paul writes this, showing us he understood and lived the life of perfection:
Galatians 2:19-21 DR
19 For I, through the law, am dead to the law, that I may live to God: with Christ I am nailed to the cross.
20 And
I live, now not I; but Christ liveth in me. And that I live now in the
flesh: I live in the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and
delivered himself for me.
21 I cast not away the grace of God. For if justice be by the law, then Christ died in vain.
The Church is weak because people stop allowing God to purify the soul, the mind, the imagination.
This accounts for the number of weak priests, weak teachers, and weak parents.
I was thinking earlier today of three departments within a chancery office with which I was familiar in times past. In that department, some of the women were contracepting, believed in women priests, and divorce and remarriage without annulments. Some believed in same sex marriage.
They were not only living in mortal sin, but heretics. Now, that so many people in one chancery office were not "practicing" their faith weakened the Church from within. Bad decisions were being made, poor policies, and people were being taught fallacies.
If that diocese hired people who were committed to being saints, the diocese would have been in a stronger position.
The Church is not only weakened from within by bad or lax priests who are not pursuing holiness, but by thousands of lay Catholics who are content with their lives of compromise and errors.
Holy Mother Church suffers because of disobedience. The same scenario happens in convents, monasteries, retreat houses across the world, where the inhabitants live in serious sin, and do not even see the danger of habitual venial sin. I think of retreat houses wherein New Age heresies are taught.
Until Catholics realize that personal holiness is the only way the Church can be strong and effective in the world, we shall witness the weakness of the Church Militant.
