"They do not see except with blind eyes, since their desire is fixed on passing things, and so they are deceived and act like fools who notice only the gold and fail to see its venemous sting."
-Catherine of Siena
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A Large Collection of Articles Regarding Clergy Abuse
"And since pride blinds us, impoverishes us, and dries us up by robbing us of the richness of grace, it leaves us unfit to govern ourselves or anyone else."
-Catherine of Siena
"Sin creates [an inclination] to sin; it engenders vice by repetition of the same acts. This results in perverse inclinations which cloud consciences and corrupt the concrete judgment of good and evil. Thus sin tends to reproduce itself and reinforce itself, but it cannot destroy the moral sense at its root." from the Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1994, paragraph 1865
"It is for this class of rattlesnakes I have always wished the island retreat - but even an island is too good for these vipers...." Gerald Fitzgerald, a Catholic priest of integrity
"O devils worse than devils!"
"Sometimes they administer correction as if to cloak themselves in this little bit of justice. But they will never correct persons of ay importance, even though they may be guilty of greater sin than more lowly people, for fear that these might retaliate by standing in their way or deprive them of their rank and their way of living. They will, however, correct the little people, because they are sure these cannot harm them or deprive them of their rank. Such injustice comes from their wretched selfish love for themselves."
"What is the source of such filth in their souls? Their own selfish sensuality. Their selfishness has made a lady of their sensuality, and their wretched little souls have become her slaves, whereas I made them to be free by the blood of my Son, when the whole human race was freed from slavery to the devil and his rule."
"My ministers would be standing at the table of the cross in holy desire, nourishing themselves there on the food of souls for my honor. But instead these have made the taverns their table, and there is public they swear and perjure themselves in sin upon miserable sin, as if they were blind and bereft of the light of reason. They have become beasts in their sinning, lustful in word and deed."
"They are like criminal gamblers and swindlers: After they have gambled away their own souls into the devils' hands, they gamble away the goods of the Church as well, and they gamble and barter away whatever material goods they have been given in virtue of [my Son's] blood. So the poor go without what is due them, and the Church's needs are not provided for."
"This selfishness has poisoned the whole world as well as the mystic body of holy Church and made the garden of this bride a field overgrown with putrid weeds. That garden was well cultivated when it had true workers, that is, my holy ministers, and it was adorned with an abundance of fragrant flowers, because good shepherds, whose own lives were honorable and holy kept their subjects from living evil lives. But that is not the case today. In fact, it is just the opposite, because evil shepherds are causing their subjects to be evil. So this bride is full of thorns, full of a multitude of different sins."
"But these wretches, because of their bloated pride, indecency, and lust, neither see nor understand anything but the outer crust, the letter, of Scripture. They receive it without any relish, because their spiritual taste is disordered, corrupted even, by selfish love and pride. Their bellies are full of uncleanness, hungry only for the fulfillment of their perverted pleasures, glutted with concupiscence and avarice."
"How can those who are so sinful bring their subjects to justice and reproach them for their sins? They cannot, for their own sins have left them bereft of any enthusiasm or zeal for holy justice."
"As if they were blind and stupid, with the light of their understanding extinguished, they do not recognize what miserable filth they are wallowing in."
"Because of this wretched pride, and avarice born of their sensual selfishness, they have abandoned the care of souls and give themselves over completely to guarding and caring for their temporal possessions. They leave behind my little sheep, whom I had entrusted to them, like sheep without a shepherd."
"Not only do they not give what they are in duty bound to give to the poor, but they rob them through simony and their hankering after money, selling the grace of the Holy Spirit. Some are so mean that they are unwilling to give to the needy the very things I have given them freely so that they might give them to you - unless their hands are filled [with money] or they are plentifully supplied with gifts [in return]. They love their subjects for what they can get from them, and no more. They spend all the goods of the Church on nothing but clothes for their bodies. They go about fancily dressed, not like clerics and religious, but like lords or court lackeys. They are concerned about having grand horses, many gold and silver vessels, and well-adorned homes. They have and keep disordered vanity and their whole desire is feasting, making a god of their bellies, eating and drinking inordinately. So they soon fall into impure and lustful living."
"They spend their efforts not on virtuous living but on polished rhetoric."
(Quotes from The Dialogue by Catherine of Siena)
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