CAPG's Blog 

What medium is to be observed by a priest between a severe and a lax morality?

There have been priests in every age who have decided this question according to their own fancy and inclination, and priests will continue to do so in the future. There will always be doctors and preachers and directors of souls who, yielding to the prejudices and tastes of the age, or desirous of gaining the good will of individuals, or ambitious to make a name, will change the teachings of the Church, making easy or burdensome the yoke of the Lord; as if it were their right to broaden or make narrow the way to heaven; as if it were their privilege to substitute the changing and fallible opinions of men for the infallible and changeless law of the Gospel of Christ.

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A good priest is certainly not a man who follows the mode of the world and its fashions; he is a man who is loyal to truth and loves order. The truth, then, is this, that laxity and severity are two extremes, both equally bad and dangerous and both skirting along the edge of the precipice.

And first laxity. It is condemned in every page of Holy Writ. Did not our Lord say: Narrow is the gate and strait is the way that leads to life? and again: I came not to send peace upon earth, but the sword? And does not He command what is hard and a trial to flesh and blood? To cleanse the heart of whatever is a snare to it and defiles it, to submit to humiliations, to deny oneself in all things, to return good for evil, to carry the Cross daily- this, in short, is the morality taught by Jesus Christ. This is but saying that the life of a Christian is a life of mortification and self-denial, and that to be a Christian in any true sense one must be generous and courageous, ready to struggle and willing to make war upon oneself and conquer. For this reason the Holy Council of Trent warns ministers of the Sanctuary against that excessive indulgence which causes sinners to slumber on in their sins and against becoming accomplices in disorders which they should combat and correct.

To wish to adjust the teachings of the Gospel to the solicitations of human passion, instead of subjecting human passion to the teaching of the Gospel; to set up principles from which deductions can be drawn indulgent to human nature, ever averse to mortification and self-sacrifice, is to open wide the door to laxity, to create false consciences and to cause the loss of souls under pretext of tranquilizing them. Woe to you who deceive the people, scatter lies and call them oracles; Woe to you who lead them astray and allow them to slumber on in false security! My hand shall be heavy upon you; the corruption of your false maxims shall be visited upon your heads, and in the end you shall know that I am the Lord. ( Ezechiel vi. 13.)

Next, severity. Faith and a decent respect for one-self will be enough to restrain one from disseminating in public or teaching privately a lax morality which is clearly in opposition to the spirit of the Gospel. But this is not true in regard to severity. An excessive severity flatters vanity and gains a reputation for sanctity. A priest who openly parades himself as one of austere life is reputed mortified and a man of irreproachable morals. This was the artifice made use of by the Scribes and Pharisees to lead the people astray and poison their minds with error. A stately walk, and imperious tone of voice, a cold and mortified exterior, long prayers, ceaseless censure of the most innocent actions, a haughty scorn of publicans and sinners, all this but served as a mask for their hypocrisy and was a fitting expression of the severe maxims which they disseminated. Their teaching were an additional burden, and made almost unbearable the already weighty and galling yoke of the Hebrew law. They laid upon others burdens which they themselves were unwilling to bear, and which they would not so much as touch with a finger's tip.

This is why the Lamb of God, who was so gentle and tender to others, who pardoned the woman taken in adultery, who had not even a harsh word for Judas who betrayed Him, nor for the executioners who crucified Him, had for the Scribes and Pharisees only words of scorn and anathema: WOE TO YOU!

And why was our Lord so severe upon them? because God is essentially loving and the Father of mercy, and nothing is so injurious to Him as to represent Him as a gloomy and terrible Master, ever armed with thunderbolts to annihilate us. It is, therefore, beyond all question that nothing is more detrimental to souls than to exaggerate the difficulty of being saved, and to put on grace a higher estimate than that put upon it by our Savior Himself. And after all, His ministers are but the interpreters of His law. If, on the one had, they are forbidden to conceal or disguise its true import and meaning or make it ineffective by unwarranted indulgence, they are, on the other, equally forbidden to render it odious and intolerable by culpable exaggeration.

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It is necessary to keep a middle course between these two rocks and while avoiding one not get wrecked on the other. But to do this an exact and precise knowledge of the doctrine of Jesus Christ is necessary, in order to transmit it to the people just as He brought it from heaven, and just as the Church transmits it to us, without adding to it or taking from it a single iota.

Source: Jesus living in the priest : considerations on the greatness and holiness of the priesthood, by Rev. Millet S.J. 1901