The Religious State
by VP
Posted on Wednesday August 15, 2018 at 12:00AM in Books
He who finds himself bound by a habit of any vice cannot take any holy Order without incurring the guilt of mortal sin.
“I am horrified,” says St. Bernard (Epist. 8), “when I think whence thou comes, wither thou goest, and what a short penance thou hast put between thy sins and thy ordination. However, it is indispensable that thou do not undertake to purify the conscience of others before thou purifiest thy own.
"Of those daring sinners who, though full of bad habits, take priesthood, an ancient author, Gildas say, “It is not to the priesthood that they should be admitted, but they should be dragged to the pillory” (Cast. In eccl. Ord.).
They, then, says Saint Isidore, who are still subject to the habit of any sin should not be promoted to holy orders (Sent. 1. 3, C. 34).
(…) According to St. Gregory, it is particularly necessary with regard to the virtue of chastity that “No one should be admitted to the ministry of the altar unless an assurance has been given of his perfect chastity".
(...) And as a bishop cannot ordain any person unless he be a man of approved chastity, so a confessor cannot permit an incontinent penitent to receive ordination without having a moral certainty that he is free from the bad habit which he had contracted, and that he had acquired a habit of the virtue of chastity.
By St. Alphonsus de Liguori
Source:The Religious State: Together with a Short Treatise on the Vocation to the Priesthood 1889
