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I have
to say that for me and, I believe, for many other [religious of my
order], there exists an even greater benchmark than the Magisterium of
the Roman Catholic Church. We used to speak of a well-formed conscience and
a pure heart shaped by prayer and the love of God. Unfortunately, that has
fallen out of favor in recent years. We [specific religious order]
have stood at the “edge” since our beginnings while nurturing a
great love for the Church.
 hen people speak about being at
the edge, it doesn’t usually mean dying to the world
in good Christian
faith and love for the Church. More often than not it indicates a desire
to dilute theology to accommodate popular
political sentiment, and in that sense,
“standing on the edge” means only that you already have one foot
in hell.
That’s a sad thing, and
yet that’s the consequence of Original Sin.
Conscience really has no meaning except in the context of our
baptism into freedom from the slavery to sin.
That is, ever mindful of our promises to reject all the works of the
devil and to live a holy,
chaste lifestyle, conscience warns us when
we are in the process of betraying those baptismal promises.
If we try to follow any
“conscience” not illuminated by those baptismal promises, we will
be walking in spiritual darkness, following a
guide undisciplined by self-denial and
obedience, and we will be led so far into a distortion
of the Gospel message of love and
forgiveness that we will end up falling right over
the edge of “love” into impiety and
sin.
God placed us in this world with
free will so that we would be capable of
true love. And yet, given all my clinical experience
and knowledge of the psychology of the
unconscious, it’s no surprise to me—a great
sadness, yes, but no surprise—that most persons use their free will
to send themselves straight to
hell.
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when I hear it said that God is good and He will pardon us, and then see
that men cease not from evil-doing, oh, how it grieves me! The infinite goodness
with which God communicates with us, sinners as we are, should constantly
make us love and serve Him better; but we, on the contrary, instead of seeing
in His goodness an obligation to please Him, convert it into an excuse for
sin which will of a certainty lead in the end to our deeper
condemnation. |
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—Saint Catherine of Genoa
The Life and Doctrine of Saint Catherine of Genoa,
Chapter XV |
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