Untitled - Saints' Books

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1 1 8 Material for Sermons. [PART i.
The prophet and the priest are defiled.
. . .
Therefore their
way shall be as a slippery way in the dark j for they shall be
driven on, and fall therein? Behold the ruin of the un
chaste ecclesiastic. He walks on a slippery path, in the
midst of darkness, and is
impelled to the precipice by
the devils, and by evil habits. Hence it is impossible
for him to escape destruction. St. Augustine says that
they that give themselves up to this vice soon contract
the habit of it; and the habit soon creates, as it were, a
necessity of sinning. 2
The vulture rather than abandon
the carcass on which it has begun to feed is content to
wait to be killed by the sportsman. This happens to
him that contracts a habit of impurity.
Oh! how much greater the obstinacy produced in the
priest that submits to the tyrannical rule of this vice,
than that which it causes in seculars! This happens
both because the priest has had greater light to know
the malice of mortal sin, and because in him impurity
is
a greater sin than it is in a secular. For the unchaste
priest not only offends against chastity, but also against
religion, by violating his vow, and, generally speaking,
he also transgresses against fraternal charity. For the
incontinence of a priest is almost always accompanied
with most grievous scandal to others. In his book on
the
Things,"
Denis the Carthusian relates that a
servant of God, conducted in spirit to purgatory, saw
there many seculars that were suffering
for sins against
purity, but very few priests. Having asked the reason,
he was told that scarcely any unchaste priest repents
sincerely of this sin, and that, therefore, almost all such
3
priests are damned.
1 "
Propheta et Sacerdos polluti sunt;
. . . idcirco via eorum erit
quasi lubricum in tenebris; impellentur enim, et corruent in ea."-
3 "
Jcr. xxiii. II.
2
Dum servitur " libidini, facta est consuetude; et dum consuetudini
non resistitur, facta est necessitas." Conf. 1. 8, c. 5.
Vix aliquis talium veram habet contritionem; idcirco pene omnes
seternalher damnantur." Quat. A T ov. p. 3. a. 13