Untitled - Saints' Books

Material for Sermons. [PART i.
or mother more than Me is not worthy of Me* Oh! how
many priests shall we see condemned on the day of
judgment for having taken holy Orders to please their
relatives.
When a young man, in obedience to the call of God,
wishes to become a religious, what efforts do not his
parents make, either through passion or for the interest
of the family, to dissuade him from following his voca
tion ! It is
necessary to know that, according to the
common opinion of theologians, this cannot be excused
from mortal sin. See what I have written on this sub
ject in my Moral Theology. Parents who act in this
manner are guilty of a double sin. They sin first
against charity, because they are the cause of a grievous
evil to the child whom God has called to religion. A
person who dissuades even a stranger from following a
religious vocation is guilty of a grievous sin. They sin,
secondly, against piety; for by their obligation to edu
cate a child they are bound to promote his greater
spiritual welfare. Some ignorant confessors tell their
penitents who wish to become religious, that in this they
should obey their parents, and abandon their vocation
These
if their parents object to their entering religion.
confessors adopt the opinion of Luther, who taught that
a person sins by entering religion without the consent
of his parents. But the doctrine of Luther was rejected
by the holy Fathers, and by the Tenth Council of
Toledo, in which it was decreed that children who had
attained their fourteenth year may lawfully enter re
ligion even against the will of their parents. A child is
bound to obey his parents in what regards his education
and the government of the house; but with regard to
the choice of a state of life, he should obey God by
embracing the state to which God calls him. When
1
"Qui
Matt. x. 37.
amat patrem aut matrcm plus quam me, non est me dignus."