CHAPTER CXXII.
How injustice reigns in the above-mentioned wicked ministers ; and that particularly in that they do not correct their subjects.
" I HAVE told thee how in My beloved ones there shone the pearl of justice. Now I will tell thee how these miserable wretches wear injustice on their breast as a buckle, which injustice both proceeds from, and is clasped with their own self-love, through which they commit injustice against their own souls and against Me, in the darkness of their in discretion.
" Me they deprive of glory, and themselves of honour and a holy life, having neither desire for the salvation of souls nor hunger for virtue. For this reason they act unjustly towards their subjects and their neighbour, and do not correct their vices ; rather they are blind and do not know them, and allow their subjects to sleep and lie quiet in their infirmities, from their disordinate fear of offending creatures. But they do not observe that in thus wishing to please creatures, they in reality displease them, and Me, your Creator, as well. Sometimes indeed they do correct their neighbour, in order to cloak themselves in some rag of justice. But they do not go to a great man who is living in great and open sin, for they are afraid if they do that he will interfere with their own state and life, but they turn on some insignificant person, for they see that he can do them no harm. Thus is injustice committed through miserable self-love, which has poisoned the whole world , and the mystical body of the holy Church, and through which the garden of My Spouse has run to seed and given birth to putrid flowers, which garden was properly cultivated at the time when the true labourers were there, that is to say, My holy ministers, and was adorned with many fragrant flowers, for the subjects led virtuous, honourable and holy lives, through the examples of their good pastors. To-day it is not so, but rather the contrary, for through wicked pastors the subjects have also become wicked. My Spouse is full of the various thorns of many sins, not that she can in herself be infected through the stench of sin, for the virtue of the Sacraments can receive no harm, but those who feed at the breast of this Spouse are infected by the stench in their souls, losing the dignity in which I have placed them, though that dignity is not diminished in itself, but only with regard to them.
" Wherefore through their sins the Blood is held of no account, for seculars lose the due reverence which they ought to pay to them for the Blood's sake ; not that they ought to do so, and their fault, even if I forgive them, is none the less on account of the sins of their pastors, who are wretched mirrors of sin, in that office in which I have placed them in order to be mirrors of virtue."
Sound familiar at all?
Had St Catherine lived in modern times, I wonder what Cardinal Dolan, Cardinal O'Malley, Cardinal Wuerl, et al, would say about her? (That is a rhetorical question; I have no doubt what they'd say)
Now, more than ever.
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