The voice of Saint Catherine of Siena, which challenged the bishops of her time, is perfectly applicable to our reality.

 "LET NOT THE SEVERE WORD OF TRUTH BE ADDRESSED TO YOU WHEN SHE SAID: 'CURSED BE YOU FOR BEING SILENT'".

From the depths of the centuries, the cry of Saint Catherine addressed to bishops and cardinals who silently witness the slaughter of souls perpetrated today with their complicit silence...

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"[…]Poor me! Poor me! My wretched soul! Open your eyes and look carefully at the perversity of death that has entered the world, and especially into the Holy Church, the mystical body of Jesus.

Poor me! May your heart and soul burst at the sight of so many offenses committed against God! See, Father, that the devil, the infernal wolf, kidnaps men, the sheep that feed in the garden of the Holy Church; and there is no one who moves to snatch them from his mouth. The shepherds sleep in their self-love, in the same greed and filth;  And they are so drunk with pride that they sleep and don't even feel themselves, even though they see that the devil, the infernal wolf, is stealing the life of grace from them and even from those entrusted to them. They don't care: and all this is due to the perversity of their self-love. How dangerous self-love is in bishops, priests, and the people entrusted to them!

You are a bishop; if you have self-love, you do not correct the defects you see in those entrusted to you: because if you love yourself for yourself, you fall into human respect, and therefore you do not intervene to correct. If you loved yourself for God's sake, however, you would not fear human respect; courageously, with a strong heart, you would correct the defects, and you would not remain silent or pretend not to see.

Dearest Father, I want you to be free from self-love.  I beg you to live so that the Truth will not address you with that stern, reproachful word, when it said: "Cursed be you, because you remained silent."

Woe to me! Be silent no longer! Cry out with a hundred thousand tongues! I see that, through silence, the world is in ruins, and the holy Church, the Bride of Jesus, has become all pale and no longer has her color, because her blood has been sucked from her: the blood of Jesus, given to us by grace and not to satisfy a debt, is stolen by evil shepherds through pride for their own gain, taking away the glory that should be God's and giving it to themselves. They steal with simony, selling the gifts and graces given to us by grace, at the price of the blood of the Son of God. […]".

Saint Catherine of Siena, Letter 16, To a Bishop

THERE CAN BE NO BETTER ADVICE

 

CLOTHING IS FOR COVERING, NOT FOR SUGGESTING OR DISPLAYING

"...The good of our soul is more important than bodily well-being; and we must prefer the spiritual welfare of our neighbor to the comforts of our body...

If a certain type of clothing constitutes a grave and imminent occasion of sin, and endangers the salvation of your soul and that of others, it is your duty to abandon it..."

Pope Pius XII

 

THE MEANING OF DOGMAS CAN NEVER CHANGE OR CONTRADICT IT

The First Vatican Council, in the Constitution Son of God, Chapter 4, proclaimed:

“The doctrine of faith which God revealed was not presented as a philosophical discovery to be perfected by human ingenuity, but handed down as a divine deposit to the Bride of Christ to be faithfully guarded and infallibly declared. Therefore, that meaning of the sacred dogmas which Holy Mother Church declared once and for all must be maintained in perpetuity, and one must never depart from that meaning.”

Then, in Canon 3 on Faith and Reason, it decrees: “If anyone asserts that, after the dogmas have been established by the Church, a meaning different from that which the Church understood and understands should ever be attributed to them according to the progress of knowledge, let him be anathema.”

FATIMA

Pope Pius XII: “I am concerned about the messages of the Blessed Virgin to Lucia of Fatima. This persistence of Mary regarding the dangers that threaten the Church is a divine warning against the suicide of altering the Faith in her Liturgy, in her Theology, in her soul… I have heard around me innovators who want to dismantle the Sacred Chapel, destroy the universal flame of the Church, reject her vestments, and make her feel remorse for her historical past.

A day will come when the civilized world will deny its God, when the Church will doubt as Peter doubted. She will be tempted to believe that man has become God. In our churches, Christians will search in vain for the red lamp where God awaited them. Like Mary Magdalene who wept before the empty tomb, they will ask, ‘Where have they taken Him?’” (Pope Pius XII, quoted in Monsignor Roche, Pius XII Devant)  l’Histoire, pp. 52-53).

THE WISDOM OF PEMÁN

A clear and sound conscience

is the treasure I desire;

 I ask for nothing and expect nothing

 for tomorrow.

 I neither pursue glory, 

 nor does foolish ambition trouble me; 

 And upon being born each morning,

 I ask only of God

a clean house to shelter me,

 fresh bread to eat, a book to read, 

and a Christ to pray to;

 for he who strives and toils

 finds nothing that fulfills him, 

 and he who needs the least

 has more than he who has the most. 

 José María Pemán

ALL EYES

"Mary is all eyes, compassionate towards us and ready to help us. Saint Epiphanius calls Mary 'the one with many eyes'; she who is all eyes to see and help those in need. A man possessed by a demon was being exorcised, and when the exorcist asked him what Mary was doing, the possessed man replied: 'She goes down and goes up.' He meant that this most benign Lady does nothing other than descend to earth to bring graces to humankind and ascend to heaven to obtain divine favor for our supplications. Saint Andrew Avellino rightly calls the Virgin the administrator of Paradise, who is constantly engaged in obtaining mercy, imploring graces for all, both the just and the sinners. 'The Lord has his eyes on the righteous' (Psalm 33:16). But the Lady's eyes, says Richard of Saint Lawrence, are turned both towards the just and towards sinners. And this is because Mary's eyes are a mother's eyes, and a mother does not..."  "Look only to prevent your child from falling, but also, having fallen, to help him up."

Saint Alphonsus Liguori