LOS ANGELES, CA — Listing 15 spiritual ailments, Pope Francis warned the Curia to be on their guard and to ask for God’s forgiveness. He spoke about the ailments as affecting both the Curia as well as the clergy of the Catholic Church and even the parishioners themselves.
Here is the list of 15 spiritual conditions against which every Christian ought to be on their guard.
Pray for the leaders and clergy of our Church, that they may be free of spiritual illness and flourish through the power of the Holy Spirit.
1. Feeling immortal and essential
“A curia that does not practise self-criticism, does not keep up to date, does not try to better itself, is an infirm Body.” Pope Francis suggested visiting a cemetery to see people who perhaps thought themselves essential or even immortal at one time.
2. Excessive activity
People who lose themselves in their work and neglect “what is better” which he explained was sitting at Jesus’ feet.
3. “Petrification”
Some people become incapable of feeling, buried in their work and under papers.
4. Overplanning
Some people become accountants in a spiritual sense, overplanning to the point they no longer hear and heed the Holy Spirit in what they do. They tend to become static and unchanging, unreceptive to the direction of the Holy Spirit.
5. Lack of coordination
Some people lose their sense of community and instead of living communally and cooperatively, they live for themselves and the body of people as a whole suffers.
6. Spiritual Alzheimer’s
Described as a “progressive decline of spiritual faculties” which “causes severe disadvantages to people.” Specifically, Pope Francis referred to people who have lost their spiritual way, having forgotten about the Lord. They become subject to “passions, whims and obsessions.”
7. Rivalry and vanity
Some people are more concerned with rank and privilege and not with doing their pastoral duty to their neighbors.
8. Existential schizophrenia
People who live double lives, spiritually empty and mediocre, filling themselves with the false esteem of degrees and honors, but without fulfilling pastoral duties to others.
9. Gossip
Some people gossip and become “sowers of discord.” Pope Francis described this as a “disease of cowards.”
10. Defiance
People who “court their superiors” looking after what they might gain and not at what they can give.
11. Indifference
When people think only of themselves and not of others, and they lose the warmth of human relationships. They do not share their knowledge, preferring to see others fall.
12. The funeral face
People who are “scowling and unfriendly and think that in order to be serious, they must show a melancholic and strict face and treat others, especially those, whom they think are inferior, with rigidity harshness, and arrogance. People should strive to be joyful and full of humour and self-irony, which can be healthy.
13. Hoarding
Some people prefer to surround themselves with material possessions because spiritually they are empty.
14. Cliques
When belonging to a group is more important than belonging to the Body of Christ, they can develop a spiritual form of cancer.
15. Showing off
“When the apostle turns his service into power, and his power into a commodity to gain worldly profits, or even more powers. It is the disease of those people who relentlessly seek to increase their powers. To achieve that, they may defame, slander and discredit others, even on newspapers and magazines. Naturally, that is in order to show off and exhibit their superiority to others”.
Pope Francis ended his talk comparing priests to airplanes, saying that everybody knows when they fall, but most fly successfully. “Many criticize, and few pray for them.” However, those that fall bring down the whole Church.
Catholic Online
