The Lethargy of the Guardians of the Faith
"The Power of Evil Lives on the Cowardice of Good"
The first part of this section is all about this motto, in the words of St. Don Bosco. Hildebrand explicitly points out that it is primarily those bishops he has in mind, who destroy the Church or want to turn into something else entirely: "I think of the much more numerous bishops who have no such intentions, but when action is necessary against heretical theologians or pastors or against a blasphemous disfigurement of the cult - they do not make any use of their authority. "These bishops close their eyes to the abuses and ignore all appeals that remind them of their duty to take action against the Church destroyer.."
They give the impression that they are afraid of something.
What are the bishops afraid of?
They fear being "attacked by the press or the mass media and being labelled as reactionary, narrow-minded, to be medieval different."
But the ultimate fear, which would be needed in terms of their own salvation, they do not know: "You fear men more than God."
The cause of this sickness of time (cowardice): "aggiornamento" (assimilation)
This disease is prevalent in the secular realm, "But that it has also penetrated into the church, is one of those terrible symptoms that the struggle against the spirit of the world has been replace under the slogan of aggiornamento aligned to a pacing with the zeitgeist. One must think of the hireling who leaves his flock to the wolves - if you think about the lethargy of so many bishops and religious superiors who are themselves still orthodox [in the sense of orthodox], but do not have the courage to intervene against the most flagrant heresy and abuses of all kinds in their dioceses or in their orders."
Read more at The Eponymous Flower