disability of seeing wrong anywhere, and who walk through the
commandments of God and the Church with apparent unconcern. What must
we think of such people in face of the fact that they not only could,
but should know better! They are supposed to know their catechism. Are
there not Catholic books and publications of various sorts? What about
the Sunday instructions and sermons? These are the means and
opportunities, and they facilitate the fulfilment of what is in us a
bounden duty to nourish our souls before they die of spiritual hunger.

A delicate, effeminate life, spiritual sloth, and criminal neglect are
responsible for this kind of laxity.

This state of soul is also the inevitable consequence of long years
passed in sin and neglect of prayer. Habit blunts the keen edge of
perception. Evil is disquieting to a novice; but it does not look so
bad after you have done it a while and get used to it. Crimes thus
become ordinary sins, and ordinary sins peccadillos.

Then again there are people who, like the Pharisees of old, strain out
a gnat and swallow a camel. They educate themselves up to a strict
observance of all things insignificant. They would not forget to say
grace before and after meals, but would knife the neighbor's character
or soil their minds with all filthiness, without a scruple or a shadow
of remorse.

These are they who walk in the broad way that leadeth to destruction.
In the first place, their conscience or the thing that does duty for a
conscience, is false and they are responsible for it. Then, this sort
of a conscience is not habitually certain, and laxity consists
precisely in contemning doubts and passing over lurking, lingering