The Church's Worst Enemies are bad Catholics

@RorateCaeli 

It is a well-known account. Sister Marie Bernarde (Bernadette) Soubirous is in the convent of the Sisters of Charity in Nevers, it is 1870, war is raging throughout northern France as the Prussian-led German armies march towards Paris. The first printed version of the account,* published while she was still living, is the following. A visitor came to Bernadette at that time and made her the following questions:

- Did you receive, in the grotto of Lourdes, or after then, any revelations related to the future and fate of France? Did not the Blessed Virgin deliver any warning for France, any threats?

- No

- The Prussians are at our gates; does that not cause you any fear?

- No.

- There is thus nothing to fear?

- I only fear bad Catholics.

- You do not fear anything else?

- No, nothing else.

Words of great wisdom from the Saint. 

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"Somewhere back in the 1930s, during the Spanish Civil War, and facing other issues in Germany and Italy, Pius XI asked this very question: “Who are the Church’s most dangerous enemies?” His answer was as follows:

The Church’s worst persecutors have been her own unfaithful bishops, priests, and religious. Opposition from outside is terrible; it gives us many martyrs. But the Church’s worst enemy is her own traitors. 

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On Feb. 27, 1939 Mgr. Fulton J. Sheen, Professor of Fundamental Theology at Catholic University, Washington, declared  at solemn mass in St. Patrick's Cathedral.  Bad Catholics are at the root of every evil and persecution the Church has suffered from the time of Judas Iscariot to the present day.

Pope St. Pius V warned: “All the evils of the world are due to lukewarm Catholics.” 

At the Beatification of Joan of Arc on December 13, 1908, Pope St. Pius X said that: " In our time, more than ever, before the greatest asset of the evilly disposed is the cowardice and weakness of good men, and all the vigor of Satan’s reign is due to the easygoing weakness of Catholics.  Oh!  If I might ask the divine Redeemer, as the prophet Zachary did in spirit: 'What are those wounds in the midst of your hands?' the answer would not be doubtful.  'With these I was wounded in the house of those who did nothing to defend me and who, on every occasion, made themselves the accomplices of my adversaries.'  And this reproach can be leveled at the weak and timid Catholics of all countries." —Publication of the Decree of the Heroic Virtues of St. Joan of Arc, etc., December 13th, 1908; vatican.va 

In the middle of the 19th century, Pope Pius IX  stated: "Liberal Catholics are the worst enemies of the Church."

Today you must make the decision to be a good Catholic so that you are on the side of Jesus Christ and not on the side of God's enemies.

Saint Bernadette Soubirous pray for us.

O Mary, conceived without sin, pray or us who have recourse to thee.