More Thinking than Praying Doesn't Work

Using Carlo Carretto today for Lectio Divina.

Carlo assumes the voice of St. Francis of Assisi giving women advice, by referring to Saint Catherine of Siena: "Transform your home into a convent--an ideal, spiritual one, as Saint Catherine did.  Let prayer reign there, good counsel, and peace.  Let your toil, wherever it is, be illumined by the power of your calling--for you were made to love, to comfort, to serve."

Mmmmmm.......knowing St. Catherine like I do, I think she'd tell Carlo where to go.

You know, like she told the Pope to leave Avignon.  Carlo is giving advice in the 1980's to women who want to be priests.  He thinks women should be priests.  He's (St. Francis) telling priests, "Are you still the slaves of ancient cultures, in which a woman was of no account, in which she was subjugated by male arrogance and destined only to live behind a curtain like the women of the Muslims?"

Oh Carlo!  You are besmirching the names of St. Catherine and St. Francis.  I'm sure both are spinning in their graves.  Good Grief!  When I think of the many times Catherine defended priests, no matter how undeserving they were!   In one of her dialogues St Catherine of Sienna was told by Christ what He thinks of priests. "They are My anointed ones”, the Savior said, “and I call them My Christs because I have given them the office of administering Me to you. The angel himself, has no such dignity, for I have given it to those men whom I have appointed as earthly angels in this life."


Catherine, and I'm sure Francis, too, would have unquestionably obeyed the Church laws.  Where does Carretto come off?


Mmmmmm....does prayer sometimes lead you to sin?