St. Catherine Sienna Speaks against Bad Clergy

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St. Catherine Sienna Speaks against Bad Clergy – I

‘Eradicate the Wolves inside the Church’

TIA | September 16, 2024

In her Dialogue, St. Catherine of Siena often speaks of the degeneration inside the Church and the great need for reform. In fact, she speaks so strongly about bad Prelates and pastors that some of the French translations, which appeared at a time when anti-clericalism in France was at its most violent, simply omitted these chapters in St. Catherine’s book. Unfortunately, it was these censured books that were generally chosen to be translated into English.

This excerpt on St. Catherine of Siena from Fr. Sáenz’ book titled Christian Archtypes shows how the Saint railed against the bad pastors and Prelates in the Church, counseling that a true reform could only take place when they were eradicated and replaced with good shepherds. 

The reader can view his Spanish sources at the end of the article.

One of the most acute sorrows of St. Catherine of Siena (1347-1380) was the sight of mercenary shepherds, and even wolves. There have been, no doubt, excellent shepherds. But it is no less true that the lives of many were scandalous.

She condemns priests who are mercenary shepherds and even wolves

During her stay in Avignon, Catherine became closely acquainted with the papal court and its unworthy Prelates. She had also seen them during her travels through Italy. In those times it was common for influential families to try to place their sons in high ecclesial offices, even if they were completely inept.

Several saints, such as St. Vincent Ferrer and St. Bridget, or even eminent men such as Petrarch, for example, harshly criticized such aberrations. Their message found an echo then among the people, for, as we have said, in that century the population was, despite everything, deeply religious. Then evil did not have, as it does now, a charter of citizenship, giving it an impudence and allowing it to defy the principles of the natural and supernatural order. Those who committed evil accepted the censures that were made against them in the name of Christian morality.

The situation of the Church was something that made Catherine’s heart bleed from a wound that reopened with each new spectacle. What Unamuno said about Spain can well be applied to the Saint: The Church wounded her. In her Dialogue she transcribes some very severe words that God addresses to priests:

‘I suffered My Hands to be tied to free mankind from the bonds of guilt & you use your anointed hands foolishly in dishonest acts’

“You ought to be a mirror of honesty, and you are a mirror of dishonesty. I [Christ] suffered Myself to be blindfolded in order to enlighten you, yet with lascivious eyes you thrust poisoned arrows into the hearts and souls of those upon whom you so maliciously fix your gaze. I allowed Myself to be given gall and vinegar to drink, but you, like a disordered animal, delight in your delicate foods, making a god of your belly.

“Vain and dishonest words come from your mouth, with which you are obliged to admonish your neighbor, announce my word and pray the Office. Yet I perceive from it nothing but stench...

“I suffered My hands to be tied in order to free you, and all mankind, from the bonds of guilt. Yet your hands, anointed and consecrated to administer the Most Holy Sacrament, are used foolishly in dishonest acts... All your members, like cacophonous instruments, transmit a bad sound, because the three faculties of the soul come together in the name of the Devil, when you should gather them in My name...”

Our Lord even goes so far as to compare these bad priests to devils incarnate, because they have identified themselves with the will of the Devil: “They do the same work as he does, with regard to Me...”

St. Catherine warns against the “unworthy ministers of the Blood”: “Because of their defects, the Blood is corrupted, that is, the lay people lose the due reverence they should have for them and for the Blood.”

Catherine fully agrees with these assessments of God. She knows that the holiness of the clergy is closely linked to the beauty of the Bride of Christ and the salvation of souls. “Today we see the opposite,” she affirms in one of her letters. “Not only are they not temples of God, but they have become stables and pens for pigs and other barnyard animals.”

Much of the blame lies with the Bishops who, as God Himself tells her in the Dialogue, “have been more concerned about multiplying the number of priests rather than their virtues».”


The Church persecuted by corrupt & heretical pastors

St. Catherine of Siena points to three sins that most degraded the clergy in her time: lust, avarice and pride. In her opinion, the time had come to call for a reform. What needed to be reformed was certainly not the Bride herself, who will always remain holy and is not diminished or altered by the defects of her ministers, but rather the latter. “The time has come to weep and lament because the Bride of Christ is being persecuted by her perfidious and corrupt members,” she writes in a letter.

“The mystical body of the Holy Church is surrounded by many enemies,” she writes to a monk.

“Thus do you see that those who have been placed to be the pillars and upholders of the Holy Church have become her persecutors with the darkness of heresy. This is no time to sleep, but to defeat them with vigilance, sweat and tears, and with sorrowful and loving desires and humble and continual prayer.”

But Catherine is not content with crying, praying and fasting. She will take concrete steps, addressing the Pope directly, since only he has conditions to remedy so great an evil.

In a letter to Gregory XI, she tells him, on behalf of Christ, that he must decide to use his power to remove from the garden of the Church these corrupt flowers, “the bad shepherds and leaders filled with impurity and greed and swollen with pride who poison and putrefy this garden.” He must use his power to remove these persons, putting in their place shepherds according to the heart of God.

She is not content to fast & pray, but believes it necessary to address the Pope face to face & in letters

Our Lord explained to her as she reports in the Dialogue why the Church was in this situation: It was because when choosing the pastors, the Prelates did not examine whether they were good or bad, but only had the desire to please favorites or offer families a favor; thus, those charged with informing the Holy Father about the candidates sent him positive references about ill-suited persons.

At times, she continued, these Prelates praise the bad or mediocre candidates because they share their vices and ambitions. When the Pope discovers the truth of the situation, he should remove them. If he does, he will fulfill his duty. If not, he will not go unpunished when he will have to give an account before the Lord of his sheep.

To avoid such drastic measures as the deposition of unworthy Bishops, the Holy Father should choose from the start humble priests, who out of modesty try to avoid prelatures, and not those who seek them to fuel their vainglory. By not acting in this way, we have those Bishops who, as our Saint says to Brother Raymond, “have acted like flies, which are such a base insects that they care not about the sweet and aromatic things upon which they land, but go from there to rest on repugnant and unclean things.”


To be continued


Works consulted

* Santa Catalina de Siena, El Diálogo, BAC, Madrid 1955.
* Cartas Políticas, Losada, Buenos Aires 1993.
* Johannes Jörgensen, Santa Catalina de Siena, Acción, Buenos Aires 1993.
* M. V. Bernadot O.P., Santa Catalina de Siena al servicio de la Iglesia, Studium, Madrid 1958.
* Jean Rupp, Docteurs pour nos temps: Catherine et Thérèse, Ed. P. Lethielleux, Paris 1971.
* Jacques Leclercq, Santa Catalina de Siena, Patmos, Madrid 1955.

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St. Catherine Sienna Speaks against Bad Clergy – II
‘The Cowardly & Complicit Silence of Bishops before Error’
Fr. Alfredo Sáenz SJ

TIA | September 30, 2024

In the last article, Fr. Alfredo Sáenz records St. Catherine of Siena condemning the unworthy pastors and prelates in the Church of her time. Here he continues with her words on bad religious: She criticizes in particular their silence in face of heresy and immorality, caused by their self-love that made them permit abuses in order to advance in their careers.

She warns they will have much for which they will answer before God, for “bad shepherds are to blame for almost all the evils that the members of their congregations commit.”


What riles St. Catherine most is cowardly or complicit silence, especially of the Bishops. While the Infernal Wolf snatches away the sheep, she complains, the shepherds sleep in their egoism. “Why are you silent?” she writes to a Prelate. “This silence is the world’s perdition. The Church is pale; her blood is running out.” The fault, she tells another Bishop, lies in the perverse love they have for themselves, which prevents them from reprimanding when they should.

“So that you may not be deprived of this love, my dearest pastor. I ask you to act in such a way that on the day when the Supreme Truth judges you, you will not have to hear these harsh words: ‘Cursed be you, you who have said nothing.’ Ah, enough of silence! Cry out with a hundred thousand tongues. I see that because of silence the world is rotten. The Bride of Christ has lost her color (cf. Lam 4:1), because there are those who suck her lifeblood, which is the Blood of Christ, which was given freely and now is stolen by pride by those who deny the honor due to God and give it to themselves.”

Catherine often returns to this topic of self-love that creates cowardice of spirit and causes one to hold his tongue when he should speak out. In a letter to the Abbot of Marmoutier, who had written asking her thoughts about the situation, she replies that one of the causes of the poor state of the Church is excessive indulgence. Priests become corrupt because their superiors do not punish those who are entrenched in their three great vices: impurity, greed and pride, and who think only of pleasures, honors and riches.

Nor do Prelates correct their faithful because, as our Saint says: “they fear losing their prelatures and displeasing their subjects.” They do not want to displease others, they seek to live in peace and have good relations with everyone, although the honor of God demands that they fight.

“Such individuals, seeing their subjects sin, pretend not to see in order to avoid having to punish them. Or, if they do punish them, they do so with such mildness that they merely rub salve on the vice, because of their constant fear of displeasing others or causing quarrels. This arises from their own self-love.”

Catherine repeatedly insists on the incompatibility between charity and this cowardly and fearful egoism. Christ did not come to bring us a timid pacifism, under which evil thrives more than under good, she warns. He has come with the sword and fire.

“To want to live in peace,” says Catherine, “is frequently the greatest of cruelties. When the abscess is ready, it must be cut off with the red hot iron and cauterized by fire: if the salve is applied before the wound is cleansed, the corruption spreads and sometimes causes death.”

These words are taken from one of her letters to Pope Gregory XI.


To the Pope: 'Be a man'

God Himself, referring to the shepherds of His Church, confirmed this idea in the Dialogue: “They will stop correcting ones in high positions even if they have great defects rather than lesser ones for fear of compromising their own position or their lives. They will, however, rebuke the lesser ones because they see that they can do them no harm or take away their comforts.” That is, they will be strong with the weak and weak with the strong.

“All they will do is to crush those who wish to follow them under the stones of great obedience, punishing them for faults they have not committed. They do this because in them shines not the precious stone of justice, but rather that of injustice. That is why they act unjustly, hating and meting out penance to those who merit grace, benevolence, holy love, goodness and consideration, and granting positions to those who, like themselves are members of the Devil.”

St. Catherine to Pope Gregory XI: ‘Be a man!’

As is logical, since it is the Pope who has responsibility for the universal Church, she addresses her most stinging letters to him. If we continue on like this, Holy Father, she writes in one of them, the sick man, who does not see his illness because no one warns him, and the doctor, who does not dare to resort to iron and fire, will both suffer the same fate: "If the blind leads the blind, both fall into the abyss; doctor and patient hurry to hell together."

“O my Babbo, sweet Christ on earth, follow the example of your namesake St. Gregory. You can do what he did, for he was a man like you and God is now and always what He was then; only virtue and zeal for the salvation of souls are lacking to us... I wish to see you like this. If until now you have not acted resolutely, I earnestly ask you to act in the future as a courageous man and follower of Christ, whose Vicar you are.”

Catherine's words took on singular energy. “Courage, my Father,” she said to the Pope. “Be a man. I tell you that you have nothing to fear... Do not be a timid child. Be a man and take as sweet what is bitter... Act manly, for God is on your side. Do this without fear; and even if you must face hardships and tribulations, do not be afraid. Be comforted by Christ, our sweet Jesus. For amidst the thorns the rose blossoms, and amidst many persecutions the reform of the Church springs forth.”

The term “virility” appears often in these letters. “Now we need a fearless physician who will use the iron of holy and righteous justice, for the salve has already been used so excessively that the members are almost all rotten.”

Again she insists: “I tell you, o sweet Christ on earth: if you act in this way, with astuteness and anger, all will repent of their wrongdoings and will come to rest their heads on your bosom... O sweet Babbo!” she concludes: “Go quickly to your Bride who awaits you all pale, so that you may restore her color.”


She engages collaborators in her mission of reform

Catherine was not content to appeal by herself to Gregory XI. She also tried to enlist the help of others to influence him. She wrote to a Nuncio:

“You must work hard together with the Holy Father and do what you can to extirpate the wolves and the incarnate demons from the shepherds...

“I beg you, even if it causes your death, you must tell the Holy Father to remedy so many iniquities. And when the time comes to make new shepherds and cardinals, let this not be done by flattery or money and simony. Beseech him, as much as you can, to seek out and find men with virtue, goodness and a holy reputation.”

St. Catherine told Urban VI the Holy Church must be reformed with ‘good, honest and holy pastors’

She recommended something similar to an Abbot who was a confidante of the Pope:

“You must do everything you can with the Holy Father to drive out the bad shepherds who are wolves and incarnate demons, and who only think about getting fat and possessing sumptuous palaces and brilliant retinues... And when the time comes to appoint Cardinals or other pastors of the Church, beg him not to be guided by flattery, greed or simony or to take into consideration whether they belong to the nobility or the middle class, because virtue and good reputation are what ennoble a man before God.”

In 1378 Urban VI acceded to the papal throne. Catherine immediately wrote to him saying that she was “anxious to see the Holy Church reformed with good, honest and holy pastors.”

She asked God for this directly, as can be seen in the Dialogue: “That Blood is what your hungry servants beg of You at this door, begging You through it to have mercy on the world, and to cause your Holy Church to bloom with the fragrant flowers of good and holy pastors, who by their sweet odor shall extinguish the stench of the evil and rotten flowers.”

And also: “If the Church is reformed in this way with good shepherds, the subjects will necessarily be corrected, because bad shepherds are to blame for almost all the evils that the subjects commit.”

She clearly saw that reform was only possible with new Bishops imbued with a supernatural spirit, lucidity and courage. From this handful of new Bishops, even if it were small, the true restoration of the Church would begin.



Works Consulted

* Santa Catalina de Siena, El Diálogo, BAC, Madrid 1955.
* Cartas Políticas, Losada, Buenos Aires 1993.
* Johannes Jörgensen, Santa Catalina de Siena, Acción, Buenos Aires 1993.
* M. V. Bernadot O.P., Santa Catalina de Siena al servicio de la Iglesia, Studium, Madrid 1958.
* Jean Rupp, Docteurs pour nos temps: Catherine et Thérèse,Ed. P. Lethielleux, Paris 1971.
* Jacques Leclercq, Santa Catalina de Siena, Patmos, Madrid 1955.