"Two Traps for the Pious"

I found this post at Robert Gotcher's Classic Catholic (with a number of thoughts from a book by Fr. Groeschel) both interesting and enlightening.

Unfortunately piety has a bad name, primarily because there are a lot of people in the world who try to conform their lives to the manifest will of God in a way that simply kills charity in their souls. We've come to call them pharisees and we are fools if we presume the proper pronoun is "them" rather than "us."

I also thought it was fascinating that Fr. Groeschel recommends great literature as one of the potential antidotes to a lack of charity (I think because it both gives us an opportunity to "walk in someone else's shoes" for a time and tends to help us better understand human nature). This makes sense to me, but I had never thought about it in quite this way before.

This is almost an accidental, automatic fault. It can be overcome, as Fr. Groeschel points out, by reading good literature and opening your eyes to the plight of the poor and intentionally entering into solidarity with the poor by divesting one's self of some of the incidental benefits of a devout life.

Read the whole post here

This also reminds me that I've read and not-yet-reviewed an excellent book of Fr. Groeschel's called The Virtue-Driven Life. He covers each of the theological virtues (faith, hope and charity) and cardinal virtues (prudence, temperance, fortitude and justice) in detail of a very practical and understandable sort. I particularly appreciated his distinctions between each virtue regarded naturally and supernaturally.