Father Tigar SJ on 'lapsed' Catholics

This week's extract from Papist Pie...

"If the Catholic Church makes a person truly happy, how do you account for lapsed Catholics?"

Falling away from the practice of religion is due to free-will. Free-will means that the will is free to choose a lower good in preference to a higher one. A man can choose the lower pleasure of getting drunk in preference to the happiness of being sober; he can choose the immediate pleasure of being lazy and neglecting his job, in preference to the sustained pleasure of keeping his job, by working conscientiously.
The Catholic faith does make a man truly happy, because it satisfies his intellect and his higher will, but it demands the sacrifice of his lower appetites, eg., the happiness of assisting at Mass on Sunday demands the sacrifice of the desire to stay in bed. Lapsed Catholics begin by indulging their lower appetites, and doing violence to their higher aspirations.
No one has been known to give up the Catholic faith for a high, or noble or self-sacrificing motive.
The usual motive is a slackness of will, which refuses to face up to the sacrifices involved in the practice of the Catholic faith. Sometimes it is because a Catholic wants to marry someone else's wife or husband. He chooses the lower kind of happiness that comes from the love of a woman in preference to the higher kind of happiness that comes from the love of God.

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