Priest..... nailed it.
"On the day of my first vows in 1962, the preacher glared at us earnest and innocent novices and quoted the line, "Thou shalt be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect!" (Matthew 5:48). Most of the honest guys left within the first few years of seminary when they could not achieve this supposed perfection. That's sad because I think a lot of them would have been really good friars and priests, precisely because they wereso human, humble, and honest.
Many people give up on the spiritual life or religion when they see they cannot be perfect. They end up practical agnostics or atheists, because they refuse to be hypocrites. This is classic all-or-nothing thinking, characteristic of addicts. Many formal believers keep up the forms and the words, going to church and pretending to believe; but there is no longer the inner desire, love, joy, or expectation that is usually visible in people on the path of union.
Richard Rohr
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