Our Primary Weapon against Evil is always prayer

St. Paul warned the Catholics of his day about evil. "Because your fight has not been with flesh and blood,  but with Principalities and The Rulers and The Powers of this dark world and with wicked spirits... (Ephesians, 6:12).  

The primary weapon is prayer. As we hear about, and will hear more about the scandals that are rocking the Church, there will be the temptation to try to deal with the evil in only a human way. This will fail. The devil, always working, thinking and calculating, will always have a more than adequate method of using mere human means and ways to his advantage and objectives: dragging souls into hell. Does he not rejoice, for example, over Catholics who have fallen into schism over these scandals? 

The temptations will grow stronger as the scandals grow bigger and more horrifying. Perhaps for every minute we spend researching, studying these scandals, we might set aside ten minutes of prayer? If we do not have the time for prayer, we certainly do not have the time to research these scandals. 

Does this mean that we are to turn a blind eye? No, it means that we are firstly to work out our own salvation, to try to live a holy life, so that we might be examples to those in our lives. This will do more than "denouncing" evil prelates. In fact, this was also the temptation and error of Americanism, denounced by Pope Leo XIII. In opposing the sexual degeneracy of infiltrator prelates and clergy, the Devil re-packages old heresies to lead souls astray!

Does this mean that we cease to call out this evil? God forbid! It means that our primary weapon is that of prayer and righteous living. If we do not believe that prayer is the greatest weapon, then we are already in a halfway house between the Church and paganism. We are already on the way to apostasy; on the way to being unable to save our souls , nor help those near to us.  

One wonders when the crisis truly hits - as it will get worse - how many will be left in the Church? Remember, the devil wishes to drive you and me out of the Church. And yes, we can leave the Church roaring and denouncing evil churchmen as we go! Let us be very careful, as these are very dangerous times. 

Dom Chautard wrote: 

"Those who pray,” said the eminent statesman Donoso Cortes, after his conversion, "do more for the world than those who fight, and if the world is going from bad to worse, it is because there are more battles than prayers.”
"Hands uplifted,” said Bossuet, "rout more battalions than hands that strike.” 

And in the midst of their desert, the solitaries of the Thebaid often had burning in their hearts the fire that animated St. Francis Xavier. "They seemed to some,” said St. Augustine, "to have abandoned the world more than they should have.” But, he adds, people forget that their prayers, purified by this complete separation from the world, were all the more powerful and more NECESSARY for a depraved society. 

A short but fervent prayer will usually do more to bring about a conversion than long discussions of fine speeches. He who prays is in touch with the FIRST cause. He acts directly upon it. And by that very fact he has his hand upon all the secondary causes, since they only receive their efficacy from this superior principle.