Of Murmuring and Detraction
Source: Berthaumier 1863
The vice of detraction, my brothers, is opposed to the very principle of piety and grace; it is abominable to our most pious Lord, because the detractor feeds upon the blood of the souls he kills with the sword of his tongue. The impiety of detractors is all the greater than that of thieves, because the law of Jesus Christ, whose fulfillment consists in observing charity, binds us more strictly to desire the salvation of the soul than that of the body.
Moreover, what else does the religious who murmurs against his brothers or his superiors do, if not to drench with the gall of his reproaches and betrayals his own mother, Religion? Detractors are of the race of Ham, who, instead of concealing, uncovered in his father what should have been withdrawn from the eyes of men. They lay bare and exaggerate the faults of their superiors and of their Order; for this reason they will incur the curse of God. Like swine, they delight in mud and filth, in the faults they eagerly seek to uncover in their brothers, and which perhaps they even falsely claim to have found or seen; they glut themselves on these and feed upon them in the manner of unclean animals, more unclean than these animals themselves in their conscience. Like dogs seized with rabies, they complain of regular discipline, of the corrections imposed in religious life, of the Order itself and of its superiors; they bark at them and bite them as much as lies in their power.
Such indeed is the language of detractors: “My life is not perfect; I have neither knowledge nor special talent; and thus I can find favor neither with God nor with men. I know then what I shall do: I will imprint a stain upon the foreheads of the elect, and thus I shall try to draw upon myself the good graces of those who are beneath me. Besides, my superior is a man; he sometimes acts in the same way as I do; he cuts down the cedar so that only the branch may appear upon the path.” Come then, wretch, take courage; feed yourself on human bodies, and since you cannot live otherwise, gnaw at the entrails of your brothers.
Such men apply themselves to appearing good rather than to becoming so; they rise up against vice, yet they do not rid themselves of it; they praise only those upon whose authority they wish to lean, and they abstain from all praise when they imagine that the one who would be its object ought not to be informed of it. They sell, at the price of pernicious praise, the pallor of a fasting face; they wish to be regarded as men devoted to the spiritual life, so that they may pass judgment on everything and be judged by no one. They delight in reputation and not in the works of holiness, in the name and not in the virtue of the Angel.