Query:

I am deeply distressed about what I consider a leadership crisis in the Church.  My immediate problem, though, is that I constantly struggle to know whether my feelings of frustration and indignation stem from God, guiding me to keep the Faith, or from the Enemy, using my pride to sow doubt in my heart.

Reply:

Maybe both!  Everything bad comes from the distortion of something good; there is no other way to get anything bad.  Theologically, we can express this fact by saying that everything God created was good.  Philosophically, we can express it by saying that goodness and being are coextensive, so there is no such thing as an evil “substance” or fundamental reality.  For example, disease is the disordering of what would otherwise be health, but it would be absurd to say that health is the disordering of what would otherwise be disease.

The same principle applies to your frustration.  There really is something wrong in some sections of the leadership of the Church, and we ought to feel dismay about it.  These are good responses, because they are in accord with how things really are, and we should hold onto them.  But the Enemy can use our disappointment to fan pride and sow doubt.  These are bad responses, and we should resist them.  Christ did not promise that the smoke of Satan could never through any fissure enter the temple of God.  What he promised was that the gates of hell would not prevail against her.  Although the present trouble has novel elements, she has won through greater storms in the past.  Yes, really.

What can you do?  Pray without ceasing.  Rejoice in Providence.  Life the faith and teach your children diligently.  Avoid scandal and schism, but practice supernatural hope and bear witness to what the Church really teaches.  If the trouble comes to you personally, trust God not less, but even more.