Rehab for St Aloysius
The June issue of Reality magazine has an article seeking to ‘rehabilitate’ St. Aloysius Gonzaga SJ. The author, Thomas J. Craughwell, argues that the real value of the saint’s heritage lies in his very human struggle with holiness and religious life, not in his overly sentimentalised image of piety and self-mortification. It is because of this misrepresentation, Craughwell argues, that devotion to Gonzaga has virtually died out. The author looks for inspiration in his biography: “Saintliness did not come easily to Aloysius, and in that respect he was very much as we are now- striving to be good, hoping someday to be holy, and worried that we aren’t making much progress.”