Eight False Types of Piety And How to Avoid Them

 by Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira

August 13, 2024

Our spiritual life is the life of grace within us; through it we become children of God.

For our spiritual life to be preserved and to develop, a series of actions are required that constitute the life of piety.

How must that life of piety be? What deviations must be avoided?

These are problems we must understand to progress in sanctity.

Concessions to the world

In a speech to university students of Rome in June 1952, the Holy Father Pius XII made an observation that shows well the importance of the subject, and above all, the need to address it in a practical manner.

Analyzing the moral crisis that youth usually goes through, His Holiness stated: “Let us leave aside the question of how this crisis was provoked, to which intellectual difficulties and other circumstances have contributed, [reasons] that can be sought…in the wild jungle of unbridled passions and moral deviations, or perhaps in the murky field of concessions people think must be made to the demands of a coveted career.”

Indeed, how many concessions is a fervent Catholic solicited to make in our days! How to avoid compromising with the spirit of the world, except through solid piety? Therefore, what must the characteristics of true piety be?

Before we describe true piety, we will analyze some types of false piety very common in the modern world and will show the moral deviations to which they lead.

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