The unfreedom entailed by such an attitude is obvious. Persons of this type very often fall short of their chosen aim because they shun the tensions and efforts implied in its realization. They complacently submit to their natural aversions and inhibitions. They unreservedly surrender to whatever element or theme in a given situation happens to appeal to their nature. Any occasion for prattle is likely to seduce them into neglecting their duties. They waste the time assigned for work by dozing or daydreaming.

Without regard for the hierarchy of values, they obey the tendency of their nature to prefer always the easy way, to choose in any alternative what is more comfortable, less arduous, requiring less effort and involving less asperity.

Their unfreedom consists in the fact that, instead of a true response to value engaging their personality, they follow the pull of their nature and without resistance yield to its tendency towards the peripheral and the irrelevant and whatever is devoid of tension.

This glib submission to their natural tendencies many of them mistake for freedom, seeing that they always do what they like, without feeling constrained by any shackles. Others, again, rightly experience their inability to convert their resolutions into acts as a painful lack of freedom; their laxity appears to them a disgraceful sign of their decadence. Yet, they continue drifting along, without ever taking any measures to stop the rot. On the contrary, the consciousness of their profligacy renders them the more passive; they apply less and less effort to halt their downward drift. “Now,” they would say to themselves, “it is too late anyway.” The disorder that engulfs them grows from day to day; they are buried under a thicket of unfulfilled duties, self reproaches, and aching fears concerning the initial effort towards order they feel to be necessary but dreadful.

We must uproot self-indulgence of every sort

This state of unfreedom is the utmost antithesis to the state of self-possession, of habitare secum. A Christian who has lapsed into this paralyzing form of self-indulgence must wage a relentless war against it. He must find out his particular inhibitions, and fight them by a systematic ascetical practice.

Whatever the dispositions of his nature, the law of his life must be taken not from his nature but from Christ. Above all, he must dishabituate himself from self-indulgence in general. He must take care never on any occasion to throw off the holy restraints imposed upon him by his awareness of the metaphysical situation of man and his membership in the Mystical Body of Christ.