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This post is very interesing. Hobbledehoy, if I ask, where did you get this passage? Or is this just your own opinion?

Welcome to CathInfo curiouscatholic23!

As I have written, those were general remarks and personal observations, based on the cases which I have encountered: so yeah, it's just my own opinion, which is all I can offer.

As I counseled Canuk so I counsel you now: seek the direction of a holy and learned Priest whom you trust, and ask his counsel in all humility and sincerity. He alone would be able to direct you efficiently and efficaciously, being endowed with the graces of state peculiar to Holy Orders alone. I am just some random layman who posts on this Forum.

Sometimes after I committed these sins in the past the first thing I thought of after I felt sorry for my sins were "the only way I can make up for this and save my soul and avoid hell is by dedicating my life to the cahtolic religion and becoming a priest." Now I am starting to wonder if this was spiritual pride obstructing true repentance and humility.

Now this is just my observation based on what you have written, and it is general because I do not know your particular predicament:

It comes to pass that certain interior souls who struggle against vices feel sometimes compelled to enter the Priesthood in order to lead a life of penance and prayer that will repair the damage done by their sins and rehabilitate them from such damage. This I believe is a delusion, because a Priest is supposed to not only live a life of prayer and penance, but guide the layfolk in the capacity and competence of teacher at the pulpit, judge in the Confessional, counselor in spiritual direction, an alter Christus at the Altar and in administering the Sacraments necessary for salvation and perfection. The incompatibility between the grave duties of the Priesthood with the lifetime effort of fighting violent temptations originating from long-acquired vices is something you yourself admit:

I am wondering if I dug myself so much in a whole that even if I am in a state of grace, the fight for me just to be chaste to receive communion will weigh down the responsibilities of being responsible for other souls....no matter how much prayer and rosaries I do.

Only a holy and learned Priest will be able to tell you if you have a particular call for the life of prayer and penance that would enable you to repair for sin and reach high degrees of Christian perfection in a particular way (for, generally, every Catholic is called to the life of prayer, penance, reparation and the attainment of Christian perfection, and this is essentially the epitome of the message of Our Lady of the Rosary at Fatima).

If this life of prayer and penance entails the Sacred Priesthood, your progress in efficiently rooting out vice and advancing in detachment from self and things could be a sing that such a vocation is indeed of divine origin. For a man becomes a Priest first for the greater glory of God, and then for the salvation of souls: there is nothing of self in this equation, except insofar as pertains the mortification and self-abnegation necessary to destroy self and with devout enthusiasm embrace and espouse the Holy Cross, for the Priesthood, most especially in our day, is nothing less than a prolonged Via Crucis, a participation in the immolation of the Divine Victim upon Mount Calvary, anything less will bring forth the sort of mediocrity that will forthwith lead you to a tepidity and complacency [if not to outright scandal] that has been the cause of this whole present-day mess with the Church.

If you feel you have a particular call for a life of penance and prayer with entire dedication, and have yet to reach the point of victory over vice, then perhaps the Religious life may be an option, or a variant thereof [such as becoming a Tertiary, Oblate, Confraternity member of some sort, or leading the life of "urban hermits" as they are called].

Only a holy and learned Priest whom you trust can say anything definitive regarding your situation. Again, I'm just some random guy who's read a lot and has met many kinds of people.

I keep re-reading the post and it describes me accurately. The more sins I committ, either venial or mortal, the more I feel that I have to become a priest in order to make up for these sins. Is this unusual?

It is not as unusual as most people may think, and this hardly a new phenomenon. I believe many of the Priests and Bishops that have wrought great ruin against the Church in the past (and those who still do) at one point succuмbed to such a delusion or a variant thereof.

If there is no substantial progress in the interior life and in the attainment to Christian perfection, there can be no vocation to the Priesthood that is of divine origin. As I have written, it is my opinion that such a proclivity is a delusion arising from spiritual blindness and pride, or a delusion that is of demonic origin.

Another thing I struggle with is custody of the eyes. Is it always a mortal sin to stare at a woman? Like lets say a girl in a really short mini skirt walks by and I notice her legs. At what point does that stare become a mortal sin?

From what I have read, that stare becomes a mortal sin when all of the following happen: 1) you become conscious of the fact that you actually looking at such a thing; 2) feel an involuntary delectation at such a sight (the initial rush of adrenaline through your veins that quickens the heart beats and begins to vex your mind); and 3) you consent with full deliberation to the involuntary delectation and make a positive effort to cultivate it into a greater or more prolonged delight.

A knee-jerk reaction of staring automatically as an indecently-dressed dame walks by is not a sin at all if you do not consent to it, and you try all your best to distract yourself from it (by prayer especially, or thinking about something else, like algebra or economics or death or clowns), even if you feel that initial rush of adrenaline. It is the consent of the will that determines the culpability of an act.

I'm finding this sin, custody of the eyes, my main barrier to receiving communion. Before it used to be fornication, but now it is this. I am wondering if maybe I am being too hard on myself considering that in most major cities young women knowingly and unknowingly dress like whores these days?

If you have reached a point whereat you were formerly given over to fornication and now are struggling chiefly with custody of the eyes, this is very good progress. It is natural for you to begin to be "hard on yourself" because you are undergoing a process of rehabilitation whereby by grace and the exercise of temperance and modesty you are undoing the desensitization to sin and impurity that modern day "culture" has propagated amongst the people.

However, scruples (although initially salutary for the penitent who seeks to repair grave damage) can lead to discouragement and dissipation, and ultimately to give up on the struggle and give oneself over with wild abandon to vice. Remember that prudence is the "Moderatress" of the moral virtues, and you have to know what exactly constitutes sin and what does not.

Yes, if you live in a city populated by indecent women, and you are constrained by exigencies of circuмstance to face this situation on a daily basis, then your culpability would be lessened somewhat. But beware, my friend: for many have been destroyed by cultivating a lax conscience and being once more desensitized to sin and impurity in an even worse and more perilous way than hitherto, for now it would be spiritual blindness and presumption that could lull you into tepidity and make you blind as to the actual state of your soul.

So yes, culpability is somewhat diminished in the particular case you cite, but there is absolutely no excuse: now that you are earnest in overcoming vice since you know the evil and hatefulness thereof, those situational factors that would lessen culpability in others would be so many reminders for you to have recourse to the means of grace (vocal and mental prayer, the Sacraments, devotion to Our Lady, etc.) or else run the risk of incurring greater culpability for having neglected the means of grace of which your coevals may not be aware (or, perhaps, will never be aware). Remember that God never allows you to be tempted beyond your strength, for, as St. Augustine taught, you are either given the strength to overcome temptation by grace or are called to pray for such strength and grace.

Remember also to pray the Holy Rosary most especially for these intentions: 1) the grace to know with a full knowledge, to feel profoundly, to deplore and to detest your sins; 2) the grace to feel and realize the disorder of your life, to hold it in horror, to reduce it to rule, and amend it, and to correct yourself; and 3) the grace to know and detest the world, to put away from your soul, and keep out of it, all worldly and vain thoughts, and to renounce for ever the world and all its vanities - all this that you may be able to love God all the more generously and profoundly, with all the strength and energy of your being. This is the ultimate renovation of the sacred Baptismal vows that enabled you to become a member of the Mystical Body of Christ.