About St. Bonaventure's Quote

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Futaba

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What did St. Bonaventure meant by saying, “One damned soul, if he came into the world, would suffice to infect the entire of it.”? We all know that the wicked are roaming the earth yet there are still many saints.
 
The term toxic people is a modern one but it serves to describe how only a small amount of yeast can work through the whole dough
 
It’s one of those things where everyone quotes the quote— “As Bonaventure, says—!”, but no one looks at the original context of the idea. 🙂

If I had to make a random guess, I’d say it probably has some sort of relation to the thought—
Consequently, just as one trespass resulted in condemnation for all people, so also one righteous act resulted in justification and life for all people.
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Flipping through some of the translations of Bonaventure online, I’m not coming up with the original context. And I bet that pretty much none of the people waving the quote around have bothered looking at the original context, either. But if you can find the paragraph where he said it, you’d be halfway to answering your own question. 😀
 
Does this mean, if one person is a obstinate sinner, then they can poison a parish or even a diocese by entering it, spending time with the people and attending mass? I remember hearing a quote from another Saint (I think the one of Lisieux but I could be wrong) saying how she would smell the stench of some souls, could such their nternal state spread their stench?
 
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The Cure d’Ars had that ability.
St. John Vianney, like Sts. Catherine of Siena, “Don” John Bosco and “Padre” Pio of Pietrelcina, had the gift of reading souls (I’m never sure of the technical name for it). There is an account of a famous actress of his time who had heard of his reputation as a Confessor, and she made a pilgrimage to see him. She got off the carriage and began to approach him. The saint repelled.

“Madame,” he begged. “Please keep away from me. The stench of your soul is so foul I fear I may vomit.”
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Thank you for your quote, it’s kinda sobering to hear but considering who they are, they may have been trying to say something that needed to be said.
 
Expanding upon that, does this mean you think sinners can cause a parish, a church or even a diocese to die by entering it, spending time with the people and going to mass to it. Or am I underestimating the power of good people and well, a certain higher power.
 
First of all, I never think like that, that’s why I stated that there are still saints. Second, sinner is not the same with damned soul. Damned soul, in that context, is the one who already in hell while sinner is like me, still living and still need to repent.
 
Right, which is why context would be important.

Did the quote have a footnote attached to it, showing that the author harvested the phrase from its original habitat?

Because I’ve come across five or six books that have happily plagiarized that phrase from each other— but none of them have gone to the primary source. And I’m not able to find it myself.
 
I have heard - that one bad apple - can effect all the other apples - in the container.
Maybe, it’s something like that.
Hitler - was one person -

Many people say that they’d rather read a biography about a pirate - than a saint.
 
One damned soul cannot refer to evil people being alive on earth because nobody here is still damned before death and before Jesus’s Judgement (that happens after death). So one damn soul can be one of the souls who are already damned (and we know of) and the only ones we know for sure are damned are the devil and the fallen angels, the demons.
 
midori said:
There is an account of a famous actress of his time who had heard of his reputation as a Confessor, and she made a pilgrimage to see him. She got off the carriage and began to approach him. The saint repelled.
“Madame,” he begged. “Please keep away from me. The stench of your soul is so foul I fear I may vomit.”
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Just out of curiosity, did he ever hear the actress’s confession?
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I don’t know.

But I do know that Padre Pio threw some people out of the confessional when they were so ingrained in certain habitual sins that they had no intention of ceasing. I want to say there was this one woman he threw out four or five times, before she decided to change her ways to avoid the embarrassment of being thrown out yet again.

So if the Cure d’Ars was similar, he might have used the opportunity for this kind of frankness to alert her to whatever her chronic sins were-- she was probably someone’s mistress-- and allow her to divorce herself from that lifestyle, as an active token of her determination to “go and sin no more”, before he received a true confession, rather than someone visiting him for a novelty confession.
 
Futaba said:
First of all, I never think like that, that’s why I stated that there are still saints. Second, sinner is not the same with damned soul. Damned soul, in that context, is the one who already in hell while sinner is like me, still living and still need to repent.
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These sinners, if they’re not ready, do you think that by simply attending a Church or Parish, they can poison a parish?
 
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