(Continuing our refection on the spiritual child and the spiritual adult) The spiritual child is stuck in its development by choice. Its focus is self rather than other. It is like the spoiled, self-willed child. Like the natural child or infant, the spiritual child gets upset over the smallest thing. Feelings are easily hurt. Wrongs done to it are remembered and not forgiven.

A spiritual child is like a time bomb, always ready to explode. Anything can trigger it. One may have just come from Mass. But if something upsets the person, he becomes very angry and verbally abusive. The spiritual child  is a Sunday Catholic but a weekday pagan.

Pope Francis likens the spiritual child to a lukewarm Catholic. "A lukewarm heart becomes self-absorbed in lazy living and it stifles the fire of love. The lukewarm person lives to satisfy his or her own convenience, which is never enough, and in that way is never satisfied; gradually such a Christian ends up being content with a mediocre life. The lukewarm person allocates to God and others a 'percentage' of their time and their own heart, never spending too much, but rather always trying to economize."