Thanks!
Consecrated Paths is definitely incredibly wordy, but at the same time it's interacting with the game in weird ways so it needs to have more text to explain things.
As for the limited actions, it's because your main actions all have recruitment tied together with the actual action taken, and placing paths in the right locations (like WA sympathy) can net you a lot of free troops, but it's probably a fair bit more fragile since path tokens can be hit in both clearings.
The 8 cards is deliberate to provide super high deck churning when combined with having to spend cards to take actions, so Charity is there to give other players some interaction with the mechanic rather than just watch a ton of cards get thrown away for no reason.
It could beak the flow if other players get AP, but maybe adding a "If a player can't choose, then the Believers choose which card to give them" to the Law could help.