Family Divisions and Cheap Grace

In my twenties, I read these words of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and took them to heart. The Cost of Discipleship was one of my favorite books in the early 1970s. For over ten years, I carried Letters and Papers from Prison with me when I moved as the book reminded me of my call as a Catholic in the world.

Cheap grace is the grace we bestow on ourselves. Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, Communion without confession...Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate.

...costly grace confronts us as a gracious call to follow Jesus, it comes as a word of forgiveness to the broken spirit and the contrite heart. It is costly because it compels a man to submit to the yoke of Christ and follow him; it is grace because Jesus says: "My yoke is easy and my burden is light." 

We are living in times of decision. We are not the first generations to do so. The lives of the saints bear witness to times of decision.

Already, I know many families who are being divided by this new ruling on ssm.

One can only stand firm and stay with the Church and Christ on this issue, despite pain.

Christ warned up of these times:

Religious belief has not been costly for some until now. In a secular society, one has to make choices. In a pagan society, it may actually be easier to stand up for the truth, as the truth shines more brightly.

We shall be forced to decide between cheap and costly grace.

Matthew 10:32-42Douay-Rheims 

32 Every one therefore that shall confess me before men, I will also confess him before my Father who is in heaven.

33 But he that shall deny me before men, I will also deny him before my Father who is in heaven.

34 Do not think that I came to send peace upon earth: I came not to send peace, but the sword.

35 For I came to set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother, and the daughter in law against her mother in law.

36 And a man's enemies shall be they of his own household.

37 He that loveth father or mother more than me, is not worthy of me; and he that loveth son or daughter more than me, is not worthy of me.

38 And he that taketh not up his cross, and followeth me, is not worthy of me.

39 He that findeth his life, shall lose it: and he that shall lose his life for me, shall find it.

40 He that receiveth you, receiveth me: and he that receiveth me, receiveth him that sent me.

41 He that receiveth a prophet in the name of a prophet, shall receive the reward of a prophet: and he that receiveth a just man in the name of a just man, shall receive the reward of a just man.

42 And whosoever shall give to drink to one of these little ones a cup of cold water only in the name of a disciple, amen I say to you, he shall not lose his reward.

Excellent Post on Gradualism

http://guildofblessedtitus.blogspot.com/2015/06/gradualism-instrumentum-laboris-and.html

better than my posts earlier this year and last year...although I covered the points on grace.

And previous post leading up to this one...from same author:

Wednesday, 1 April 2015

What's at Stake at the Synod? Everything!

By PAUL PRIEST.

We are not equal - God isn't a democrat - in just the same way as there is a hierarchy of ranks among the 

angels there is a hierarchy of human souls and their perfectibility - it's known as Predilection. God loves us 

all infinitely and calls us to fulfill our created perfectibility - but some are created to be more - to do more

 [remember the parable of the sower? 30, 60, a hundredfold?]

God loves them more because they are created to be more lovable because they have a vocation to be more

... I know it doesn't sound fair but He's God: We're not - we have our place in His divine plan as either tiny cogs or

 hard-working pistons or massive power-wheels - whatever that position we were made for it - and can achieve 

perfection within it and be fulfilled with absolute joy and happiness in being everything we were called to be. 

God made us so we ultimately wouldn't ever wish to be anything but ourselves in our perfection in our part of 

His Divine plan [this is why envy - wanting to be another - is the greatest sin against oneself]

Finally on this point it must be noted that in regard to Predilection how we repent from and amend for our sins 

will also be variant - for some it will be easy and lengthy - for others it will be more grueling and intermittent.

Now, secondly we have to understand what the Holy Spirit is about - for most of us the Holy Spirit keeps us in 

existence, He inspires our intellects with truth, beauty and the notion of the good - which motivates our will to 

carry out this inspiration freely towards the good - this is what Love is. The Holy Spirit provides us with Sufficient 

Grace to never sin - He provides our intellects and consciences to be aware of the Good, the True and Beautiful - 

and we can conform to this and be truly free. Remember the only thing we are ever free to do is to do good - 

sin is always a denial of our freedom and actually traps us and makes us less free.

Alternatively, we can hoodwink ourselves into thinking happiness may be achieved through another route - 

a short-cut - an easy way - and hence we lie to ourselves and our God and our created reality and the rest of 

creation and we commit sin - and in the process we as temples of the Holy Spirit in whom we live, move and 

have our being - abuse and defy the Lord, the Giver of Life with our lies and sin. These are the only two things 

we can say we possess - every other thing comes from God, is worked by God and returns to God - every other 

thing is Grace of which we are unworthy but in which we we happy receivers can and should boast.

Normatively, the Holy Spirit works through Sufficient Grace, but there are times where through an extraordinary 

act of predelictive Love, the Holy Spirit acts upon us with what's known as efficient Grace - unstoppable, 

unpreventable grace which compels us towards an act.

There's an old Fulton Sheen story of a wayward alcoholic actress who accepts his invite to see the Church on the 

proviso he would not ask her to go to Confession - he kept the promise in his own way for as they were touring 

the 

Church he opened the confessional door and threw her inside.

Divine Providence decrees that God does this to some of us in extraordinary circumstances. God does not work 

against our wills - but instead He takes over with Efficient grace to ensure something happens. Think the Conversion 

of St Paul and other profound conversion stories. Think Miracles. Think the imposition of the knowledge of God 

upon the Prophets or all who lived and believed during the Incarnation or the appearance of the Sacred Heart or 

Our Lady. Think of the Promises of Christ regarding Papal Infallibility and the inability of the Gates of the 

Underworld to prevail against the Church. All this is Efficient Grace - unpreventable, unthwartable - 

it has nothing to do with the arbitrary, discretionary choices within human free will. God just does it!

Sometimes God uses efficient Grace upon us to actuate His will. Otherwise, it is sufficient grace where we are at 

the helm of our wills - the Holy Spirit inspires our intellects and carries out our wills - but we choose - we decide. 

The Holy Spirit does not treat us like puppets or cosmic chess pieces - He limits himself to inspiration of the 

intellect to motivate the will - we choose whether to conform to that will or not. Hence in matters of the Church 

the Holy Spirit may inspire - but the Pope and his Brother Bishops and clerics and religious act according to their 

own either conformed or refusenik wills. The Holy Spirit does not choose a Pope - Cardinals choose a Pope. 

The Holy Spirit does not appoint 

Bishops - The Pope does. The Holy Spirit does not gerrymander or rig Synod or Oecumenical council votes - 

The Pope and Bishops vote.

Now, there is only one real argument against the existence of God - all the others fall apart when rationally 

confronted with reality but one remains - one so confrontational that it compelled Ivan Karamazov to refuse to 

participate and return his invitation to belong to God's creation: The problem of Evil and there is only one rational 

response:

"How else can evil be allowed to exist, save for a greater good?"

God permits evil - He permits sin. Yes - nothing happens but what God wills - but there is a profound difference 

between what God wished [His Antecedent will] and what God permits [through which He will actuate a greater 

good] - i.e. His Consequent Will. God's antecedent will was for none to fall, for all to share Heaven in their created 

perfection with Him for eternity - for all to be saved. God's consequent will - because angels fell, because we fell, 

because we continue to sin and because ultimately some of us will not wish eternity with Him if the price means 

dying to our selfish vices - is axiomatically very different from God's original antecedent will.

Therefore when anything happens - we are absolutely forbidden from the presumption that what God's 

consequent will has permitted remotely conforms to that which His antecedent will desired.
Just because something happens - be it some remarkably fortuitous or ostensibly miraculous event or a revolution 

or a restoration or discovery or victory over an evil aggressor in war, or alternatively the horror of war and famine 

and personal tragedies or holocausts upon Jews, Chinese, Russians, the Unborn, our euthanised sick and unwanted,

 or the ravages of Spanish flu or AIDS or ebola we cannot attribute to God's antecedent will. In fact, we are 

absolutely prohibited from ever presuming it is part of God's antecedent will [eg Divine vindication/reward or

Divine retribution]. It is merely the case that what happens is what God permits. Nor can we surmise His will from 

the ostensible benefits or the blatantly obvious ravages of what God permits. We are guaranteed that God's 

resolution of it all is assuredly a greater Good.

Now comes the big crunch question: What in the name of all sanity has any of this to do with the impending 

Synod on Marriage and the Family? It's about the proposed reception of Holy Communion for civilly divorced 

and remarried Catholics and active homosexuals, isn't it? That the ongoing mortal sin of adultery and fornication 

should not be a barrier from being one in communion with one's neighbours? By appealing to mercy and tolerance 

and the notion of integration and unity and even [ironically] appealing to the notion of solidarity that no-one is i

isolated or alienated 

or ostracised? That we all be one?

What has any of this to do with God's sufficient grace or the Holy Spirit not treating us like puppets or God's 

antecedent and consequent will? Well the answer is quite simple: It has EVERYTHING to do with it! Primarily 

you have to understand how the world has been contaminated in two ways over the past two centuries - 

and how this ideological contamination has infected the mind-frame of those within the modern Church.

The first is easily recognised and understood contamination is Evolutionism. This is not meant in the limited 

biological sense regarding certain developments within certain species, but universal development of everything - 

absolute ever-fulfilling progressivism summed up by "things can only get better" or rather the promise that 

"things only do get better"  This is a serious error. For further reading look at the writings of Teilhard de Chardin, 

Emile Mersch and Karl Rahner and a host of moderns to understand this notion of everything evolving to some i

neffable ethereal omega point where we all become so like God we collectively usurp His role in some Buddhist 

nirvana of everything and nothing.

Secondly we have to get a bit philosophical - and although I'll skip the background of the whole metaphysical

 potency/act problem in presocratics through stoical pantheism and enlightenment naturalism and pantheism - 

[which Aristotle and Aquinas perfectly refuted and dealt with], we end up with the nightmare philosophy of 

Hegel which like a virus has infected every socio-cultural and political ideology of any wing and flavour - 

be it nazism or Stalinism, capitalism or revolutionary Marxism, libertarianism or totalitarianism.

Now I suppose yet again you're asking - what has Hegel to do with the Synod? Please bear with me for a few 

more minutes before I tell you. Hegel's philosophy is grounded in two main principles:

The Dialectic - This rests upon the premise that there is no actual truth or understanding of reality, that there 

cannot be as there is division and dissension and alienation. Therefore all is merely a movement towards a more 

truthful understanding through a position of compromise and unity between the extremes and tensions of all 

aspects of reality. In this paradigm, one takes two seemingly opposing positions and seeks the underlying truth 

within both to synthesise this thesis and antithesis into a higher thesis - which in turn is still imperfect and has 

opposition through an antithesis and must again be synthesised into a higher thesis into infinity as the process 

continues.

Now how can we be certain this process works and we won't be misguided or misdirected throughout this? 

Ah, but that's impossible because there is a 'universal spirit' within reality that seeks this unfolding, flourishing, 

unifying. coalescing synthesis of the dialectic. The principle at work here is that a spirit is leading ever onward and 

upward in all spheres of reality towards a universal holism - this spirit is known as The Geist. The Geist ensures the 

validity and integrity of the ideological system itself and its ultimate destiny in perfection. This, resting not on 

objective truth but something very tenuous can easily morph into something similar to all our 'utopianisms' of 

reichs, or a communist world-state, or universal randian liberty, or the integrationist wonderland of the 

multiculturalist or the feminist or the eco-warrior? We are enslaved to the machinations and functions of the 

Geist - we are part of a system which 

is inseparable from this unstoppable force leading humanity towards its inevitable destiny.

Now are you beginning to see where I'm coming from? The development of Doctrine? It being the will of the 

Holy Spirit ? In this world view, we are mere pawns and puppets of this Divine Will - this movement of this 

religious geist - the Holy Spirit - towards this evolving ever-re-flourishing progressive end.

In such a spiral,  or vortex, we are to seek an end to division and synthesise into uniformity and unity via a 

compromise dialectic which will placate and satisfy - where tolerance and 'mercy and charity' dwell - via 

acceptance of all and the elimination of alienation and ostracism. For we are all equal in the sight of God and 

none are loved more or less - and equality indicates sameness and uniformity and homogeneity where 

dissociating divisive factors like difference or independence or non-conformity are anathematised.


The Synod's proposed 'theology of mercy', the Kasperite position, is going to be grounded upon what I call 

"three great heresies and a lie". The first two heresies are going to be promoted at every opportunity in order

 to introduce a third with which the Church has been contaminated for centuries and which has manifested itself 

in three forms of a heresy against God's sufficient grace {Neo-Pelagianism/Molinism- then Jansenism- then 

Gradualism}. Rebel Bishops sought to impose at the Synod on the Family 35 years ago, but were halted in their 

tracks by Pope St John Paul II in Familiaris Consortio.

The first heresy is quite obvious:

That everything that happens within the Church conforms to the antecedent will of God - that God wished this 

for the Church from before creation - and that all movements of the Holy Spirit are manifestations of this Church 

progression - forward ever forward - we cannot go back - all is development and what God planned.

Of course, we have absolutely no idea whether it does or not. By such time, we will have dispensed with the holy 

doctrines and the integrity of the Church's discipline, which has been guided by the Holy Spirit. In truth, we are not 

open to the innermost mysteries of the Divine plan - but it would be the gravest presumption to not believe that 

the mass exodus out of the Church - that its secularisation and desacralisation - and its loss of the apologetic, 

its cultural identity and the falling away of so many are not merely what God permits in His consequent will - 

and were never part of His antecedent. But this naive ludicrous Hegelian optimism that it's all happened 

because it's what God always wished is a heresy.

The second heresy is simple. It is the idea that we are but pawns and puppets of the Holy Spirit in our wills - 

our Bishops and clerics and bodies of our reformist laity by their very existence and every thought, word and 

deed is all subsumed into the system by which the Holy Spirit moves them all towards the desired end. Of course 

this is a heresy - the Holy Spirit inspires our intellect - and we accept or reject and act accordingly - free will - 

defy and choose to sin.

Thus these two heresies will be promoted at every opportunity to lay the groundwork for the third. This is the 

heresy that you can guarantee through the major soundbites and buzzwords from the lips of all those who seek 

to change Catholic teaching via a perversion of its pastoral implementation by simply desiring it. This will be one of 

Lebensraum:

"We must allow the Holy Spirit space to reform the Church"

The third heresy is quite confusing, which is probably why during the last Extraordinary Synod there was almost 

universal ignorance of what the heresy entailed among Catholic journalists, commentators and media 

representatives who all spoke at great length while claiming great understanding about it, but every last one of 

them got it wrong.

In Familiaris Consortio Pope St John Paul II refers to the law of gradualism - an easily recognisable phenomenon - 

our gradual progression through the consequences of our sin after our repentance and absolution we are still weak ,

 weary and scarred and that it will take us a while to gradually heal.

BUT Pope St John Paul II rejects absolutely the heresy known as the Principle of Gradualism.
 I could go into this heresy at great length and explain its intricacies and consequences and the way it destroys 

the very fabric of the notion of grace and God's love for us and the integrity of the human person, but all you 

really need to know about it is that quite simply it denies God's sufficient grace to immediately repent of all sin or 

sinfulness - and the sufficient grace to not sin again.



In other words, using this 'principle' God does not provide sinners with the grace which will prevent them from 

being able to stop sinning or to not start sinning again. The underlying great lie in it all is 'God doesn't love us 

enough to get us out of our mess" Therefore, in this heretical viewpoint, all sinners cannot be expected to stop 

sinning immediately - they must be treated with compassion and understanding to be weaned off from their 

sinfulness - go on a sin-controlled diet - enter into a sin-reduction spiritual fitness plan, like methadone as 

replacement for heroin. It cannot be expected for severe or long-term sinners to immediately stop their sins - 

it is simply 'not possible' for them.

In other words the underlying message of this heresy is that when it comes to repentance and turning away from 

sin - GOD COMMANDS THE IMPOSSIBLE. This is a diabolical lie. The lie is that God has not provided the sufficient 

grace - therefore they cannot do it.

Now you see this is where the heresy comes undone and, incidentally, many Church fathers, St Augustine & the 

Council of Trent absolutely repudiate and refute Gradualism.

The heresy is not going to be very palatable to the collective faithful when it comes to the conclusion that God 

commands the impossible from sinners. This heresy has its ultimate conclusion that:

We sin and can't stop: and it's God's fault.

Hence the Gradualists - of which Kasper and his cronies are mere successors - have to now insert a lie into the 

equation. It's irrational - yes it's mendacious - yes it is the actions of anti-intellectual scoundrels, but this is what 

the Gradualists do if a heresy gives you the principle you want but not the conclusion you desire. You simply 

change the conclusion.


In order to retain this "Principle of Gradualism" they have to twist the argument on its head. It is not that God 

commands the impossible. How could He? He's a merciful, tolerant, forgiving, ever-loving and always charitable 

and inclusive God? 

It's not God that's demanding the impossible from these poor sinners trapped in their sinful ways needing slow, 

pastoral assistance and reassurance to slowly reduce their sinfulness. It's not God who is lacking in Love and Mercy.

NO - IT'S THE CHURCH!

It is the Church which is cruel and uncharitable and merciless and intolerant with its hyper-proscriptive 

alienating legalism and Donatism - its judgmentalism upon the sinner [actually it's judging the sin but they're

 on a roll here]. It is the Church's heartless, calcified, rigorist legalism which is to blame and this is NOT WHAT 

GOD WANTS!

We are therefore not walking in God's ways. We are not living according to His Gospel and the values of His 

kingdom. We are standing in the way of His message of welcoming love which calls all sinners to Himself. 

Remember the ludicrous tag-line to the 

film "Love Story"? "Love means never having to say you're sorry". Well gradualism considers God's love means 

'we have nothing to ever say sorry about'

In other words when Our Lord said, "If you love Me you will keep My commands" He never really meant we had to 

do it! That's Donatism - that's heartless legalism. Haven't both Donatism and legalism been recently condemned 

by our Bishops Conference and Pope Francis?

Do you see what's at stake now? Have a little think about the ramifications of a single gradualist principle 

being inserted in any moral adjudication on pastoral practice and praxis within Holy Mother Church - even 

to something as seemingly remote as using it to justify the slow reception of people still in mortal sin to 

reception of the sacraments. A single gradualist principle sets a moral precedent which may subsequently be 

applied to any and every aspect of Catholic moral teaching and its pastoral applications.

In other words the entirety of moral and pastoral theology - contaminated with the lethal virus that sin is 

something with which we have to deal with, to negotiate with, compromise with, excuse and slowly wean people 

off from and lead people away from, becomes a hellish nightmare of counter-productive self-contradicting

heterodoxy, lie, fallacy and heresy-in-itself.

Catholic morality in one fell swoop would collapse and fall dead in the water - not merely ineffectual but directly 

counterproductive - but lethally destructive and toxic! Now, if you wish any further clarifications or explanations 

please ask in the combox - but I've already spent way too long writing and taken up far too much of your time.
Gradualism underfoot. For if the Gradualists were to succeed? The price would be too high for us all....

MYSTICI CORPORIS CHRISTI--Three

Sometimes, a particular encyclical seems prophetic. Humanae Vitae is of that category, as is Humanum Genus. The encyclical on the Mystical Body of Christ resonates with me this week, as we Catholics face a new awareness of the fragility of the Faith in many countries.

My comments are in blue here.

6. There is a special reason too, and one most dear to Us, which recalls this doctrine to Our mind and with it a deep sense of joy. During the year that has passed since the twenty-fifth anniversary of Our Episcopal consecration, We have had the great consolation of witnessing something that has made the image of the Mystical Body of Jesus Christ stand out most clearly before the whole world. Though a long and deadly war has pitilessly broken the bond of brotherly union between nations, We have seen Our children in Christ, in whatever part of the world they happened to be, one in will and affection, lift up their hearts to the common Father, who, carrying in his own heart the cares and anxieties of all, is guiding the barque of the Catholic Church in the teeth of a raging tempest. This is a testimony to the wonderful union existing among Christians; but it also proves that, as Our paternal love embraces all peoples, whatever their nationality and race, so Catholics the world over, though their countries may have drawn the sword against each other, look to the Vicar of Jesus Christ as to the loving Father of them all, who, with absolute impartiality and incorruptible judgment, rising above the conflicting gales of human passions, takes upon himself with all his strength the defense of truth, justice and charity.

The real experience of Christians standing against the Nazi destruction of the Jews, and the new totalitarianism which included hatred of Christ's Gospel message and which prefered a neo-paganism, made many Christians, including leaders, come together in Germany and other places, decide to be strong together. Much was at stake, like today.

7. We have been no less consoled to know that with spontaneous generosity a fund has been created for the erection of a church in Rome to be dedicated to Our saintly predecessor and patron Eugene I. As this temple, to be built by the wish and through the liberality of all the faithful, will be a lasting memorial of this happy event, so We desire to offer this Encyclical Letter in testimony of Our gratitude. It tells of those living stones which rest upon the living corner-stone, which is Christ, and are built together into a holy temple, hr surpassing any temple built by hands, into a habitation of God in the Spirit.[4]

This good Pope aided the Jews himself, and the cooperation of many brave people revealed a love of God embracing all humans in distress. The period of warfare and the time after the war witnessed great growth in the Catholic Faith, not only in numbers, but in the consolidation of study and the pursuing of truth. Sadly, communist and socialist infiltration also grew, and the corruption we see today in the curia must be seen as entrenched positions of anti-Catholicism near the heart of the Church, like a disease ready to spread. Modernism also became part of the thinking of many leaders in the Church, especially in the seminaries, which churned out liberal, even disobedient priests. As an old priest told me years ago, he and his friends joined the seminary in the 1950s to make the Church more Protestant, in order to create a Pan-Christianity which could stand up against both communism and socialism. Of course, this belief did not work.

8. But the chief reason for Our present exposition of this sublime doctrine is Our solicitude for the souls entrusted to Us. Much indeed has been written on this subject; and we know that many today are turning with greater zest to a study which delights and nourishes Christian piety. This, it would seem, is chiefly because a revived interest in the sacred liturgy, the more widely spread custom of frequent Communion, and the more fervent devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus practiced today, have brought many souls to a deeper consideration of the unsearchable riches of Christ which are preserved in the Church. Moreover recent pronouncements on Catholic Action, by drawing closer the bonds of union between Christians and between them and the ecclesiastical hierarchy and especially the Roman Pontiff, have undoubtedly helped not a little to place this truth in its proper light. Nevertheless, while We can derive legitimate joy from these considerations, We must confess that grave errors with regard to this doctrine are being spread among those outside the true Church, and that among the faithful, also, inaccurate or thoroughly false ideas are being disseminated which turn minds aside from the straight path of truth.

9. For while there still survives a false rationalism, which ridicules anything that transcends and defies the power of human genius, and which is accompanied by a cognate error, the so-called popular naturalism, which sees and wills to see in the Church nothing but a juridical and social union, there is on the other hand a false mysticism creeping in, which, in its attempt to eliminate the immovable frontier that separates creatures from their Creator, falsifies the Sacred Scriptures.

10. As a result of these conflicting and mutually antagonistic schools of thought, some through vain fear, look upon so profound a doctrine as something dangerous, and so they shrink from it as from the beautiful but forbidden fruit of paradise. But this is not so. Mysteries revealed by God cannot be harmful to men, nor should they remain as treasures hidden in a field, useless. They have been given from on high precisely to help the spiritual progress of those who study them in a spirit of piety. For, as the Vatican Council teaches, "reason illumined by faith, if it seeks earnestly, piously and wisely, does attain under God, to a certain and most helpful knowledge of mysteries, by considering their analogy with what it knows naturally, and their mutual relations, and their common relations with man's last end," although, as the same holy Synod observes, reason, even thus illumined, "is never capable of understanding those mysteries as it does those truths which form its proper object."[5]

Naturalism and false rationalism created the atmosphere for the Irish vote on Friday. False mysticism created an environment of false love and false tolerance of sin. The framework of morality disappeared in Ireland, and, indeed, in Europe and America over the past forty years.

What was set aside was exactly "reason illumined by faith" which leads to study, prayer and the understanding of the true goal of all humans, union with God in heaven forever. 

Of course, I love this following paragraph with the reference to perfection, which would include, moral perfection as well as mystical and rational assent to the Church's teaching on all subjects.

11. After pondering all this long and seriously before God We consider it part of Our pastoral duty to explain to the entire flock of Christ through this Encyclical Letter the doctrine of the Mystical Body of Christ and of the union in this Body of the faithful with the divine Redeemer; and then, from this consoling doctrine, to draw certain lessons that will make a deeper study of this mystery bear yet richer fruits of perfection and holiness. Our purpose is to throw an added ray of glory on the supreme beauty of the Church; to bring out into fuller light the exalted supernatural nobility of the faithful who in the Body of Christ are united with their Head; and finally, to exclude definitively the many errors current with regard to this matter.

To read a clear document on what the Mystical Body of Christ actually is will give us all hope.

12. When one reflects on the origin of this doctrine, there come to mind at once the words of the Apostle: "Where sin abounded, grace did more abound."[6] All know that the father of the whole human race was constituted by God in so exalted a state that he was to hand on to his posterity, together with earthly existence, the heavenly life of divine grace. But after the unhappy fall of Adam, the whole human race, infected by the hereditary stain, lost their participation in the divine nature,[7] and we were all "children of wrath."[8] But the all-merciful God "so loved the world as to give his only-begotten Son";[9] and the Word of the Eternal Father with the same divine love assumed human nature from the race of Adam—but an innocent and spotless nature—so that He, as the new Adam, might be the source whence the grace of the Holy Spirit should flow unto all the children of the first parent. Through the sin of the first man they had been excluded from adoption as children of God; through the Word incarnate, made brothers according to the flesh of the only-begotten Son of God, they receive also the power to become the sons of God.[10] As He hung upon the Cross, Christ Jesus not only appeased the justice of the Eternal Father which had been violated, but He also won for us, His brethren, an ineffable flow of graces. it was possible for Him of Himself to impart these graces to mankind directly; but He willed to do so only through a visible Church made up of men, so that through her all might cooperate with Him in dispensing the graces of Redemption. As the Word of God willed to make use of our nature, when in excruciating agony He would redeem mankind, so in the same way throughout the centuries He makes use of the Church that the work begun might endure.[11]

The pope refers almost immediately to grace, a theme on this blog. The truth of the Fall of Man and his need for redemption led to the Incarnation and the great act of mercy, Christ's Sacrifice on the Cross, which draws all people of good will to a life of freedom and justice. Grace comes through the merits of the Church, the visible Church, and we choose to cooperate or not cooperate with these graces of that Act of Mercy, Redemption. Through the Cross and through the Church, we have access to new life as brothers and sisters in Christ.

13. If we would define and describe this true Church of Jesus Christ—which is the One, Holy, Catholic, Apostolic Roman Church[12]—we shall find nothing more noble, more sublime, or more divine than the expression "the Mystical Body of Jesus Christ"—an expression which springs from and is, as it were, the fair flowering of the repeated teaching of the Sacred Scriptures and the holy Fathers.

The Church is the Mystical Body of Christ, a great mystery of love. He is the Head and we are the Body. The visible Church on earth is this body, as noted below and explained by Leo XIII. The heresy of the "invisible church" was clearly rejected over a hundred years ago.

To be a member of the Mystical Body means that we are one with Christ on earth in and through His Church.

14. That the Church is a body is frequently asserted in the Sacred Scriptures. "Christ," says the Apostle, "is the Head of the Body of the Church."[13] If the Church is a body, it must be an unbroken unity, according to those words of Paul: "Though many we are one body in Christ."[14] But it is not enough that the body of the Church should be an unbroken unity; it must also be something definite and perceptible to the senses as Our predecessor of happy memory, Leo XIII, in his Encyclical Satis Cognitum asserts: "the Church is visible because she is a body."[15] Hence they err in a matter of divine truth, who imagine the Church to be invisible, intangible, a something merely "pneumatological" as they say, by which many Christian communities, though they differ from each other in their profession of faith, are united by an invisible bond.



to be continued....

Beginning More on The Indwelling of the Trinity

St. Teresa of Avila writes clearly on the Indwelling of the Trinity. Here is a selection from The Interior Castle or The Mansions. I have many more posts on this from the past, but this week, I am re-examining this truth.

The boldface parts are my emphasis.

1. BEFORE going farther, I wish you to consider the state to which mortal sin [46]brings this magnificent and beautiful castle, this pearl of the East, this tree of life, planted beside the living waters of life [47] which symbolize God Himself. No night can be so dark, no gloom nor blackness can compare to its obscurity. Suffice it to say that the sun in the centre of the soul, which gave it such splendour and beauty, is totally eclipsed, though the spirit is as fitted to enjoy God's presence as is the crystal to reflect the sun. [48] 

 2. While the soul is in mortal sin nothing can profit it; none of its good works merit an eternal reward, since they do not proceed from God as their first principle, and by Him alone is our virtue real virtue. The soul separated from Him is no longer pleasing in His eyes, because by committing a mortal sin, instead of seeking to please God, it prefers to gratify the devil, the prince of darkness, and so comes to share his blackness. I knew a person to whom our Lord revealed the result of a mortal sin [49] and who said she thought no one who realized its effects could ever commit it, but would suffer unimaginable torments to avoid it. This vision made her very desirous for all to grasp this truth, therefore I beg you, my daughters, to pray fervently to God for sinners, who live in blindness and do deeds of darkness. 

I am repeating some of her statements in order to show that God truly desires and demands holiness from each one of us. Too many clerics talk down to the laity, as if we were not called to perfection, which we all are. Mortal sin, no longer preached in most parishes, separates us from ourselves and from God. We are no longer the person God created us to be, but something less, something sub-human.

All mortal sins throw us into sub-human conditions of the body and the soul. We deny God's Own Life within and we deny the active Presence of the Trinity in our lives. How sad to exchange such a call to be one with the Divine for......what-temporal comfort. So, do some of the synod fathers deny mortal sin, deny grace, deny that temptations may be overcome?

 3. In a state of grace the soul is like a well of limpid water, from which flow only streams of clearest crystal. Its works are pleasing both to God and man, rising from the River of Life, beside which it is rooted like a tree. Otherwise it would produce neither leaves nor fruit, for the waters of grace nourish it, keep it from withering from drought, and cause it to bring forth good fruit. But the soul by sinning withdraws from this stream of life, and growing beside a black and fetid pool, can produce nothing but disgusting and unwholesome fruit. Notice that it is not the fountain and the brilliant sun which lose their splendour and beauty, for they are placed in the very centre of the soul and cannot be deprived of their lustre. The soul is like a crystal in the sunshine over which a thick black cloth has been thrown, so that however brightly the sun may shine the crystal can never reflect it.

We have to stop pretending that there are no differences in a person in mortal sin and those in sanctifying grace. We must bring those in mortal sin back to the realization of sin and death, eternal death of the soul and eternal pain of both the body and soul.

To accommodate sin is not love. One loves only in truth and in God. With God, love becomes glorious and perfected, as noted by St. John Paul II in Familiaris Consortio.

If something, some place, some person takes us away from God, this thing, place, person cannot be where love resides.

God to The World-- "I called, and you refused." Proverbs 1:24

Garrigou-Lagrange helps us understand a basic principle that sanctifying grace is not extrinsic to us but intrinsic. It is a permanent condition of the soul, which some of the synod fathers do not understand.

When one loses sanctifying grace, which is participation in the Divine, one cannot "make grace" or "make virtue" happen. God's gift of grace remains necessary.

A key paragraph from Reality helps us see the layers of meaning presented by this genius, Garrigou-Lagrange.

Sanctifying grace, then, is a participation, not, like actual grace, virtual and transient, but formal and permanent. Still this participation is, not univocal, but analogical, because the divine nature is independent and infinite, whereas grace is essentially finite and dependent on God. Further, grace is an accident, not a substance, and the utmost knowledge it can give us of God is only intuitive, never absolutely comprehensive. Nevertheless this participation, though it is analogical, is still a participation in the deity as deity, since it is the source of the light of glory which enables us to see God as He is in Himself, the deity as deity. Now the deity as deity, though it pre-contains formally all perfections, being, life, intelligence, which it can communicate to creatures, still transcends infinitely all these perfections. [1113] The stone, by participating in being, has an analogical resemblance to God as being. The plant, participating in life, has an analogical resemblance to God as living. Our soul, participating in intelligence, has an analogical resemblance to God as intelligent. But sanctifying grace alone is a participation in the deity as deity, a participation which is naturally impossible and hence naturally unknowable. Only the obscure light of infused faith here below, and only the light of of glory there above, can let us see the deity as deity, God as He is in Himself.
We are here in a world of truth far beyond the reach of reason. Hence, first, the adversaries of the faith can never prove that sanctifying grace is impossible. But, secondly, neither can its possibility be rigorously demonstrated by reason. What, then, of the arguments we have just been proposing? They are arguments of appropriateness, profound indeed and inexhaustible, but since they move in an order beyond reason and philosophy, they can never be apodictically demonstrative. Both the intrinsic possibility of grace and its existence are affirmed with certitude, not by reason, but by faith alone. [1114].

In baptism. we are not merely adopted, but taken into God's Own Life. This participation is intrinsic to the soul, within, not without, as the Lutherans and some other Protestants believe.

I have posted these thoughts before under "grace", but I want to be more pointed in my examination of the lack of understanding of grace among some bishops and cardinals. They seem not to understand Christ, the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity. Garrigou-Lagrange clarifies this Scriptural based definition of the ability to turn against grace.

First, and again, a look at the different kinds of grace.

Efficacious grace, in contrast with sufficient grace which can remain sterile, is infallibly followed by a meritorious act. This efficacious grace, so Thomists maintain, is intrinsically efficacious because God wills it; not merely extrinsically efficacious, that is, by the consent of our will.
We shall consider first the texts of St. Thomas which express this doctrine, then the Scriptural texts on which it reposes. The main distinction here is that between God's antecedent will and God's consequent will, a distinction fully in harmony with that between potency and act.
Commenting on St. Paul, [1121] St. Thomas writes: "Christ is the propitiation for our sins, for some efficaciously, for all sufficiently, because the price, which is His blood, is sufficient for universal salvation, but, by reason of impediment, is efficacious only in the elect." God removes this impediment, but not always. There lies the mystery. God, he says again, [1122] withholds from no one his due. Again: [1123] the New Law gives of itself sufficient aid to shun sin. Then, commenting on the Ephesians, [1124] he becomes more precise: God's aid is twofold. One is the faculty of doing, the other is the act itself. God gives the faculty by infusing power and grace to make man able and apt for the act. God gives further the act by inner movement to good, working in us both to will and to do. [1125].

In other words, God is active in our participation in this grace. God makes us able to accept His grace, and leads the person in grace to a particular action, which is, therefore, good and a gift. Again, the idea that men and women do not have grace to pursue holiness is sheer heresy.


All men receive concurrence of grace which makes them able to fulfill the divine precepts, because God never commands the impossible. As regards efficacious grace, by which a man actually observes God's commands, if it is given to one, it is given by mercy, if it is refused to another, it is refused by justice. [1126] If man resists the grace which makes him able to do good, he merits deprival of that grace which gives him the actual doing of good. By His own judgment, says St. Thomas, [1127] God does not give the light of grace to those in whom he finds an obstacle.

We choose to live against God's Will for us, a life in grace.

This resistance of grace is entirely in our own wills. Because sanctifying grace is a permanent quality of life, one begins to think and act like God. One begins to rest in His Will. If one is not in sanctifying grace, without actual grace, or prevenient grace, one cannot come into this mode of being which is thinking and acting like God.

Many people in the Catholic Church are denying natural law. The reason for this is that natural law has been separated from sanctifying grace. Grace informs nature, sanctifies and makes holy what is natural to man. So, a natural virtue of prudence becomes "supernaturalized" by grace.

Natural law becomes clouded in both the will and the intellect by the lack of grace. Many of us have noted how many people are no longer baptized. Some low-church Protestant denominations do not believe in child-baptism and merely "consecrate" their babies to God.

Sorry, but consecration does not involve grace. The children grow up without the intellect, will, body, imagination, etc. being informed by infused knowledge and the theological virtues. One reason for the fast decaying of our Christian cultures must be this willing ignorance of grace as directly coming from baptism. One reason for the devolution of human intelligence, and teachers who are honest have noticed this, is that children are not allowed the grace which informs the intellect. Without grace, natural law can be set aside by those who choose not to be fully human. To be fully human, because we are made in the image and likeness of God, demands a participation in grace. 

Garrigou-Lagrange writes something startling. Even the demons have acquired faith, that is faith based on their experience of miracles. Faith in God in the demons is not infused faith, as in the person who has been baptized.

Here is G-L again on the basic grace of conversion:

Sufficient grace is not sterile, it produces a good thought, a good movement of will, some disposition to consent. It is called sufficient, says Alvarez, [1148] as counter-distinguished from "simply efficacious." But each sufficient grace is in a sense efficacious, i. e.: in its own order.
But each meritorious act, however small, requires a grace simply efficacious. It is good here and now realized, hence presupposes an eternal decree of God's consequent will. Nothing comes to pass hic et nunc, unless God has efficaciously willed it (if it is good) or permitted it (if it is evil). [1149] We cannot, says Bossuet, [1150] refuse to God the power of actualizing our free and salutary choice, without which no merit can exist.

3. Resistance to sufficient grace is an evil, arising from us, from our defectibility and our actual deficience, whereas our non-resistance is, on the contrary, a good, arising from ourselves as second causes, but from God as first cause.

What some of the synod fathers forget, or refuse to admit, is that resistance to sufficient grace, a great evil, comes from our own imperfections, which is why we must all pray daily for this grace of perfection. That a priest told me we can move beyond venial sin, and that insight from prayer that concupiscence can be destroyed, (http://supertradmum-etheldredasplace.blogspot.com/2015/04/to-destroy-concupiscence.html), both are truths which emphasize the call to holiness through grace.

I am moving towards a more in-depth discussion on the Indwelling of the Trinity, but one can follow the tags to previous posts until I get to these posts.

In the meantime, I hope readers are beginning to see the great dangers of those who are denying the very doctrines of grace and free will held to sacred in our Church.

Yes, I am getting to gradualism-Three

So, how is St. John Paul II against the heresy of gradualism, which denies free will and grace?

Here, he is clear that marriage is a decision which demands the virtue of faith, given to all in baptism. In this grace, we all become prophets to the truth. We, through our lay lives in marriage, strengthen the Church and evangelize the unbelieving.

Again, God does not ask the impossible, and we all are given the theological virtue of faith, which like all the virtues, is made perfect in practice.

Do gradualists think the saint's words are mere poetry? Do they not believe this infallible document themselves? Have they never experienced the growth of faith through suffering in their own lives?

Maybe, maybe not...The entire point of gradualism is that people should be allowed the sacrilege of receiving Christ while they are in sin, instead of following the teaching of sacrifice and suffering put forward by St. John Paul II and others.

At the time of the wedding vow, faith is operative in both couples, unless there is an impediment, which only the Church can decide. In that moment, the couple agrees not only to love each other and subsequent offspring, but to evangelize through the sacrament and to build up the Church through their real, total love. They enter into the love of God Himself.

To throw this away, and worse, to turn against this sublime teaching mocks God, and God will not be mocked.

As a sharer in the life and mission of the church, which listens to the word of God with reverence and proclaims it confidently,[120] the Christian family fulfills its prophetic role by welcoming and announcing the word of God: It thus becomes more and more each day a believing and evangelizing community.
Christian spouses and parents are required to offer "the obedience of faith."[121] They are called upon to welcome the word of the Lord, which reveals to them the marvelous news--the good news--of their conjugal and family life sanctified and made a source of sanctity by Christ himself. Only in faith can they discover and admire with joyful gratitude the dignity to which God has deigned to raise marriage and the family, making them a sign and meeting place of the loving covenant between God and man, between Jesus Christ and his bride, the church.
The very preparation for Christian marriage is itself a journey of faith. It is a special opportunity for the engaged to rediscover and deepen the faith received in baptism and nourished by their Christian upbringing. In this way they come to recognize and freely accept their vocation to follow Christ and to serve the kingdom of God in the married state.
The celebration of the sacrament of marriage is the basic moment of the faith of the couple. This sacrament, in essence, is the proclamation in the church of the good news concerning married love. It is the word of God that "reveals" and "fulfills" the wise and loving plan of God for the married couple, giving them a mysterious and real share in the very love with which God himself loves humanity. Since the sacramental celebration of marriage is itself a proclamation of the word of God, it must also be a "profession of faith" within and with the church, as a community of believers, on the part of all those who in different ways participate in its celebration.

Marriage is not just between two people to control lust. The witness of marriage in the Church transcends the sub-human and brings people to a chance for perfection.

This profession of faith demands that it be prolonged in the life of the married couple and of the family. God, who called the couple to marriage, continues to call them in marriage.[122] In and through the events, problems, difficulties and circumstances of everyday life, God comes to them, revealing and presenting the concrete "demands" of their sharing in the love of Christ for his church in the particular family, social and ecclesial situation in which they find themselves.
The discovery of and obedience to the plan of God on the part of the conjugal and family community must take place in "togetherness," through the human experience of love between husband and wife, between parents and children, lived in the spirit of Christ.
Thus the little domestic church, like the greater church, needs to be constantly and intensely evangelized: hence its duty regarding permanent education in the faith.
52. To the extent in which the Christian family accepts the Gospel and matures in faith, it becomes an evangelizing community. Let us listen again to Paul VI: "The family, like the church, ought to be a place where the Gospel is transmitted and from which the Gospel radiates. In a family which is conscious of this mission, all the members evangelize and are evangelized.

Here we are back to my theme yesterday, that we are all called to evangelize and no one is left out of this command, not even the mother at home, or the dad at work.

We HAVE the grace to stay married and to be married in Christ. We are given that grace and we only have to agree to living in that grace.

This apostolic mission of the family is rooted in baptism and receives from the grace of the sacrament of marriage new strength to transmit the faith, to sanctify and transform our present society according to God's plan.
Particularly today the Christian family has a special vocation to witness to the paschal covenant of Christ by constantly radiating the joy of love and the certainty of the hope for which it must give account: "The Christian family loudly proclaims both the present virtues of the kingdom of God and the hope of a blessed life to come."[125]

Remember how I wrote yesterday that I had a missionary heart? All who are married are given that for their children and for the parish, the entire Church.

It should not be forgotten that the service rendered by Christian spouses and parents to the Gospel is essentially an ecclesial service. It has its place within the context of the whole church as an evangelized and evangelizing community. Insofar as the ministry of evangelization and catechesis of the church of the home is rooted in and derives from the one mission of the church and is ordained to the upbuilding of the one body of Christ,[128] it must remain in intimate communion and collaborate responsibly with all the other evangelizing and catechetical activities present and at work in the ecclesial community at the diocesan and parochial levels.
54. Evangelization, urged on within by irrepressible missionary zeal, is characterized by a universality without boundaries. It is the response to Christ's explicit and unequivocal command: "Go into all the world and preach the Gospel to the whole creation."[129]

Anything less is not the individual or couple living out their baptismal calls.

The Christian family's faith and evangelizing mission also possesses this Catholic missionary inspiration. The sacrament of marriage takes up and reproposes the task of defending and spreading the faith, a task that has its roots in baptism and confirmation,[130] and makes Christian married couples and parents witnesses of Christ "to the end of the earth,"[131] missionaries, in the true and proper sense, of love and life.
A form of missionary activity can be exercised even within the family. This happens when some member of the family does not have the faith or does not practice it with consistency. In such a case the other members must give him or her a living witness of their own faith in order to encourage and support him or her along the path toward full acceptance of Christ the savior.[132]
Animated in its own inner life by missionary zeal, the church of the home is also called to be a luminous sign of the presence of Christ and of his love for those who are "far away," for families who do not yet believe and for those Christian families who no longer live in accordance with the faith that they once received. The Christian family is called to enlighten "by its example and its witness those who seek the truth. "[133]
Just as at the dawn of Christianity Aquila and Priscilla were presented as a missionary couple,[134] so today the church shows forth her perennial newness and fruitfulness by the presence of Christian couples and families who dedicate at least a part of their lives to working in missionary territories, proclaiming the Gospel and doing service to their fellow man in the love of Jesus Christ.
Christian families offer a special contribution to the missionary cause of the church by fostering missionary vocations among their sons and daughters[135] and, more generally, "by training their children from childhood to recognize God's love for all people."[136]

Do some of the fathers in the synod not get it that marriage sanctifies? Adultery leads to perdition. Period. How is it that they think that those in mortal sin, according to Divine Law and the mystery of the sacrament, can receive grace? They cannot, and, in fact, insult God by putting their sin in His Face, as it were. Again, those who insists on this position cannot understand the freedom of will we all have, and grace, given to all.

56. The sacrament of marriage is the specific source and original means of sanctification for Christian married couples and families. It takes up again and makes specific the sanctifying grace of baptism. By virtue of the mystery of the death and resurrection of Christ, of which the spouses are made part in a new way by marriage, conjugal love is purified and made holy: "This love the Lord has judged worthy of special gifts, healing, perfecting and exalting gifts of grace and of charity."[138]

So we become saints in marriage. Yes, this is possible, with free will choosing real love through grace.


The gift of Jesus Christ is not exhausted in the actual celebration of the sacrament of marriage, but rather accompanies the married couple throughout their lives. This fact is explicitly recalled by the Second Vatican Council when it says that Jesus Christ "abides with them so that just as he loved the church and handed himself over on her behalf, the spouses may love each other with perpetual fidelity through mutual self-bestowal...For this reason, Christian spouses have a special sacrament by which they are fortified and receive a kind of consecration in the duties and dignity of their state. By virtue of this sacrament, as spouses fulfill their conjugal and family obligations they are penetrated with the spirit of Christ, who fills their whole lives with faith, hope and charity. Thus they increasingly advance toward their own perfection as well as toward their mutual sanctification, and hence contribute jointly to the glory of God."[139]
Christian spouses and parents are included in the universal call to sanctity. For them this call is specified by the sacrament they have celebrated and is carried out concretely in the realities proper to their conjugal and family life.[140] This gives rise to the grace and requirement of an authentic and profound conjugal and family spirituality that draws its inspiration from the themes of creation, covenant, cross, resurrection and sign, which were stressed more than once by the synod.
Christian marriage, like the other sacraments, "whose purpose is to sanctify people, to build up the body of Christ, and finally, to give worship to God,"[141] is in itself a liturgical action glorifying God in Jesus Christ and in the church. By celebrating it, Christian spouses profess their gratitude to God for the sublime gift bestowed on them of being able to live in their married and family lives the very love of God for people and that of the Lord Jesus for the church, his bride.

And if people fail, we have the sacrament of confession. One does not have to dump the conjugal relationship. One can forgive, one can ask forgiveness.

 An essential and permanent part of the Christian family's sanctifying role consists in accepting the call to conversion that the Gospel addresses to all Christians, who do not always remain faithful to the "newness" of the baptism that constitutes them "saints." The Christian family too is sometimes unfaithful to the law of baptismal grace and holiness proclaimed anew in the sacrament of marriage.
Repentance and mutual pardon within the bosom of the Christian family, so much a part of daily life, receive their specific sacramental expression in Christian penance. In the encyclical Humanae Vitae, Paul VI wrote of married couples: "And if sin should still keep its hold over them, let them not be discouraged, but rather have recourse with humble perseverance to the mercy of God, which is abundantly poured forth in the sacrament of penance."[146]

There is much in this encyclical on children, the family and preparation for marriage, but I am going to skip to these next selections.

And here the Pope-Saint addresses priest directly:

Priests and deacons, when they have received timely and serious preparation for this apostolate, must unceasingly act toward families as fathers, brothers, pastors and teachers, assisting them with the means of grace and enlightening them with the light of truth. Their teaching and advice must therefore always be in full harmony with the authentic magisterium of the church, in such a way as to help the people of God to gain a correct sense of the faith to be subsequently applied to practical life. Such fidelity to the magisterium will also enable priests to make every effort to be united in their judgments in order to avoid troubling the consciences of the faithful.

In the church, the pastors and the laity share in the prophetic mission of Christ: The laity do so by witnessing to the faith by their words and by their Christian lives; the pastors do so by distinguishing in that witness what is the expression of genuine faith from what is less in harmony with the light of faith; the family, as a Christian community, does so through its special sharing and witness of faith.

and again....the synod referred to here is the one in 1981
. ...the church cannot ignore the time of old age with all its positive and negative aspects. In old age married love, which has been increasingly purified and ennobled by long and unbroken fidelity, can be deepened. There is the opportunity of offering to others in a new form the kindness and the wisdom gathered over the years and what energies remain. But there is also the burden of loneliness, more often psychological and emotional rather than physical, which results from abandonment or neglect on the part of children and relations. There is also suffering caused by ill-health, by the gradual loss of strength, by the humiliation of having to depend on others, by the sorrow of feeling that one is perhaps a burden to one's loved ones, and by the approach of the end of life. These are the circumstances in which, as the synod fathers suggested, it is easier to help people understand and live the lofty aspects of the spirituality of marriage and the family, aspects which take their inspiration from the value of Christ's cross and resurrection, the source of sanctification and profound happiness in daily life, in the light of the great eschatological realities of eternal life.
In all these different situations let prayer, the source of light and strength and the nourishment of Christian hope, never be neglected.