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| Excommunication Scene from Becket |
Continuing my examination and application of Quietism in today's Church, I am continuing with the list of errors so clearly condemned by Holy Mother Church.
Here are two more for consideration.
13. After our free will has been resigned to God, reflection and care about everything of our own must be left to that same God, and we ought to leave it to him, so that he may work his divine will in us without us.
There is nothing about the fight against temptations, the need to follow the Ten Commandments and the need to follow the Laws of the Church. This anti-intellectualism is part of the new Quietist attitude. It is, basically, a giving up of our freedoms and responsibilities, especially with regard to free will. Adults who do not want to grow up, those stuck in the Peter Pan Syndrome, fall under this false belief system and avoid real action.
14. It is not seemly that he who is resigned to the divine will, ask anything of God; because asking is an imperfection, since the act is of one's own will and election, and this is wishing that the divine will be conformed to ours, and not that ours be conformed to the divine; and this from the Gospel: "Seek and you shall find," was not said by Christ for interior souls who do not wish to have free will; nay indeed, souls of this kind reach this state, that they cannot seek anything from God.
One of the things which surprises me is that people pray for world peace, or an end to injustice, but do not pray for a specific person or even needs. I pray very specifically, as my Faith in God is such that I have specific needs for which to implore His Grace. Those who say, and I have heard this recently, "Oh, I just pray in general," are not putting their faith and hope on the line--this is not a response to grace but to fear, the fear of rejection, which is the opposite of Faith.
Another common error is this one: 16. It is not proper to seek indulgences for punishment due to one's own sins, because it is better to satisfy divine justice than to seek divine mercy, since the latter proceeds from pure love of God, and the former from an interested love of ourselves, and that is not a thing pleasing to God and meritorious, because it is a desire to shun the cross.
This week, I met an Irish Catholic man in his 40s who did not know what an indulgence was. I was amazed. After I explained it to him, as he asked me about this after Sunday Mass, he said basically that he could not believe in indulgences, as the Church could not decide on such things. OMGoodness...He also does not believe in Purgatory.
And, so many people have never been to a Mercy Sunday, Low Sunday, final blessing of the Divine Mercy Novena as it is very rare to find it, here,and in my home diocese in America. If there was ever a time to seek indulgences, it is now.
I think part of the rejection of this is simply a distrust of Rome, the Vatican and an over-simplified approach to religion. Again, this is Quietism.
Another point is a very Protestant idea from Quietism--the denial of the need for physical aids to worship. Some NO people fall into this category and deny the need for incense, bells, and even the Traditional Latin Mass.
18. He who in his prayer uses images, figures, pretension, and his own conceptions, does not adore God "in spirit and in truth."
I try and point out that even the Recusant Catholics risked their lives to have Agnus Deis and relics, holy cards or pictures, breviaries, etc. We are body and soul, created by God with needs to feed both.
And, another biggie--anti-intellectualism, which has, in my view, weakened the Church horribly here and elsewhere.
19. He who loves God in the way which reason points out or the intellect comprehends, does not love the true God.
I call this religious sloth. To be continued....