More on the Evil and Prevalence of Quietism

Continuing with the heresy of Quietism, I am looking at these points from the Letter, Coelestis Pastor, quoted earlier today.


20. To assert that in prayer it is necessary to help oneself by discourse and by reflections, when God does not speak to the soul, is ignorance. God never speaks; his way of speaking is operation, and he always operates in the soul when this soul does not impede him by its discourses, reflections, and operations.


This would be an enlightenment idea, basically denying that God can communicate directly through prayer or a mystical experience. God uses many ways, in the Catholic tradition, to speak to us, including direct, private revelations, as well as the great Revelation of Christ Himself, through the Scriptures and the Eucharist.

It is odd that Quietism, which seems so anti-intellectual, is also anti-human spirit.

21. In prayer it is necessary to remain in obscure and universal faith, with quiet and forgetfulness of any particular and distinct thought of the attributes of God and the Trinity, and thus to remain in the presence of God for adoring and loving him and serving him, but without producing acts, because God has no pleasure in these.


This section is very New Age and sounds like something from the 80s. Of course, all the great mystics and spiritual writers instruct us to start with meditation, of the Life of Christ and the attributes of God, moving from meditation to contemplation.  This type of prayer described above is not Christo-centric, but Hindu.


22. This knowledge through faith is not an act produced by a creature, but it is a knowledge given by God to the creature, which the creature neither recognizes that he has, and neither later knows that he had it; and the same is said of love.


Again, we know when we are given both infused knowledge and  knowledge gained either by experience, or study. We also have Knowledge as one of the Gifts of the Holy Spirit.To deny that we have any responsibility for gaining some levels of knowledge again makes the Christian a baby, not a rational creature capable of using free will to approach God and accept grace.

 23. The mystics with St. Bernard in the Scala Claustralium (The Ladder of the Recluses) distinguished four steps: reading, meditation, prayer, and infused contemplation. He who always remains in the first, never passes over to the second. He who always persists in the second, never arrives at the third, which is our acquired contemplation, in which one must persist throughout all life, provided that God does not draw the soul (without the soul expecting it) to infused contemplation; and if this ceases, the soul should turn back to the third step and remain in that, without returning again to the second or first.


These steps have been misunderstood by the Quietists, who again, deny the involvement of our wills intellects and hearts in the processes of meditative and contemplative prayer. These steps are clearly defined by St. John of the Cross, and St. Teresa of Avila, who explain that humans are brought back and forth into various steps of prayer and  final union with God. Partly, this last point is influenced by an over-emphasis on scruples, I think.


24. Whatever thoughts occur in prayer, even impure, or against God, the saints, faith, and the sacraments, if they are not voluntarily nourished, nor voluntarily expelled, but tolerated with indifference and resignation, do not impede the prayer of faith; indeed they make it more perfect, because the soul then remains more resigned to the divine will.


All impurities of thought and heart are to be rooted out by Confession and penances. Temptations are to be resisted. One cannot move on to perfection with any sin; and indifference is an open door for the evil one. We are not to be resigned to impurities or distractions. St. Ignatius of Loyola is good on these points, as are the above mystics. Again, the lack of responsibility for dealing with impurity and distractions seems to be taken away from the rational person. Bad.

The next set of points really show a keen departure from Catholic Truth.


25. Even if one becomes sleepy and falls asleep, nevertheless there is prayer and actual contemplation, because prayer and resignation, resignation and prayer are the same, and while resignation endures, prayer also endures.

I have heard, recently, ladies tell me that they pray while sleeping. I do not think so. Also, I hate to disappoint some charismatics, but your angels do not keep on praying your prayers while you sleep. They may pray, but to expect an angel to finish your rosary is just plain superstition. What is crazy here is again the denial of the will and intellectual involvement in prayer. We pray, with our intellects, our wills, our hearts, our souls.

26. The three ways: the purgative, illuminative, and unitive, are the greatest absurdity ever spoken about in mystical (theology), since there is only one way, namely, the interior way.

Well, how many saints must we quote to answer this tripe? Cf Garrigou-Lagrange, etc.

27. He who desires and embraces sensible devotion does not desire nor seek God, but himself; and anyone who walks by the interior way, in holy places as well as on feast days, acts badly when he desires it and tries to possess it.

Again, this an appeal to Protestantism, which denies the need for devotions, such as the rosary, pilgrimages, novenas, even Adoration of the Eucharist. Need I say more on this obviously wrong point?

28. Weariness for spiritual matters is good, if indeed by it one's own love is purified.


No matter how one defines weariness, either in a physical way, or spiritual acedia, this is a bad thing. The great mystics, including St. Bernard of Clairvaux, warn us of this evil state of apathy and even depression. Love is not purified in torpor, but in battle and vigilance.

29. As long as the interior soul disdains discourses about God, disdains the virtues, and remains cold, feeling no fervor in himself, it is a good sign.


I call this spiritual death and denial of grace, if not mortal sin. Oh dear....we are now in a denial of love.

30. Everything sensible which we experience in the spiritual life, is abominable, base, and unclean.


OK, now we see the philosophical background of Molinos, which is dualism and the denial of the physical humanity of man and woman. Out of all the points, this one causes the apathy of so many Catholics who fall into this heresy. If the physical life is bad, why learn, why pay attention to politics, why vote, why get married, why have children and so on. This type of hatred of the real and the physical also leads to a denial of the Incarnation of Christ, the logical extension of this heresy-the denial of the God-Man, Christ. In fact, the basis of this heresy is the denial of the Incarnation of Christ and the redemption of all mankind.

I see that many younger Catholics cannot make the spiritual or intellectual bridge between the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity and their own lives, which leads even to a denial of the efficacy of the sacraments, especially Baptism. Grace and study, God's mercy and work.....

Thanks to Wiki for Acedia

To be continued...in memory of a famous trilogy, I shall have two more, to make five, on this heresy. Tomorrow's postings will finish this examination.

Against Quietism

Some good advice from The Imitation of Christ against Quietism--


"The fervent and diligent man is ready for all things. It is harder labor to withstand our vices and passions than to toil at bodily labors. He that shuns not small defects, little by little, falls into great ones....Watch over yourself, stir up yourself, and whatever may become of others, neglect not yourself. In proportion as you do violence to yourself, the great progress will you make..."


To be continued....

The Passive Ones

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....

The popular heresy of no pensar nada

I have been concerned about a tendency in a certain generation, or generations of Catholics regarding the heresy of Quietism. Now, this heresy results in two effects, which basically separates those who seek the Kingdom of God, from those who merely want religious experiences. However, the most drastic effect is to create a group of Catholics who are passive.

The laity are not called to passivity.

One of my favorite sites online is the Papal Encyclical one. Here is the link the Coelestis Pastor on Quietism. I shall list the errors of Molinos here and highlight some I am meeting in particularly younger Catholics, ages 50-35. I find this trend is weakening parish life and the Church. Here is the long list from the letter from the Pope, Innocent XI, 20 November, 1687.


The Propositions:
1. It is necessary that man reduce his own powers to nothingness, and this is the interior way.
2. To wish to operate actively is to offend God, who wishes to be himself the sole agent; and therefore it is necessary to abandon oneself wholly in God and thereafter to continue in existence as an inanimate body.
3. Vows about doing something are impediments to perfection.
4. Natural activity is the enemy of grace, and impedes the operations of God and true perfection, because God wishes to operate in us without us.
5. By doing nothing the soul annihilates itself and returns to its beginning and to its origin, which is the essence of God, in which it remains transformed and divinized, and God then remains in himself, because then the two things are no more united, but are one alone, and in this manner God lives and reigns in us, and the soul annihilates itself in operative being.
6. The interior way is that in which neither light, nor love, nor resignation is recognized, and it is not necessary to understand God, and in this way one makes progress correctly.
7. A soul ought to consider neither the reward, nor punishment, nor paradise, nor hell, nor death, nor eternity.
8. He ought not to wish to know whether he is progressing according to the will of God, or whether or not with the same resigned will he stands still; nor is it necessary that he wish to know his own state or his own nothingness; but he ought to remain as an inanimate body.
9. The soul ought not to remember either itself, or God, or anything whatsoever, and in the interior life all reflection is harmful, even reflection upon its human actions and upon its own defects.
10. If one scandalizes others by one's own defects, it is not necessary to reflect, as long as the will to scandalize is not present; not to be able to reflect upon one's own defects, is a grace of God.
11. It is not necessary to reflect upon doubts as to whether one is proceeding rightly or not.
12. He who gives his own free will to God should care about nothing, neither about hell, nor about heaven; neither ought he to have a desire for his own perfection, nor for virtues, nor his own sanctity, nor his own salvation-the hope of which he ought to remove.
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.
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.
15. Just as they ought not ask anything from God, so should they not give thanks to him for anything, because either is an act of their own will.
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.
17. When free will has been surrendered to God, and the care and thought of our soul left to the same God, no consideration of temptations need any longer be of concern; neither should any but a negative resistance be made to them, with the application of no energy, and if nature is aroused, one must let it be aroused, because it is nature.
18. He who in his prayer uses images, figures, pretension, and his own conceptions, does not adore God "in spirit and in truth."
19. He who loves God in the way which reason points out or the intellect comprehends, does not love the true God.
20. To assert that in prayer it is necessary to help oneself by discourse and by reflections, when God does not speak to the soul, is ignorance. God never speaks; his way of speaking is operation, and he always operates in the soul when this soul does not impede him by its discourses, reflections, and operations.
21. In prayer it is necessary to remain in obscure and universal faith, with quiet and forgetfulness of any particular and distinct thought of the attributes of God and the Trinity, and thus to remain in the presence of God for adoring and loving him and serving him, but without producing acts, because God has no pleasure in these.
22. This knowledge through faith is not an act produced by a creature, but it is a knowledge given by God to the creature, which the creature neither recognizes that he has, and neither later knows that he had it; and the same is said of love. 23. The mystics with St. Bernard in the Scala Claustralium (The Ladder of the Recluses) distinguished four steps: reading, meditation, prayer, and infused contemplation. He who always remains in the first, never passes over to the second. He who always persists in the second, never arrives at the third, which is our acquired contemplation, in which one must persist throughout all life, provided that God does not draw the soul (without the soul expecting it) to infused contemplation; and if this ceases, the soul should turn back to the third step and remain in that, without returning again to the second or first.
24. Whatever thoughts occur in prayer, even impure, or against God, the saints, faith, and the sacraments, if they are not voluntarily nourished, nor voluntarily expelled, but tolerated with indifference and resignation, do not impede the prayer of faith; indeed they make it more perfect, because the soul then remains more resigned to the divine will.
25. Even if one becomes sleepy and falls asleep, nevertheless there is prayer and actual contemplation, because prayer and resignation, resignation and prayer are the same, and while resignation endures, prayer also endures.
26. The three ways: the purgative, illuminative, and unitive, are the greatest absurdity ever spoken about in mystical (theology), since there is only one way, namely, the interior way.
27. He who desires and embraces sensible devotion does not desire nor seek God, but himself; and anyone who walks by the interior way, in holy places as well as on feast days, acts badly when he desires it and tries to possess it.
28. Weariness for spiritual matters is good, if indeed by it one's own love is purified.
29. As long as the interior soul disdains discourses about God, disdains the virtues, and remains cold, feeling no fervor in himself, it is a good sign.
30. Everything sensible which we experience in the spiritual life, is abominable, base, and unclean.
31. No meditative person exercises true interior virtues; these should not be recognized by the senses. It is necessary to abandon the virtues.
32. Neither before nor after communion is any other preparation or act of thanksgiving required for these interior souls than continuance in a customary passive resignation, because in a more perfect way it supplies all acts of virtues, which can be practiced and are practiced in the ordinary way. And, if on this occasion of communion there arise emotions of humility, of petition, or of thanksgiving, they are to be repressed, as often as it is not discerned that they are from a special impulse of God; otherwise they are impulses of nature not yet dead.
33. That soul acts badly which proceeds by this interior way, if it wishes on feast days by any particular effort to excite some sensible devotion in itself, since for an interior soul all days are equal, all festal. And the same is said of holy places, because to souls of this kind all places are alike.
34. To give thanks to God by words and by speech is not for interior souls which ought to remain in silence, placing no obstacle before God, because he operates in them; and the more they resign themselves to God, they discover that they cannot recite the Lord's prayer, i.e., Our Father.
35. It is not fitting for souls of this interior life to perform works, even virtuous ones, by their own choice and activity; otherwise they would not be dead. Neither should they elicit acts of love for the Blessed Virgin, saints, or the humanity of Christ, because since they are sensible objects, so, too, is their love toward them.
36. No creature, neither the Blessed Virgin nor the saints, ought to abide in our heart, because God alone wishes to occupy and possess it.
37. On occasion of temptations, even violent ones, the soul ought not to elicit explicit acts of opposite virtues, but should persevere in the above mentioned love and resignation.
38. The voluntary cross of mortifications is a heavy weight and fruitless, and therefore to be dismissed.
39. The more holy works and penances, which the saints performed, are not enough to remove from the soul even a single tie.
40. The Blessed Virgin never performed any exterior work, and nevertheless was holier than all the saints. Therefore, one can arrive at sanctity without exterior work.
41. God permits and wishes to humiliate us and to conduct us to a true transformation, because in some perfect souls, even though not inspired, the demon inflicts violence on their bodies and makes them commit carnal acts, even in wakefulness and without the bewilderment of the mind, by physically moving their hands and other members against their wills. And the same is said as far as concerns other actions sinful in themselves, in which case they are not sins, but in them (because with these) the consent is not present.
42. A case may be given, that things of this kind contrary to the will result in carnal acts at the same time on the part of two persons, for example man and woman, and on the part of both an act follows.
43. God in past ages has created saints through the ministry of tyrants; now in truth he produces saints through the ministry of demons, who, by causing the aforesaid things contrary to the will, bring it about that they despise themselves the more and annihilate and resign themselves to God . . .




I am going to highlight a few today and a few later.

Firstly, the danger of non-commitment, which is also connected to the more modern error of Existentialism.
3. Vows about doing something are impediments to perfection.


Secondly, the denial of the use of reason in the spiritual life-the vast majority of Catholics I meet have not read encyclicals, the CCC, or even local letters from the bishops.


6. The interior way is that in which neither light, nor love, nor resignation is recognized, and it is not necessary to understand God, and in this way one makes progress correctly.


I partly blame the Charismatic Movement for this and believe that movement, at least in some areas. has led to Quietism.

Thirdly, the most common heresy today is the belief in Universal Salvation. Quietism separates the end goal of our lives from prayer and effort.


7. A soul ought to consider neither the reward, nor punishment, nor paradise, nor hell, nor death, nor eternity.


Next, we all need a spiritual director or regular confessor in order not to fall into deceit.

8. He ought not to wish to know whether he is progressing according to the will of God, or whether or not with the same resigned will he stands still; nor is it necessary that he wish to know his own state or his own nothingness; but he ought to remain as an inanimate body.


Fifthly, the idea of scandal, which is practically gone from our societies, is ignored in Quietism. This is serious, as many Catholics scandalize others by contraception, fornication, pro-gay beliefs, etc. and think nothing of the consequences. We have seen many, many example of this in the past week.

9. The soul ought not to remember either itself, or God, or anything whatsoever, and in the interior life all reflection is harmful, even reflection upon its human actions and upon its own defects.


And, one idea I meet almost daily in conversation with Catholics, is the Protestant belief in the one-time giving of our wills to God which supposedly solidifies salvation. This idea is prominent here in England among some Catholics, who do not understand the need for the sacramental life.

12. He who gives his own free will to God should care about nothing, neither about hell, nor about heaven; neither ought he to have a desire for his own perfection, nor for virtues, nor his own sanctity, nor his own salvation-the hope of which he ought to remove.


To be continued.