Last post, six out of six, on Quietism

Here are the last few points condemned by the Church on Quietism. I hope this little review has been helpful to some who either have fallen into errors, or for those who, like me, have come up against these in the past few years. I feel with the impending global events, we shall see a return to these false ideas, as some people cannot face reality, and retreat into passivity in the face of crisis.


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.


Mary's Fiat allowed Redemption to enter the world. It is time for the Pope to declare her Co-Redemptrix and Mediatrix of Grace. These ideas are part of our Tradition and informed by the dogmas on her Immaculate Conception and Assumption. 


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.


This is a great perversion of the idea of free will. We cannot sin without consent, but God does not will our sinning. That the evil one can make us sin against our will is an odd way of denying free will and the Perfect Will of God, Who desires that all are saved. Here, Molinos gets into some type of belief that we are not in control, with grace, of our actions and that God wants to humiliate us. Not so. The Will of God is always for good and it is the will of humans which creates evil. This point shows almost a denial of reason, as some of the other points have done. Also, after repeatedly sinning, one can fall into a habit of sin, which is hard to break. By denying our part in sin, Molinos returns to dualism and a pseudo-Manichean like false thinking, the never-ending heresy.


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.


We will to sin, period.

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 . 


Demons bring us to perdition, not sanctity. The evil ones desire only our eternal damnation. God desires our eternal bliss. Again, a perversion of the idea of free will and the idea of a Loving Father, as caused, partly, this confusion. To compare the martyrdom of the early Christians with the so-called present "ministry of devils" is so weird. However, this idea borders on a type of satan-worship, giving more power than is due to the evil spirits, "who roam about the world seeking the ruin of souls." Saints are those among us who cooperate with grace, who love God with their entire hearts, minds, souls. Mary is our example.


I end with the introduction to the Letter against Quietism, a complicated and returning heresy.


 IN ORDER to free the world, prostrate in darkness and bound by numerous pagan errors, from the power of the devil who held it a wretched prisoner after the fall of our first parent, the heavenly shepherd, Christ our Lord, by his ineffable mercy, condescended to take flesh and, as a living victim, offer himself to God for us on the wood of the cross, nailing the guarantee of our redemption to the wood of the cross as a proof of his love for us. Then before returning to heaven he left on earth the Catholic Church his bride, as a new city, a holy Jerusalem, coming down from heaven without wrinkle or spot, one and holy, protected by his mighty weapons against the gates of hell. Its government he entrusted to the prince of the apostles, Peter, and his successors; they are to preserve whole and entire the teaching drawn from his lips, lest the sheep redeemed by his precious blood feed on poisonous ideas and fall back into age-old errors. This power sacred Scripture teaches us he entrusted especially to blessed Peter. For to which of the apostles but Peter did he say: "Feed my sheep." And again: "I have prayed for you that your faith may not fail; and when once you have turned, strengthen your brothers." Therefore, we who occupy Peter's throne and possess power equal to his, not by our own merits but because of almighty God's inscrutable wisdom, steadfastly desire that the Christian people embrace that faith proclaimed by Christ our Lord through his apostles in a continuous and uninterrupted tradition; the faith which he promised will endure to the end of the world.

Quietism continued , in a little series, five out of six

I am again looking at Quietism. Here are some more points from the Pope's Letter I have been looking at the past two days.

31. No meditative person exercises true interior virtues; these should not be recognized by the senses. It is necessary to abandon the virtues.

The virtuous life is an absolute necessity for being a saint. The virtuous life is not only essential, but antecedent to the purification and eventual unity of the soul with God. The goal of life is heaven and Beatific Vision. The virtuous life is one of the themes on my blog, and I need to get back to it at some time, as so much as been going on, I interrupted the series.

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 practices 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.

Could it be that the reason why people, in my parish, talk before and after Mass, besides being lazy, is that these parishioners simply do not understand or see the value of responding to grace, the grace of thanksgiving, of love. I wonder is this poor heretic Molinos ever experienced the love of God in any intimate way? How sad, as it seems that he did not.


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.


What can I say? This is SO Quaker....


Next.

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.

A sure sign of satanic influence would be the inability to say the Lord's Prayer, or any other standard prayer, such as the Hail Mary. But, of course, a heretic, with low church ideals, would eschew the need for standard prayers. Again, this is also a denial of the human need for vocal prayer and even for Gregorian Chant, for example. One can see the overlapping false thinking of Quietism and those non-denominational, pseudo-Christian churches which deny that there are sacraments and the Mass. etc.


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.

Again, the low church, heretical impulse to get rid of all sensible devotion for a false sense of the spiritual. We are not disembodied spirits and to deny love is to deny Christ and the Indwelling of the Holy Trinity. The very goal these heretics wanted is denied to them by the denial of eros, to agape, to caritas, as I outlined last week in the encylical series on Deus Caritas Est.

We should be daily grateful for our present Pope, who has elucidated Love for us so clearly in his first encyclical.

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.

See last week's series on love. Love begets love, begets love.....This was supposed to be a three-part series, but it shall go into six, with the small one yesterday counting as three.  A thanks to my readers, who like these mini-series.

This is not the last little posting on Quietism, hopefully, to show how this heresy has effected some Catholics of a certain age.

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.

Where do I start? The good nuns taught me years ago that the way to combat a vice is to emphasize the opposite virtue. When one is raising children, this is also part of their training. Again, to assume that the virtues “just happen” reminds me of a student I had years ago, whose history project, “just didn't happen”. She earned an “F” for the course. I highly recomment Garrigou Lagrange on the virtues.Josef Pieper is another great writer on the virtues, and start here.

38. The voluntary cross of mortifications is a heavy weight and fruitless, and therefore to be dismissed.

Again, this is a denial of the Passion of Christ, His Incarnation and the entire tradition of redemptive suffering. St. Therese of Liseaux is an answer to this false idea, as is the long tradition of honoring Christ in His Passion and Death on the Cross, our Redemption.

39. The more holy works and penances, which the saints performed, are not enough to remove from the soul even a single tie.

Blessed John Paul II on suffering is an excellent answer to this point. If one has never read the Apostolic Letter Salvifici Doloris, the link is on the name.