Solidarity with evil?
We shouldn't hate error?
Archbishop, with all due respect for your office, have you lost your mind?
Our Lord wept over Jerusalem and said, "If only you knew what makes for peace" (Lk 19:42). And now we do know (those of us who Christian in more than name). Only a life lived in conformity with the mind of Christ as shown to us by His Catholic Church can bring true peace. By contrast, "Pride inflates man; envy consumes him; avarice makes him restless; anger rekindles his passions; gluttony makes him ill; comfort destroys him; lies imprison him; murder defiles him...the very pleasures of sin become the instruments of punishment in the hands of God." (Pope Innocent III, On the Misery of the Human Condition).
It is our duty as Catholics to remind others of these truths and to expose those who are promoting sin or error. But often we will find ourselves being criticized (even by other Catholics, whose commitment toward Catholic teaching is, at best, questionable) for doing so. This should never deter us. When such people accuse us of "negativity," we should recall the words of Dr. Dietrich von Hildebrand: "..the rejection of evil and of sin is a response which is purely positive and morally called for, and it possesses a high moral value. One cannot truly love God, without hating the devil. One cannot really love the truth, without hating error. One cannot find the truth and grasp it clearly as such, without seeing through errors. Knowledge of truth is inseparably linked with knowledge of error, with the unmasking of error.* All talk about the superiority of 'yes' over 'no,' about the 'negativity' of rejecting that which should be rejected, is so much idle chatter." (The Cult of the 'Positive').
* "I would maintain that fear of error is simply necessary to the genuine love of truth." (John Cardinal Newman, Grammar of Assent).
Fr. Felix Sarda Y Salvany explains in his work "Liberalism is a Sin," that, "..the wolf has always been called the wolf; and in so calling it, no one has ever believed that wrong was done to the flock and the shepherd...In his Introduction to the Devout Life, that precious and popular work, he [St. Francis de Sales, a Doctor of the Church] expresses himself: 'If the declared enemies of God and of the Church ought to be blamed and censured with all possible vigor, charity obliges us to cry wolf when the wolf slips into the midst of the flock and in every way and place we may meet him.'" (pp. 97, 100-101).
Pope John XXIII said essentially the same thing: "...as long as we are journeying in exile over this earth, our peace and happiness will be imperfect. For such peace is not completely untroubled and serene; it is active, not calm and motionless. In short, this is a peace that is ever at war. It wars with every sort of error, including that which falsely wears the face of truth; it struggles against the enticements of vice, against those enemies of the soul, of whatever description, who can weaken, blemish, or destroy our innocence or Catholic faith."
I have often been criticized for speaking the hard truths. For exposing error and for calling it what it is. So be it. I'm not interested in popularity contests or being a friend of the world. Simply put, I choose not to be a coward. I agree with Pope Leo XIII who said, "To recoil before an enemy, or to keep silence when from all sides such clamors are raised against truth, is the part of a man either devoid of character or who entertains doubt as to the truth of what he professes to believe. In both cases such mode of behaving is base and is insulting to God, and both are incompatible with the salvation of mankind." ( Sapientiae Christianae, AAS 22 (1889-90) 390, PE, 111.14).
How about you dear reader? Aren't there enough chicken-Catholics in the world?
Meditation: Galatians 1:10
It was St. Augustine, Father and Doctor of the Church, who said, "Interficere errorem, diligere errantem" - Kill the error, love the one who errs. I have actually taken that as the motto for this Blog. Gaudium et Spes of the Second Vatican Council put it this way: "..it is necessary to distinguish between error, which always merits repudiation, and the person in error, who never loses the dignity of being a person even when he is flawed by false or inadequate religious notions. God alone is the judge and searcher of hearts, for that reason He forbids us to make judgments about the internal guilt of anyone." (No. 28).
ReplyDeleteWe must repudiate Islam which is false even as we respect the dignity of persons suffering from flawed religious notions.
Someone tell that weak man, that it is a very, very good idea to have a hatred of Islam (Islam - the historical-political system responsible for the wholescale slaughter of Christians and others).
ReplyDeletehttp://beast-begins.beforeitsnews.com/survival/2016/03/april-19-temple-of-baal-in-new-york-is-going-up-same-day-the-blood-sacrifice-to-the-beast-begins-2612314.html
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