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Heresy
is “diversity” . . .
diversity
is heresy. |
The Question |
Rejection of Graces |
Condoning Sin
The
Question
As a part of studying Church
Tradition, every person who calls himself or
herself a Christian must develop an understanding of the theological concept
of heresy.
Now, many persons in today’s
world bristle at the use of the word heresy, but technically all
Protestants are heretics, and all so-called Catholics who dissent from the
true Faith are heretics. The word heretic comes from the Greek word
hairetikos which means “able to choose.” Thus a heretic
is someone who chooses some aspects of the Faith
and rejects other aspects of it. To speak of heresy, then, is not a judgment;
it’s a simple fact.
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When a criminal
stands in court and hears the judge say, “This court finds you guilty
and sentences you to ten years in prison,” that’s judgment. So,
too, when someone says, “Go to hell,” that is judgment.
But to tell someone that he is living in sin and is in grave danger of ending
up in hell is a warning, not judgment. As for what will actually happen to
this poor soul . . . well, only God can make that
judgment. |
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Anyone who wishes to enter deeply
into the Catholic faith, therefore, must pose this question: When individuals
reject various aspects of true Catholic teaching—and often treat it
with contempt and hostility—do they also reject the salvation that Christ
offers them through His Church?
To answer this question, we must
consider two separate, but interrelated, topics: the rejection of graces,
and the condoning of sin.
Rejection of
Graces
Through the Catholic Church all
Catholics can obtain all the graces necessary to work out their
salvation. These graces include not just the seven
sacraments [1]
(Baptism, Confirmation [or Chrismation], the Eucharist, Penance, Anointing
of the Sick [commonly called “Last Rites” when administered
near death], Holy Orders, and Matrimony) but also all the devotions that
help us to pray constantly for our needs and
for the sake of other souls, and to sustain us in our efforts to make
sacrifices for others.
And, as part of their protest
against Catholic Tradition, Protestants reject most of the sacraments. Some
Protestant sects reject all the sacraments except Baptism and Matrimony.
Many Catholics treat the sacraments with such ignorance as to defile them.
Protestants also reject Catholic devotions such as intercessory prayers to
the Blessed Virgin and the saints. And all Protestants reject the
Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist. But however
much we might commune with Christ in our hearts through prayer, our bodies
are the temples of the Holy Spirit and need the
physical nourishment of Christ’s Body and Blood to be sustained in the
hard work of our salvation.
Nevertheless, rejecting many
of God’s graces, as long as it does not become
sacrilege,[2]
is not necessarily a mortal sin, for though
it impairs one’s closeness to God and offends and wounds charity, it
may not completely destroy charity.
Of course, by rejecting many
graces, such as the Eucharist, the
Rosary, the Chaplet of The
Divine Mercy, and the Liturgy of the Hours, no
soul—Protestant or Catholic—will be able to advance very far in
spiritual perfection. Even if it manages to avoid
mortal sin, it will die encumbered by its
attachments to the secular world, it will have many
stains to be burned out of it in Purgatory, and
it will likely be only a spark of holiness in heaven compared to the stellar
luminescence of the great saints who have given themselves totally to Christ
without protest.
Condoning
Sin
The rejection of graces, however,
has an insidious psychological consequence. Without being able to cling tightly
to the rock of true Faith, we get blown off into
the open seas, with no sense of direction and no guideposts, and, in this
desolate and empty place, we become susceptible to the deceptions and
illusions of human
desire. Even in trying to follow our
conscience, we often see things according
to what we want, not according to what is good for us—or what
serves the true good of others. And so, lost in
pride and
blindness, we defile
love and fall prey to all the temptations of
sin.
And this is precisely what has
happened to the Protestant sects and Catholic dissenters. Cutting themselves
off from Catholic doctrine, and drifting wherever the wind of popular sentiment
happens to be blowing, everything becomes relative. Sin slowly loses its
revulsion. And before long, even those who have been baptized and have
(supposedly) renounced the ways of the devil begin
to believe that sin really isn’t sin. And,
wittingly or unwittingly, they end up condoning
sin.
Consider, for example, the seven
capital (or deadly) sins: pride, avarice, envy, wrath, gluttony,
sloth, and lust. Look at them as evidenced by contemporary life in
Protestant [3]
America.
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Pride,
avarice, and envy have become standard practices in business and
sports. |
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Wrath?
Anger and revenge
have become the daily practice of our legal system and our political system,
as well as a way of life on our streets and in our homes. |
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Gluttony? Potbellies and
obesity have become a national trademark, in
the context of rampant and insatiable consumerism. |
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Sloth? Resting our potbellies
in front of a television for several hours every day has become the national
exercise, in the context of a growing indifference to self-discipline and
personal integrity. |
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And lust?
Fornication has become a recreational sport. Birth
control pills have become a matter of personal grooming, like combing the
hair. Homosexuality, bisexuality, and heterosexuality have become
choices of preference like a café latte or
a cappuccino. Divorce has become no more significant than getting an automotive
oil change. Abortion has become just a medical
treatment for the unwanted side effects of fornication. |
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In all of this, life is reduced
to its lowest common denominator—personal pleasure and convenience—and
sin becomes just a way of life.
Here, then, we find the real
danger of heresy—both to Protestants and to Catholics subject to its
pernicious influence. When true Catholic virtues—such as
chastity; humility;
modesty; detachment
from the world; suffering and obedience;
and prayer and sacrifice as works of
mercy—are pushed aside, then sin is condoned.
When sin is condoned, it can’t be repented. And when a soul does not
repent its sins, it cannot be
saved.
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In aviation,
a pilot flying on a dark night with no lighted horizon for reference can
become disoriented, putting the airplane into what is aptly called a
graveyard spiral—a spiraling dive into the ground. Even as the
airplane plunges to its destruction, centrifugal forces will counteract the
force of gravity, and the pilot will “feel” that everything is
normal. The flight instruments, of course, will tell the truth, but because
everything feels OK, the pilot will ignore the instruments, believing
that they have gone bad. |
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And so, with this lesson from
aviation, perhaps you can now understand how someone lost in heresy can be
living in mortal sin and yet feel that
he or she is living a Christian life. Deceived by the sentimental desire
to be “accepting,” and ignoring the instruments—the
Tradition of the Catholic Church—it will
be only a matter of time before he or she plunges to total destruction, to
hear Christ the Judge say, “You say you ate and drank with Me, but I
do not know you; get away from Me and depart into the
darkness.”
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1. What exactly is a sacrament? A sacrament is
a visible sign (sacramentum) of the mystery of salvation
(mysterium). The sacraments, says the Catechism of the Catholic
Church, “are efficacious signs of grace, instituted by Christ and
entrusted to the Church . . . . The visible rites by which the sacraments
are celebrated signify and make present the graces proper to each sacrament.
They bear fruit in those who receive them with the required dispositions”
(§ 1131).
2. Sacrilege, says the
Catechism of the Catholic Church, “consists in profaning or treating
unworthily the sacraments and other liturgical actions, as well as persons,
things, or places consecrated to God. Sacrilege is a grave sin especially
when committed against the Eucharist, for in this sacrament the true Body
of Christ is made substantially present for us” (§ 2120).
3. During WW2, President Roosevelt
privately said to Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau, Jr., and a Catholic
appointee, Leo Crowley, “You know this is a Protestant country, and
the Catholics and Jews are here under sufferance.” See The Conquerors:
Roosevelt, Truman and the Destruction of Hitler’s Germany 1941-1945
(Simon & Schuster) by Michael Beschloss. An excerpt can be found at
“FDR’s
Auschwitz Secret,” by Michael Beschloss, Newsweek, October 14,
2002.
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Can anyone outside
the Church
