Author Topic: Fr. Faber and truth and heresy (Read 306 times)

Merry · « **on:** August 04, 2019, 04:17:25 PM »

Fr. Faber was once asked if he didn't still have some affection for the Anglican Church, the church which baptized him, the church which was his mother in the Christian Religion.

He responded vehemently that he had no such affection. That that church was a fraud and imposter, a quite unnatural "mother" that just leads or keeps souls away from truth - an enemy of Our Lord's true Catholic Religion, the True Church.

Fr. Frederick William Faber

- from his book, The Precious Blood

If we hated sin as we ought to hate it, purely, keenly, manfully, we should do more penance, we should inflict more self-punishment, we should sorrow for our sins more abidingly. Then, again, the crowning disloyalty to God is heresy. It is the sin of sins, the very loathsomest of things which God looks down upon in this malignant world. Yet how little do we understand of its excessive hatefulness! It is the polluting of God’s truth, which is the worst of all impurities.

Yet how light we make of it! We look at it, and are calm. We touch it and do not shudder. We mix with it, and have no fear. We see it touch holy things, and we have no sense of sacrilege. We breathe its odor, and show no signs of detestation or disgust. Some of us affect its friendship; and some even extenuate its guilt. We do not love God enough to be angry for His glory. We do not love men enough to be charitably truthful for their souls.

Having lost the touch, the taste, the sight, and all the senses of heavenly-mindedness, we can dwell amidst this odious plague, in imperturbable tranquillity, reconciled to its foulness, not without some boastful professions of liberal admiration, perhaps even with a solicitous show of tolerant sympathies.

Why are we so far below the old saints, and even the modern apostles of these latter times, in the abundance of our conversations? Because we have not the antique sternness? We want the old Church-spirit, the old ecclesiastical genius. Our charity is untruthful, because it is not severe; and it is unpersuasive, because it is untruthful.

We lack devotion to truth as truth, as God’s truth. Our zeal for souls is puny, because we have no zeal for God’s honor. We act as if God were complimented by conversions, instead of trembling souls rescued by a stretch of mercy.

We tell men half the truth, the half that best suits our own pusillanimity and their conceit; and then we wonder that so few are converted, and that of those few so many apostatize.

We are so weak as to be surprised that our half-truth has not succeeded so well as God’s whole truth. Where there is no hatred of heresy, there is no holiness.

A man, who might be an apostle, becomes a fester in the Church for the want of this righteous indignation.

- from his Spiritual Conferences

I have another unpopular complaint to make. The old-fashioned hatred of heresy is becoming scarce. God is not habitually looked at as the sole truth; and so the existence of heresies no longer appalls the mind. It is assumed that God must do nothing painful, and His dominion must not allow itself to take the shape of an inconvenience or a trammel to the liberty of His creatures. If the world has outgrown the idea of exclusiveness, God must follow our lead, and lay it aside as a principle in His dealings with us. What the enemy want they must have at last. This is the rule and the experience of a constitutional country. Thus discord in religion, and untruth in religion, must come to be less odious and less alarming to men, simply because they are accustomed to them. It requires courage, both moral and mental, to believe the whole of a grand nation to be wrong, or to think that an entire century can go astray. But theology, with a brave simplicity, concludes a whole world under sin, and sees no difficulty in the true Church being able to claim only a moderate share of the population of the earth. The belief in the facility of salvation outside the Church is very agreeable to our domestic loves and to our private friendships. Moreover, if we will hold this, the world will pardon a whole host of other superstitions in us, and will do us the honor of complimenting the religion God gave, as if it were some literary of philosophical production of our own. Is this such a huge gain? Many seem amazingly pleased with it, and pay dear for it quite contentedly. Now, it is plain that this belief must lower the value of the Church in our eyes. It must relax our efforts to convert others. It must relax our efforts to convert ourselves. Those who use the system of the Church least will of course esteem it least and see least in it, and are the most forward and the most generous in surrendering the prerogatives of the Church to the exigencies of modern smoothness and universalism. It would be strange if divine truths were not sometimes harsh to a world lost in corruption and sin. Yet we have not the bravery to hold fast to our principles. We should think priest, and sacrament, and church membership, of the last consequence to ourselves, if we were dying. But we regard them of too little consequence to our neighbor to justify a candor which might savor of impoliteness, or a sincerity which may be unpopular. Or is it that we really do not care whether he be saved or not? However, our want of hatred of heresy first lowers our doctrines, and then our standard of practice. Hence it is that, with the spirit of inward repentance, a love of the Church grows also; and that, where there is cordial hatred of sin, cordial hatred of heresy is not far off. All these are antiquated notions; yet I keep running into them unconsciously. I believe we should be more really and validly repentant if we had a trifle more of the spirit of the old Inquisitors about us. I know I ought to be ashamed of this in the meridian splendor of the Nineteenth Century; but it is a weakness which I cannot overcome, perhaps because I have not made sufficiently earnest efforts to overcome it. Up to this time I continue to hold that hatred of heresy will go along with genuine inward repentance. I beg of God, in His infinite compassion, to keep alive in me to the last hour of my life the intense hatred of heresy with which He has inspired me, and which I recognize as His gift. I beg of Him to make it grow in me to an abhorrence far greater that it is yet. Heaven is the land of love; but the hatred of heresy will not diminish there; for the hatred of heresy is the adoring love of God’s ever-blessed truth.

Incredulous · « **Reply #1 on:** August 04, 2019, 05:36:55 PM »

What if we write Pope Francis petitioning him to dump Newman and replace him with Father Faber for Canonization?

During his preparation to become Catholic, Father Faber put himself under Dr. Newman, who had prohibited him from invoking Our Blessed Mother and the Angels and Saints while he was praying (Another sign of Card. Newman's holiness).

And at the end of 1844, Father Faber wrote Newman asking him to revoke the prohibition.

Father Faber was named a Doctor of Divinity by Pope Pius IX in July of 1854.

Father Frederick Faber

As for saintliness, he had a great devotion to Our Blessed Mother, as described in the link below.

Mary the Coredemptrix in the Writings of Frederick William Faber (1814-1863)

Merry · « **Reply #2 on:** August 04, 2019, 06:01:53 PM »

Well, whatever happens with Cardinal Newman, there is no doubt about the Catholic spirit and devotion of Fr. Faber.

If he wrote only "Jesus, My Lord, My God, My All" - he deserves thanks from the rest of us.

Author Topic: Fr. Faber and truth and heresy (Read 306 times)

Merry

Fr. Faber and truth and heresy

Incredulous

Re: Fr. Faber and truth and heresy

Merry

Re: Fr. Faber and truth and heresy