I can't remember if I insulted St. Therese or not.  I had read Richard Ibranyi saying that she called pagans "wild flowers" and that they were saved without hearing the name of Jesus.  I remember writing one post about this at least and deleting it.  But if I did insult her, I apologize.

Ibranyi misread the passage.

http://www.romancatholicism.org/therese.htm

St. Therese says:  "He has created the poor savage with no guide but natural law, and it is to their hearts that He deigns to stoop. They are His wild flowers whose homeliness delights Him."

This doesn't mean that he saves them in the state of the natural law.  It means that He sends them a missionary or reveals the truth to them somehow.  How can Ibranyi be so aware of how many misinterpret Pius IX when he said something similar in two encyclicals, and then go and misinterpret St. Therese?

Yeah, the passage Ibranyi cites could lead to the implicit faith conclusion, but it doesn't feel underhanded.  It's actually beautifully expressed and I think what she's trying to say clearly comes across.  He also misinterprets another passage from her Christmas play.  Sheesh.  This guy has to apologize for calling her "The Big Stinkweed."

You really have to be careful with stuff translated from other languages.

In the first passage, St. Therese says that if you have a perfect love and confidence in God, He will purge your soul through charity.  If your soul is purified by the fire of God's love, then you can be sure of not going to Purgatory.  Of course, it's hard to know for sure whether God has completely purged your soul.  It's an IF...THEN proposition, and an act of hope/confidence, not an absolute certainty.

With regard to the second passage, it is in fact the common teaching of moral theologians that we can have certain faults--weaknesses of nature--also called imperfections, that are not sins and which therefore do not offend God.  Faults or imperfections are weaknesses which even fall short of being venial sins, inclinations of our fallen nature which as long as we don't consent to them with our wills are not sins and therefore do not offend God.  Even the saints struggled with some of these faults, and God allows them to increase our humility.

There's nothing wrong, much less heretical, with either of these quotes.  And even if St. Therese had made a slight error, so what?  She's not a theologian and would surely have accepted correction on these points.  St. Thomas Aquinas is also known to have made some errors.  So which "Antipope" canonized him and proclaimed him a Doctor of the Church?  And St. Therese was no theologian.

Don't you see what you're doing, CM?  You are making yourself the final arbiter of true doctrine, even as the Protestants do with their Bible-based theology.

Ah, CM, if only you and I could be more like St. Therese.

Sometimes the polemics can be a serious distraction from our spiritual lives.  Which is why I had largely disengaged from the theological polemic for about 13 years now.  I much prefer to meditate and pray than to get into it with people on theology.

I concede your point about the first quote, but the second quote reads "COMMIT a fault".  I reject your point, until you can prove that she is not speaking of a sin.  I will wait patiently.

We probably need to see the original French.  Commit might just be a loose way of saying that if a fault happens.

CM, you must realize that not everyone is on their guard every second.  Those comments may be slightly careless, but heretical?  Ease up on the throttle a bit.

True, it doesn't sound right to say that our faults make Jesus love us more.  Having these faults and then overcoming them through His grace is what would impress Him.  But how do you know that's not what she meant?  


For instance, Peter's denial of Christ is more than a fault, but Christ knew he would deny Him and loved him anyway, because He knew Peter would prove himself later.

What she said also fits with her whole philosophy of greater and lesser saints.  It could be a fault of St. Therese that she wasn't as powerful as St. Augustine, that she can't perform polemically like he can, that she can't fight heresies like he can.  Yes, it says "commit" a fault, but this sounds more careless to me than heretical, because I don't think she's using the term "fault" theologically, the way a Pope would.

Probably the most disturbing thing that Ibranyi said about St. Therese was that she prayed for an unrepentant murderer, knowing he was unrepentant, and said God would save him anyway in His great mercy.  That is disturbing, and could be even seen as witch-like, as sympathy for the devil.  But it could also be seen as simply a passionate exaggeration of God's mercy at the expense of His justice, a naive blunder.

Remember, the Church is the spotless bride of Christ.  It could not make these mistakes, or careless slips.  But St. Therese is not the Church, nor are any of us except the Pope when he teaches from the Solemn Magisterium.  If any of this is heretical, and we don't know if she corrected herself later, then I am ten thousand times the heretic that she was.  I can't remember the last day I got through without messing up somehow.

Even St. Catherine of Siena, my favorite female saint, talked of her sins, and she admitted that for most of her life she fought with pride.  There is a story about how she held a dying criminal in her arms and as he expired he said "Oh Catherine!  Oh Jesus!"  and she was very pleased about this.  There is some pride there, that she takes pleasure in being mentioned as a savior figure along with Jesus.  So what?  She's human.  She co-redemptrixed a bit, since she brought the dying man to the Redeemer.  To Jesus through Catherine.

Those things all have conditions, which must be met.  Ladislaus mentioned this principle in relation to her quote, and in case you missed it, I conceded the point.

I'm still not convinced on "commit a fault".  I've been thinking about this one all day and I don't see a way around it.

Only the perfect never offend God and the perfect are without fault, even if they "differ in glory".

Of course not, but something's going on with her.

The only Aids "victim" is one born with it, as far as I can tell.

What happened to your ignore count all of a sudden?  Have you got a big zit or something?

I think it was that I suggested the Haitians who died in the quake are most likely going to hell since someone said they practiced voodoo.  That was imprudent actually.  Even if it's true, you don't need to go around trumpeting it.  

Still, is it unforgiveable enough to earn an ignore?  And is this because I have a pimple, or is this whole website suffering from the disease of Freebarabbasitis?  Only God knows.