Author Topic: Where There is no Hatred of Heresy, There is no Holiness (Read 2638 times)

Cantarella · « **on:** November 26, 2014, 05:14:52 PM »

Where There is No Hatred of Heresy, There is No Holiness

by Father Frederick William Faber

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 loathsome 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 tranquility, 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 abomination. We need St. Michael to put new hearts into us in these days of universal heresy.

But devotion to the Precious Blood, with its hymning of the Church and its blazoning of the Sacraments will give us Michael’s heart and the craft to use Michael’s sword. Who ever drew his sword with nobler haste, or used his victory more tenderly, than that brave archangel, whose war-cry was All for God?

The Precious Blood is His Blood, who is especially Uncreated Truth. It is His Blood who came with His truth to redeem souls.

Hence love of souls is another grace, which comes from the spirit of devotion to the Precious Blood. I wish “the love of souls” were words that were not so shortly said. They mean so much that we should linger over them, in order to imbibe their sweetness, perhaps also their medicinal bitterness as well.

A volume would hardly say all that wants saying upon this matter. In all ages of the Church a zeal for souls is a most necessary grace; and this is hardly an age in which it is less necessary than usual.

Alas! It is a rare gift, incredibly rare, rare even amongst us priests, and a gift unfortunately dishonored more than most gifts by base counterfeits and discreditable impostures.

Of all things that can be named, the love of souls is perhaps the most distinctively Catholic. It seems to be a supernatural sense, belonging only to the Church.

There are several classes of saints, classes divided from each other by wide discrepancies of grace, and a dissimilitude, almost an incompatibility, of gifts. Yet the love of souls is an instinct common to all saints of whatever class.

It is a grace, which implies the accompaniment of the greatest number of graces and the exercise of the greatest number of virtues. It is the grace which irreligious people most dislike; for it is a grace which is peculiarly obnoxious to the worldly.

It is a gift also, which requires an unusually fine spiritual discernment; for it is always and everywhere the harmony of enthusiasm and discretion. Natural activity, vulgar emulation, the bustle of benevolence, the love of praise, the habit of meddling. The over-estimate of our own abilities, the hot-headedness of unripe fervor, the obstinacy of peculiar views, the endless foolishness of indocile originality — all these things prepare so many delusions for the soul, and so multiply them by combining in varieties, that the gift of counsel and the virtue of prudence, as well as the cool audacity of an apostle, are needed for the exercise of this love of souls.

It is also a very laborious grace, wearing the spirit, fatiguing the mind, disappointing the heart.

This is the reason why in so many persons it is a short-lived grace. It is a part of almost everybody’s fervor, while it is part of the perseverance of very few. It is a grace which never grows old, never has the feelings of age, or the repose of age, or the slowness of age.

Hence many men cast it aside as a thing which belongs to youth, as if it were a process to be gone through, and then there was an end of it. The soul of an apostle is always youthful. It was mature in its young prudence; and it is impetuous in its grey-haired zeal.

- Taken from The Precious Blood, Chapter VI “The Devotion To The Precious Blood”, by Frederick William Faber, originally published by Burns Oates & Washbourne Ltd., Publishers to the Holy See with a Dedication by Fr. Faber dated 1860 on the Feast of the Conversion of St. Paul.

http://www.cfnews.org/page88/files/15eee980aad7a860a137ac243795c0f9-301.html

Ladislaus · « **Reply #1 on:** November 26, 2014, 05:24:08 PM »

This makes me feel better about my public excoriation of Nado.

:roll-laugh1:

2Vermont · « **Reply #2 on:** November 26, 2014, 05:54:38 PM »

Quote from: Ladislaus

This makes me feel better about my public excoriation of Nado.

:roll-laugh1:

What does this have to do with the member called Nado?

Ladislaus · « **Reply #3 on:** November 26, 2014, 07:01:57 PM »

Quote from: Nado

Quote from: Ladislaus
This makes me feel better about my public excoriation of Nado.

:roll-laugh1:

A prominent characteristic of the Feeneyite is to charge other Catholics with ill-will, or bad-will.

The Saints didn't do that.

And a prominent characteristic of Cushingites is that they lack any sense of humor.

magdalena · « **Reply #4 on:** November 27, 2014, 11:27:35 AM »

Thank you, Cantarella. It's a great reminder of something we too often forget.

Cantarella · « **Reply #5 on:** November 27, 2014, 02:39:04 PM »

Reposting this because it refers to the place of "Virtuous Hatred" in relation to our neighbor, within the context of Catholic charity. Something quite unfamiliar for "sentimental" modern man.

From the Summa:

Quote from: Angelic Doctor

Whether sinners must be loved out of charity

Objection 1: It seems that we should not love sinners out of charity. For it is written in the Psalms:"I have hated the wicked" (Ps 118:113). Now, David had perfect charity. Therefore, sinners should be hated rather than loved, out of charity.

Objection 2: Further, "love is proved by deeds," as St. Gregory says in a homily for Pentecost (In Evang. 30). But good men do no works of love to the wicked: on the contrary they do works that appear to be of hate, according to the Psalm (100: 8): "In the morning I put to death all the wicked of the land;" also, God commanded in Exodus (22:18): "You shall not suffer a witch to live." Therefore, sinners should not be loved out of charity.

Objection 3: Further, it is proper to friendship that one should desire and wish good things for one's friends. Now the saints, out of charity, desired evil things for the wicked, according to Psalm 9:18: "May the wicked be turned into Hell." Therefore sinners should not be loved out of charity.

Objection 4: Further, it is proper to friends to rejoice in and desire the same things. Now charity does not make us desire what the sinners desire, nor to rejoice in what gives them joy, but rather the contrary. Therefore, sinners should not be loved out of charity.

Objection 5: Further, it is proper to friends to associate together, according to Ethics (chap 5, n. 3). But we should not associate with sinners, according to 2 Cor 6: 17: "Wherefore come out from among them and be separate." Therefore, we should not love sinners out of charity.

On the contrary, Augustine says (De Doctrina Christi I, 30), "When it is said: Thou shalt love thy neighbor, it is evident that we ought to look upon every man as our neighbor." Now, sinners do not cease to be men, for sin does not destroy nature. Therefore, we ought to love sinners out of charity.

I answer to these arguments that two things should be considered in the sinner, his nature and his guilt. According to his nature, which he has from God, he has a capacity for eternal happiness upon which the relationship of charity is based. as stated above (A. 3, q. 23, a. 1-5). Wherefore, we ought to love sinners out of charity in respect to their nature. [4]

On the other hand, their guilt offends God and is an impediment to their eternal happiness. Wherefore, in respect to their guilt, so long as they offend God all sinners ought to be hated, even one's father or mother or kindred, according to Luke (14:26). [5] For it is our duty to hate in the sinner his being a sinner, and to love in him his being a man capable of achieving eternal happiness. [6] This is to love him out of charity for the love of God.

Reply to objection 1: The Prophet hated the iniquitous as such, and the object of his hate was their iniquity. [7] This is the perfect hatred of which the same Prophet says (Ps. 139: 22): �I hate them with a perfect hatred.� Now, for this same reason one hates what is bad in a person and loves what is good in him. Hence also this perfect hatred belongs to charity. [8]

Reply to objection 2: As the Philosopher observes (Ethics, 9, 3), when our friends fall into sin, we should not deny them the benefits of friendship so long as there is hope of their mending their ways. And we should help them regain virtue more readily than to regain money, had they lost it, for virtue means more to friendship than money. [9]

When, however, such persons fall into very great wickedness and become incurable, we should refuse them friendly treatment. It is for this reason that both divine and human laws command such sinners to be put to death, because it is more likely that they will harm others than mend their ways. [10]

Nevertheless the judge issues such sentences not out of hatred for the sinners, but out of love of charity, because he prefers the public good to the life of one single person. Moreover, the death inflicted by the judge profits the sinner if he converts, as expiation for his crime; and if he does not convert, it profits him by putting an end to his sin, because the sinner is thus deprived of the power to sin more.

Reply to objection 3: Such like imprecations that we come across in the Holy Scripture may be understood in three ways: First, by way of prediction, not by way of wish, so that the sense is: "The wicked shall be turned into Hell."
Second, by way of wish, so that the wisher�s desire refers not to the punishment the man receives, but to the justice of the punisher, according to Psalm 58:11: "The just shall rejoice when he shall see revenge." For according to the Book of Wisdom (1:13), not even God "delights in the perdition of the wicked" when He punishes them, but He rejoices in His justice, according to the Psalm (11:7): "The Lord is righteous and He loves righteousness."
Third, so that this desire refers to the removal of the guilt, not of the chastisement, [11] in such a way that the sin be destroyed, but the man may live.

Reply to objection 4: We love sinners out of charity not so as to desire what they desire and to rejoice in what gives them joy, but so as to make them desire what we desire and rejoice in what makes us rejoice. [12] Hence it is written (Jer 15:19): "Let them convert unto you; but you shall not convert unto them."

Reply to objection 5: The weak should avoid communicating with sinners on account of the danger of being perverted by them. But it is commendable for the perfect, [13] whose fall is not to be feared, to communicate with sinners in order to convert them. Thus, the Lord ate and drank with sinners as reported in Matthew 9:11-13. Yet all should avoid the society of sinners when it means participation in sin. Thus it is written (2 Cor 6:17): "Go away from among them and touch not the unclear thing," that is, what is in accordance with sin. [14]