Amateur Sophomoric Theologians Want to Discourage You
Beware of those ‘Catholics’ seeking to discourage you in this time.
The internet is a handy tool to do great research, but one should stake neither life, health nor soul upon it. Any doctor will tell you that you will find terrible advice that appears otherwise. Lawyers, priests, plumbers and street sweepers will tell you the same. Discernment is of the essence when you plan to put internet based advice into practice.
This is also true during this time for Catholics. Many good people of faith become anxious about whether or not they are in a state of grace. There are plenty on the internet in Catholic fora who will tell them no. They come from the side of Catholicism that teaches that your chances of getting to New York City during the Corona Virus Shut down are greater than you ever getting to Heaven, buddy boy.
It is tragic because they scare people unnecessarily and teach an image of God that is like the demanding overlord who takes delight in seeing people suffer for all eternity, just because he can. Contrary to other’s teachings: We are indeed not sinners in the hands of an angry God.
That is not a Catholic image of God. The famous sermon of that name was by a congregationalist minister eighteenth century Massachusetts. He was not Catholic at all.
In Catholicism, we have sacraments that are manifestations of God’s grace in special times and one of those times is when one strayed from the right path.
Now there are two kinds of people in that case, those who choose to stay off the right path and those who choose to get back on to it.
God’s grace is like an inviting light that leads people to choose the way back to the road to eternal life. However, many in Catholic online fora are like the legendary Mainer giving directions: “Well, you just can’t get there from here.” They fill good, faithful people with discouragement. That is a great problem in these virtual worlds— the lurking sophomoric, amateur theologians. They are dangerous and just as much as those handing out medical information who are not trained in medicine.
The reality is that God does all he can to get you into Heaven, you will not go there if you choose to stay off the right path, otherwise, God seeks to keep you on the road to eternal life. He only demands that you co-operate with his grace. That is what the Church actually teaches.
Even St. Thomas Aquinas, the go to source for all things on salvation in the Catholic Church, teaches that God’s grace increases even in the worst of all sinners as one approaches death to encourage the person to repent and to enter eternal life. It is the most hardened of hearts that rejects that grace.
One Catholic teaching for this time is that if the Sacrament of Reconciliation (aka Confession or Penance) is not available one simply has to make a perfect act of contrition and God’s grace is available until the sacrament is once again accessible. So if a person got the virus and was on his or her death bed with sacraments unavailable to patient, God’s grace is still there.
What is a perfect act of contrition? It is actually not so much perfect as what it signifies. It means that you are sorry for your sins because of your love for God, not because you are afraid of Hell.
Many in these fora teach people filled with anxiety about their failures that they must commit a perfect act of contrition without explaining what that means. Once people hear the word ‘perfect’ then they feel they cannot reach that standard and it fills them with needless anxiety and despair.
God does all he can to get you into Heaven, period. Your co-operation will get you there, period. What will get you cast out? Simple, refusing God’s grace, period.
This is what the Church actually teaches.
The sacraments are manifestations of God’s presence in a personal and powerful way to let the faithful Catholic know that God is with each person who calls out to Him. This is called grace.
Saint Thomas Aquinas teaches that one cannot find Heaven without the grace bestowed on them from God himself. He restricts his grace to no one.
Where does this problematic teaching come in that makes it difficult for you to get into Heaven? I believe that school has a lot to do with it. I am not blaming teachers, I am talking about the social structure in our early education.
We spend all but six of the first eighteen years in our lives working to get the A. Those who do the best are awarded, rightly so, with accolades and those who do not do well are often dismissed, sometimes quite nastily, in class.
When we were learning socialization in school, many of us believed that we were on our own. We needed to put in the work and make sure that we worked hard to ensure we got an A, then we could go to college and finally in the work world where we would be rewarded with a lifetime of a good career and salary. We would die a happy death and be celebrated in the world ad infinitum.
The rest? Well they would end up on the street or in some dead end job because they did not work hard enough. My second grade teacher warned that if we did not study hard we would spend the rest of our lives in the local candy house dipping chocolates because that is where those people go. I later learned that chocolate dipping is a well-paid skill, ironically enough.
I do believe that this concept entered our faith world as well. Therefore, as in school, we had to work hard so that we could get to Heaven and experience eternal joy with Christ.
That is really not how our faith works.
I really angered some administrators in a Catholic school when I gave a homily in which the main message is: “God cheats.”
I pointed out that God does all he can to get you into heaven; that is after all the point of the cross.
School does not work that way, hence why I angered the administration. I am sure you met someone in your life who could not graduate because of falling short one or two points in one core course. Your first reaction may have been similar to mine: ‘how can a teacher be so mean?’ This is different than those who cannot graduate because they never showed up for school.
God does everything he can to see that you can get to Heaven, but your co-operation is required.
It does not have to be perfect, but it has to be done.
It is like when I was in boot camp. In order to graduate we had to run a ten minute mile. I was not much of a runner. I used to bicycle a lot, but running was not my style. It was difficult for me and I fell behind so far I was close to completely failing.
Just before I reached that line, a fellow recruit who was actually coming to the Navy from the Army encouraged me. He said: “C’mon Carr, think of what you will be doing on Saturday,” when boot camp would be over and we would finally be sailors.
I did not suddenly become the best runner in the pack, but I thought it through in a second. If I could get enough energy to move to the front of the pack then if I fell back again, I would not end up behind by the time the exercise was over. I did exactly that and I graduated.
That is a better understanding of how God works. Doing all he can to help us to make it. There are many stories of saints praying for the person who everyone else in town gave up on, but they never did. Neither does God.
Too many take that school model seriously and basically teach people that unless they are perfect in everything they do, God will cast them into Hell. They get reinforced in that belief by some yahoos who monitor these fora and fill them with this anxiety.
That is not the point of our faith.
Many of the saints describe themselves as the worst of all sinners including St. Teresa of Calcutta and St Paul. They wouldn’t celebrate their accolades but instead praised God for his grace in their weaknesses. Saint Paul says specifically he boasts not of his accomplishments but of his weaknesses for through his weaknesses Christ’s power become perfection. (2 Corinthians 12). Try using that as an excuse in your math class.
So, just as you should not replace any sound medical advice from the internet, neither should you get your faith from online fora. You will end up reading from people tell you are going to Hell. The only proper response is to ignore their advice and reciprocate their words, then call a true professional in the faith.