Dissent in the Church

 WE should not be too surprised why we have dissent and dissenters within the Church. We should, in fact, expect it and also be prepared for it. We should not lose our charity just because we are contradicted. Christ himself, love and goodness incarnate, was not spared of this.

He was denied by St. Peter himself, betrayed by Judas, rejected by his own people, suspected by the leading men of his time, and finally crucified by the people he came to redeem. Even his apostles would miss the point of what he was forcefully teaching and showing.

These things can happen to anyone of us. As St. John in his gospel would have it, “He came unto his own, and his own received him not.” (1,11)

                                                                                      

Christ had to bear with all of these. More, he preached and lived what he preached that we have to love our enemies. If one strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other. If one takes away your coat, let go of it. If one forces you to walk one mile, go with him for two.

    We have to forgive not only seven times, but seventy times seven, meaning, always. He tells us to forgive otherwise we will not be forgiven ourselves. We should remember that all of us are sinners.

    This is true loving, the one that comes from God and not just our own invention, developed simply on our own terms that are mainly based on the material, the sensual, the worldly. True loving goes beyond these human, natural, not to the mention the inhuman and unnatural categories and values we are prone to have due to our sin.

    Therefore, we should be wary when we feel provoked and react to dissenters within the Church, in their usual colourful ways, by utilizing their own style and venom. That would be joining them in thegutter, instead of taking them out of it.

    What we have to do is to follow the advice of St. John of the Cross, who was clearly inspired by the example of Christ. “Where there is no love, put love and you will find love.” We don’t put off fire byadding fire. We drench it with water.

    This formula never fails. It may take time, its effects not immediately seen, but it will always work. That’s the reason why suffering and sacrifice are unavoidable to a person who truly lovesGod and everybody else in obedience to God’s will.

    That is why Christ himself told us very clearly, “Whoever wishes to come after me must deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me. For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses hislife for my sake and that of the gospel will save it.” (Mk 8,33-35)

    Dissent within the ranks is the risk all of us, from God down to the last man, take because of our freedom. It can be a sign of freedom, but not necessarily freedom itself, for true freedom is the reciprocal of total obedience to God’s will. So, let’s take it easy. Let’s just be sport, try our best with charity and truth. God is always in control.

    What we have to do is, as one saint would have it, to drown evil with an abundance of good. In our differences and conflicts, let’s never burn the lines that keep our dialogues and exchanges going. If thesituation becomes unbearable, let’s find ways to seek ways to loosen tension, erode division, remove animosities.

    Let’s pray hard, be spiritual and supernatural in approach, and then study the issues thoroughly. Kindness should not supplant competence. We don’t approach the issues with reason alone. We need to be spiritual and supernatural.

We should have a tight grip on our emotions and passions, and drop many bombs of goodwill, courtesy and compassion.

    This is how the conversation gets going even if the other party is bent in spoiling it. We should be quick to recognize the good points these dissenters make, and build on them the bridges to reach theirmind and heart.

    In points of conflicts, let’s be clear to distinguish between the person and the error. We have to learn to be “fortiter in re, suaviter in modo,” doing what is to be done with unflinching firmness, but inthe most inoffensive manner possible.

    This will definitely take time and oodles of patience. But let’s remember that in dealing with Church dissenters, it’s not a matter of scoring points but of converting them. Obviously with God’s grace but

also with our utmost effort.

Keeping the foundation

WE should never let go of our true and ultimate foundation in life. While we have different aspects in life, and each one more or less has its proper foundation, we should remember that in the final analysis our real foundation is nothing less than God himself, our Creator, Father and the abiding principle that keeps and directs our earthly existence.

    An immediate corollary to this is that we therefore are brothers and sisters to one another. We should polish this sense of being God’s children and our fraternity among ourselves, since many are now the factors that seek to undermine this.

    We need to remind ourselves of this obvious and fundamental truth because nowadays we seem to be slowly and unconsciously detaching ourselves from him, as we get more and more immersed, and also confused, in our earthly and temporal affairs—business, politics, pursuit of knowledge in the sciences, technology, arts, etc.

    As a consequence, we are getting swallowed up by a certain logic and dynamics that is purely worldly, material-found, or at best social, political or economic that, given our human condition, cannot help befall into different and conflicting positions and views.

    Besides it’s a dynamics that also deadens our spiritual aspirations that always, by its very nature, tend to enter into the supernatural reality, the world of faith and religion. It’s a dynamics that in its desire to keep us realistic, confine us always to the here and now, to what is practical, popular, convenient. It hardly goes beyond this.

    In fact, it’s a dynamics that sooner or later will develop an intense hatred against anything spiritual and supernatural, anything that has to do with faith and religion. It becomes aggressively, even violently, intolerant to these considerations, shutting Christ out of our public discourses and restricting him to purely private quarters, if it still does care a little about religious freedom.

    It’s also a dynamics that will eventually put division among ourselves, since it will certainly erode the principle of our unity and fraternity. Instead of being brothers and sisters, we would become enemies to one another.

    Christ has warned us about this very likely possibility, one is that is actually happening in many places today. Referring directly to his usual critics, the scribes and the Pharisees, he said: “Blind guides, who strain out a gnat, and swallow a camel.” (Mt 23,24)

    This happens when we replace God’s wisdom with our own worldly wisdom, propped up merely by our sciences and technologies, and our political, social or cultural consensus. These are things that, whileproducing wonderful benefits, cannot bring us to our transcendent ultimate goal.

    Let’s remember what St. Paul said about human knowledge, especially the kind that is bereft of charity. “Knowledge puffs up, but charity edifies.” (1 Cor 8,1) The pursuit of knowledge that is not inspired by love of God and others is a dangerous exercise, is toxic to our true human dignity, harmful to human unity.

    This is something we have to resolve. We have to learn how to relate our earthly affairs to our supernatural goal. That’s why we need to pray a lot, meditate on the words and life of Christ, who is thefullness of divine revelation and the very pattern of our humanity.

    We need to master the doctrine of our faith, ever pursuing to have a greater grasp of the whole doctrinal body, so we can have a truly integral, complete vision of things, approximating God’s vision for us. This provides us with the proper perspectives through which to see the world and to relate our temporal affairs to God.

    We should never forget that to closely follow Christ, who is the way, the truth and the life for us, we need to follow what he said: to deny ourselves and to carry the cross. There is no other formula, since our worst enemy is actually our own selves, our pride and tendency to make ourselves our own God.

    We need radical humility that can only be achieved through the cross. That is why we need to appreciate the wisdom of Christ’s cross. St. Paul reminds us of this:

    “We preach Christ crucified, unto the Jews indeed a stumbling block, and unto the Gentiles foolishness. But unto them that are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.” (1 Cor 1,23)

    In our politics, the social, economic or purely political options only have relative value. But when an option goes against God, his commandments, the teaching of his Church, then we know it is really wrong.

The value of the Cross

ONE of the greatest disasters of our times is that many people, a great majority of them, have nothing but disgust and even hatred for the distinctive value of suffering. For them, suffering is an intrinsic evil, and therefore should be avoided at all costs.

The cross, the icon of suffering, should be nothing other than an ornament at best. It should not hold any other purpose or meaning.

This is the sad thing about our current world culture. It directly contradicts what Christ said: “If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me.” (Mt 16,24)

The cross, in whatever form it comes, is actually the key that opens the spiritual and supernatural world meant for us. It widens our perspectives, and leads us to transcend the limits of our human nature. It enables us to enter into the dynamics of a love that is not
only material but also spiritual, not only natural but also supernatural.

It represents the extreme and ultimate way of loving, as it invites us to go beyond the confines of our wounded human nature in order to soar to the divine love from where we come and to where we are supposed to go.

With the cross, we would know how to pay for the offenses and sins we have committed. It is the fair deal we are offered in exchange of the tremendous benefit it also gives us—nothing less than the possibility to love all the way to God.

God, and not just the sky, is the limit of our loving. That’s why Christ gave us the new commandment that summarizes all the other previous commandments given to us—that we love one another as he, Christ, loved us. Christ is the standard of our love, and not just any human and natural value.

That’s why saints and holy men and women, following the example of Christ, have always seen the cross as something most welcome in their lives, because Christ’s love for us goes all the way to the cross. Pope Benedict says, “There is no love without suffering.”

Opus Dei founder, St. Josemaria Escriva, echoing the sentiments of all the saints, laments that “the cross is still a symbol of death, instead of being a sign of life. People still flee from the cross as though it were a scaffold, when it is a throne of glory. Christians
still reject the cross and identify it with sorrow, instead of identifying it with love.”

Without the cross, we debase our love and restrict it to the purely sensual, worldly and temporal level. Without it, the wings of our love are cut as it functions only on the basis of practicality, convenience, popularity and other earthly values, motives and advantages.

This is what we see in all these rationalizations behind the move to pass the RH Bill, for example. Those for it, as well as all those who are for abortion, euthanasia and similar things, are espousing a kind of love that sees no value in the cross.

It’s ok to contracept, it’s ok to abort, it’s ok to euthanize, because to a particular person, that may be the right thing to do. No one should dare to correct him, unless some immediate physical harm takes place.

They are developing a kind of morality that is not based on God who is love, bur rather on their own idea of what is good and evil. They make themselves their own God.

Since it’s a morality that denies God, it cannot help but fall to the belief that there can be no absolute truths and no universal moral law. The corollary is that everything is relative to the acting person, to the situation, to the consequences, and to other circumstances and elements, etc.

Of course, it is ironic that what is relative and individualistic is now made the absolute and universal moral law. Everything is reduced to the thinking that what may be good to me may not be good to you, and vice-versa. There’s no such thing as an intrinsically good act which should be fostered at all times, nor an intrinsically bad act that should be  avoided at all times.

This thinking is contained in such ethical systems as relativism, situation ethics,  consequentialism, proportionalism, and some peculiar variations of the so-called fundamental option and liberation theology.

Only considering the circumstances and ignoring the nature of the act itself and the agent’s intentions, they detach themselves from God who loves us through the Cross.