Eclectic Amateur

Dale Price finds a passage from de Lubac which wonderfully explains a great modern paradox:

If heretics no longer horrify us today, as they once did our forefathers, is it certain that it is because there is more charity in our hearts? Or would it not too often be, perhaps, without our daring to say so, because of the bone of contention, that is to say, the very substance of our faith, no longer interests us?

Men of too familiar and too passive a faith, perhaps for us dogmas are no longer the Mystery on which we live, the Mystery which is to be accomplished in us. Consequently, then, heresy no longer shockjavascript:void(0)
Save as Drafts us; at least, it no longer convulses us like something trying to tear the soul of our souls away from us….And that is why we have no trouble in being kind to heretics, and no repugnance in rubbing shoulders with them.

In reality, bias against ‘heretics’ is felt today just as it used to be. Many give way to it as much as their forefathers used to do. Only, they have turned it against their political adversaries. Those are the only ones who horrify them. Those are the only ones with whom they refuse to mix. Sectarianism has only changed its object and taken other forms, because the vital interest has shifted. Should we dare to say that this shifting is progress?

It is not always charity, alas, which has grown greater, or which has become more enlightened: it is often faith, the taste for the things of eternity, which has grown less. Injustice and violence are still reigning; but they are now in the service of degraded passions.

–Henri de Lubac, S.J.
Further Paradoxes, pp. 118-119, Newman Press, 1958. (Ellipsis in original)

I have puzzled for a bit over the paradox of the Episcopalian (and more generally “liberal”) approach to “tolerance”, “acceptance”, “inclusiveness”, and other buzzwords for some time now.

Deny the Resurrection and Virgin Birth of Our Lord? No problem, have fun with your bishoprick! Good luck on those book deals! Clearly, no horror of heresy here, right? (Apparantly, the ECUSA has “no core doctrine” regarding the actual meaning of the words in the Nicene Creed which it recites every Sunday.)

Ah, but deny the real religion (sex good! George Bush bad!, or perhaps dialogue good! turf-crossing bad!), and the long knives come out.

There was a time, a long time ago, when it seemed logical to me that a church which tolerates Jack Spong ought to have room for me. de Lubac explains well why this is not necessarily so. I did not know then about Newhaus’ Law (“Where orthodoxy is optional, orthodoxy will sooner or later be proscribed.”).

God have mercy upon us.