Heresy: Grieving And Moral Injury
By FR. KEVIN M. CUSICK
Many are suffering a devastating spiritual wildfire that is leaving vast destruction in its wake. Some speak out, but many others keep their counsel, for reasons ranging on the spectrum all the way from fear to prudence, or some combination thereof.
What I describe finds an apt metaphor in California ravaged by an aggressive wildfire gone out of control, threatening many lives and the destruction of property. We grieve with those who lost their homes. News comes as I write on this winter morning that two persons have in fact died as result of the blaze. May others be spared a similar fate.
The danger of death ever threatens all of the living. But because of our faith it never need mean more than the loss merely of the body, dust to dust.
The phenomenon of a good thing gone out of control is a definition for heresy: choosing one element of the Church’s faith and life, exaggerating it out of proportion to the point of obscuring or overturning another necessary component of salvation.
Just as fire in its place can serve as a heat source or aid in creating and producing but can also run amok, causing death and destruction, so heresy. Compassion is good and necessary but denying another soul the truth is never compassionate.
When the safety and security of the weak are threatened they must sometimes flee the fire. Just as we must sometimes flee temptation as our only means of rejecting temptation, so when the powerful oppress the least among us by imposing conformity to error, escape may be the only viable recourse.
Others may not have the luxury of removal from proximity to error. They will suffer the devastation of mental and spiritual agony in witnessing and processing the results.
This is the moral injury of the good who see the truth attacked and denied.
There can arise a concomitant temptation to submit to resignation, a kind of moral defeat.
So in the Church, the phenomenon of grieving the moral injury of heresy. It is one thing when members go astray of their own volition. It is entirely another when those responsible for teaching, guiding, correcting and reproving themselves promote error.
Many members of the Church are suffering the consequences of betrayal. A devastating and overwhelming wildfire of an attack on truth has had negative consequences for the mental, moral and spiritual health of countless believers.
Some speak. Some languish silently. Some discontinue the practice of their faith. Loss of souls is the result in the ultimate damage to the mission of preaching the Gospel and the Lord’s work of redemption.
And in some cases we may witness punishment meted out to those who will not go along “for fellowship’s sake.”
Persecuting those who want to pray and live as the Church has always done and taught while preaching the necessity of “radical inclusion” is mentally stressful as well as nonsensical. And extremely damaging to the spiritual life and witness of the Church to the broader society, which requires internal coherence for growth, serenity and overall spiritual well-being.
The cruel edicts of Rome expelled traditional Catholic families from parishes, gutting the affected communities financially, and increasing the fragility of those already experiencing borderline non-viability in small churches across the country.
To promote error is in fact attacking the Church herself, in a mistaken attempt to show understandable compassion for individuals, an always necessary good.
Defining, or in some cases, redefining, compassion means inverting the faith and practice of the Church. It has always glowed with some heat at various levels within the organization, but when bishops themselves began to light a match and then use their authority to require others to do so, the low level fever of error in ember form explodes into a raging inferno. Now it swallows up entire dioceses.
The Eucharist is, of course, “medicine for the weak” as we have heard from a prominent voice in Rome. We all share in the weakness that is simply human nature. There is no problem at all with, and certainly much help in, urging the faithful to call upon Christ for divine strength through the infinite graces of the holy Eucharist.
But when it comes to mortal sin, we’re not talking about the mere weakness that all of us share simply as human beings; we’re talking instead about the free act of the intellect and will to choose evil. Not to ask a human person to take responsibility for that is in fact to do injury to the dignity of that person.
One of the errors commonly encountered is the flipping of what is good into something mislabeled as “bad” and therefore better discarded as burdensome or even injurious.
For one example, to accuse the Church of placing “barriers” between souls and salvation is a calumny when, in fact, it is the moral truth which the Church teaches that helps individuals to overcome the barriers to accessing grace, which their own freely chosen actions have frustrated.
The sacrament of Confession is both the witness box of truth and the tribunal of infinite mercy. Misrepresenting the sacrament instituted by Christ to free souls from the ultimate bondage to sin is a tremendous calumny. Against God Himself.
The methodology of deconstructing Church teaching on faith and morals then quickly follows upon this artificial catalyst of change.
The so-called “wise” among us are no longer exercising the sobriety of faith unto salvation. They have become in their own minds “wiser,” puffed-up by pride in “conformity to this world.”
“I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercy of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, pleasing unto God, your reasonable service.
“And be not conformed to this world; but be reformed in the newness of your mind, that you may prove what is the good, and the acceptable, and the perfect will of God.
“For I say, by the grace that is given me, to all that are among you, not to be more wise than it behoveth to be wise, but to be wise unto sobriety, and according as God hath divided to every one the measure of faith” (Rom. 12:1-3).
Holiness is found also in chastity, living the new life of grace by presenting body and soul as a “living sacrifice” to God. The attempt to approve and even bless sexual sin is an anti-Gospel that inverts and overturns chastity, necessary for everyone who would be saved.
Those who reject this truth compound confusion and encourage sin. What is the answer?
We have all we need for salvation in our sacred tradition handed down in the Church. Let us embrace and teach it all the more. Each has his or her own role as the Scriptures teach:
“For as in one body we have many members, but all the members have not the same office:
“So we being many, are one body in Christ, and every one members one of another.
“And having different gifts, according to the grace that is given us, either prophecy, to be used according to the rule of faith;
“Or ministry, in ministering; or he that teacheth, in doctrine;
“He that exhorteth, in exhorting; he that giveth, with simplicity; he that ruleth, with carefulness; he that sheweth mercy, with cheerfulness” (Rom. 12:4-8).
Our Lord Jesus is King of love and Shepherd. There is never any internal incoherence or distress for those who wholly embrace His way of salvation in the Church.
As we have done so we shall do. Against the destructive fires of heresy we shall fight with the fire of love: love for our Lord and the freeing truths of salvation, bringing release for all who are imprisoned by error and sin.
“Let love be without dissimulation. Hating that which is evil, cleaving to that which is good. Loving one another with the charity of brotherhood, with honour preventing one another. In carefulness not slothful. In spirit fervent. Serving the Lord. Rejoicing in hope. Patient in tribulation. Instant in prayer.
“Communicating to the necessities of the saints. Pursuing hospitality. Bless them that persecute you: bless, and curse not.
“Rejoice with them that rejoice; weep with them that weep. Being of one mind one towards another. Not minding high things, but consenting to the humble. Be not wise in your own conceits” (Rom. 12:9-16).
Thank you for reading and praised be Jesus Christ, our King, now and forever.
