on making peace with heresy

By Diogenes ( articles ) | Mar 17, 2005

Dale Price blogs the following quote from the late Cardinal Henri de Lubac, S.J.

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 shocks 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.