The new activity centred congregations founded in and after the sixteenth century were in such a hurry to get out into the fray that they were not fully equipped for the task ahead of them. They were over eager to win back the Church from the Protestant heresy, win for the Church new converts, evangelise the new ‘worlds’ that were being discovered almost daily. They wanted to re-educate the faithful without delay, to halt the dangerous new ideas that were threatening to corrupt or even destroy the Church. Sadly they felt that there was so little time to be lost that the sort of deep spiritual foundation that prepared the Apostles in the early Church was all but forgotten. Compared to the early apostolic Church the preaching and teaching that characterised the new post Renaissance congregations was superficial.
Replete with the practice of Mystical Theology
However, there were reforms of the older orders and new orders and congregations that had not forgotten their origins and the preparation necessary for intensive and effective apostolic action. The new discalced Carmelites are a perfect example of how the contemplation that can alone prepare and support a person for intensive and effective apostolic action can be practised. It was their teaching and those who followed their example that assured that, as Monsignor Ronald Knox insisted in his masterwork ‘Enthusiasm’, as well as many other spiritual theologians, that the seventeenth century was replete with the teaching and practice of mystical prayer . However, this was all to change and change dramatically because of a momentous event that took place at an ecclesiastical court in Italy in 1687.
A life sentence for a Pseudo Mystic
The court that met in Rome ended with a life sentence given to a Spanish priest called Miguel de Molinos for falling into a heresy that came to be known as Quietism. The severity of the sentence reflected the seriousness with which the Church considered his teaching. There were many errors but two things stand out above all. Firstly, that the total passivity that he demanded in prayer was in effect an acceptance of the Protestant heresy that insisted that we can do nothing to merit the action of God in prayer or in anything else for that matter. Secondly, while remaining totally passive before God in prayer, a person must do nothing to cast off temptations, particularly sexual temptations. The many counts of sexual depravity listed at his trial proved where a person ends up when they allow sexual temptations to go unchecked.
Anti-mystical Witch-hunts
The reaction to this condemnation did not just extend to other, perhaps less heretical forms of Quietism, but to all forms of mystical theology and to orthodox contemplation too. From the very beginning contemplation had been the life blood of the Church because it was the life blood of Christ himself, both before and after his Ascension into heaven. Contemplation in, with, and through him, was the only way to union with God which was the final desire of all, and the end goal therefore of all authentic Catholic Spirituality. Anti-mystical witch hunts spread out over Christendom destroying even the slightest whiff of Quietism and stamping out the practice of contemplation wherever they found it. The enormity of this and its consequences down to the present day is beyond calculation. In his monumental ‘History of the Church’ Monsignor Philip Hughes puts it this way:
“The most mischievous feature of Quietism was the suspicion that it threw on the contemplative life as a whole. At the moment when, more than at any other, the Church needed the strength that only the life of contemplation can give, it was the tragedy of history that this life shrank to very small proportions, and religion, even for holy souls, too often took on the appearance of being no more than a divinely aided effort towards moral perfection”.
Moralism supplants Mysticism
This moral perfection not only included the moral teaching of the Gospels but the moral teaching of stoicism that had seeped into Christianity in the third and fourth centuries and again at the Renaissance. Henceforth, the only way to become perfect as Christ was perfect, was to list all the moral virtues that could be seen embodied in him and try to embody them in ourselves.
In other words, the humanism that had already been partly introduced into Catholic Spirituality was now virtually extended to all. When its perpetrators are challenged then they always protest that of course the grace of the sacraments will always be necessary, whilst in practice the emphasis is always placed on human endeavour. The truth of the matter is that without the purification that is brought about through mystical contemplation, a person is not sufficiently able to access the love of God, made available to us in the sacraments, that made Christ the perfect embodiment of all the virtues.
Pick and mix Spiritualities
From that time forward and down to the present day, Catholic Spirituality may well have widened to include the myriad forms of ‘Pick and mix spiritualities’ but it did not deepen. It did not deepen because it could not deepen without the fruits of contemplation that were no longer open to them. Before the condemnation of Quietism all too many of the activity-centred congregations and those who followed this spirituality were deprived of these fruits of contemplation without which living a full Christ-like life and communicating it to others is impossible.
A Lost opportunity
There was an opportunity to reverse this pernicious downward trend in Catholic Spirituality at the Second Vatican Council but the ignorance of what had been lost prevailed. Research into early Christian practices had enabled the leading biblical theologians to bring back the early liturgy that prevailed in the early Church. However, because of the inherited apathy at best, or antagonism at the worst for contemplative spirituality assimilated in their formation, no complimentary constitution of Catholic spirituality was even considered. So after successfully restoring a modern representation of the ancient Liturgy and all the sacraments that make up that liturgy, the mystical spirituality that would enable the faithful to receive the love of God endlessly being poured out through that liturgy was totally forgotten, as it still is!
A Frightening Comparison
If it is by their fruits that you will know them, a brief comparison with early Catholic mystical spirituality and the modern moral spirituality speaks volumes. The most adept and astute of apologists are finding it increasingly difficult to describe the modern Church as One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic. When true contemplative loving is extracted from their daily spirituality then this is the inevitable consequence.
This sort of moral behaviour did not and could not have been verified in the early Church. Firstly because of the profoundly mystical Spirituality that they shared with and in Christ, Secondly, because in those early days, although serious sinners did exist and could be reconciled with the Church and be rehabilitated, this could only happen once. Recidivists were excommunicated permanently lest the sort of scandal that we see in the Church today prevented Christ the King and the community over which he reigned radiating something of the glory of God in all that they said and did.
A Revolutionary Spirituality
The profound purifying spirituality that enabled them to do this was revolutionary for themselves and for others. Why? Because it was practised within the mystical body of Christ himself into whose contemplation of God they were incorporated. It was here that they received the love of God in such abundance that it overflowed into their lives and into their apostolic action. In other words, God’s love was now able to suffuse and surcharge the moral virtues with the mystical love that animated and still animates Christ, making them into infused virtues. Only a return to this early Christian contemplative spirituality will enable Christ to do again through us what he did through the early Christians two thousand years ago.
David Torkington’s latest book, The Primacy of Loving, the Spirituality of the Heart is now available. I would be grateful for a review on Amazon or any preferred outlet