Posted on 05/04/2014 4:13:19 PM PDT by NYer
There was an odious man named Frank in our fundamentalist church when I was a boy who had a brood of badly behaved children. When one of them would act up, Frank would haul the miscreant out of the sanctuary and wallop him. When he would re-appear with the unfortunate sprog, Frank would mutter sanctimoniously, “Sometimes we need to administer love to our children.”
The memory brings to mind another fracas at church in an earlier time. At the Council of Nicea, Bishop Nicholas of Myra punched the heretic Arius in the face. Arius had been asked to defend his doctrine that Jesus Christ was only a created being and not God incarnate. The future Santa Claus, fed up with this nonsense, got up and administered some love. St. Nicholas is also known as Nicholas the Wonderworker. Some work. Some wonder.
Nicholas was not the only one of the Fathers inclined to physical expressions of orthodoxy. St. John Chrysostom was so troubled by Christians who advocated teetotalism that he preached a homily encouraging the faithful to revolt:
Paul is not ashamed. . .in writing to Timothy, to bid him take refuge in the healing virtue of wine drinking. Not to drink wine? God forbid! For such precepts belong to heretics. . . .Should you hear any one in the public thoroughfare, or in the midst of the forum, blaspheming God; go up to him and rebuke him; and should it be necessary to inflict blows, spare not to do so. Smite him on the face; strike his mouth; sanctify your hand with the blow, and if any should accuse you, and drag you to the place of justice, follow them, and when the judge. . .calls you to account, say boldly that the man blasphemed the King of angels!
Most of us would hesitate to follow John Chrysostom’s robust advice. Explaining to the sheriff that we had struck the progressive Christian because he had “blasphemed the King of Angels” is not our style. Our new beatitude is “blessed are the milquetoast for they shall inherit a peaceful life.” We prefer to do battle with words, not swords, for we are sure that fingers tapping keyboards are more effective than fists striking faces.
Nevertheless, virulent, vituperative, and even violent attitudes towards heretics are part of Scripture itself. St. Paul inveighed against the legalists who insisted that the Gentile converts should be circumcised, saying that he wished they would go the whole way and castrate themselves. (Gal.5:12)
Meanwhile St Peter wrote these choice words about heretics:
There will be false teachers among you, who will introduce destructive heresies. . .Many will follow their licentious ways, and because of them the way of truth will be reviled. In their greed they will exploit you with fabrications. . .these people, like irrational animals. . .revile things that they do not understand. . .thinking daytime revelry a delight, they are stains and defilements as they revel in their deceits while carousing with you. Their eyes are full of adultery and insatiable for sin. They seduce unstable people, and their hearts are trained in greed. Accursed children!. . .These people are waterless springs. . .for them the gloom of darkness has been reserved. . . .What is expressed in the true proverb has happened to them, “The dog returns to its own vomit,” and “A bathed sow returns to wallowing in the mire.” (2 Peter)
Indeed, while the New Testament sings sweetly of the joys of following Christ, it also echoes with the most severe imprecations against both legalistic and licentious false teachers. The apostles may not condone physical violence against heretics, but they certainly have no time for compromise, weasel words, ignoring immorality. and sentimental half-truths that paper over lies and pretend divisions do not exist.
Without becoming Westboro Baptists, our lily-livered age could use the odd theological pugilist. Few of us will take the risk of punching a heretic, but what are the options? First is clarity. There is such a thing as false teaching because there is such a thing as true teaching. The Catholic faith is true. Therefore it is dogmatic. It has boundaries. Not everything goes. It is possible to be outside the Church, and we come to know the boundaries through solid and substantial catechesis.
If we are clear that there are boundaries, then we are also clear that false teachers blur the boundaries, water down the faith, and obscure the truth. They do so in both doctrine and morals. If we are clear that heresy exists, then we must also hate it. We hate false teaching because the fate of souls is at stake. False teaching leads to bad beliefs and bad behaviors, and bad beliefs and behaviors propel souls on that broad way that leads to destruction.
Clarity is first. Charity is second. In the second chapter of the Book of Revelation St. John recounts Christ’s words to the believers in Ephesus. He says, “You have this in your favor. You hate the works of the Nicolaitans which I also hate.” (The Nicolaitans were a sect notorious for their sexual profligacy and false teaching.) Notice however, that gentle St. John says he hates the works of the Nicolaitans. So then, hate the heresy, love the heretic.
Clarity, then charity, and I would add a spice of hilarity. Chesterton was an effective warrior for the faith because he was a happy warrior. Heretics are rarely happy. Good humor, therefore, is often the best antidote to the sour-faced and self-righteous seriousness of heresy.
Unfortunately, the heretics are often as odious as the heresy. It is not easy to disentangle sin from the sinner, and it is not easy to sift the heresy from the heretic. The temptation to slap remains and therefore our prayer also remains, “Lead us not into temptation,” and teach us to administer love in better ways.
So true...As we know, the way of the father with the son was chastisement...And as we know the position of the Catholic religion is vengeance...
When the Catholic religion was created with the power and might of the Roman armies, the vengeance against non Catholic believers took on an appalling act of murder and torture, because they could...
We can see in this post that if the means was again available, we'd be living in a far more bloody world...
non-Catholic believers were AKA heretics.
Is that the heritage you mourn?
You’re claiming LDS is free from coercion and violence?
I tend to use the word “orthodox” in regards to the Eastern Churches not in full union with Rome.
For this reason I use instead the terms “conservative” and “liberal” in even areas of faith and doctrine.
Using “orthodox” with no cap is better if you’re describing orthodoxy” in the sense of orthodox or traditionally true doctrine. “Orthodox” with a cap now means the various churches who have that name in their title.
The title itself originally came from the theological disputes in what we now call the Middle East, because these were the churches that adhered to traditional orthodox doctrine (as opposed to Arianism, Donatism, or a host of other heresies that thrived there). But eventually, after the Fall of Constantinople in 1453, began to refer to the ethnic or national churches of the East.
You can’t say you’re “Orthodox” without saying what ethnic group or tradition you belong to...Russian, Serbian, Syrian, etc. But you can say you’re “orthodox” if you are either Catholic or whatever your national “Orthodox” church is, because all of them are Trinitarian and agree on the major points of Christian doctrine.
The big technical difference between the capital O Orthodox and the capital C Catholics is the so-called filioque clause in the Creed, but it is widely acknowledged that both interpretations are correct and that the wording may have been the problem.
If the capital O Orthodox ever come back, they’ll be able to finally get rid of the ethnicism that has been holding Christianity in captivity among them. And they’ll bring us all the artistic and spiritual riches of the East, which greatly influenced both Rome and its important colony, Spain, during the early years of Christianity.
The Visigothic rite traditionally celebrated in Spain, modified during Vatican II and no longer more than a shadow of its former self, nonetheless was the rite celebrated in Spain during most of the Islamic invasion (in the parts of Spain that rebelled or were not invaded) and was supposedly very similar to a Byzantine rite liturgy.
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