Compassion

Ever since I began in this space to write in support of Archbishop Burke for his handling of the recent dissenter activity in St. Louis-- activity leading to the excommunication of pretend priestesses McGrath and Hudson and schismatic priest Bozek, and the canonical admonition of Sr. Lears-- I get the occasional email or comment about how I lack what their supporters consider the most important virtue.

Compassion.

Flannery O'Connor wrote, "In the absence of faith, we govern by tenderness, and tenderness leads to the gas chamber."  Walker Percy paid homage to this idea in The Thanatos Syndrome, and many mistakenly give him credit for the quote (I trust the womenpriest crowd will note I give the female author credit here).

Does not this sum up the state of affairs in the Church?

Many so-called Catholics live out a practical divorce of Faith and Truth-- as though one could have the faith without the truth.  They say they hold to the true Gospel of Love that Jesus intended, and they equate faithfulness to it with social action.  The Church is not seen as a visible, historical reality, but rather an interior feeling and relationship among those who hear the voice of God inside them.  Thus the voice of the real Church-- the one Christ founded upon Peter and his successors, and which speaks with Christ's own authority-- is not relevant to them.   They preach compassion, and make their inner voice their own infallible Pope.

Compassion-mongers tell us that differences of opinion are not important.  All religions have truth, and it is intolerant to claim that the Catholic Church has the fullness of truth.  Just because many do not believe in the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist, what does it matter?  Though  I may feel that women should not be priests, many women feel "called" to be priests.  Who am I, who are you, to deny them?

Compassion-mongers tell us that the Church is constrained by an arbitrary power structure of men who seek to keep women out of any position that would challenge their power.  They need to rebel to show an even greater faithfulness to the message of the gospel of love and compassion, a gospel they feel encourages their disobedience of arbitrary rules.

Compassion-mongers don't see many personal activities as sinful-- there are corporate sins, to be sure-- societal racism, sexism, homophobia, and anything else they don't like.  There is only one exception to this rule: a person can be guilty of Intolerance--the only mortal sin.

Compassion-mongers, whether they can articulate it or not, hold to philosophy of Modernism. Modernism is the synthesis of all heresies, according to St. Pius X in Pascendi Dominici Gregis.

St. Pius X considered those persons who deny the truths of the Catholic faith while clinging to the label "Catholic" to be the most dangerous of enemies to the faith.  They seek to cover their disobedience with the veneer of Catholicism.  Leading the faithful astray, they preach compassion yet deny the truths of the Christ.  They deny openly, either by their disobedience or by their insubordination to His Vicar, the authority of the Church.

But compassion cut loose from the truth leads to a bad end.  Without the Truth of Christ to guide us, our personal feelings quickly lead us astray.  We reject the maternal guidance and teaching authority of the Church Jesus Himself gave us, and chaos ensues.  Each person's feelings impose an arbitrariness on others.  We lose our sense of eternal life and focus on immanent needs.  Immanent relief from poverty.  Immanent relief from the strictures of a moral life.  We make an immanent God to fit our immanent religion.

This compassion causes many to care more about whether a person "feels validated" than whether he goes to heaven or hell.  They condemn the intolerant Archbishop and those who support him, who try to warn them of their spiritual danger and instead confirm their so-called friends in mortal sin.  In their world, it is not the Archbishop, but they, who show compassion.

We must stand for the truth against these misguided souls who would lead souls to worse than the gas chamber.  This is the response of Charity, the virtue that the common understanding of "compassion" mocks.