On Naturalism and Moral Matters: Against the National Catholic Reporter

http://ncronline.org/blogs/grace-margins/synod-family-and-grace-self-doubt

Such people are insufferable. More tolerance would be afforded these shallow thinkers if they did not possess the audacity to consider themselves Catholics. The death of Catholicism in the public square is quickened by this naturalism posing as mercy and acceptance of every and any deviance that would astonish their own master. A fundamental principle of Catholic theology is the distinction between nature and what is owed to it, and grace which is essentially of the supernatural order. These self-proclaimed saviours of Catholicism are not even capable of grasping the necessity of such a differentiation. On the contrary, they mesh the two realities together in confused fashion, polluting their integrity and perverting man's ends. When one is unable to discern what pertains to man as his due, one is liable to claim that salvation is his right.

 There is a primordial error in their attitude towards the Faith whose only existence is to serve as a cultural inheritance or to grant a mushy feeling of goodness or the obligatory niceness. Their faith is a pride in themselves and their ability to overcome the bonds of history, tradition and objectivity. The faith is there to serve as the guarantor of their fabricated reality, a reality sown together by discordant threads of unconscious prejudices, fears and the need for a good fame among the 'respectable'. For them the Faith originates within man (or person, for they hate such ''exclusivity'' of expression), fulfilling his needs and projecting his confused hopes of reassurance and happiness. It is a great wonder that the word most on their lips is ''mercy''. For what do they ask mercy? They proclaim no wrong-doing. A hypocritical superficiality can only request mercy when sin is a construct of history and goodness is a feeling. Surely for someone with a Masters in Divinity, these basic premises of Sacred Theology should be rooted deep in her intellect. Alas, this would be a threat to her security as a happy sinner. 

 For these people nothing of substance is ever serious,  is never urgent. They ascribe transcendental importance to the interpretation of words which would embarrass the worst caricatures of a dialectician of the Schools.Self-doubt in matters of theology is more than heresy, it is utter madness. A desire to consider one's faith as provisional leads to the obvious conclusion that one should never die or sacrifice for this pleasing fantasy. It is for this reason that they only wish to consider the 'diverse experiences' of groups that they have pinned together without any realisation that they are individuals with no more in common than the labels relentlessly applied to them. The love of God is cold in them, it never surpasses a natural and inefficacious complacency in the benevolence of the Lord as manifested in creation and His general providence. God is made in the likeness of man and as man is never settled in his nature, the divine being is infinitely fertile for manipulation. 

 Man can only obtain a true understanding of moral theology after he has mastered the treatises of De Deo Uno and De Trinitate and de Deo Creatore. All too often moral theology has been reduced to the most banal presentation of civic ethics imaginable. Without a knowledge a man's end, how can he attain to this end? What steps should he take? How will he know when he has reached it? De Christo Salvatore and De Gratia provide the means. However these are intrusions into his secularism, where Faith can only embarrass him among his contemporaries. A hindrance to be snubbed until the all too necessary cliche is required to be recited as evidence of piety and niceness. Your ''own moral discernment'' is founded on nothing other than your progressive acquiescence in sin. 

 The aim of man is sanctity, not accommodation, nor tolerance nor diversity. If the formal motive for faith is the authority of God revealing, the rejection of elements of it is self-belief and self-deception. Have you noticed that the reasons for abandoning the fullness of faith pertain to the moral? Who leaves the Church for Monothelitism nowadays? But how many will depart for the sake of ''LGBT issues''? This shows the falsity of their position which they claim to be intellectual and rational. The effect of original sin is stronger on those who do not believe in it.

 I converted to Catholicism when I was 17 after going through the expected teenage upheavals in matters sexual. A conversion that lead to the bemusement of friends and family, a suspicious respect from some and ridicule of others. Such upheavals were hindrance to my embrace of Catholicism and if I am to abandon my Faith it will be due to that. It is all or nothing. Sanctity or returning to where I was those few years ago. Purity or normalcy. Heaven or Hell. There is no in-between, no accommodation, no middle ground for dialogue. God or Satan. 

 It is for this reason that Mason and her ilk disgust me. Doesn't the ''average sinner'' deserve to hear the call to holiness or are we to be so condescending to snatch away hope from such unworthy and incapable beings?