A Heresy Based on Prayer
QUIETISM EXPLICATED
The
foremost promoter of the Quietist doctrine in the Roman Church was the
Spanish Roman Catholic priest, Michael Molinos. He seems to have been born in
Sargossa in 1627. He became a doctor of divinity – a trained theologian. He even
converted his friend, Pope Innocent XI to his doctrine – albeit temporarily.
Molinos was found guilty of heresy by the Inquisition and thrown into prison
where he died in 1697.
Molinos
held that God must be loved without even the slightest motive of concern for
what is in it for you and loved like this all the time because he is worthy
in himself and not because he is good to you. So far that is Catholic
doctrine. Since you always have some
desire to fulfil or satisfy when you use your free will meaning that you get
some pleasure from it, Molinos said that you have to lose free will by
meditation on the fact that God is inside you and attain complete passivity
and become God’s puppet.
Catholic
Encyclopaedia http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/12608c.htm
discusses Quietism and says that we should only help ourselves for
God wills it and not because of ourselves and that Quietism is right in that
but went too far in the application of this principle. Catholicism says that
if you try to love God with disinterest in yourself and fail that is okay as
long as you do your best with God’s help to match the ideal so
self-interested love for God is tolerable. Quietists forbade this attitude
and had an all or nothing approach. They considered any acceptance of
self-interest to be dangerous and forbidden and supposed that no good would
come of it.
Molinos
said that the true Christian would go to Hell for all eternity if it were
God’s will. They won’t hate God there for they have no free will to hate with
so he is not saying the true Christian would hate God forever if that were
God’s will because it wouldn’t be.
Quietism
does not forbid happiness or sadness as long as you don’t intend to be happy
or sad for you must intend nothing.
Quietism
tells you if you have to will anything or act then do what is easiest so it
can encourage sin. One might pretend to be an aspiring Quietist and get their
sins excused for that reason.
Once
God starts controlling you, you cannot sin or merit rewards for all that is
left of you is awareness of God. The power to choose is gone. The Quietist’s
passivity will take the form of being in a tranquil state no matter what
happens to her or him be it suffering, pleasure or temptation. Her or his
mind can think only of God’s presence meaning that she or he acts kind of
absent-mindedly all the time. The Quietist is detached from everything except
God.
Quietism
need not become pantheism for the person controlled by God could still be a
separate entity, as regards consciousness, from God. It is like what you experience if you can
imagine being awareness and nothing else, you have no sight, taste, sound,
touch or sense of smell. You have no
free will or body. What is left is
what we are talking about.
The
doctrine teaches that catechisms, set prayers and sacraments are useful only
for the beginner and are to be discarded as soon as God enables one to do so.
But
Molinos only permitted external religious acts for deceptive purposes. They
were a cover for his heretics. When the prayer of simple awareness of God
kills free will obviously you start with it and not external actions. This
prayer is an effort but God can make it give way to a passive awareness of
the divine presence. It happens to you like a vision. It ceases to be you
making yourself aware of God but God making you aware of himself.
When
one turns to the gospels and sees Jesus recommending prayers like the “Our
Father” and generally not behaving like a Quietist one must conclude that if
Quietism is true then Jesus was not fit to be a Spiritual Director never mind
the Son of God! The Devil must have written the gospels to keep people away
from God. Quietists only go for asceticism when it is easer for them than
indulgence and involves less use of free will.
The
doctrine teaches a firm acceptance of predestination for God alone saves you
and not your efforts. But perhaps you have to use the effort of your free
will to get rid of your freedom enabling God alone to save you without your
effort so salvation is your choice. That effort consists of simple
concentration on the presence of God. It is not your choice in the end
because only God can let the meditation destroy the will.
The
doctrine recommends severe suffering and penance in the struggle to get God
to save you for these break and help destroy the will. You have to suffer
what you cannot bear. Quietism does not encourage wilful self-torture for
those who have attained the state it labours for.
Quietism
says that attachment to grace is attachment to the gift of God that makes you
holy and not God. Christians reply, “But grace is not what is given by God
but is God giving you himself as helper and friend.” But we experience grace
as help and we do not experience this help as God personally. Even if God is
his grace it is impossible to be attached to the help and not God. You can
love the heat in the sun and not the sun though the two are the same. Molinos
held that grace was given to be forsaken. The race that enabled one to become
passive and to which one was not attached was all the grace he cared about.
If
the Quietist God existed he would force us all to be passive and unfree when
free will is useless.
QUIETISM REFUTED
If
God wants us to give up our free will then he is saying he does not want to
be loved for love can only be caused by a free agent according to the
Christian view. Some Quietists say that for us to forsake free will is to
love God and is an act of love even though it means we cannot love God
anymore. It would be more love if you kept trying to get rid of free will and
could not. Quietism runs down effort which is silly.
Anyway,
if you choose to give up free will you want to give it up so how could you
enter the passive state when you have a desire? Desire is supposed to block
the state of love for God. It is not love for you want to do it. Presumably
God himself removes desire for you for you cannot get rid of it yourself.
Then why doesn’t he?
The
Quietist says that if anybody is not in the passive state, it is because of
sin and self. If your will is selfish then the closer it gets to the passive
state the worse it is. Why? It is worse for a strong person to do wrong than
for a weak one to do it. It’s excuses for being selfish are withering away
meaning that the strength to resist evil has grown. One way that is true but
the other way it is not true for it is not getting rid of all the sin. The
better it seems to get the worse it gets so no improvement is made in
reality. They just seem to be improved.
Why would God demand love or the annihilation of free will if he is able to accept the Quietist without it?
Conclusion
Quietism is a disturbing doctrine. But studying it shows how far the Church wishes people would go in avoiding any form of self-interest.
BOOKS CONSULTED
A CATECHISM OF CHRISTIAN
DOCTRINE, CTS,
A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY, VOL
6, PART II, KANT, Frederick Copleston SJ, Doubleday/Image,
AQUINAS, FC Copleston,
Penguin Books,
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL,
Friedrich Nietzsche, Penguin,
BOOK OF COMMON PRAYER,
Association for the Promotion of Christian Knowledge,
CATECHISM
OF THE
CHARITY,
MEDITATIONS FOR A MONTH, Richard F Clarke SJ, Catholic Truth Society,
CHRISTIANITY
FOR THE TOUGH-MINDED, Edited by John Warwick
CRISIS
OF MORAL AUTHORITY, Don Cupitt, SCM Press,
EVIDENCE
THAT DEMANDS A VERDICT, VOL 1, Josh McDowell, Alpha, Scripture Press
Foundation, Bucks, 1995
ECUMENICAL
JIHAD, Peter Kreeft, Ignatius Press,
THE
GREAT MEANS OF SALVATION AND OF PERFECTION, St Alphonsus De Ligouri,
Redemptorist Fathers,
HANDBOOK
OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS, Peter Kreeft and Ronald Tacelli, Monarch,
HONEST
TO GOD, John AT Robinson, SCM,
HOW
DOES GOD LOVE ME? Radio Bible Class,
IN
DEFENCE OF THE FAITH, Dave Hunt, Harvest House,
MADAME
GUYON, MARTYR OF THE HOLY SPIRIT, Phyllis Thompson, Hodder & Stoughton,
RADIO
REPLIES, 1, Frs Rumble & Carty, Radio Replies Press,
RADIO
REPLIES, 2, Frs Rumble & Carty, Radio Replies Press,
RADIO
REPLIES, 3, Frs Rumble & Carty, Radio Replies Press,
REASON
AND BELIEF, Brand Blanschard, George Allen and Unwin Ltd, 1974
REASONS
FOR HOPE, Ed Jeffrey A Mirus,
THE
BIBLE TELLS US SO, R B Kuiper, The Banner of Truth Trust,
THE
BRIEF OF ST ANTHONY OF
THE
GREAT MEANS OF SALVATION AND OF PERFECTION, St Alphonsus De Ligouri,
Redemptorist Fathers,
THE
IMITATION OF CHRIST, Thomas A Kempis, Translated by Ronald Knox and Michael
Oakley, Universe, Burns & Oates, London, 1963
THE
LIFE OF ALL LIVING,
THE
PRACTICE OF THE PRESENCE OF GOD, Brother Lawrence, Hodder & Stoughton,
THE
PUZZLE OF GOD, Peter Vardy, Collins,
THE
SATANIC BIBLE, Anton Szandor LaVey, Avon Books,
THE
SPIRITUAL GUIDE, Michael Molinos, Christian Books, Gardiner
THE STUDENT’S CATHOLIC
DOCTRINE, Rev Charles Hart BA, Burns & Oates,
UNBLIND FAITH, Michael J
Langford, SCM,
A
system that says that there is nothing good or godly or holy in the human
will and in human effort is profoundly dangerous. It annihilates self-esteem
and any joy we take in our achievements. One would need to be a Siamese twin
to a counsellor to get through life if it became dominant in the world.
The
system requires that in the effort to become right for God to make you
passive and reach the state of passive mystical contemplation of God the dark
night of the soul is a must. God will initially give you enjoyment of the
prayer of quiet and then he will inflict a long and utterly terrible
depression on you in which you feel you are getting nowhere and are and have
been worthless and God has abandoned you. It is evil. Depression is the sense
of worthless existence and cannot be of any use to God unless he is
malignant. To make a person feel worthless is to imply that person is worth
nothing and nobody would have the right to claim that the person is suffering
for their good. That would be loathsome. God is a wholly evil concept. The
only way out would be to claim that depressed people deliberately make
themselves feel like that.
The
religious experience of the Quietist is a symptom of mental disorder for it
cannot be real.
CONCLUSION
Atheists have a right
to see prayer as an evil activity. It conditions people to prefer God’s
rights to human rights and to deepen the religious hold on the world with all
the terrible disasters that brings. Prayer insults people. The view of
God that it proposes for us is vile and has resulted in the vile hypocrisy
that is so common in people of faith. One wonders if people who are
unaffected by its poison really believe or only imagine that they believe.
Prayer implies God
should let good people suffer for he has the power to save them and won’t. It can
only lead to trouble. If people didn’t see the need for praying they wouldn’t
see the need for believing in God so prayer must be exposed.
The benefits of prayer
do not come from prayer at all which is why we should destroy people’s faith
in prayer and have no regrets. The benefits are nothing compared to the
damage that is done.
The WEB
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/12608c.htm
Catholic
Encyclopaedia. This discusses Quietism.
Books Consulted
BOOKS CONSULTED
A CATECHISM OF CHRISTIAN
DOCTRINE, CTS,
A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY, VOL
6, PART II, KANT, Frederick Copleston SJ, Doubleday/Image,
AQUINAS, FC Copleston,
Penguin Books,
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL,
Friedrich Nietzsche, Penguin,
BOOK OF COMMON PRAYER,
Association for the Promotion of Christian Knowledge,
CATECHISM
OF THE
CHARITY,
MEDITATIONS FOR A MONTH, Richard F Clarke SJ, Catholic Truth Society,
CHRISTIANITY
FOR THE TOUGH-MINDED, Edited by John Warwick
CRISIS
OF MORAL AUTHORITY, Don Cupitt, SCM Press,
EVIDENCE
THAT DEMANDS A VERDICT, VOL 1, Josh McDowell, Alpha, Scripture Press
Foundation, Bucks, 1995
ECUMENICAL
JIHAD, Peter Kreeft, Ignatius Press,
THE
GREAT MEANS OF SALVATION AND OF PERFECTION, St Alphonsus De Ligouri,
Redemptorist Fathers,
HANDBOOK
OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS, Peter Kreeft and Ronald Tacelli, Monarch,
HONEST
TO GOD, John AT Robinson, SCM,
HOW
DOES GOD LOVE ME? Radio Bible Class,
IN
DEFENCE OF THE FAITH, Dave Hunt, Harvest House,
MADAME
GUYON, MARTYR OF THE HOLY SPIRIT, Phyllis Thompson, Hodder & Stoughton,
RADIO
REPLIES, 1, Frs Rumble & Carty, Radio Replies Press,
RADIO
REPLIES, 2, Frs Rumble & Carty, Radio Replies Press,
RADIO
REPLIES, 3, Frs Rumble & Carty, Radio Replies Press,
REASON
AND BELIEF, Brand Blanschard, George Allen and Unwin Ltd, 1974
REASONS
FOR HOPE, Ed Jeffrey A Mirus,
THE
BIBLE TELLS US SO, R B Kuiper, The Banner of Truth Trust,
THE
BRIEF OF ST ANTHONY OF
THE
GREAT MEANS OF SALVATION AND OF PERFECTION, St Alphonsus De Ligouri,
Redemptorist Fathers,
THE
IMITATION OF CHRIST, Thomas A Kempis, Translated by Ronald Knox and Michael
Oakley, Universe, Burns & Oates, London, 1963
THE
LIFE OF ALL LIVING,
THE
PRACTICE OF THE PRESENCE OF GOD, Brother Lawrence, Hodder & Stoughton,
THE
PUZZLE OF GOD, Peter Vardy, Collins,
THE
SATANIC BIBLE, Anton Szandor LaVey, Avon Books,
THE
SPIRITUAL GUIDE, Michael Molinos, Christian Books, Gardiner
THE STUDENT’S CATHOLIC
DOCTRINE, Rev Charles Hart BA, Burns & Oates,
UNBLIND FAITH, Michael J
Langford, SCM,