Vatican City, Mar 1, 2018 / 05:57 am (CNA/EWTN News).- A new letter issued by the Vatican’s doctrinal office has reaffirmed that Christian salvation can only come through Christ and the Church, and highlighted modern expressions of Pelagian and Gnostic thought which contradict this belief.
Signed by Archbishop Luis Ladaria SJ, prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, on the Feb. 22 feast of the Chair of St. Peter, the letter is addressed to the world’s bishops.
It clarifies how the ancient heresies of Pelagianism and Gnosticism are diffused in modern culture, and urges Christians to evangelize while engaging with those from other religions in a spirit of genuine dialogue.
The four-and-a-half page letter consists of six points, including an introduction and conclusion, outlining the errors of Pelagianism and Gnosticism in light of Christian doctrine, and reaffirming Christ as the only means of salvation, which is offered through the sacraments.
According to the letter’s introduction, the aim in writing it is to “demonstrate certain aspects of Christian salvation that can be difficult to understand today because of recent cultural changes,” incorporating Pope Francis’ reflections on the issue.
Modern expressions of Pelagianism and Gnosticism
The letter pointed to the difficulty many have in accepting the teachings of Christianity in today’s society, noting that on one hand, “individualism centered on the autonomous subject tends to see the human person as a being whose sole fulfillment depends only on his or her own strength.”
In this view, Christ is seen as “a model that inspires generous actions with his words and his gestures,” but is not recognized as the one who transforms the human condition by incorporating mankind into a new, reconciled life with the Father.
On the other hand, the letter noted that “a merely interior vision of salvation is becoming common, a vision which, marked by a strong personal conviction or feeling of being united to God, does not take into account the need to accept, heal and renew our relationships with others and with the created world.”
Pope Francis, the letter said, has often spoken of these two tendencies, identifying them with the ancient heresies of Pelagianism and Gnosticism.
Pelagianism gets its name from the monk Pelagius, who lived in the 400s and taught that the human will, as created by God, was enough to live a sinless life. Gnosticism, on the other hand, was a widely diffused belief in the 2nd century that the material world is the result of error on the part of God.
Since the beginning of his pontificate Francis has spoken out about the two heresies, and in 2015 during his pastoral visit to Florence, told participants in the Fifth Convention of the Italian Church that Pelagianism and Gnosticism are two of the greatest temptations that lead the Church away from humility and beatitude.
In the speech, he said Pelagianism “spurs the Church not to be humble, disinterested and blessed,” and does so “through the appearance of something good. Pelagianism leads us to trust in structures, in organizations, in planning that is perfect because it is abstract. Often it also leads us to assume a controlling, harsh and normative manner.”
Norms, he said, “give Pelagianism the security of feeling superior, of having a precise bearing,” while Gnosticism “leads to trusting in logical and clear reasoning, which nonetheless loses the tenderness of a brother’s flesh.”
The attraction of Gnosticism, he said, is “a purely subjective faith whose only interest is a certain experience or a set of ideas and bits of information which are meant to console and enlighten, but which ultimately keep one imprisoned in his or her own thoughts and feeling.”
Likewise, in Cardinal Joseph Ratzingers’ 1986 spiritual exercises, the future Pope Benedict XVI also condemned the Palegian trend in modern society, calling it a “vice” and saying those who accept Palegianism “do not want forgiveness and in general they do not want any real gift from God either. They just want to be in order.”
“They don’t want hope they just want security,” he said, adding that “their aim is to gain the right to salvation through a strict practice of religious exercises, through prayers and action. What they lack is humility which is essential in order to love; the humility to receive gifts not just because we deserve it or because of how we act.”
In Thursday’s letter, Ladaria said a “new form” of Palegianism is spreading in today’s culture in which the individual, “understood to be radically autonomous, presumes to save oneself, without recognizing that, at the deepest level of being, he or she derives from God and from others.”
According to this thought, salvation “depends on the strength of the individual or on purely human structures, which are incapable of welcoming the newness of the Spirit of God,” the letter said.
However, a new form of Gnosticism is also widely diffused, promoting an understanding of salvation which is “merely interior, closed off in its own subjectivism.”
“In this model, salvation consists of improving oneself, of being intellectually capable of rising above the flesh of Jesus towards the mysteries of the unknown divinity,” the letter said. “It presumes to liberate the human person from the body and from the material universe” in which God is no longer found, “but only a reality deprived of meaning” and “easily manipulated by the interests of man.”
Comparing the two heresies is intended as a simple recognition of “general common features, without entering into judgments on the exact nature of the ancient error,” the letter said, emphasizing that there is a vast difference between modern, secularized society and the social context in which the heresies were born.
However, “both neo-Pelagian individualism and the neo-Gnostic disregard of the body deface the confession of faith in Christ, the one, universal Savior,” the letter said, and reaffirmed that “salvation consists in our union with Christ.”
Man’s search for salvation and Christ as Savior
The letter noted that each person, in their own way, seeks happiness and tries to obtain it through the means they have available.
Yet this desire is not always explicitly expressed, and is frequently “more secret and hidden than it may appear,” revealing itself only in situations of crisis, the letter said, noting that this desire can often be manifested as a desire for better health or economic well-being, and can be expressed as a need for interior peace and peace with others.
It also takes on the character of endurance and the desire to overcome pain, fighting off the “evil” of error, fragility, weakness, sickness and death.
Faced with these aspirations, faith, the letter said, teaches that in rejecting all attempts at “self-realization,” these desires “can be fulfilled completely only if God himself makes it possible, by drawing us toward Himself.”
“The total salvation of the person does not consist of the things that the human person can obtain by himself,” such as wealth, reputation or knowledge, the letter continued, noting that if redemption were judged solely according to the needs of mankind, “how could we avoid the suspicion of having simply created a Redeemer God in the image of our own need?”
The letter then emphasized that God has never stopped offering salvation to his people, and that this redemption has a concrete name and face in Jesus Christ.
Salvation, it said, doesn’t occur in just an interior manner, because Jesus was made flesh in order to communicate with mankind. And by becoming part of the human family, Jesus “has united himself in some fashion with every man and woman and has established a new kind of relationship with God, his Father, and with all humanity.”
Each person can be incorporated in this new relationship and participate in Jesus’ own life, the letter said, adding that Christ’s incarnation, “rather than limiting the salvific action,” allows him “to mediate the salvation of God for all of the sons and daughters of Adam.”
Given this understanding, when faced with the “individualist reductionism of Pelagian tendency, and the neo-Gnostic promise of a merely interior salvation,” Christians have to remember “the way in which Jesus is Savior.”
“He did not limit himself to showing us the way to encounter God, a path we can walk on our own by being obedient to his words and by imitating his example,” but instead opened the door to freedom and pointed to himself as the way.
This path, the letter said, “is not merely an interior journey at the margins of our relationships with others and with the created world,” but consists of a “new and living way” that Jesus inaugurated for mankind in his own flesh.
“Therefore, Christ is Savior in as much as he assumed the entirety of our humanity and lived a fully human life in communion with his Father and with others.”
Salvation is through the Church, the Body of Christ
The letter reaffirmed that the place where humanity receives the salvation of Jesus “is the Church,” beginning with baptism and continuing through the other sacraments.
“Both the individualistic and the merely interior visions of salvation contradict the sacramental economy through which God wants to save the human person,” the letter said.
Salvation cannot be achieved by one’s own individual efforts alone, as neo-Pelagian thought would argue, but is instead found “in the relationships that are born from the incarnate Son of God and that form the communion of the Church,” the letter said.
Likewise, it stressed that the grace of God leads us to concrete relationships that Christ himself formed, and of which the Church is an image.
Salvation, then, “does not consist in the self-realization of the isolated individual, nor in an interior fusion of the individual with the divine,” but rather means being incorporated “into a communion of persons that participates in the communion of the Trinity.”
While Gnosticism has a negative view of creation, seeing it as a limitation of man’s freedom and therefore implying that salvation means freeing oneself from the body and concrete human relationships, true salvation offered by Christ includes the sanctification of the body, the letter said.
With the sacraments, “Christians are able to live faithful to the flesh of Christ and, as a result, in fidelity to the kind of relationships that he gave us,” the letter said, explaining that under this rationale, care for those who are suffering is especially important, particularly through the spiritual and corporal works of mercy.
The letter closed urging Christians to advance in announcing the “joy and light of the Gospel,” while also establishing a “sincere and constructive dialogue” with those from other religions, believing that God can lead all men of goodwill toward salvation in Christ.
“Total salvation of the body and of the soul is the final destiny to which God calls all of humanity,” it said, and urged believers to look forward to the coming of Christ, who will “change our lowly body to conform with his glorified body by the power that enables him also to bring all things into subjection to himself.”
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When did Jesus stop becoming the Lamb of God, He who takes away the sins of the world . . . and become a psychologist? Obviously, I missed it.
It’s pretty pitiful isn’t it Mark?
Synodial corporate speak.
My heart mourns for what has become of the Church since the Modernists revolution. About two years ago I happened upon the life of Sr. Marie de St. Pierre. I would recommend reading about her life and her visions of Jesus – it was highly enlightening regarding the “chastisement of revolutionary men”. God bless you!
Thank you so much Mark. May God bless you also.
I’ve read about Sr. Marie & we actually had a priest come for a Lenten Mission this year to talk about devotion to the Holy Face & encourage us to not blaspheme or misuse God’s name. Father talked about making our Sundays real days of rest, too & refraining from unnecessary work & doing business.
And this follows the model by which Christ founded His Church?
Four hundred people of diverse faith backgrounds (or none) reflecting on these questions is intended to promote a relationship with Christ as Redeemer?
This all seems like a recrudescence of the Tavistock craze of the Sixties. I wouldn’t be surprised that at some point participants aren’t blindfolded and asked to fall backwards into the arms of the group as an experience in trust.
Who’s paying for this exercise in self-indulgent reflection by 400 people? Close up shop, cut the losses, save hundreds of thousands, if not millions of dollars and give the money to the poor? I’m actually ashamed at my Church putting on such a display.
Vatican III?
The purpose of synodolatry is coming clear.
It is to turn our gaze from Jesus — who is almost never mentioned in its documents — to ourselves.
Feelings, growth, conversing in the spirit, ability to listen, walking together as we instead of I, learning to walk with other religions, discernment in common – all out of the Sixties spirituality that feels in unison rather than thinks.
What Synod organizers mimic are the methods used by Marxist ideologues to brainwash, to cleanse the mind of preconceptions, convictions, to become pliable to the spirit. Which spirit? Personally I have a repulsion to what and how is being promoted.
Key terms extracted from the 27,000 words of bubble-wrap in the Instrumentum Laboris: “tone, style, fruits [gay bashing?], listening [or the ‘listing’ barque of Peter?], savor, tone [again], tensions, context”!
And next week, something about “radiates.”
Good news, this! Yours truly recalls that in his “Witness to Hope,” George Weigel commented on the “radioactive” power of the “Theology of the Body” in the 21st Century. Surely, THIS is the radiation on the Synod’s scripted agenda for next week!
If only the intended and concrete “fabric” (a better term?) of the also “hierarchical-communion” Church–rooted in the breadth and depth of the Communion of Saints–could be advanced without synodally undermining–I mean underMINDing–the unity of the Faith with morals. Walking and chewing gum at the same time!
Butt, the pygmies-of-progressivism are at the helm, or the stern, or the port side, or wherever.
Those questions are tedious. They don’t really ask anything that matters or pertains to the Divine and Holy Faith.
If this Synod just publishes a bunch of goop I won’t mind at all. Since goop has no meaning and by definition cannot harm the faith.
Yikes. Those questions are nonsense.
I am attaching a Wikipedia entry on the topic of “Sensitivity Training Groups” that is straight out of the 60’s radical psychologizing movement and the Tavistock model I alluded to above. If this doesn’t describe the proceedings on Synodality, nothing does.
“The focus of the sensitivity training group was on here-and-now interactions among the group members, and on their group experience; and worked by following the energy of the emerging issues in the group, and dramatising them in verbal or non-verbal ways. An atmosphere of openness and honesty was encouraged throughout; and authenticity and self-actualization were prominent goals.”
# of times the following words are mentioned in in the questions:
God = 1 time
Jesus = 0
Christ = 0
synod and its variants = 17
And Will Bishop Barron be THE VOICE “crying out in the wilderness” of this stupendous and evil gathering of heresy? Will he call out the heresy that is being expressed in flowery terms, and make bold proclamations of our Lord Jesus Christ, especially Jesus’ first encyclical to mankind: “REPENT AND REFORM YOUR LIVES, FOR THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN IS AT HAND?” Will Bishop Barron be that voice crying out in this synods wilderness engulfed in Satan’s smoke? And then will he boldly proclaim to all the souls in attendance in this wilderness what St. Paul resolutely said in leaving Athens: “HENCEFORTH I WILL PREACH CHRIST CRUCIFIED? What say ye, Bishop Barron? I pray, and I say this with all humbleness and sincerity of heart, that you and other likeminded men at this stupid gathering, will follow the example of St. John the Baptist.
From the moment I heard of this Synod on Synodality, I was highly suspicious. Then as the Synod when from bishops to a highly selected, specific group of lay members, I lost any degree of confidence that this would bode well for the Church. There was no Christ crucified. No Savior that chose to bear the sins of the world. No acknowledgement of his mercy or his glorious resurrection. I listen to pope Francis speak and I become confused. Where is Tradition valued and acknowledged. He abandons Christ, focuses on the mundane, and chooses to criticize the west. It is almost as if he is a politician for some failed, backward Marxist state.
Every single word I have read or heard from the Synod and its promoters gives me PTSD from the touchy-feely psychobabble that was served up to us in my “catholic” high school in the 1970s. It was cringy, embarrassing and revolting back then, when doofus hipster Christian Brothers and Maryknoll priests in civvies chatted us up as we sat cross-legged in circles on the floor. It is even more so now, coming from aging, reactionary hippies and their coterie of young, malformed dissenters.
Yes, this reminds me of the “listening sessions” & non-directive psychotherapy from the 1970’s which wreaked havoc on religious orders.
I just don’t get it. A synod about what a synod means to you or your fellow synod goers? They are looking for a reason to justify their time away from working in the vineyard.
With all this reference to “Spirit”, I can’t believe they can be this frivolous and blasphemous in their treatment of the Holy Spirit, so I’m sure, in the interest to get things started in the spirit of conviviality, they must be talking about mandatory cocktail hours. Given the importance of the event, I’m sure the whiskey varieties are, at the very least, twleve year old, which should take us back to an era before this madness began.