Skip to main content

Clarification

Image
By


Over on Facebook, I've gotten at least one correspondent who's confused by my Christopher West posts.


I responded thus:


Here's why West is dangerous. We must certainly suffer evil in our union with Christ, this evil being the bad things that happen to us and our concupiscience, which the sacraments do not remove. We can never in this life be without the evil around us and the evil within us, and in that sense we must "offer it up" or "suffer" it.


But West is using this truth to go one step further. He's saying it is Puritanical to avoid near occasions of sin, that it is instead a mark of an illuminated Christian to embrace occasions of sin and to seek the good in them.


His argument is Jungian. It is really nothing but "there's good at the heart of everything bad". True enough. And there's even a kind of "good" in pornography, so far as sex itself is good. Even Satan still retains things that are "good" - his intelligence, his will. These he uses for evil, but they are in themselves good.


West is paving the way for what the wrong kind of people could use as a kind of "grooming behavior". He is trying to dull our sensibilities by speaking theological half-truths that are used to rationalize sin.



Here's a test for you. Use West's argument with your wife if you're married. Tell her, according to West, that looking at another woman naked is a good thing because you're looking at her through the eyes of a redeemed Christian and you're seeking the good that lies at the heart of lust. Tell her you're going to the strip club for just this high minded theological reason.


See if she buys it

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Full Story on Bishop Finn

By
" Let's step outside and settle this thing like men ," she said, and she was a lady. " You're spewing anti-Catholic rhetoric !" he insisted. "How can you criticize a bishop when you're an actor and everyone knows actors are perverts and nitwits ," she screamed. (That last gal had a point). These are all reactions to my post last week about Rod Dreher's article on Bishop Finn's Indictment. And above all, people are charging me with believing the biased media coverage of the scandal. This, at least, is not true. In fact, everything I say in this post will be taken not from a media account of the scandal , but from the independent report on it as commissioned by the diocese , the Graves Report, which you can read on your own here . So let's shove the media aside and see for ourselves what's contained in this internal diocesan report conducted by an independent firm. *** Fr. Shawn Ratigan was a priest of the diocese of Kansas Cit...
99 comments
Read more

What Follows ...

By
At one point I took all of these posts down, because I felt I had been far too willingly brainwashed into a religious system that was doing more harm than good.   But, lately, I decided to republish some of the more interesting posts.  What follows is about ten percent of what I posted from 2007 to 2021.  They are in an odd chronological order, becuase Blogger is a clunky. Meanwhile, you can find my more sane (and more recent) musings here -  https://theateroftheword.substack.com .
Post a Comment
Read more

Pornography - Gateway to Communion and Liberation

By
OK, here's where the Christopher West thing is heading. A purely despicable article in CNA by Communion and Liberation member Matt McGuinness shows you what you need to know .  McGuinness uses West's tactics, but takes them just a wee bit further. Rightly, McGuinness points out that our deepest desires are for more than what lust can provide, and that seeking to use porn to fulfill these desires is bound for frustration. But, incredibly - and it astonishes me as I write this - McGuiness, a member of a devout Catholic organization writing for a Catholic publication, encourages men to go all out for porn .  You want it?  Go for it!  You'll see it doesn't help. In other words, sin and sin boldly. To do otherwise is to be LESS THAN HOLY, or so McGuinness implies.  Do you desire to bring yourself to climax before lewd pictures on the internet but feel reluctant to do so?  Heck, you're a piker!  Don't be lukewarm or you'll be vomited out of Chris...
26 comments
Read more