A reader of my post The Purity Tests raises a good question:
"What you say about the ‘purity filters’ may be true, but how many people are at the stage where they can effectively sift the orthodox from the cleverly disguised heretical?"
This question actually raises another concern that has bothered me for some time now:
Many orthodox Catholics are afraid of error, to such an extent that the avoidance of error can seem to become the driving force in their spiritual lives.
Please understand me: This isn’t a bad impulse. Wanting to avoid error because one wishes to remain faithful to the Church’s magisterium is a good thing. When used in a prudent manner, such an impulse can be self-protection against false teaching. The problem arises when the person is so afraid of error that it prevents him from taking reasonable chances. The often-unspoken fear appears to be that the person is afraid that error is, in itself, sinful, and that a person who is in error in not just wrong on some point but heading toward hell.
Error is not a sin. The only time it can become a sinful situation to be in error is when one is so set in one’s erroneous opinions that the person is not open to correction from properly-constituted authority, such as the Church. For example, a person who innocently believes that Jesus did not found the Catholic Church does not sin by such a belief. Only if that person has reason to believe he should investigate the claims of the Catholic Church to be founded by Christ and refuses to do so does the possibility for culpability for error develop. If he does investigate the claims to the best of his ability, and cannot in good conscience understand those claims to be true, he does not sin even though he is objectively mistaken. But if he comes to the conclusion that the claims are true and refuses to act on those beliefs in the manner to which they should call him, then he may be culpable for his decision not to become Catholic.
You see, the problem is not innocent ignorance or even innocently accepting something as true that is objectively incorrect. The problem is refusing to act upon the knowledge that we have in a manner that is faithful to God. We are not judged on what we know, but on how well we have remained faithful to God through the knowledge we’ve been given. We should seek not to be know-it-alls, but faithful to what we know.
So, to answer the original question. In the words of Christ and the late John Paul II: Be not afraid! In your reading, you may come across ideas that are not entirely orthodox. Your "purity filter" may not catch everything that should be filtered out. You may, in the short term, not have an entirely correct understanding of a particular issue. And that’s okay! So long as you remain open to correction from those you know can provide you with Christian orthodoxy, you need not fear. God will not abandon you and he will bring forth good from the true knowledge that you have. What matters to God is not your expertise but your obedience.
To close, remember the Great Western Schism. There were saints on both sides of the divide who stumped for the various papal contenders. One famous example was St. Vincent Ferrer who supported one of the antipopes. Even when St. Vincent was in error over who was the true pope, he worked miracles and was not directly told by God the identity of the true pope. For many years, St. Vincent’s reputation was bound up with his support of an antipope. The heroic virtue of St. Vincent was that when he realized his error he immediately stopped his support for the antipope and pledged his allegiance to the true pope. He did not seek to justify his past support or rationalize away his knowledge of who the true pope was out of fear for his reputation. He sought only to be faithful. And God rewarded that faithfulness with sanctity even though St. Vincent was not a know-it-all.
St. Vincent Ferrer, pray for us.
This post raises a good point, one which every academic or semi-academic Catholic ends up having to wrestle with. Can I throw just one more thought into the mix? Sometimes error is harmful, not because it is sinful, but because it is erroneous. An honest error about the nature of the Church could lead to honest changes in one’s devotional life, for example–changes which might not be healthy. The fear one would have is that one may not even recognize that a particular issue is something one should run by the good folks at Catholic answers. Hopefully one will stumble across correction at some point, but in the mean time….
All of which is not to say that we should live in terror of error. Michelle is right: there are many issues on which salvation does not depend and about which one can find conflicting arguments among good and educated Catholics (evolution, for example). Error about these things is not only compatible with sanctity–it is unavoidable. Nobody has all the answers.
The excessive fear of error can also induce suspiciousness and a lack of charity. Well meaning Catholics who are excessively fearful of error sometimes fall into the error of assuming that the most extreme “conservative” statement on a position must be the most orthodox statement.
Well, with specific regard to those whose duty it is to teach (and all of us are to some extent catechists) isn’t error far more serious than simply “not sinful”. That is, those who teach must make a good faith effort to ensure they are not in error and passing it on to others through their own ignorance.
Your point is well taken, though it seems to me that Michelle’s original point, which I take to be entirely valid, is addressed not to teachers but precisely to laypeople who want to begin by excluding and disregarding anything said by anyone upon whom any shadow of suspicion could reasonably be cast, and then happily and uncritically embracing whatever is left.
Michelle’s point is also well taken: Not all that might be less than totally 100 percent pure must be regarded as so unwholesome and unsafe that it should be rejected and condemned. A cracked, slightly grungy vessel might still have a lot of good stuff inside. At the same time, not everything that’s been exhaustively vetted against Church teaching and shown to be not contradictory to any of it is necessarily beyond criticism or the need for discernment. We need to be able to think critically about everything, from the seemingly innocuous to the partially suspect and beyond.
I would also add – not that Michelle was implying the contrary – that one should not make a *habit* of reading material that one knows to be erroneous or contrary to the faith, regardless of its good points. There’s a difference between being afraid to read anything remotely questionable, and just plain ol’ prudence. Reading materials that are not totally on the up and up should be done with prayer and thoughtfulness, not a devil-may-care nonchalance. Although it is true that as long as we are open to correction, there’s little to worry about, it’s also true that most modern errors are founded on the idea that they’re right and the correctors are wrong (e.g., liberal Call-to-Action types and far-right schismatics). I know people who have teetered on the edge of both camps simply because of reading. Another analogy: if one is totally committed to chastity and purity of heart, there should be no harm in looking at the naked body of a member of the opposite sex. That is a true statement. Problem is, who can say that they’re pure enough to do it? Hardly anyone, and therefore it would be wrong to do, because we would fall into sin due to weakness. Putting oneself in harm’s way can be a problem *if it is done without appropriate watchfulness over ourselves.*
So, anyway, don’t be petrified of reading a book a little outside the mainstream. But don’t be lackadaisical about it either.
You know, we don’t live in an intellectual vaccuum. Error can often lead to sin. That’s why truth is important. It’s not just all theoretical.
“The Truth will set you free.”
If I give my cafeteria-Catholic friend a book on Catholic marriage, and in it the author says a lot of very good and helpful things but casually mentions contraception in an everybody-does-that-of-course manner, then my friend may be led to view contraception in that manner which may lead her into sin. Serious sin. It would be remiss of me to give her that book and not even mention the author’s treatment of contraception. Even if she’s reading the book for its information on a different specific issue that she’s dealing with.
Just an example.
(from Michelle’s post):
“If he does investigate the claims to the best of his ability, and cannot in good conscience understand those claims to be true, he does not sin even though he is objectively mistaken.”
Yes, but if I have given him a resource that further solidified his error, then I am partially responsible for that. And even though his (honest but lacking) viewpoint may not be a sin, in the End he may have a harder time because he did not have the sacraments of the Catholic Church in his life. So he may suffer from other sins which could have been absolved… through a more complete viewpoint on the Church.
One does not wish to follow the blind man into the pit. read that in a good book once…