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.
