Quietism Resembles Hinduism, Buddhism And Transcendental Meditation

From Brother Andre Marie's Weblog

The Church, The Mystical Body

An excerpt.

In the list of Pius’ errors is “unhealthy quietism.” The pontiff explains it as “the dangerous error of those who, from the mysterious union of all of us with Christ, try to deduce a certain unhealthy quietism by which the whole spiritual life of Christians and their progress in virtue are solely attributed to the action of the divine Spirit, excluding and setting aside our due cooperation.” As can be garnered from the pope’s words, quietism is a heresy which reduces the role of the will to being purely passive, undermining the necessity for any spiritual activity on the part of the will.

Quietists refer to the state of “repose” or quietude that is achieved by a truly holy person. The heresy bears great resemblance to Hinduism, Buddhism and Transcendental Meditation.

Probably having such pagan pantheistic origins (just as the “false mysticism” condemned in the first point), quietism became a Catholic heresy in the seventeenth century teaching of Molinos and Petrucci, and later evolved into the less radical form known as semi-quietism and advanced by Fénelon and Madame Guyon. In both of these forms it was condemned by the Magisterium.

All of these heretical currents swirled about in the period between the two world wars, as theological delving into the doctrine of the Mystical Body piqued the interest of both orthodox and heterodox writers.

As the American Jesuit Father Jesuit Father J.Joseph Bluett wrote in 1942, “Between 1920 and 1925, the quantity of literature on the argument amounted to the total produced over the previous 20 years. Between 1925 and 1930, this production doubled. During the following five years, we can see a five-fold increase over all that was written in the corresponding period of the decade before. The apex of this acceleration was reached in 1937. After that, material continued to grow but now at a much more moderate pace.”

One example of the heterodox works of the time is a volume published in 1939 by a German Parish priest named Karl Pelz: The Christian as Christ. In it, he dared to equate the union of Christ and the faithful to Eucharistic transubstantiation. In doing so, he brought to absurd limits the false mysticism that was to be condemned four years later.

On the positive side, the orthodox Belgian Jesuit, Father Emile Mersch wrote several works, among them, the weighty volumes, The Whole Christ and The Theology of the Mystical Body (written in 1933 and 1940 respectively). These works are among my sources for this presentation.

Something had to be done about the chaos that attacked the Church during this time.

Link (here)