You keep using that word…..I don’t think it means what you think it means

Pelagianism has been a much used word in Catholic circles of late.  Which is surprising, because as a formal heresy, it was fairly well stamped out  1500 years ago or so. Arianism actually persisted longer than Pelagianism.

Certainly, the Holy Father seems much enamored of the word.  He used it a couple of weeks ago to describe traditionalists to some visitors from S. America. He just used it again yesterday, when he went a bit further:

Pope Francis drew a sharp contrast between “Christians of words” and “Christians of action” during his homily at a weekday Mass on June 27.

Commenting on the Gospel image of a house built on rock, the Pope said that true Christian faith is built on Jesus Christ. However, he said, “There has always been the temptation to live our Christianity not on the rock that is Christ.” This temptation toward “a Christianity without Jesus” is doomed to failure, the Holy Father remarked, because only Jesus gives the faithful the right to address God as Father.

Pope Francis said that the “Christians of words” fall into two categories: the gnostics, who “lives floating on the surface of the Christian life;” and the pelagians, who whose rigid approach puts them “in perpetual mourning.”   

Both gnostics and pelagians “masquerade as Christians,” the Pope said, insofar as they do not base their faith on Jesus Christ. “The Holy Spirit has no place in their lives,” he added.

That’s a rather damning indictment from the Holy Father. Given that he just made rather plain two weeks ago that he sees this “pelagian” current in those traditionalists who gave him a spiritual bouquet, these latest remarks seem rather shocking.

But, be that as it may, I think from the Pope’s two statements we can begin to piece together how Pope Francis defines “pelagians.” He apparently feels they are rigorists who are joyless and think this life must be one of constant prayer and penance in order to have a chance of salvation. There is more than a slight implication that they don’t cooperate with Grace.  Given that most all of the practices traditionalists adopt are simply those used by faithful Catholics for centuries, it’s fair to ask what esteem Pope Francis holds the centuries long Tradition of the Church.

I also have to quibble more than a bit with the definition of pelagianism used by Pope Francis. In the words of Inigo Montoya, “you keep using that word…….I don’t think it means what you think it means.”

For those who don’t know, Pelagius was a 4th/5th century priest or religious type from what is now Britain who taught a rather complex heresy.  St. Augustine spent many years combatting this heresy.  I could attempt to define Pelagianism, but I think Marius Mercator, close friend and colleague of St. Augustine, does better.  Mercator spent years fighting this heresy, as well, and wrote a compendium of errors held by Pelagians. This from p. 185 of Jurgen’s Faith of the Early Fathers, Vol. 3:

[Pelagians hold errors such as these (every single statement is an error):]….Adam was created mortal and he would have died whether he had sinned or not. The sin of Adam injured himself alone and not the whole human race.  When infants are born they are in the state in which Adam was before the Fall. Since not everyone belonging to the human race dies through Adam’s death, neither does everyone belonging to the human race rise up through Christ’s Resurrection. Infants have eternal life even if they are not baptized. These five headings are productive of one most impious and abominable opinion [or, here is what Pelagians believed in a nutshell]: he adds, moreover, that a man is able to be without sin, and can easily keep the commandments of God…….

That last bit really defines the core of Pelagianism – that man can pretty easily keep the commandments and achieve eternal life.  Which is pretty much the opposite, I think, of what the Pope is accusing his “pelagians” of believing: he sees rigid souls who think we have to just suffer and work ourselves to death to have a faint hope of achieving salvation.  Which also doesn’t exactly make them “Christians of words,” they’re simply Christians of a type of action the Pope does not find to his liking.  St. Augustine, of course, defined Pelagianism similarly to Marius Mercator above.  I will say, in the Holy Father’s defense, that there are some modern sources that define Pelagianism down to being a philosophy of “working one’s way to Heaven,” but that’s really not an accurate definition, although Pelagians did, sort of, believe that.

What the Pope is really repeating is the protestant critique of traditional (pre-conciliar) Catholicism, that Catholics have this belief we could work our way to Heaven independent of Grace. First of all, the protestants were wrong, the Church has never believed that. Secondly, that’s not the heresy he keeps bringing up.

I won’t say much else, because I don’t want to belabor the point. But I will say this: I think the Church has really gotten into a great deal of trouble over the past several decades for operating in an either/or mentality – some emphasize Scripture, others Tradition, some emphasize the active life, some the contemplative, some are involved in catachesis, others take a missionary approach which forbids catachesis, etc.  My view is that the Church is the Body of the great “both-and:” we reverence Scripture AND Tradition, the active AND the contemplative, etc. On more than a couple occasions, the Holy Father has indicated, in pretty marked terms, that he holds the more cerebral, contemplative side of the Church in something approaching a low regard.  For instance, he told that same group of S. American religious above that one should be a priest or a college professor, but not both.  Which, the previous Pope was both!

Yes, it’s a very Jesuit point of view. That’s all I’ll say about that.