Nothing is more frustrating to the new saint than sin – sin in himself and sin in the world. We want perfection, and after a powerful religious experience we expect it. Thus, the last of our "sanctity traps" is that "Perfection Is Possible" (P.I.P.). The P.I.P. attitude is that even in this life a per-fect Christian life is possible. Nor more will sin and guilt weigh down my conscience. No more will temptations cloud my judgment. No more will I struggle with distrac-tions in prayer, because everyday I will say 'good morning' to Jesus and walk with him as my constant friend. A young man who had experienced God's love through the charismatic renewal put it this way:
"I know I'm saved. I know that I will one day see the Lord."
"But what if you fall away?" I asked him. "Isn’t it still possible for you to lose your salvation?"
He was perfectly confident: "No, I can't, because God's work in me was so powerful that I know now he will never let me sin and lose salvation."
Each of us is born wounded and separated from God. This is original sin. It is not as though we had sinned ourselves, but because of Adam's sin - followed up by the sins of our parents - we were separated from God. We didn't belong to him or enjoy his sanctifying help. We did not have the gift of the Holy Spirit dwelling in our hearts. Baptism undoes that original sin. In this sacrament we are joined to Christ - transferred from the kingdom of darkness to the Lord's reign of light. Satan has no more claim on us; we belong to Jesus.
Original sin is indeed washed away in Baptism, but its effects remain. One of its chief effects is the weakness of our flesh. Originally, Adam and Eve had no inclination to sin. When they looked upon each other in their original nakedness, for example, they were not consumed with lust, as we would be (Gn. 2: 25). This is why Satan had to tempt them first with pride: "You shall be like gods." (Gn. 3:5) But for us, even after that sin is gone and we are reconciled with God, this weakness remains. Theologians call it concupiscence. Something inside us still wants to sin.
How can this be, that sin is forgiven and its effects linger on? It is not so hard to understand, if we think about our ordinary experiences of sin. Suppose a young man has a habit of reading pornography. This is a sin and it leads him to other sins, especially masturbation. Realizing that this is wrong he repents and goes to confes-sion. By the sacrament of Penance his sin is really for-given. However, the priest in the confessional will instruct him that he must never again touch those publications - even if they have worthwhile articles that he might find useful. Why? - because they are for him an occasion of sin. We are creatures of habit, and if we put ourselves into certain situations, they trigger those habits.
Suppose I have always had a cigarette with a cup of coffee during my break at work, and now I want to quit smoking. I can help my "will power" by spending that break in a different way. If I know that a particular photography magazine contains nude photos that stimulate me to sin, then I need to avoid them and find a different source of photographic news and tips. Recovering alcoholics recognize that they cannot simply try to be mod-erate; the must abstain from drinking alcohol. We have all had experience that repenting and being forgiven of habitual sins does not make us immune to future temptations. It is like that with original sin; the sinful tendencies we were born with still remain. We have to battle them constantly.
This can be a hard pill, however. We don't like to think of ourselves as weak. Most of us tend to think the best of ourselves. After a powerful religious experience, it is easy to believe that all sin is now behind us. "I used to be a real 'potty mouth'. But since I was baptized in the Holy Spirit, I have not even been tempted to use foul language." Yes, but since that prayer experience, most of my free time has been spent at prayer meetings and with friends I have made there. Then I play softball at my high school reunion and am shocked to hear what comes out of my mouth - the same things I always used to say in high school!
The Bible makes this truth particularly clear. David was the king "after the Lord's own heart". By God's power he killed Goliath, assumed the throne of Judah, united the two kingdoms, established Jerusalem as the city of the Lord, wrote many psalms, and ruled God's people well. Then he saw Bathsheba bathing. He committed adultery and then had her husband Uriah killed. David knew God well - and sinned badly. St. Peter spent every day for almost three years with Jesus - days of watching miracles and hearing the eternal wisdom of Christ. By God's own power he recognized and testified that Jesus was the Messiah. He vowed he would die for Jesus. Then, in the High Priest's courtyard, while Jesus was being interrogated, he denied his Savior.
The danger here is that I can fall back into serious sin. So long as I know I am weak, a sinner, and needing God's mercy, I won't be foolish about temptation.
Most of Ned's life was spent in drug and alcohol-induced crime. Through the apostolate of some "old women" (as he called them) who used to visit the prison, he was led to a genuine conversion. He confessed his sins, returned to the sacra-ments, and began to pray regularly. Unlike most prisoners who "find God", he did not try to use religion to get out of prison early. When he did get paroled, Ned managed to keep clean, to grow in prayer and responsibility. Then his cousin offered him a "snort" of cocaine. Ned was confident. He was holy now; he could handle this. He couldn't. Very quickly Ned was back to drinking and using cocaine. His rage and paranoia returned, and he got a handgun. Soon he was again on the run from the police.
Tragically, these are Christians like Ned, who think that Christ has made them invulnerable to old temptations. Christ promised to save us from sin, but he does not make us spiritual supermen.
The "One Thing" that Makes Me Holy
If sanctity can be certified, it is because of some one thing - some experience or act - that puts the Christian beyond the reach of sin. The idea of the P.I.P. is that in the individual Christian's life, some one experience or act can certify his sanctity. This might be a special act of consecration to Our Lady. One book promises: "In the Act of Con-secration, our heart is exchanged, by divine grace, for Our Lady's heart and then our souls are purified and cleansed through a focused reconciliation with God."* This implies that someone consecrated to Mary can have a sinless heart like hers. For many evan-gelical Protestants this one thing would be their conversion experience. (Thus, the debate arose among evangelical the-ologians about whether the devil can have any influence over someone who was already 'saved'.) For some charismat-ics, this "one thing" was the baptism in the Holy Spirit. Now these things - consecration to Our Lady, a conver-sion experience, a personal encounter with the Holy Spirit in power - are all good in themselves. The danger lies in seeing them in an exclusive way, as though after this one thing, one is free of all sin and temptation.
A particularly important kind of act is joining a spe-cial group committed to holiness. This group will be so holy and so attuned to God that if I join their life, then I can't go wrong. Recall the retreat leader in Chapter 5, who said, "I don't need to follow Jesus, as long as I keep my eyes on my pastoral leader." By joining the group I decisively give it all to Jesus. The group certi-fies my own sanctity. Because it is holy, I am holy - as long as I continue to live its pattern of life.
The Pristine Church
Probably the most important and dangerous kind of certified sanctity is this belief that a "pristine Church" life is pos-sible. The Church is full of sinners and it shows. When his Protestants split from Rome, Martin Luther complained that the priests he 'inherited' didn't even know the commandments. Non-believ-ers love to point to the 'holy wars' that Christians have waged against each other. Today we read about pedophile priests. We all know people who look good in Church and even get credit for being "such good Chris-tians", but who are unscrupulous in business or carry on adulterous affairs. Sometimes the Church seems to be no better than any other well-meaning social organization.
We want a holy Church - one that looks holy and makes us feel holy. What we see, though, is something different. What has gone wrong? Some would trace the prob-lem back to the Edict of Constantine in the 4th Century. By freeing Christians from religious persecution and later mak-ing it the official religion in the Roman Empire (so goes the theory), Constan-tine corrupted the Church and made it worldly. The early Anabaptists of the 16th Century took this to its logical extreme, saying that the institutional churches - Protestant as well as Catholic - were false. They believed that after Constantine the true Church of Christ has survived only in the form of small, intense communities. Some Catholics today trace the Church's problems to the Second Vatican Council, where - they say - the Council agenda was hijacked and perverted by liberal German bishops. "The Rhine flows into the Tiber," and pollutes it. If Pope Paul VI could complain that the smoke of hell was seeping into the Church - they say - he had no one to blame but John XXIII, who announced he was "throwing open the windows" to let in some air. The church seems to be too much a part of the world. It isn’t a place to protect my holiness.
Some try to solve the problem of a sinful Church by constructing a pristine church life within the Church. The idea is to form a "local manifesta-tion of the Body of Christ" outside the Church’s institutions. Instead of hesitant, confused, over-worked priests, the leaders will be men of tested wisdom and pastoral skill. These leaders will not shilly-shally around where sin is concerned; their community will have clear, effective ways to 'pastor' the immature and discipline the disobedient. And the members will not be lukewarm 'Sunday Catholics'. They will be people of genuine daily commit-ment, dedicated to permeating every part of their lives with the Christian faith. Their membership will make a whole-life commitment. Everything in one's life belongs to the group and its members. They will be a group that looks like the entire Church should look visibly holy, filled with the Spirit, and loving one another in a way that stands out as a public witness. They, at least, will be living the Christian life as it should be lived.
A Reality Check
Although it is good to strive for perfection and to improve parish life as much as we can, God did not promise us perfection. A look at the Bible should make that clear. The entire Old Testament is the story of Israel's infi-delity. God split the Red Sea and saved the rag-tag people of Israel from a powerful army with chariots and armored infantry. But within a couple of weeks, Israel was ready to go back. God led them into the Promised Land, where they overcame powerful peoples. No sooner had they settled down than they started worshipping local idols. God established David and Solomon as kings, but then the Northern Kingdom broke off and found some other gods. The Southern Kingdom didn't do much better, despite the many prophets that the Lord sent them. The Old Testament is the story of human infidelity and divine mercy.
"But that's the Old Testament. They didn't have the Holy Spirit." True enough. Still, Jesus had to chide his disciples about their ambitions. St. Peter denied Christ, and Judas, the traitor, was one of the Lord's inner circle. St. Paul had to scold St. Peter him-self, as well as the Christian communities in Corinth and Galatia. Not that he was perfect, either. St. Paul was so annoyed with St. Mark that he did not want him on his second missionary journey. Sts. Paul and Barnabas had a major argument about this and ended up going their separate ways. The Church has always been afflicted with sin. There has always been something going wrong in it.
The common theme in our complaints is that the Church must somehow come out of this world. Emperor Constantine - or the German bishops, or American politics - has made the Church worldly. We are offended when the Church gets involved with money matters or when we hear of power struggles among churchmen. This reflects a deep longing we all share for the Reign of God, where we will all be holy, where "Christian" means that someone is genuinely good. We want to be safe from sin and the devil, somewhere where evil will no longer be able to touch us. God does promise us these things - but not in this life. Jesus promises to be with us, but not to take us out of the world (see Jn 17:11, 15-18). As long as we are here, the world, the flesh, and the devil remain with us, and we must cope with them.
The Scriptural evidence should give us a clue: The Church is not supposed to look pristine. Of course, Christ died to overcome sin, and the Church is the place where he conquers sin. Every Christian, every parish, and every dio-cese ought to struggle to overcome sin. But the point is not to have perfection. The point is not to dazzle the world with a perfect organization of perfect people. The point is that God has decided to save us from our sins - all of us - and to use sinners to do it. If he wanted things done perfectly, he could have sent angels. It would be no problem for God to set up a Church organization that runs perfectly. But he didn't. The Church is made up of redeemed - and still imperfect - sinners. And he chooses to work through them. The key is not how good we are, but how merciful God is.
The Dangers of the P.I.P. Trap
The fundamental problem with the P.I.P. trap is that it is a lie. As we have just seen, perfect Christians in a pristine Church are not what God had in mind. Believing that perfection is possible leads to both personal and cor-porate problems.
Spiritual writers warn us against the capital sin of sloth. This sinful tendency is not simply laziness. Sloth is a kind of sorrow or sadness about spiritual exer-tion. Sloth doesn't want to make the effort any more to avoid sin and grow in holiness and love of God. So, it resembles the garden-variety laziness that puts off clean-ing the garage or finishing up the fiscal-year-end report. And the desire for "certified sanctity" is actually a form of sloth. It says, ‘Can't I be finished now with fighting tempta-tion and occasions of sin? Do I still have to study Scrip-ture to learn from it? Can't I get on with the glorious stuff - prophecies, miracles, mighty works of God and pro-found inspirations? Do I still have to work on fundamen-tals?" The answer is "Yes". If concert pianists must prac-tice their trills, scales, and repeated notes, if Michael Jordan must spend the summer working on his jump shot, then Christians must attend to the fundamen-tals of the spiritual life. Our sanctity is never "certified" in this life. We don't achieve assured perfec-tion before we die.
Most important, the P.I.P. trap leads to the sins against the Holy Spirit: presumption and despair. If sanctity can be certified and perfection is possible, then where do I stand if I have never had the necessary experi-ence to certify that I am saved? Langston Hughes illus-trates this graphically in his autobiographical short story "Salvation". As a child he belonged to a church that taught that every Christian had to have a salvation experience. As a typical young adolescent, he had been into his fair share of mischief. He was a sinner, for sure. Then one Sunday he was prayed over in the hopes that the Holy Ghost would fall upon him and he would be saved. He waited and prayed, but nothing happened. His friends had told him to 'fake it', to babble in tongues, shout and dance. But Hughes really expected God to do something to him. When God did not, he was crushed. God had - so he felt - rejected him. In his case, the P.I.P. teaching had led him to despair. If everyone is supposed to feel this and I don't, then obviously God has rejected me. If everyone else is able to embrace the community's commit-ment and submit joyfully to the leader and I feel reserva-tions in my heart, then I must be a hopeless sinner. Every-one else feel joy, and I have suspicions. I wind up despairing of God's grace toward me.
This trap can also lead to the sin of presumption. Now that I am perfect I'm safe. I pray in tongues, I have undertaken the commitment God called me to. Nothing can go wrong. I presume upon God's grace, because I no longer need his help for my weaknesses and his mercy for my sins. This is where the Pharisee stood in Jesus' parable (Lk. 18:9-14). He was telling the truth when he thanked God he was not like other men, "grasping, crooked, adulterous", and said that he fasted twice a week and paid tithes. In fact, he was sincerely thankful. But he did not go home justified, because - unlike the tax collector - he did not appeal to God's mercy. He saw himself as beyond all that. He no longer needed to be saved.
This sin of presumption has two bad effects - one annoying and the other dangerous. "Perfect" Christians are annoying, not so much because they boast (although they sometimes do that), but because they can be so defensive. They are too holy to watch Saturday Night Live, but the other night "while flipping through the channels", they saw something funny. Deep down inside I am afraid that I might still be sinful, but I hate to be reminded of it. If I have had the "certifying" experience, then no one should call my holiness into question, right? I become defensive.
The genuinely dangerous effect of presumption is that it leads back to serious sin. Remember the story of Ned, who presumed he could dabble again with drugs. The grace of Christ really does transform us. St. Paul could honestly write, "I have been crucified with Christ, and the life I live now is not my own; Christ is living in me." (Gal 2:19-20) But he also wrote: "I am racing to grasp the prize if possible, since I have been grasped by Christ Jesus. Brothers, I do not think of myself as having reached the finish line." (Phil 3:12-13) The attitude of presumption makes the Christian lackadaisical. Very quickly he can fall back into old sins.
Besides the personal dangers of presumption and despair, the P.I.P. attitude is socially destructive; it ruins the Body of Christ. A priest-friend of mine commented on this once. He said that he admired the fervor of a par-ticular group, but he thought their perfectionism was off-base. "As I've gotten older," he said, "I've come more and more to see the wisdom of what they taught us in the semi-nary - ‘Save a seat in the last pew.’ It's good that these people want to be perfect, but you have to leave room in the back of the Church for those who have only enough courage to come in the door." A church or community of the perfect has no room for sinners, no room for the weak. Paradoxically, the perfect group of perfect Christians has no room in it to do Christ's main work - having mercy on sinners.
More serious is that the pristine church can quickly lead to a kind of enslavement. If it is by obeying the group that I am holy, then I am its slave. The Bruderhof Anabaptist communities have freely admitted that the worst times in their history were those when - out of desire for 'unity of mind and heart' - their members stopped listening to their consciences and refused to speak out against errors. If the group is so holy, then anything original I might bring to it can only be sinful. I become a spiritual slave, because only the community can assure my holiness. If a Christian depends on the community to guarantee his holiness, then his guide is no longer Christ, but that group. He must do what his "brothers and sisters" approve and what the leaders want. For example, a Catholic joins a traditionalist group that celebrates a monthly Mass in Latin and also serves as a kind of doctrinal "watchdog" over local religious education programs. Members of this group are intensely aware of their Catholicity, and their habits of frequent Mass and confession keep them close to Christ. Let us suppose, however, that this one member is invited to work with an inter-faith group at the homeless shelter, providing material services and cleaning the chapel. There is a good chance that many members of his traditionalist group will disapprove of this project. In fact, some of them - leaders included - may suggest that he is "less than fully Catholic". Such a person might well decide not to join this good work for the homeless (a kind of work, by the way, which the Pope and Vatican II Council expressly approve), because it will cut him off from those who certify his personal holiness.
And if the group believes that they are really the pristine Christian community, they can become arrogant col-lectively. "The Lord has given us a way of life. We don't need Mother Teresa to tell us how to be holy." The member who does not conform is not just odd, but is a sinner. He disrupts the "life God has given us". A premium is placed, not on virtue, but on conformity. The members lose their own individuality.
The fact is that Christ provides our only assurance. St. Paul writes, "If we hold out to the end we shall also reign with him. But if we deny him, he will deny us. If we are unfaithful he will still remain faithful, for he cannot deny himself." (2 Tim. 2:12-13) Christ is certain, we are not. This means that I cannot trust my own strength. I cannot trust the strength of other people. I can trust only him and his mercy. This is why Christ told us to pray "Thy Kingdom come", that the Father will establish his reign over us, and "forgive us our trespasses", because until the day we die, we are in danger of sin. It is only his grace that will carry us to the end, not our own strength, not any act or experience we have.
The Error of "Visible Grace"
In the first chapter I warned that although this book would talk about many different movements and organizations, it would be a mistake to condemn them. Each of the movements we have looked at in this book has had a strong experiential element - a conversion experience, a sense of empowerment with the Holy Spirit, a new feeling of deep peace, a sudden and new freedom for certain sins, a powerful sense of God’s love. God sends us these things to build us up. But none of these things is itself the faith that makes us holy. Experiences point the way, but they are never the reality.
Here we touch on a central truth of Catholic mystical theology. God cannot be experienced. He is absolutely beyond our senses, feelings and emotions. When you returned to a Latin Mass and found yourself overwhelmed by the majesty, solemnity, and holiness of the Liturgy, your experience was genuine, but it was not God. A sweet warm feeling flowed through your entire body when the prayer group laid hands on you and you broke into tongues. This was a gift of God, but it was not the Holy Spirit. We can never experience God directly.
The faith, the hope, and the love that make us holy are invisible and imperceptible. They cannot be felt. This is not because they are less than our experiences. It is because they are greater than our experiences. The faith that makes us holy is a mystical contact with God. Faith is a genuine contact and inner transformation by God. By it he forms himself - as it were - in our souls. It is something deeper than feelings. It is because God is so great and beyond all our sense and imaginings that real faith cannot be felt.
Strange as it may seem, this offers us great hope. Every emotion dies. Latin Masses become routine. The daily Rosary ceases to be sweet and becomes boring. Charismatics have wondered publicly what must be done to recapture that original fire. We can compare this with marriage. After the honeymoon, the loving husband and wife settle into daily life, no longer dominated by delicious romantic feelings. But their love has taken root on a deeper level. Their entire life has been transformed by their vowed love and shared life. Likewise the Christian’s life is transformed, even when it seems that the fire has gone out. In fact - and here is a profound truth that the spiritual writers have often addressed - God often lets us feel his absence precisely so that we will draw closer to him. God is not in the incense or the powerful Pentecostal wind; he is imperceptibly present in the heart. The faith that sanctifies has to trust in that presence and in his mysterious activity.
The truth about faith is that, in a mysterious way, it creates God’s image in us. By the natural powers of our minds we cannot accurately know or imagine God. Every picture or idea falls infinitely short of what God really is. The greatness of the gift of faith is that by faith God impresses his own image or nature onto our souls so that in faith we do know him. This knowledge won’t come to full fruition until we see him in heaven, but it is real in this life. But because this is a mystical kind of knowledge, we cannot be directly conscience of it. This means that I can never really know how real or strong my own faith is. Only God can know this. All I can do is to pray for faith and then trust in his mercy. But this invisible faith is far more real and enduring than any religious experience God may ever grant. Faith is the real gift.
So the desire for a pristine Church and personal perfection is really a desire for a kind of visible grace. This is natural; we humans live by our senses. But God wants to lift us to his level. And to do this he has to help us get free of this dependence and to walk with him. When we turn back to the "visible graces" - especially when God is calling us to deeper faith - then we fall into sanctity traps.
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