They are heavily involved in motivational teaching and “feel good” sessions to promote emotions. They overwhelm with smiling faces, handshakes and hugs of unconditional friendships. They immediately become your best friend and replacement family. Critical thinking is discouraged and seen as selfish, or as dissention (see Power Corrupts - Questioning and Inducing Guilt).

Years ago when we were first married, a friend who worked with Carol in the bank came up to her crying terribly and stated that another employee who was a Jehovah’s Witness had declared she only had to pray to hear and when she told him she had done this, his response was that she had no faith. Carol’s friend wanted to know if this was true.

Of course we do not believe it is true, because G-d loves all His children, especially the “disabled” (a term we both loathe because these are not the true ones disabled). Yes it is true He healed people of blindness, deafness and lameness, but these were miracles done, as well as those at Fatima and other holy places of healing, to show His power, even over nature. Indeed, science still cannot restore true sight after all their advancements, however Yeshua restored sight to the point that those He healed saw as if they were never blind. Yet not all are healed in this way, sometimes the healing He does is to help us accept ourselves as we are.

So Carol asked her friend if she minded be deaf because she remembered her telling her once before she was at peace with her deafness and she admitted before she talked with him she was, but now… That’s when Carol pointed out that Jesus may have healed her back when she prayed, healed her of her insecurity over how He created her and this is something no one should take away from her. Then they began to discuss how He was using her in the deaf community and she began to feel much better when she saw how much He was helping her.

Feel good theology is wrong, not because it’s not good to feel happy or satisfied, but such feelings come from accomplishments or overcoming difficulties. In fact at the Papal Household during Advent in 2003, Father Raniero Cantalamessa gave a second homily he called "Though I Walk Through the Valley of the Shadow..." in which he noted that we have had a great gift in our modern saints because these kept records on their walk to that saintly faith we all admire. Below are excerpts from this amazing talk:

It has been revealed by her personal diaries and her (Mother Teresa’s) letters to her Spiritual Director, made public on the occasion of the process of beatification: "With the start of her new life at the service of the poor, an oppressive darkness came upon her."[3] A few brief passages suffice to give an idea of the density of the darkness in which she found herself:

"There is so much contradiction in my soul, such deep longing for God, so deep that it is painful, a suffering continual -- yet not wanted by God, repulsed, empty, no faith, no love, no zeal.... Heaven means nothing to me, it looks like an empty Place"[4]

It was not difficult to recognize immediately in this experience of Mother Teresa a classic case of that which scholars of mysticism, following St. John of the Cross-, usually call the dark night of the spirit. Tauler gives an impressive description of this stage of the spiritual life:

"Now we are abandoned in such a way that we no longer have any knowledge of God and we fall into such anguish so as not to know any more if we were ever on the right path, nor do we know if God does or does not exist, or if we are alive or dead. So that a very strange sorrow comes over us which makes us think that the whole world in its expanse oppresses us. We no longer have any experience or knowledge of God, and even all the rest seems repugnant to us, so that it seems that we are prisoners between two walls."[5]

Everything leads one to think that this darkness was with Mother Teresa until her death, [6] with a brief parenthesis in 1958, during which she was able to write jubilantly: "Today my soul is filled with love, with joy untold, with an unbroken union of love."[7] If from a certain moment she no longer speaks about it, it is not because the night was finished, but rather because she got used to living with it. Not only did she accept it, but she recognizes the extraordinary grace it held for her.

"I have begun to love my darkness for I believe now that it is a part, a very small part, of Jesus' darkness and pain on earth."[8]

Through the study of people like Mother Teresa and St. John of the Cross we can come to better understand the teaching on true holiness that come from the pulpit of Church:

Cat. 2015: The way to perfection passes by way of the Cross. There is no holiness without renunciation and spiritual battle, cf.2Tim.4. Spiritual progress entails the ascesis and mortification that gradually lead to loving the peace and joy of the Beatitude.

He who climbs never stops going from beginning to beginnings that have no end. He never stops desiring what he already knows. St. Gregory of Nyssa, Hom. In Cant.8; PG 44, 941C.

We agree that our Church’s call to holiness is a cross that the feel good theologians fail to grasp. Our L-rd taught this when He came, He told us not to fear he who could take our lives but rather HE who could take life and soul, that we have to love nothing more than Him and we are to take up that cross or we are unworthy of Him, Matt.10.26-39. He’s the Messiah Who listed persecution twice among the Beatitude’s blessings, so even though hugs, kisses and shaking of the hands is not bad in and of itself, be very leery if all you hear from a “teacher” or all you get from its members is emotional feel good vibes because, as James warned:

You believe that G-d is one you do well. Even the demons believe and shutter. Do you want to be shown, you shallow man, that faith apart from works is barren?” James2.19-20

Faith without works is dead. After all, if we are going to judge them by their “fruit” (Matt.7.15-20) then they have to have good fruit beyond handshakes and good feelings to judge.

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