NOTES ON QUIETISM
Quietism
and Jansenism are joined in place and time—not entirely surprising, because
they share the same foundation in a belief in the incapacity of the human will
to freely choose grace and to cooperate with it. Both ideological systems (systems
of ideas) hold a pessimistic view of human nature after the Fall, which they
understand to be essentially depraved and crippled with incapacity as a result.
“Quietism
[was] a doctrine of Christian spirituality that, in general, holds that perfection consists in passivity (quiet) of
the soul, in the suppression of human effort so that divine action may have
full play. Quietistic elements have been discerned in several religious
movements, both Christian and non-Christian, through the centuries; but the
term is usually identified with the doctrine of Miguel de Molinos, a Spanish
priest who became an esteemed spiritual director in Rome during the latter half
of the 17th century and whose teachings were condemned as heretical by the
Roman Catholic Church.”
—“Quietism:
Religious Doctrine,” Britannica
Curiously,
Quietism and Jansenism are associated with antithetical movements in Roman
Catholic spirituality—the former, spiritual laxity, the latter, spiritual
rigorism.
“Quietism
(from the Latin word quies, repose, inactivity) is the result of false mysticism. It is a theoretical
and practical negation of asceticism.
The basic principle of quietism is that Christian
perfection is found only in a complete passivity of the soul. This
passivity applies not only to mental prayer but to spiritual life in general.
Any human effort or activity interferes with God’s action. “Let God act” is the
guiding principle of the quietists, meaning: Let God alone do everything. Early
in life, a person, they say, should make an act of complete passivity. When
this has been done, no other act of virtue is required, no resistance to
temptation is necessary. Their perfection consists essentially of
self-annihilation, mystical death, and absorption into the divine substance.
Their part in the work of salvation and sanctification is limited to the
passive exposure of their soul to the action of the Holy Spirit who does everything
in consequence of our union with Christ.”
—Pascal
P. Parente, “Quietism,” Catholic Culture
Saint Ignatius of Loyola fell afoul of the Spanish Inquisition under suspicion of sympathy with the Alumbrados, the Quietists of the time in Spain.
“The Alumbrados of Spain in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were quietists professing doctrines received from the Pantheistic Brethren and Sisters of the free Spirit. According to these early quietists, perfection consists in complete absorption in God. The human will becomes identical with the divine. There is, then, no need for Sacraments, for law, for worship, and the person can indulge in carnal desires without staining the soul.”
Fortunately, Loyola was judged not guilty by the Inquisition and freed. Notwithstanding, his incarceration and interrogation by the Inquisition left its mark on the saint and his classic opus, the Spiritual Exercises.
One
of the notable exponents of Quietism is Meister Eckhart, who made statements
that could be interpreted as pantheistic, identifying the being of the
beatified soul in Heaven with the being of God. For this reason, among others,
he was censured and condemned by the pope.
“The
Church has repeatedly condemned the errors of pantheism. Among the propositions
censured in the Syllabus of Pius IX is that which declares: ‘There is no
supreme, all-wise and all-provident Divine Being distinct from the universe;
God is one with nature and therefore subject to change; He becomes God in man
and the world; all things are God and have His substance; God is identical with
the world, spirit with matter, necessity with freedom, truth with falsity, good
with evil, justice with injustice’ (Denzinger-Bannwart, ‘Ench’, 1701). And the
Vatican Council anathematizes those who assert that the substance or essence of
God and of all things is one and the same, or that all things evolve from God’s
essence (ibid., 1803 sqq.).”
—“Pantheism,”
Catholic Encyclopedia
About
Meister Eckhart’s Quietism:
“In
his 60th year he was called to a professorship at Cologne. Heinrich von
Virneburg—a Franciscan, unfavourable to Dominicans, anyway—was the archbishop
there, and it was before his court that the now immensely popular Meister
Eckhart was first formally charged with heresy. To a list of errors, he replied
by publishing a Latin Defense and then asked to be transferred to the pope’s
court in Avignon. When ordered to justify a new series of propositions drawn
from his writings, he declared: ‘I may err but I am not a heretic, for the
first has to do with the mind and the second with the will!’ Before judges who
had no comparable mystical experience of their own, Eckhart referred to his
inner certainty: ‘What I have taught is the naked truth.’ The bull of Pope John
XXII, dated March 27, 1329, condemns 28 propositions extracted from the two
lists. Since it speaks of Meister Eckhart as already dead, it is inferred that
Eckhart died some time before, perhaps in 1327 or 1328. It also says that
Eckhart had retracted the errors as charged.”
—“Meister
Eckhart: German Mystic,” Britannica
“It
must be admitted that some of the sentences in his sermons and treatises were Beghardic, quietistic, or pantheistic.
But although he occasionally allowed harmful sentences to proceed from his lips
or his pen, he not unfrequently gave an antidote in the same sermons and
treatises. And the general tenor of his teaching shows that he was not a Beghard,
nor a quietist, nor a pantheist. ...In January, 1327, Archbishop Heinrich of
Cologne undertook an independent inquiry, whereupon Eckhart and Father Nicholas
appealed to Rome against his action and authority in the matter. But the next
month, from the pulpit of the Dominican church in Cologne, Eckhart repudiated
the unorthodox sense in which some of his utterances could be interpreted,
retracted all possible errors, and submitted to the Holy See. His profession of
faith, repudiation of error, and submission to the Holy See were declared by
Pope John XXII in the Bull ‘Dolentes referimus’ (27 March, 1329), by which the
pontiff condemned seventeen of Eckhart’s propositions as heretical, and eleven
as ill-sounding, rash, and suspected of heresy (Denzinger, Enchiridion, no. 428
sqq.; Hartzheim, Conc. Germ., IV, 631).”
—“Meister
Johann Eckhart,” Catholic Encyclopedia
As
long as mysticism exists in the Roman Catholic Church—and it always will,
because the religion is all about a transcendent spiritual dimension beyond our
ordinary and everyday empirical experience—Quietism and its progeny will remain of major interest
and concern among the faithful.
Public domain photo
ReplyDeletePhoto link:
https://www.piqsels.com/en/public-domain-photo-jzfgg
Gonzalinho