Sunday, June 6, 2010

Duc in Altum

"Put out into the Deep" (Luke 5:4)



Sometimes when you run aground you need to question your perspective and start seeing things as they truly are. The foolish cling to the past. The wise find new horizons. Seeing what needs to change is largely a matter of  perspective and focus.

John Paul 2 reminds us that "Nobody can use a person as a means towards an end, no human being, nor yet God the Creator" and that even "Christ's command to love is based on the personalistic norm".

Benedict 16 reminds those formed by the Legion that Maciel twisted their understanding of the Church's mission into "efficiency at all costs".

The more you have been integrated into Maciel's system of efficiency at any cost, the further you are from the true understanding of militia Christi that the Legion's charism must be refounded on.

The time has arrived to put out into the deep and leave behind the shallowness of Maciel's system.

Anyone looking to turn away from coercive activism would do well to turn to Dietrich Von Hildebrand  "one of the great ethicists of the twentieth century" (JP2) and "most prominent among the figures of our time" (B16). Especially to his great spiritual work Transformation in Christ written at the peak of his struggle against efficiency at the cost of human freedom:
"They apply the categories of mechanism to the province of organic life and even to the realm of spiritual personality and culture..."

"Facility is their watchword; and their complacent pride impels them to treat all things in a cavalier fashion..."

"They imagine themselves able to solve every problem and to arrange everything according to some simple prescription..."

"They denature the object of their attentions and with a kind of glib dexterity doctor it, as it were, until the problem appears to be solved or, rather, enchanted away...


"They do not treat things adequately but merely tamper with them, though often with a show of success..."

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