On the feast of St. Teresa of Avila, I’m reminded of Pope Benedict XVI fascinating commentary on metabasis–the trajectory of charity as “departure from oneself”–in the second volume of his renowned Jesus of Nazareth series:
‘Love to the end’ is what brings about the seemingly impossible metabasis: stepping outside the limits of one’s closed individuality, which is what agape is—breaking through into the divine. The ‘hour’ of Jesus is the hour of the great stepping beyond…it is agape ‘to the end’—and here John anticipates the final word of the dying Jesus: telestai— ‘it is finished’ (19:30). This end (telos) , this totality of self-giving, of remolding the whole of being—this is what it means to give oneself even unto death.”
The theme of departure, exiting, or coming out of oneself toward the God as ultimate Other appears elsewhere, often in reference to the spousal relationship between Christ and his Church. For example, in the Song of Solomon, the bridegroom invites his bride to “come” with him “to Lebanon,” while the bride invites him to “come into [his] garden,” both indicating the outward motion from the self toward the other (4:8, 16). This imagery also appears in the Revelation to John, when Christ the “Lamb” prepares for his marriage to his bride, the Church [“The Lamb has come, and the bride has made herself ready” (19:7), “The Spirit and bride say ‘Come!’” (22:17)].
The theme of coming out of the self can be likened to martyrdom insofar as it involves the death of the egotistic self. One cannot experience true unity with Christ or others until they first exit their ego. This death to self is not the end of the story, or of the trajectory of motion—instead, it is the beginning. Take, for example, the image of Teresa of Avila’s ecstasy, which she describes in her autobiography as an experience mirroring the conjugal union between two spouses:
I saw in his hands a large golden dart and at the end of the iron tip there appeared to be a little fire. It seemed to me this angel plunged the dart several times into my heart and that it reached deep within me. When he drew it out, I thought he was carrying off with him the deepest part of me; and he left me all on fire with great love of God. The pain was so great that it made me moan, and the sweetness this greatest pain caused me was so superabundant that there is no desire capable of taking it away; nor is the soul content with less than God. The pain is not bodily but spiritual, although the body doesn’t fail to share in some of it, and even a great deal. The loving exchange that takes place between the soul and God is so sweet that I beg Him in His goodness to give a taste of this love to anyone who thinks I am lying.
This experience inspired the controversial statue by Gian Lorenzo Bernini. Teresa’s facial expression in the statue reflects the sensations of physical agony, death, erotic pleasure, and spiritual joy, which she alludes to in her description of the experience. This image vividly conveys the extent to which Teresa’s experience holds together the tension between bodily passion/desire and renunciation, and mortification of self and communion with Christ as divine Bridegroom.
The 1984 Spanish mini-series about her life takes seriously the erotic language Teresa uses to bring to life her account of her first ecstasy. The moaning and heavy breathing may make some raise an eyebrow, but if we take the Saint at her word, it’s highly realistic.
The very etymology of the word “ecstasy” provides some insight into the “hidden” implications of this event—it is derived from the Greek ἔκστασις: to come outside of oneself, or of one’s position. Bernini’s statue gives form to these hidden implications. Her facial expression, which simultaneously evokes a sense of great pain or of death and of sensual pleasure, harkens to the interrelatedness of love and death, which is poetically summarized in chapter 8 of the Song of Solomon: “Place me like a seal over your heart, like a seal on your arm; for love is as strong as death, its jealousy unyielding as the grave” (8:6).
Philosopher Jean-Luc Marion applies the ideas of love as coming out of the self and love embracing death to his analysis of conjugal relations between a man and woman. He notes that the moment of climax between lovers gives way to an “eschatological anticipation”—the lover’s gift of self to the other in the conjugal act requires that he holds on to nothing for himself: “Loving demands that the first time already coincide with the last time.” The conjugal act implies a totalizing gift, which extends into
the final instance…The dawn and the evening make one single twilight—the time to love does not last and is played out in an instant, a fragment, a single beat—only one heartbeat, the smallest gap…separates us from eternity. We love one another in articulo vitae, or in other words in articulo mortis; death frightens the lover no more than the finish line terrorizes the runner…The time of the lovers…settles into the end—they leave together form the moment of departure and cannot part from one another.
The French wittily refer to the moment of climax as le petite morte: the small death. In this way, even the conjugal relations of a married couple are drawn into the trajectory of love unto death that Christ invites his followers to participate in. This is echoed in the Byzantine tradition, in which the imagery of death and martyrdom appear throughout the liturgical rites for matrimony. Toward the end of the marriage ceremony, the celebrant leads the bride and groom around the sacramental table three times in what is known as the “Dance of Isaiah.” The hymn chanted alongside this dance makes reference to the crowns that were placed on the heads of the bride and groom earlier in the ceremony. These crowns represent the “rewards of the martyrs” for having “fought the good fight,” and thus are “giv[ing] glory to [God].”
This hymn recalls what this man and woman are called to do in their marriage: ultimately, to die to themselves, and become united to Christ through their spouse. In this sense, they are replicating the heroic act of the martyrs, who literally die for the sake of union with, and glorification of, Christ. Thus, perhaps in a less dramatic way, the married man and woman are giving witness to the trajectory of their marriage as ordered toward an Object external to itself. On this feast of St. Teresa, the entire Church–both those called to marriage and consecrated life–ought to reflect on her powerful usage of spousal imagery to illuminate the mysterious intimacy that Christ calls each of us to with himself.
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Since reading Jesus of Nazareth I’ve come to the realization that Jesus of Nazareth is, at least from my perspective Benedict’s greatest work, among the greatest works of Christology. Personally I believe by far the best. Stephen Adubato demonstrates this with key quotes and his commentaries.
Benedict XVI makes encounter with Jesus alive and vibrant. A powerful counter to the current popular secularist Jesus. Instead,”Love to the end is what brings about the seemingly impossible metabasis: stepping outside the limits of one’s closed individuality, which is what agape is—breaking through into the divine” (Adubato quoting Benedict). Benedict enlightens us to the depth of meaning regarding the narrow, rough road to salvation. That an interior awareness of offering oneself without measure elicits knowledge of divine love, exquisite and passionate, unique to God, is offered us by participation.
I would first point out that if Professor Adubato had consulted a concordance of St. Teresa’s writings, he would find that she uses the word “ecstasy” only some half a dozen times. Her far more common description is “rapture”, which she sometimes also describes as “a deep recollection.”
Secondly, far from “going out” of oneself, Teresa describes the spiritual life as a journey ever more deeply within oneself to “the very interior center of the soul, which must be where God Himself is.” (Int. Cast. VII, 2, 3)
Finally, in the same chapter, before describing the spiritual marriage, she writes, “Between the spiritual betrothal and the spiritual marriage the difference is as great as that which exists between two who are betrothed and two who can no longer be separated. I have already said that even though these comparisons are used, because there are no others better suited to our purpose, it should be understood that in this state there is no more thought of the body than if the soul were not in it, but one’s thought is only of the spirit. In the spiritual marriage, there is still much less remembrance of the body”. (Int. Cast. VII, 2, 2-3) “And even though the comparison may be a coarse one I cannot find another that would better explain what I mean than the sacrament of marriage. This spiritual espousal is different in kind from marriage, for in these matters that we are dealing with there is never anything that is not spiritual. Corporal things are far distant from them, and the spiritual joys the Lord gives when compared to the delights married people must experience are a thousand leagues distant.” (Int. Cast. V, 4, 3)
The Spanish mini-series about Teresa was indeed impressive, but i think that Prof. Adubato would have done better to focus on Teresa’s writings, or else find some other writer to quote whose ideas were more similar to his own.
P.S. In French, “mort” is feminine, so that the correct phrase is “la petite mort”. Unless, perhaps he was quoting from Old English as in Sir Thomas Malory’s “Le Morte d’Arthur”?
I earlier posted a comment pointing out some of the textual weaknesses of Professor Adubato’s study of St. Teresa.
i will now post my personal opinion of this article both as a woman and as a religious. I think the article is ghastly in its erotic focus, and it greatly distorts both the spiritual life and marriage, both of which are icons of the “great mystery” that is “Christ and the Church”. (Eph. 5, 32).
“I think the article is ghastly in its erotic focus…”
I disagree. And I think Benedict XVI would disagree as well. For example, from his first encyclical, which takes up the topic of “eros” at length:
Mr. Olson, Benedict XVI was a very holy man and in his holiness he saw things as God sees them in their God-given beauty and purity. St. Teresa wrote most wisely and beautifully in her “Meditations on the Song of Songs” about the Song of Songs, and she says that “these words bear in themselves great majesty.” Is “great majesty” evident in Prof. Adubato’s article?
I pity one whom we call our Holy Mother when she is again subjected to psychoanalysis of this quality. The author seems blissfully ignorant that this is a very worn premise: orgy/rapture; climax/ecstasy (rinse and repeat).
There are other authors who have posited similar psychoanalyses of sexuality in the spiritual experiences of the Saint, using the Bernini sculpture as a “proof text.” Cathleen Medwick, Alana Louise Bowden and Caroline Babcock have all beaten him to it, yet perhaps being women themselves, they refrain from using quite such crass language.
Taking a masterpiece of a text from Pope Benedict and, four paragraphs later, describing a depiction of St. Teresa in ecstasy using a sexually deviant term is bizarre at best, insidious at worst – and in case we do not notice the first time, the emphasis on the “erotic” is dutifully repeated (he does not use “eros” at all).
I am sorry, but it is very self-serving to assume Pope Benedict would “agree” with the premise; although he doesn’t stoop to use the term “orgiastic,” does he? Yes, indeed, “eros” ought not be “reduced to ‘pure sex,'” but how does the use of the above term avoid that in this article? (And you could spare us the witticism of the French, especially if the author – or your proofreaders – cannot use the proper article for “morte”)
Why is it after this many centuries, it seems only in our hyper-sexualized woke age that we are repeatedly treated to this sort of “hagiographic analysis,” even in publications that are intended to promote the Faith? Perhaps by reading and studying her works for ourselves and not passing ourselves off as experts in her life and spirituality by reference to one work of art, one film and one passage in one book, said Faith and more of its Saints may be better served.
At the very end of the article we seem at last to find the topic that the author is championing; but surely there are nobler ways to defend the Sacrament of Marriage? Dear Mr. Olsen: with all due respect to your work, you could have done a lot worse, but you have come pretty close. I suspect that most if not all of my Sisters in Carmel would agree that Simone de Beauvoir had more respect for a Saint like Teresa, even if we might not completely agree with her thoughts. Look it up. Please.
Thank you, Sister Mary Elizabeth and Sister Gabriela, for your thoughtful remarks. I’ll readily admit that poor editing (on my part) missed language in this essay that was indeed problematic and not fit for the topic. I apologize for that and thank you, again, for pointing it out. I will strive to do better!
I don’t agree that the essay is devoid of worthy and helpful content. I am convinced (as a man who has been married for nearly 30 years now) that the laity (I cannot speak so much to religious, ordained, etc) need to see the deeper connection between sexuality, sacrifice, and self-gift. Sexuality, even for many good and holy Catholics, is sometimes trapped on the level of “dos” and “don’ts” (which are, to be clear, VERY important) and does not touch on the deeper realities, which are connected, of course, to soteriology and eschatology. And I think that is something that John Paul II tried to bring to the fore during his many decades of writing about the human person, both in his theology of the body and many other places.
Again, thank you. God bless!
God bless you, dear Mr. Olsen. It takes a truly good, great and humble man to apologize and I know that you understand when a Carmelite nerve has been struck where our Mother is involved.
YES, there is boundless treasure in the effort for ALL the faithful consecrated by their Baptism to become aware of the depths of the beauty and blessing in the connection between sexuality, sacrifice and self-gift – including us religious, which is one of the many, many debts we owe to St. John Paul.
Please be assured of our prayers for all the wonderful work that you do.
Again, may God bless you and all who work with you!
Dear Mr. Olson, Thank you very much for your kind and delicate reply. I can’t imagine how many articles you have to review, and it is understandable that some things may slip past you that would rather have caught. And, I’m sure that you will admit that it is also understandable the Carmelites have a hair-trigger when it’s a matter of defending their Foundress!
I have just been reading Eric Varden’s article in the Tablet about chastity and how difficult it is to speak and write about such things nowadays. And yet, you are perfectly right that all Catholics need to realize more deeply that our sexuality is gift from God, and a glorious gift at that!
Prof. Adubato would probably have been better served if he had chosen a married saint as the subject of his article, but unfortunately there is very little that is wisely and well-written on the subject. There are a few anecdotes: St. Elizabeth of Hungary held her husband’s hand while she said her prayers. Bl. Barbe Acarie was in ecstasy during the birth of one of her children. As you said, we are greatly indebted to St. John Paul II for his theology of the body, and yet even this only really addresses the subject as applying to marriage.
I am very interested in the subject because I chose my title “of the Incarnation” when I read that the Church is the continuation of the Incarnation. Our bodies are meant to be sacraments of His grace just as His was! There is much to discover in this!
Again, thank you for your apology. I am grateful that you took the time to consider all this, and I look forward to more interaction with the Catholic World Report. Perhaps I will even send you an article myself!
Dear Mr. Olson, I thanked you earlier, but I want to make sure it gets to you. I am very grateful that you took the time to review the article and the comments. God bless you for your apology. You are in my prayers.
Exstasis, Gk for ecstasy is to stand outside or to transcend oneself. Traditionally ecstasy is referred to by the mystics as experienced in the vision of God. Insofar as eros understood as passionate physical desire, the word’s meaning is transformed when it refers to love of God. Saint Thomas Aquinas confirms the reality of erotic love on a spiritual level, that the human passions, remaining physical in nature, purified by the Holy Spirit find their perfection and fulfillment in divine love.
When we leave this world and if gifted with the beatific vision, we remain what we are as created physical and spiritual. Our physical life is now in perfect compliance to what is holy and spiritual, yet physical in accord with our nature. Our physical nature is drawn by our spiritual nature, the soul, toward God.
Yes, indeed! ““Those who belong to this age marry and are given in marriage; but those who are considered worthy of a place in that age and in the resurrection from the dead neither marry nor are given in marriage. Indeed they cannot die anymore, because they are like angels and are children of God, being children of the resurrection.” (Lk. 20, 34-36)
It was only after I pasted this Gospel passage, that I realized how apposite the sentence “they cannot die anymore” is to this article!”
I am on the mail list of the Fairfield Carmel, and i remember that a year ago you posted a long article in support of that Carmel.
Mr. Olson, would you send this article to the Fairfield Carmelites to read?
I shared this article with a Carmelite Nun, and she replied with these excerpts from St. Teresa’s letters to her brother, Lorenzo:
“As for the lascivious feelings that you tell me about, don’t pay any attention to them. For although I have never experienced this — for God in his goodness has always delivered me from those passions — I think it must happen because the delight of the soul is so great that it arouses these natural feelings. They will die away with the help of God if you pay no attention to them. Other people have spoken to me about this.” (Letters 177, n. 8)
“…As for those sensual stirrings, so that you be tried in every way, as I told you, I see clearly that this is not a matter of importance and that the best thing you can do is to pay no attention to them. Once a very learned man told me that a man came to him extremely distressed because every time he received communion a terribly lascivious mood came over him (much worse than your experience) and that he had been ordered not to receive communion more than once a year, which was enough to fulfill his obligation. And this learned man, although he was not a spiritual person, understood the weakness and told him that he should pay no attention to it and receive communion every eight days. And the trouble went away when the man lost the fear of it. So, you shouldn’t pay any attention to this.” (Letters 182, n. 5)
How does this spiritual direction from the Saint to a layman fit in with the present article?
It doesn’t.
Actually, I think it does. It shows that Teresa never experienced the erotic feelings that Bernini and the author of the article attributed to her. This definitely weakens the thrust of the article. He should have chosen another saint.
I watched the Spanish mini-series that the writer mentions, and his article makes me think of the scene in the parlor where the nobleman is spouting his spiritual pornography at Teresa, who leaves in indignation, slamming the door behind her.
This is an excellent point!
In fact, the miniseries is available online: https://delaruecaalapluma.com/2013/01/17/serie-de-rve-sobre-santa-teresa-jesus/ – In Episode 2, “Cuentas de Conciencia,” what St. Teresa is depicted as saying to the nobleman (some 22 minutes in) is perhaps a very fitting coda to the ill-advised choice made of publishing this article: “All this offends rather than helps (us) to understand the things of the Lord.”
I daresay no one in their right mind would draw Pope Benedict in to defend that kind of “spiritual pornography.” Perhaps someone with more education than I have could explain how the approach of Professor Adubato’s article differs from this depiction in film.
But no: perhaps don’t waste any more time on this; save your publication further embarrassment.
Dear Editor, it seems to me Sr. Gabriela got it right this time and I’d like to suggest that the best approach to examining the Carmelite inspiration would be to let a sound Carmelite do it. The clash on this page shows that we can’t run things into each other -a distinct problem being presented to the Church now in these days – as if they somehow all arrive at the same infinite point where faith was always leading.
And actually I found Sr. made her case very well.
You may (or may not) find some interest in my post below, a quote from St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross.
I am a woman with a fervent fondness for the life, the writings, and the perfection practiced by St. Teresa of Avila and St. John of the Cross. Once upon a time I was favored with an invitation for entree into a Carmelite convent.
Grateful that our Lord and our Mother has seen in a timely manner that we would need the revelations of the Divine Will – the theme of dying to the self will to be united to the Divine Will, its struggles ,glories and blessings . The Song of Songs too can be seen as a poem of that theme and same with the mystical experiences of holy souls . https://queenofthedivinewill.org/little-catechism-of-the-divine-will/
Such an understanding more needed esp. in consideration of the potential of the ‘spousal theme ‘ to not add to the envy , effeminization, identity confusions etc : as the great prevailing danger of our times already . Persons of other faiths and cultures too might find greater familiarity , acceptance and comfort with the Divine Will manner of relating to the faith .
Thank you and God bless !
Oh oh look out Editor.
Another Carmelite, St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross, opines on original sin at “Woman,” p.64, Institute of Carmelite Studies, 1996:
“The direct consequence of original sin gives a clue as to what they [man and woman] may be held accountable for: the consequence was that man and woman saw each other with different eyes than they had previously; they had lost innocence of interchange with one another. So the first sin may not only be considered as a purely formal one of disobedience to God. Rather it implied a definite act which had been forbidden and which the serpent presented enticingly to the woman and then the woman to the man. Indeed, the act committed could well have been a manner of union which was at variance with the original order. But that the tempter first tempted the woman may signify that he had easier access to her, not that the woman was more easily induced to evil (indeed, both Adam and Eve were still free of an inclination to evil), but because the nature of the temptation was in itself of greater significance for her. From the first it was intended that woman’s life would be more strongly affected by procreation and the education of posterity. The difference of punishment for the man and woman is also indicative of this.”
Ahem.
Thank you for sharing this passage from St. Teresa Benedicta. You might be interested in a study I recently posted on Eve’s conversation with the serpent: https://wherepeteris.com/improving-on-gods-plan/
I must be dense: what does your “Ahem” mean, please? Does it point to some idea that I’m missing, or were you just clearing your throat and the microphone picked it up? That often happens to me on my cellphone.
Dear Anne Marie,
I was literally and linguistically and purposely clearing my throat and telling my readers about it. Why I cleared my throat I assumed would be obvious.
Letting imagination a little loose, we could think of “the hem” of Jesus’ garment (Matthew 9:20-22)
And suddenly, a woman who had a flow of blood for twelve years came from behind and touched the hem of His garment. For she said to herself, “If only I may touch His garment, I shall be made well.” But Jesus turned around, and when He saw her He said, “Be of good cheer, daughter; your faith has made you well.” And the woman was made well from that hour.
There we have a hem, a touch, a healing, and a woman with no more bleeding. Praise the God of Creation.
This St Teresa Benedicta of the Cross text makes reasonable what I always discounted as puritanical. I hadn’t considered that the transgression may have been “a manner of union which was at variance with the original order”, that is, contrary to the natural order. Thanks for sharing this.
Not forgetting the author yet not being an expert on Teresa or Carmelites, I venture this.
St. Teresa’s experiences confirm both a powerful fidelity and a complete chastity, attesting to the marvel of grace in her life.
People often fix marital unity in the sexual act, where the fruits of the union are consummated. But in the spiritual life unity is different.
When the saint alludes to marriage it is to point to a total dedication and fealty of the Lord’s love He offers and makes spiritually fruitful.
So when we say it is mystical we mean it is not understood to the corporeal and temporal order. Which is why we label it mystical.
I would say that what St. Teresa describes – that is, recounts – is her testimony and the proof of the gifts she found in the Lord.
I sound very bland? You have to appreciate that the art is meant to sublimely cast a defining moment in solid form and shape.
The angel is the messenger! The arrow his message!
Since the article is about marriage, I asked a married woman to read the article and share her thoughts about it. She read it, and then wrote, “I hated it.” She then gave me 2 paragraphs of detailed theological criticisms and 1 paragraph of stylistic criticism of the article. She is a professional woman who works in the publishing world.
The idea that passion is always connected somehow to sexuality is not the teaching of the faith.
I once heard a bishop recommend to clergy to “sublimate their sexuality” and I think this too is wrong, as though the erotic must have a place in passion and be somewhere engaged in it; and as though prayer proceeds through these combinations for some perfection or at all.
Eve’s statement about not even touching the forbidden tree, reflects her right understanding of what God had said. Here she is showing her best, how God made them in innocence.
But her conversing with the devil about that, indicates things already going bad. “Eating” comprehensively speaks about planting, nurturing, harvesting, preparing and serving.
I would add that Jesus affirms the same virtue when He says, even to look at a woman lustfully is an immersion into grave sin. Christ affirms goodness and what grace produces.
Maybe woman’s punishment came out greater (the childbearing, etc.). It is magnified in the vast, endemic, impersonal evil in the world at large, Adam responsible at the head, resting on man.
But I raise the issue of “not touching” and “not looking”, to highlight what I see going wrong with “homosexual blessing”. For homosexuals, chastity is not merely refraining from particular acts.
For them, chastity is the total renunciation of the inclinations of every type as evil and NOT from God and as contrary to true human disposition, character, relation. Which they too must condemn.
I raise it also to highlight the error in the absolutizing of dialogue and walking. Jesus joining them on Emmaus and sharing Eucharist was also to rebuke: He didn’t give set up “constitutive synodalism”.
https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/255730/latvian-bishop-at-synod-if-someone-is-living-in-sin-we-can-t-tell-them-that-s-all-right
https://www.catholicworldreport.com/2023/10/18/synod-on-synodality-asked-to-rethink-the-whole-church-according-to-synodality/
Earlier, in the morning, I posted this (below); and it hasn’t gotten published.
The same ting happened with another post of mine around the same time, to do with prayer for peace October 27. In this latter case I posted a further comment -about an hour ago; and it is being published but the one before it does not appear.
Perhaps the two missing posts will appear tomorrow? There was one time when I noticed a very long delay that affected a post of mine. More than a day or two before it was showing. I imagine that it’s possible for signals to get lost in the internet maze sometimes.
I would like to re-post the one for this article and have it showing at this time. It relates to the very problem of overdoing parallels and wrongly matching up marriage with “homosexualized friendship”.
Homosexualist “friendship” is not friendship and is contrary to the virtue of friendship -and all the virtues including the lesser ones like basic courtesy.
If I have a problem with a virtue, say, trying to make intemperance into a sort of high-minded paternalism, the way to unpack that is not a by making comparison to marriage or unmaking comparison to marriage.
There is also a lie going on, where people of merit are heralding that homosexualists can’t help themselves. If they can’t help themselves, then there is a question of appropriate steps.
All that is at the level of human virtue, which all of us are bound to master.
There is also the area to do with grace. When Mary Magdalene was crying at Jesus’ feet she was not messaging Him that she knows He would understand that she was born that way; nor that, as bad as she had been, the renunciation she saw would not be the important thing.
My comment of earlier today is pertinent in another way, where I make an attempt to add to a point discussed by Sr. Gabriela in her article in her link.
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Elias Galy
OCTOBER 19, 2023 AT 8:32 AM
Your comment is awaiting moderation.
Eve’s statement about not even touching the forbidden tree, reflects her right understanding of what God had said. Here she is showing her best, how God made them in innocence.
But her conversing with the devil about that, indicates things already going bad. “Eating” comprehensively speaks about planting, nurturing, harvesting, preparing and serving.
I would add that Jesus affirms the same virtue when He says, even to look at a woman lustfully is an immersion into grave sin. Christ affirms goodness and what grace produces.
Maybe woman’s punishment came out greater (the childbearing, etc.). It is magnified in the vast, endemic, impersonal evil in the world at large, Adam responsible at the head, resting on man.
But I raise the issue of “not touching” and “not looking”, to highlight what I see going wrong with “homosexual blessing”. For homosexuals, chastity is not merely refraining from particular acts.
For them, chastity is the total renunciation of the inclinations of every type as evil and NOT from God and as contrary to true human disposition, character, relation. Which they too must condemn.
I raise it also to highlight the error in the absolutizing of dialogue and walking. Jesus joining them on Emmaus and sharing Eucharist was also to rebuke: He didn’t give set up “constitutive synodalism”.
Sr. Gabriela, about that defamation.
They uphold the abortion circle because they want to protect their charges. It’s a vicious cycle, the charges later look back with the feeling of the shared loyalty, how they were looked after and how “the worst” was prevented.
From that alone you see it is a vicious circle, not merely cycle. It is a kindness, however, from the one who points out the error, to bring it home to them. Not defaming. Instead they prefer a fantasy that this one hasn’t grown and needs their empathy over his lack of maturity.
When the empathy is not received they decide he is a hardened sinner to be resisted and undermined. So that the abortion circle stands. So convicted are they, they cause that person no end of trouble; set him down guilty of the worst irreformable things; and take charge here too.
Upstart. A failed Francis of Assisi. Make his life miserable. Not someone that can commiserate and not someone who can be trusted. Do not talk through the problem with him. Hold off on this individual.
And this is it to this day, with those Carmelites. To be fair, other orders/congregations are in on that whole “ecology” and they close ranks all the time to stave off “climate crisis”. Things must always run smoothly and any upset is commandeered to bring things back as they were.
They alone understand and they alone have the right answer.
If you find this is sounding silly, I could agree with you. But it’s absolutely worse than silly. Because we are not talking about a lost toy, we are making each other get tangled up inextricably only in order to hold on to abortion; infect everyone; and be able to control it.