“Quietness is absolutely necessary for spiritual growth under ordinary circumstances. There are sometimes brief tempests in the interior when we grow, like children in an illness. But these are eccentric phenomena. It is plain that quietness must be the prevailing atmosphere of an ascetic. We must be quiet in order to pray. Mortification must be quiet, or else it will be merely vehement nature, growing in fury as it grows in pain. Confidence in God must be quiet. The very word itself is full of the sound of rest. The receiving of the sacraments must be quiet. Noise and hurry would be simple irreverence. Our love of others must be quiet, else it will degenerate into earthly tenderness. In a word, there is hardly a function of the spiritual life which docs not require quietness for its exercise and fulfilment. Yet faults are universal, daily, in all subject matters, thought, word, deed, look, omission. They cover the whole surface of life incessantly; so that if we do not take them quietly, we shall never be quiet at all. This is so absurd a result, that it is as good as a demonstration that we must take our faults quietly.” — Fr. Frederick William Faber, Growth in holiness; or, The progress of the spiritual life
h/t Laura Wood for that post. Quite beautiful, absolutely radiant in its Truth.
Now let’s contrast this with Quietism. Buckle up.
Quietism is a wicked heresy of the 17th Century promulgated by Miguel de Molinos, a Jesuit-trained priest out of Aragon, Spain. Quietism teaches passivity as the mother of all virtues. It teaches that any action we take on our own is detrimental to a more perfect contemplation, in a way that makes contemplation an idol instead of a tool. All activity/agency and even pious actions/devotions must be eliminated, because they lie in opposition to union with God through passivity. In short, the false doctrines of Quietism teach that we ought to be quiet, and do nothing.
Does this remind you of anything related to current events? Do you see how this insane doctrine obviously matches up with the Credo of Trad Inc. these past 12 years:
“There’s nothing we can do.”
Quietism was formally condemned by Innocent XI in the bull Coelestis Pastor on 20 November 1687, the sentence being read out at Santa Maria sopra Minerva, (my absolute favorite church in Rome that isn’t a basilica… if Catholics ever reclaim that place, you need to go).
Among the condemned propositions of Quietism:
- It is necessary that man reduce his own powers to nothingness, and this is the interior way.
- To wish to operate actively is to offend God, who wishes to be himself the sole agent; and therefore it is necessary to abandon oneself wholly in God and thereafter to continue in existence as an inanimate body.
- Vows about doing something are impediments to perfection.
- Natural activity is the enemy of grace, and impedes the operations of God and true perfection, because God wishes to operate in us without us.
- By doing nothing the soul annihilates itself and returns to its beginning and to its origin, which is the essence of God, in which it remains transformed and divinized, and God then remains in himself, because then the two things are no more united, but are one alone, and in this manner God lives and reigns in us, and the soul annihilates itself in operative being.
- After our free will has been resigned to God, reflection and care about everything of our own must be left to that same God, and we ought to leave it to him, so that he may work his divine will in us without us.
- It is not seemly that he who is resigned to the divine will, ask anything of God; because asking is an imperfection, since the act is of one’s own will and election
Now it must be said that the false doctrines of de Molinos devolved much farther than this. This is just scratching the surface. There are a total of 43 condemned doctrines. Evil begets evil.
Thus explains Innocent XI:
“Recently it has been brought to the attention of our apostolic office that a certain Miguel de Molinos, under pretext of the prayer of quiet, but actually at variance with the teaching and practice of the holy fathers from the very beginnings, was teaching false doctrines by word and writings, and in practice was following them; these doctrines were leading the faithful from true religion and from the purity of Christian piety into terrible errors and every indecency.”
“Act, and God will act.” – St Joan of Arc