The sound of Pelagius laughing

 We had another good question in the queue this morning:

Why do people look at religion or treat the word like its dirty or a bad thing?

I often see the accusation, "You follow a religion" followed up with "I follow Christ".

Um....Jesus followed a religion. He was a devout Jew. He founded a religion - Christianity.

So... why the argument?

 

I think there are multiple things going on here that you are alluding to in greater culture. There is a trend, particularly in the West in the post-Christendom world, for certain groups to disdain of organized religion. There are various reasons why that has evolved. Some of it is intentionally malicious, some of it is political. Some of it, I think, is legitimately grounded in heart felt reaction against things the Church teaches that don't jive with what the modern world wants to hear and some of it is reaction against bad things that have been done in the name of the Church.

 

I think we do have to acknowledge both of those realities in this. Bad things certainly have been done historically in the name of the Church and of Christ. We also have to acknowledge that the Church does have moral and ethical teachings that have largely been rejected by larger secular culture. I think both of these factors are contributing in a strange way to certain modern Christians having a gag reflex to the idea of "organized religion."

 

This is also somewhat unique to Western, particularly American, Christianity. We have a long history in America of this John Wayne cowboy rugged individualism thing going on. It is extremely ingrained in the American psyche to be stubborn and independent. This is true across political lines. It manifests differently depending on the group, but it's there. That really does bleed over into American spiritual discourse, often not for the better, and it is tempting to want to believe that all I need is "me, myself, and Jesus." There is a distinct Pelagian heresy in that; there is nothing new under the sun.

 

Pelagianism was a controvery around AD 400. A monk named Pelagius got into a major spat with St. Augustine over the extent to which free will plays into salvation. To be fair to Pelagius, to what extent he actually taught works righteousness and how original sin did not infect humans to the extent that perfection was impossible is debatable. We don't have many of his actual writings still in existence. We have to infer a lot of what he taught from his theological opponents like Augustine and Jerome. How exact and fair they were in quoting and expounding on how awful Pelagius' actual teachings were is anyone's guess.

 

But, the general consensus of the Church fathers who sorted this out in the Council of Carthage. It is generally believed that Pelagius taught that the doctrine of original sin placed too little emphasis on the human capacity for the spiritual improvement of the self, which would lead either to despair or to reliance on forgiveness without responsibility. He also seems to have argued that many Christians were comforted with false security about their salvation leading them to relax their Christian practice. In other words, I can just go to Confession and sin all the more and rinse and repeat and not actually be expected to truly try to repend. Pelagius believed that Adam's transgression had caused humans to become mortal, and given them a bad example, but not corrupted their nature in so far as that with proper prayer and spiritual discipline, one could achieve perfection basically, to use a modern term, by pulling oneself up by one's on spiritual bootstraps.

 

In my thumbnail of Pelagianism there, you can clearly see that even though Pelagianism was clearly condemned by the Church, it has never gone away. In many ways, it's found new life in the John Wayne United States rugged individualism type of ethos: if you just pray and go to church occasionally and read enough self-help books, you can get yourself to heaven? Why? Not because you are reliant on the Sacraments or the Church or Community or even because we need Christ's grace and mercy but because at the end of the day I just need me and Jesus and that's enough because I am a good person, and all good people go to heaven. I can't tell you how many times I have heard that clearly semi-Pelagian message in sermons or Christian publications or sometimes even in Catholic homilies particularly at funerals pretty much straight up. I literally heard a priest at a funeral one time say, "So-and-so is in heaven because he was a good person." Christ was not mentioned. The Church was not mentioned. I was aghast. (It was not my parish or Diocese, so there was not much I could do other than pray about it.)

 

I remain convinced is St. Augustine could come back for a month and get a whirlwind tour of modern Western Christianity, he would be horrified. This is not just a Protestant problem. The ghost of Pelagius is everywhere. We still see it in the fall out from Covid. People stopped going to Mass. I have heard Catholics say to my face, "I just watch Mass at home. I'm a good person. I believe in Jesus. I'll go to heaven." I mean, what do you say to that? My exact comment (which was probably ill advised) was, "Well, I hope you're right, but I think there's more to it than that."

 

So, when you hear people say "I don't need the Church. I just need me and Jesus..." listen closely. You will probably hear Pelagius laughing.