Certain critics of Catholic integralism have commonly brought forward the charge that integralists have forsaken mysticism for power, adopting a one-sided predilection for coercion, at the expense of the real essence of the Catholic religion, which is self-emptying love. This is a critique that has been leveled by Michael Hanby, David C. Schindler, and others. According to this critique, integralism forgets the supreme model of Christ’s sacrifice on the cross, in which he renounced earthly power for the sake of love. Christ’s sacrifice stands as a model of Christian life, an example of the power of self-giving love over the wielding of worldly power. Integralism, it is argued, neglects this dimension of Christ’s act by adopting worldly forms of power.
In this article, I will respond to such critiques by arguing that it is precisely the mystical dimension of the Catholic faith that legitimizes the use of temporal power in the service of authority, of coercion in the service of truth. For this purpose, it is necessary to dive deeper into the links between politics and mysticism, which can only be discerned from within the bosom of the Church. The Church is the guardian of a profound mystery, a gnosis unattainable to the human intellect on the basis of its natural reason alone. Indeed, even the rational apparatus of sacred theology falls short of the mystery which the Church guards. From this fundamentally apophatic dimension of the Church’s mission, a whole vista of political theology unfolds, and politics is transformed from a worldly game of power into the very means by which souls are purified and prepared for the loving union with God that transcends reason. Integralism has a purpose that is essentially mystical.
I. Apophaticism and the Truth Beyond Reason
The Church’s task in the world is profoundly apophatic: to dictate what may not be said of God, that is, to guard the secret that is God, lest the world, in saying too much, make a mockery of Him through irreverence. By guarding against such irreverence the Church is not protecting God (who is impassible and in need of nothing); rather it is human beings who are protected against the destruction of their own dignity as images of God. Reverence before the infinite mystery is what makes human beings fully human, whereas irreverence destroys their humanity. The highest reverence, indeed, is to know that one does not know God. Thus, Dionysius the Areopagite closes his treatise De Coelesti Hierarchia commenting that “the hiddenness, beyond our capacity, we have honoured by silence.” The same Dionysius’ famous treatises De Mystica Theologia and De Divinis Nominibus speak of the profound darkness of mystical knowledge, the dense but luminous obscurity into which the soul is necessarily plunged when it seeks to know the things of God. The divine darkness is impenetrable, because God is beyond all being, infinitely transcending all things while also containing them.
Consequently, in a “programmatic” passage at the opening of De Mystica Theologia, Dionysius exhorts his student, Timothy, to leave behind his natural faculties, including his rational intelligence, in order to make way for the super-luminous darkness of Him who is beyond all knowledge:
[B]ut thou, O dear Timothy, by thy persistent commerce with the mystic visions, leave behind both sensible perceptions and intellectual efforts, and all objects of sense and intelligence, and all things not being and being, and be raised aloft unknowingly to the union, as far as attainable, with Him Who is above every essence and knowledge. For by the resistless and absolute ecstasy in all purity, from thyself and all, thou wilt be carried on high, to the superessential ray of the Divine darkness, when thou hast cast away all, and become free from all.
Following Dionysius, St. Thomas Aquinas teaches that God can ultimately be known only by being unknown: “Because we cannot know of God what he is, but only what he is not, therefore we cannot consider of God how he is, but only how he is not.” Indeed, Aquinas’ theology is permeated with a Dionysian apophaticism, grounded in the recognition that the natural capacity of the human intellect, tethered to sensation, is only adequate to know sensible creatures, in whom God is represented only ever partially and imperfectly.
Our natural knowledge begins from sense. Hence our natural knowledge can go as far as it can be led by sensible things. But our mind cannot be led by sense so far as to see the essence of God; because the sensible effects of God do not equal the power of God as their cause. Hence from the knowledge of sensible things the whole power of God cannot be known; nor therefore can His essence be seen. But because they are His effects and depend on their cause, we can be led from them so far as to know of God “whether He exists,” and to know of Him what must necessarily belong to Him, as the first cause of all things, exceeding all things caused by Him. Hence we know [of] His relationship with creatures so far as to be the cause of them all; also that creatures differ from Him, inasmuch as He is not in any way part of what is caused by Him; and that creatures are not removed from Him by reason of any defect on His part, but because He super-exceeds them all.
This is one of many passages where Aquinas, following the Areopagite, distinguishes three degrees of knowing God: 1) by way of causality; 2) by way of remotion or negation; and 3) by way of transcendence or eminence. This third way is like a synthesis arising out of the dialectic of the two prior ways, which are positive and negative respectively. The human intellect begins its journey to God through a rational process of discovery, by which it knows God positively or affirmatively as the cause of all things. But it then proceeds to deny of God that which it first discovered, on account of the infinite distance that remains between God and His creatures. Consequently, having undergone this dialectical dance of affirmation and negation, the intellect rests in the knowledge that God infinitely transcends all creatures.
The dialectic of affirmation and negation is a direct consequence of the metaphysical and epistemological condition of human nature, immersed in the diversity of sensible beings. The created world can only represent the unity of God in a particulated, multiplicitous way. It is only because of this that God, who is One, is named by a diversity of names. “[T]he perfections of all things, which belong to the rest of things through diverse forms, must be attributed to God through one and the same power in Him. . . From this we see the necessity of giving to God many names.” Accordingly, each representation simultaneously reveals and conceals God, and thus it must be both affirmed and denied: “As a result, with reference to the mode of signification there is in every name that we use an imperfection, which does not befit God, even though the thing signified in some eminent way does befit God. . . Such names, therefore, as Dionysius teaches [De divinis nominibus I, 5, De caelesti hierarchia II, 3], can be both affirmed and denied of God. They can be affirmed because of the meaning of the name; they can be denied because of the mode of signification.” The task of theology is to collect into a comprehensive unity the multitude of representations which express in a partial way the total unity of God — and then to acknowledge that this complex of representations still falls infinitely short of God.
There is a paradox in Aquinas’ account of human intellectual capacity: at the highest reaches of its capacity, the intellect discovers its incapacity. The use of reason is most at home in the first way of knowing God, where His existence and attributes are demonstrated affirmatively. But subsequently, reason begins to find the foundations of its approach to God shaken, as the way of negation draws the intellect into the awareness of its profound distance from God. It is precisely at this moment, when reason realizes its incapacity, that the intellect reaches the highpoint of its capacity for knowledge, falling silent in the face of God’s infinite transcendence. This is above all what it means to know God: to know that one does not know Him. Thus, St. Thomas writes elsewhere: “Man reaches the highest point of his knowledge about God when he knows that he knows him not, inasmuch as he knows that that which is God transcends whatsoever he conceives of him.”Be still and see that I am God (Psalm 46:10).
It is important to remember that knowledge of God is itself the highest point of all human knowledge. What a remarkable claim, then, that the high point of all knowledge, the endpoint that marks the arrival of the intellect at totality, after having traversed the entire gamut of sciences — this high point consists in the recognition that one does not know. The totality of all knowledge is consummated in ignorance. Moreover, since knowledge is what is most specific to human beings, what distinguishes them from sub-rational creation, the highest activity of human beings simply speaking, what philosophers call their proper ἔργον, their function and purpose, is precisely this docta ignoratia, this learned ignorance.
Thomas insists that the silence of reason before the transcendent God is not on account of any inherent unknowability in God. On the contrary, it is precisely on account of God’s excess of knowability, His infinite intelligibility, that the finite human intellect cannot know Him — as the bat cannot see the sun, which is maximally visible on account of its brightness. Thus:
Since everything is knowable according as it is actual, God, Who is pure act without any admixture of potentiality, is in Himself supremely knowable. But what is supremely knowable in itself, may not be knowable to a particular intellect, on account of the excess of the intelligible object above the intellect; as, for example, the sun, which is supremely visible, cannot be seen by the bat by reason of its excess of light.
Thus, the height of reason’s capacity is at precisely that point where it discovers its incapacity in the face of God’s infinite transcendence and infinite knowability. For the human intellect is finite and tethered to sensible things, which can represent God only partially and diversely. At the heights of its capacity, reason must therefore fall silent, for this is the only appropriate response to a mystery that is beyond all thought and language.
II. Faith and the Apophatic Mission of the Church
It is precisely in this space of reason’s silence that faith enters the scene. Falling silent before the excess knowability of God, the intellect now awaits the self-revelation of God, to which the intellect can only assent through faith. Beyond the threshold of reason’s silence, the things of God can only be known through belief. Thus, in an article on “whether faith is necessary,” from the commentary on Boethius’s De Trinitate, St. Thomas writes:
The truth of things may also not be evident because of defect on our part, as in the case of divine and necessary things which, according to their own nature, are most knowable. Wherefore, to understand them, we are not capable of immediate intellection, from the very beginning, since it is in accordance with our nature to attain from things less knowable and posterior in themselves, to knowledge of those that are themselves more knowable and prior. But since from none of those things that we know last do we have any knowledge of those that we know first, it is needful for us even at first to have some notion of those things that are most knowable in themselves; but this cannot be except by believing.
For example, the truth of the Triune God can in no way be accessed by reason. It pertains so intimately to the transcendent essence of God, before which reason must helplessly stop short, that it can only be known in the intimacy of God’s self-disclosure. St. Thomas could not be clearer that the truth of the Trinity cannot be known even after the threefold progress of causality, negation, or eminence delineated above:
I answer that the truth that God is three and one is altogether a matter of faith; and in no way can it be demonstratively proved. . . Thus there are things that designate His causality and His eminence over creatures and that deny in Him any of the imperfections found in effects. The existence of a Trinity of persons, however, cannot be perceived from a consideration of divine causality, since causality is common to the whole Trinity. Nor can it be known from His lacking any imperfection. Therefore in no way can it be demonstratively proved that God is three and one.
Now, this apophatic dimension of scientific theology, the silent space where reason steps aside for faith, is the proper domain of the Church’s teaching authority. The Church’s role in the world is fundamentally tied to the apophatic character of theology: to administer the Truth beyond reason to Her members, to mediate the self-revelation of God. St. Thomas confirms this when he teaches that faith requires both a formal and a material object: the material object refers to the individual articles of faith themselves, the propositions to which the intellect assents by faith. The formal object refers to the First Truth, in which all individual truths of faith participate, and which is manifested by the authority of God Himself. By extension, the First Truth is also manifested by the authority of the Church, who is God’s representative on earth:
Now the formal object of faith is the First Truth, as manifested in Holy Writ and the teaching of the Church, which proceeds from the First Truth. Consequently whoever does not adhere, as to an infallible and Divine rule, to the teaching of the Church, which proceeds from the First Truth manifested in Holy Writ, has not the habit of faith, but holds that which is of faith otherwise than by faith.
In other words, the virtue of faith cannot be severed from the authority of the First Truth, which is manifested in the Church. This is the dimension of faith in which one simply encounters a Person, or three Persons, made present by the Church: the dimension of communion. But this encounter cannot be severed from the authority of the Person encountered, an authority embodied in that Person’s visible presence on earth. Thus, the rights of the visible, concrete institution of the Church flow directly from the concrete, experiential nature of this encounter with God in faith.
One practical consequence of this is the authority of the Supreme Pontiff to dictate the terms of belief, e.g. by the drawing up of creeds. Thus, in a rare moment when he speaks of ecclesiology, St. Thomas writes:
[A] new edition of the symbol becomes necessary in order to set aside the errors that may arise. Consequently to publish a new edition of the symbol belongs to that authority which is empowered to decide matters of faith finally, so that they may be held by all with unshaken faith. Now this belongs to the authority of the Sovereign Pontiff, “to whom the more important and more difficult questions that arise in the Church are referred,” as stated in the Decretals [*Dist. xvii, Can. 5]. Hence our Lord said to Peter whom he made Sovereign Pontiff (Lk. 22:32): “I have prayed for thee,” Peter, “that thy faith fail not, and thou, being once converted, confirm thy brethren.” The reason of this is that there should be but one faith of the whole Church, according to 1 Cor. 1:10: “That you all speak the same thing, and that there be no schisms among you”: and this could not be secured unless any question of faith that may arise be decided by him who presides over the whole Church, so that the whole Church may hold firmly to his decision. Consequently it belongs to the sole authority of the Sovereign Pontiff to publish a new edition of the symbol, as do all other matters which concern the whole Church, such as to convoke a general council and so forth.
Aquinas thus casts the institutional Church, under the sovereign leadership of the Holy Roman Pontiff, as the supreme administrator of faith — that is, the supreme administrator of the apophatic space wherein reason breaks down in its pursuit of the totality of knowledge. It is thus possible to describe the Church as sovereign over theological language, the sole determiner of what may and may not be said of God, on account of God’s infinite transcendence. In Aquinas, as in all defenders of the authority of the Church since the apostles themselves, there is a keen attention to the practical impossibility of consensus on matters of faith — and indeed, even on matters of reason itself when it approaches the theological heights of its capacity. In this way, the Church is necessary not only as supreme administrator of faith, but as administrator of the highest reaches to which even natural reason aspires. Only the institutional Church is gifted with the infallible charism necessary to navigate the complex dialectics of affirmation and negation through which alone the truth of God can be known.
It is important to note, at this juncture, that the truth about God is expressed not only in words and theoretical formulations, but also in action. This is necessarily the case insofar as all human action ultimately has God for its end — a doctrine too familiar to substantiate here with citations from the Angelic Doctor. It will suffice to recall that Thomas clearly considered human action to be in some way a matter of language, just as theological knowledge is a matter of language (e.g. the naming of God). Human action, as well as human speech, is capable of signifying something. This observation is borne out in Thomas’ treatment of the virtue of truth: “Now there is a special order whereby our externals, whether words or deeds, are duly ordered in relation to some thing, as sign to thing signified: and thereto man is perfected by the virtue of truth. Wherefore it is evident that truth is a special virtue.” In this sense, a man’s very life is said to be true insofar as it is ordered to the divine law as its rule and measure: “Life like anything else is said to be true, from the fact that it attains its rule and measure, namely, the divine law; since rectitude of life depends on conformity to that law. This truth or rectitude is common to every virtue.” Accordingly, it is not a stretch to say that, since the divine law is itself but the moral component of revelation, it follows that the Church is likewise sovereign over human action, possessing supreme authority to direct human action to signify God, i.e. to “speak” of Him.
The authority of the Church is thus the earthly manifestation of the Truth beyond reason, before which reason must bow in reverence, submission, and apophatic silence. No less than this sovereign authority over thought and action, over faith and morals, is claimed for the Church by Her own immortal teaching, in the dogmatic constitution Pastor Aeternus of the First Vatican Council:
Wherefore we teach and declare that, by divine ordinance, the Roman church possesses a pre-eminence of ordinary power over every other church, and that this jurisdictional power of the Roman pontiff is both episcopal and immediate. Both clergy and faithful, of whatever rite and dignity, both singly and collectively, are bound to submit to this power by the duty of hierarchical subordination and true obedience, and this not only in matters concerning faith and morals, but also in those which regard the discipline and government of the church throughout the world.
III. Integralism and Asceticism
Since the truth which the Church administers is beyond reason, it would be absurd to reduce the Church’s administrative and magisterial role to that of engaging in rational discourse with the world. This would be to reduce the Church to one among many supposedly rational actors inhabiting a neutral public space, the “marketplace of ideas,” on the supposition that through rational discourse a consensus might naturally arise. This is, of course, the ideological core of modern liberalism. But the apophaticism of the Church’s mystical mission in the world is predicated on the fact that such a consensus is quite simply impossible among fallen men. The “beyondness” of truth, especially the truth about God, means that rational discourse is not sufficient to bring about religious consensus — neither the consensus of propositional faith, nor the consensus of a common encounter (communio) with God. Not that rational discourse is unavailable to the Church — scientific theology and apologetics find their home in Her bosom — but that such a method is in itself insufficient for the Church’s mission of guarding the divine mystery. Consequently, the Church may sometimes require other methods of mediating this truth.
What non-discursive (to be distinguished from irrational) methods of administering the truth are available to the Church? There are many, but they all have one particular characteristic in common: they all involve the subordination of the temporal order to the spiritual order, the sacramentalization of the temporal order by making it into a sign and vehicle of the truth beyond reason. For example, Dionysius the Areopagite teaches of the liturgical apparatus by which this mystical truth is communicated to the faithful, by participation in the “ecclesiastical hierarchy” of the sacraments. Indeed, arguably the sacramental rites of the Church are the principal means by which Her mystical heart, Her invisible core, is made visible. The seven sacraments are the Church’s visible instruments of the mediation of grace, the apparatus by which she dispenses the means of salvation to Her members. By their participation in the sacred liturgy, initiated Christians are privileged to experience the gnosis of the Truth that is beyond reason.
St. Thomas explains the sacramental mode, i.e. the poetic form of the sacramental ritual, in terms of its relation to reason. Poetry is used to signify that which is inaccessible to reason, either by being beneath reason (the lower passions) or indeed by being beyond reason (the things of God): “Just as human reason fails to grasp poetical expressions on account of their being lacking in truth, so does it fail to grasp Divine things perfectly, on account of the sublimity of the truth they contain: and therefore in both cases there is need of signs by means of sensible figures.” Thus the entire symbolic edifice of the liturgy is justified on the basis of the apophatic theology of the divine names, as a mode of communicating the truth beyond reason, through a language that is itself beyond rational discourse.
Indeed, the sacramental order encompasses and circumscribes the entire temporal dimension of the Church, not only embodying the telos of Her discipline in the Eucharist, but also defining the very boundaries of Her temporal jurisdiction by Baptism. Baptism is the condition of membership in the mystical body of Christ, which is also citizenship in the City of God. The entire juridical edifice and disciplinary regime of the Church rests on this sacramental foundation. Accordingly, the Church’s juridical order serves the same ends that are served by the sacramental order itself, since it actually participates in and is defined by that order. The same Truth beyond reason is administered by the Church’s juridical discipline as by Her sacramental discipline.
The mode by which the juridical order communicates the Truth beyond reason is, like the sacraments, itself beyond rational discourse — though once again it is not contrary to reason. Certainly, by virtue of its participation in the sacramentality of the Church, the juridical order communicates in one way by being itself a sign or symbol of divine Truth, or of the authority of divine Truth. The ministers of Church law, namely Her priests, bishops, and especially the supreme Pontiff, are constituted by the sacramental order itself. They embody in their persons the symbols and regalia of divine majesty, which they display in both their ceremonial and their legislative offices, not to mention their magisterial offices. (Incidentally, these three offices correspond to the “priest, prophet, and king” triad that is often applied to Christ Himself.)
But in addition to being itself sacramental, the legislative or juridical office of the Church also engages in another mode of non-discursive communication, namely coercion. This is a necessary component of law as it relates to fallen nature, as understood by St. Thomas and included in the Church’s own conception of Herself. Coercion is justified by a logic similar to that which justifies the entire sacramental order: the truth which it teaches is in some sense beyond reason, rational discourse, and rational admonition, and thus it requires some other mode of communication.
To be clear, Aquinas holds that reason is of the essence of law: lawmaking is the paradigmatic form of moral reasoning. Yet it is an act of reason that belongs first to the ruler, and only secondarily to the ruled. In fact, the ruled are initially devoid of this exercise of reason: for them, the moral truth administered by law is indeed beyond reason, and thus they are taught by law through a method that is initially not discursive, namely coercion. Thus, Aquinas distinguishes two modes of teaching virtue: admonition, for those who are already predisposed to virtue; and coercion, for those who, being wicked, are not amenable to the persuasion of rational discourse: “[A]s to those young people who are inclined to acts of virtue, by their good natural disposition, or by custom, or rather by the gift of God, paternal training suffices, which is by admonitions. But since some are found to be depraved, and prone to vice, and not easily amenable to words, it was necessary for such to be restrained from evil by force and fear.”
The doctrine of apophaticism is in the background of this conception of law: precisely because action is speech, and the truth about moral action is in some measure inaccessible to the rational powers of many, it is necessary to teach them by some other way. Coercion is one effective way, though not the only way. This is certainly the case with respect to truths that, although they are in themselves accessible to reason, are known only to the few, since fallen nature has so darkened the intellect that the multitude are guided more by their passions than by reason. It is all the more true with respect to the theological morality, embodied in the infused theological virtues, that is the privilege of the baptized. Even the virtues of faith, hope, and charity are teachable by means of coercion, insofar as those who have been infused with these virtues become subject to the discipline of the moral life that is enforced by the Church.
The claim that even charity may be taught by coercion is doubtless provocative and counterintuitive, perhaps even the greatest stumbling block to those who cannot accept the doctrine of integralism. Is not love only teachable by love itself? Charity, that highest of the virtues which reaches its pinnacle in the mystics, seems to be attainable only by the renunciation of power and coercion, and by the full embrace of cruciform love — in imitation of Christ’s self-emptying sacrifice of the cross. Indeed, such an argument has been repeated many times by the critics of Catholic integralism. As Timothy Troutner, for example, has written, “One enters into the life of the Trinity only through conformity with the one who gave his life so that others might live.”
Yet this objection misses something fundamental to the mystical life itself, and something fundamental to Christ’s very sacrifice. The aspiring mystic must be purged of all his ego-centered illusions, the false identities he constructs over and against his true nature. By participating in the self-emptying and violent death of Christ, the ego-self likewise dies, and what is left is the pure self that was loved into existence by God from the beginning. No man ever became a mystic who did not first purify his life through rigorous discipline and the practice of self-mortification, in imitation of Christ’s profound self-mortification by his death. Indeed, more often than not this purification is not his own doing: it is something that happens to him almost apart from his own will or power to achieve it. The purifying fire of asceticism is prerequisite to mystical union.
As Pater Edmund Waldstein, O.Cist, has observed, the purifying discipline of asceticism is practiced above all in the hierarchical and, indeed, coercive structure of the monastery, where the monk subjects himself to the rule of the abbot for the sake of perfect conformity to Christ: “The form of abbatial authority is truly Christological. The use of punishment in the Rule is a reaction to violation of the peace, meant to lead monks back to Christ, and the witness of monastic saints throughout the centuries testifies to its wisdom.” The monastery enshrines the whole teleology of Catholic political life, as an ideal in which all the states of life should participate in varying degrees, and for which they are prepared by the pedagogical and ascetical power of law. Mysticism is served by self-emptying asceticism, and in the monastery this asceticism is practiced through self-abnegating obedience to the disciplinary regime of the abbot. Just as apophatic theology requires the denial of all created attributes of God, so does mysticism require the ascetical practice of self-abnegation and detachment from the world, through the practice of obedience.
Indeed, the virtues of self-denial, obedience, and detachment, are not merely analogous to but are the direct application and translation of apophatic theology into action. Ascetic discipline accomplishes precisely what Pseudo-Dionysius advised to his disciple Timothy, namely “[to] leave behind both sensible perceptions and intellectual efforts, and all objects of sense and intelligence, and all things not being and being.” Thus, it is impossible to separate the mystical life of self-abnegating love from the coercive pedagogy of ascetical discipline.
This truth is also profoundly Christological: ascetical discipline is precisely how the monk, who is the archetype of the Christian, conforms himself to Christ’s sacrifice. We may look at the example of Christ and rightly see in him the power of a non-violent love, based on the total renunciation of worldly power. Yet from another perspective, the entire purpose of Christ’s sacrifice was to take upon himself the punishment due to humanity on account of sin, and thus to make himself a victim of God’s redemptive violence, a just and holy coercion, for our sakes. Christ became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross (Philippians 2:8). Our conformity to Christ and his supreme charity comes through no other path than our participation in his sacrifice, our sharing in the burden which he bore for our sakes. But even if you should suffer because of righteousness, blessed are you… For Christ also suffered for sins once, the righteous for the sake of the unrighteous, that he might lead you to God. Put to death in the flesh, he was brought to life in the spirit. (1 Peter 3:14,18).
The monastic discipline of obedience is thus no mere worldly form of administration, but the very means by which the monk participates in the form of Christ. Likewise, the discipline of coercion within the context of the Church’s temporal rule is no mere worldly discipline or Machiavellian social technology; rather, it is an integral function within the Church’s greater ascetical and mystical mission: to achieve perfect union with God through self-denying obedience and self-emptying love.
In order to love perfectly, we who are marred by sin and selfishness, and subject to the dominion of the devil, must become victims of the violence of God’s love for us. His love is a purifying fire, and we must be purified. As long as we are imperfect, this love is necessarily experienced as a kind of coercion, even a burden; yet as we are progressively purified, we come to experience it as it is: love itself. The core of this truth has rarely been expressed better than by the poet, John Donne:
Batter my heart, three-person’d God, for you
As yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend;
That I may rise and stand, o’erthrow me, and bend
Your force to break, blow, burn, and make me new.
I, like an usurp’d town to another due,
Labor to admit you, but oh, to no end;
Reason, your viceroy in me, me should defend,
But is captiv’d, and proves weak or untrue.
Yet dearly I love you, and would be lov’d fain,
But am betroth’d unto your enemy;
Divorce me, untie or break that knot again,
Take me to you, imprison me, for I,
Except you enthrall me, never shall be free,
Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.
This is a poetic, and itself deeply mystical, expression of the truth reiterated by Pope St. John Paul II, in Veritatis Splendor, that the impure and the obstinate will inevitably experience love itself as coercion, but a coercion that eventually gives way to the free gift of self in love:
Those who live “by the flesh” experience God’s law as a burden, and indeed as a denial or at least a restriction of their own freedom. On the other hand, those who are impelled by love and “walk by the Spirit” (Gal 5:16), and who desire to serve others, find in God’s Law the fundamental and necessary way in which to practise love as something freely chosen and freely lived out. Indeed, they feel an interior urge — a genuine “necessity” and no longer a form of coercion — not to stop at the minimum demands of the Law, but to live them in their “fullness”.
Conclusion
The Christian life is consummated in mystical contemplation, a pure union with God in self-emptying love and apophatic silence, after the model of Christ’s great act of love on the cross. As the Second Vatican Council taught in Lumen Gentium, this great vocation belongs to all men, and it is the Church’s mission to invite them into this mystery. Essential to this mission is the use of divinely granted authority and power: “In virtue of this power, bishops have the sacred right and duty before the Lord to make laws for their subjects, to pass judgment on them and to moderate everything pertaining to the ordering of worship and the apostolate.” The faithful, in their turn, are obligated to “accept in Christian obedience decisions of their spiritual shepherds, since they are representatives of Christ as well as teachers and rulers in the Church. Let them follow in the example of Christ, who by His obedience even unto death, opened to all men the blessed way of the liberty of the children of God.”
At its essence, Catholic integralism professes nothing other than this profound doctrine of the Church as the community wherein persons are schooled in the love of God through the practice of obedience, in conformity to the example of Christ who was supremely obedient — even to the point of becoming a victim of God’s redemptive violence. The ascetical life, practiced through obedience to the Church’s disciplinary power, is nothing but the Christian’s way of sharing in Christ’s obedience, in preparation for the perfect union of contemplative love.
Footnotes
