4. Rome’s condemnation of Quietism.
All this is abundantly sufficient to explain and justify Rome’s condemnation of Quietism. The term “Quietists” appears, I think, for the first time,—at least in an invidious sense,—in the Letter which Cardinal Caraccioli, Archbishop of Naples, addressed to Pope Innocent XI (Odescalchi) on June 30, 1682, and in which he graphically describes the abuses which, (under pretext or through the misapplication of spiritual Quiet and Passivity), had now appeared in his Diocese: souls apparently incapable of using their beads or making the sign of the Cross; or which will neither say a vocal prayer nor go to Confession; or which, when in this prayer of Quiet, even when at Holy Communion, will strive to drive away any image, even of Our Lord Himself, that may present itself to their imagination; or which tear down a Crucifix, as a hindrance to union with God; or which look upon all the thoughts that come to them in the quietude of prayer, as so many rays and effluences from God Himself, exempting them henceforth from every law.[125]
Yet it is important to bear well in mind, the special circumstances, the admitted limits, and the probable signification of Rome’s condemnations.
(1) As to the circumstances of the time, it appears certain that it was the ready circulation of the doctrines of the Spanish priest, Miguel de Molinos in the Guida Spirituale, 1675, and the abuses of the kind we have just now detailed, and that sprang from this circulation, which formed the primary reason and motive for the otherwise excessively severe treatment of a man and a book, which had both received the very highest and the most deliberate ecclesiastical approbations. That these two circumstances were the determining causes of at least the severity of his condemnation is well brought out by the circumstance that, during his two years’ trial (1685-1687), not only the short Guida but his whole obtainable correspondence (some twenty thousand letters) were examined, and that it is at least as much on such occasional manuscript material, and on Molinos’s own oral admissions,—in prison and doubtless, in part at least, under torture,—that the condemnation was based, containing, as it does, certain revoltingly immoral propositions and confessions, admittedly absent from his published writings.
But if at least some shadow of doubt rests upon the moral character of Molinos, not a shadow of such suspicion or of doubt concerning his perfectly Catholic intentions can, in justice, be allowed to rest upon his chief follower and the most distinguished apologist for his doctrine, the saintly Oratorian and Bishop, the much-tried Cardinal Petrucci; any more than Fénelon’s moral and spiritual character, or deeply Catholic spirit and intentions, can, (in spite of the painfully fierce and unjust attack upon both by Bossuet in his formally classic invective, Relation sur le Quiétisme), for one moment be called in question.[126] Other admittedly deeply spiritual and entirely well-intentioned Catholics, whose writings were also condemned during this time when devotional expressions having an at all quietistic tinge or drift were very severely judged, are Mère Marie de l’Incarnation (Marie Guyard), a French Ursuline Religious, who died in Canada in 1672, and the process of whose Beatification has been introduced; the saintly French layman, Jean de Bernières-Louvigny, much admired by Fénelon, who died in 1659; the very interior, though at times somewhat fantastic, Secular Priest, Henri Marie Boudon, who died in 1702; and the very austere but highly experienced ascetical writer, the Jesuit Père Joseph Surin, whom Bossuet had formally approved, and who died in 1668.[127] But Madame Guyon herself, that much-tried and vehemently opposed woman, was held, by many an undoubtedly Catholic-minded, experienced and close observer, to be (in spite of the largely misleading and indeed incorrect character of many of her analyses and expressions) a truly saintly, entirely filial Catholic.[128]
(2) As to the limits of these condemnations, we must remember that only two of them,—those of Molinos and of Fénelon,—claim to be directly doctrinal at all; and that Fénelon was never really compromised in the question of Quietism proper, but was condemned on questions of Pure Love alone. Bossuet himself was far less sound as against the central Quietist doctrine of the One Act, which, unless formally revoked, lasts on throughout life, and hence need never be repeated; Fénelon’s early criticism of the Molinos propositions remains one of the clearest extant refutations of that error. Again in the matter of the Passivity of advanced souls, Bossuet was distinctly less normal and sober than Fénelon: for whilst Fénelon taught that in no state does the soul lose all capacity, although the facility may greatly vary, to produce distinct acts of the virtues or vocal prayers and other partially external exercises, Bossuet taught that, in some cases, all capacity of this kind is abolished.[129] “I take,” says Fénelon, “the terms ‘Passive’ and ‘Passivity’ as they actually appear everywhere in the language of the (sound) Mystics, as something opposed to the terms ‘active’ and ‘activity’: ‘Passivity,’ taken in the sense of an entire inaction of the will, would be a heresy.” And he then opposes “Passivity,” not to “Action,” but to that “Activity,” which is a merely natural, restless, and hurried excitation.[130]
(3) And as to the abiding significance of the whole anti-quietist decisions and measures, we shall do well to consider the following large facts. From St. Paul and St. John to Clement of Alexandria and Origen; from these to Dionysius the Areopagite; from the Areopagite to St. Bernard of Clairvaux and then the Franciscan and Dominican Mystics; from these, again, on to the great Renaissance and Counter-Reformation saints and writers of this type,—the German Cardinal Nicolas of Coes and the Italian St. Catherine of Genoa, the Spaniards St. Teresa and St. John of the Cross, and the French Saint Francis de Sales and Saint Jane Frances de Chantal, we get a particular type of religious experience and doctrine, which but unfolds and concentrates, with an unusual articulation, breadth, and depth, what is to be found, on some sides of their spiritual character and teaching, among Saints and religious souls of the more mixed type, such as St. Augustine, St. Anselm, St. Thomas of Aquin, and St. Ignatius Loyola. And this mixed type, bearing within it a considerable amount of that mystical quiet and emotional-speculative element, is again but a deepening, a purification and a realization of one of the profoundest affinities and constituents of every human heart and will.
Hence, even in the thickest of the quietist controversy, when that mystical element must have seemed, to many, to be discredited once for all, those best acquainted with the rich history of the Church, and with the manifold requirements of the abiding religious consciousness, could not and did not doubt that all that was good, deep, and true in that element would continue to be upheld by, and represented in, the Church.—And it is not difficult to point to the more or less Mystical souls furnished by the Monks, the Friars; the Clerks-Regular, specially the Jesuits; the Secular Clergy; and the Laity, down to the present day. Such writers and Saints as Père de Caussade (d. about 1770) on the one hand, and Père Jean N. Grou (d. 1803) and the Curé d’Ars (d. 1859) on the other hand, carry on the two streams of the predominantly mystical and of the mixed type,—streams so clearly observable before 1687 and 1699. Quietism, the doctrine of the One Act; Passivity in a literal sense, as the absence or imperfection of the power and use of initiative on the soul’s part in any and every state: these doctrines were finally condemned, and most rightly and necessarily condemned; the Prayer of Quiet, and various states and degrees of an ever-increasing predominance of Action over Activity,—an Action which is all the more the soul’s very own, because the more occasioned, directed, and informed by God’s action and stimulation,—these, and the other chief lines of the ancient experience and practice, remain as true, correct, and necessary as ever.
5. Rome’s alleged change of front.
And yet it is undeniable that the Roman events between 1675 and 1688 do seem, at first sight, to justify the strongly Protestant Dr. Heppe’s contention that those twelve years,—not to speak of the later troubles of Madame Guyon and of Fénelon—witnessed a complete volte face, a formal self-stultification, of the Roman teaching and authority, on these difficult but immediately important matters.