p. 20Heresies

Perusal of the different rituals of secret societies will lead to the conviction that these societies are also heretical, teaching error. “Heresies,” says O. A. Brownson (vol. xix., p. 223), “originate in the spirit and tendency of their epoch, and in the effort to develop the Church, and carry her, in her doctrines and practice, along with them. … The heresiarch does not set out with the deliberate intention of founding a heresy. No man ever rises up and with deliberate forethought, says: ‘Go to, now, let us devise and found a heresy.’ The heresiarch is the man of his times—of, not for, his times—and is the one who, better than any other, embodies or impersonates their dominant ideas and sentiments. He begins by taking his standard of truth from the ideas and sentiments which he finds generally received, and with which he is filled to overflowing; these, he says, are true, and therefore the church, if true, must agree with them. He then proceeds to develop the Church, to explain her doctrine and practice in their sense. But the Church cannot accept his explanations; she condemns them, and commands him to disavow them; but he, through pride and obstinacy, refuses, goes out from her communion, and sets up for himself. Here is the history and rise of every heresy. Study any age or nation, and you will find its peculiar heresy to have originated in the attempt to conform the Church to its determined ideas and sentiments, or to incorporate them into her teaching and practice. This is evident from the history of Gnosticism, Manichaeism, Arianism, Protestantism, or any other heresy you may select.”

As soon as the truths of the Gospel were carried beyond the confines of Judea, Samaria and Galilee, by the Apostles and their successors, those false teachers against whom Christ had warned His followers arose. Satan ever watchful, was determined to wage his war for the preservation of his kingdom. Open persecution arose against the infant Church, but subtle means were also employed to deceive the people. Several persons appeared from time to time claiming to be the promised Messiah. Philo the Jew, Apolonius of Tyana, Simon Magus, Cerinthus, and other pretenders to the Messiahship during the first centuries of the Christian era claimed Pythagoras as their principal teacher. Alexandria, in Egypt, the principal seat of learning at the time, had as teachers in its schools men who endeavored to reconcile the teachings of Paganism, Judaism and Christianity, just as it was done at the Parliament of Religions, a few years ago in Chicago. All the heresies of the first three centuries had their origin in this so-called Alexandrian school. This school, encouraged by the pagan emperors and afterwards especially by Julian the Apostate, in order to destroy the influence of Christianity, attempted a fusion of all particular forms of Gentilism, moulded into shape as nearly like Christianity as might be, and intended to dispute with it the empire of the world. It borrowed largely from Christianity, copied the forms of its hierarchy, and many of its dogmas. It made no direct war on Christianity and its followers; it simply denied or derided the source whence the Christian religion was obtained, and the authority which Christian faith always presupposes. It called itself “Philosophy,” and its pretention was to raise philosophy to the dignity of religion, and to do by it what Christianity professes to do by faith and an external and supernaturally accredited revelation. Its aim was to satisfy the ever-recurring and indestructible religious want of the human soul, without recognizing the Christian Church, or bowing to the authority of the Nazarene. It proposed itself as the rival rather than the antagonist of Christianity. Space does not permit me to show how the Christian Fathers of the third, fourth and fifth centuries fought against and defeated these teachings.

The movement of the un-catholic world today, how much soever it may borrow from Christianity, however near it may approach the catholic model, can be regarded by those who understand it only as a conscious or unconscious effort to reproduce the Gentile rationalism of the old Alexandrian school. The principle on which they proceed is precisely the Alexandrian. To them all religions are equally true or equally false—true as parts of a whole, false when regarded each as a whole in itself. Take then the several religions which have been and are, mould them into a complete, uniform and systematic whole, and you will have the “Religion of the Future.” In perfect harmony with this, you see everywhere attempts to amalgamate sects, to form the un-catholic world into one body, with a common creed, a common worship and a common purpose. The aim is everywhere the same as it was with the Alexandrians, the principles and proceedings are the same, and the result, if obtained must be similar.

The “Church of the Future,” which is now to be founded, is a church, to be scientific, wherein knowledge and not humility is taught; penance and fasting are to be done away with. Like Buddhism it is to teach goodness without a God, existence without a soul, immortality without life, salvation without a heaven, redemption without a redeemer. In the economy of salvation Christ is to be ignored. We are gravely told that there is no teaching or doctrine taught by Christ and His Apostles which can not be found in some of the ancient religions, when divested of the errors therein incorporated with it.

We must admit that the main effort of this age of unbelieving progress is to trample out the supernatural character of Jesus Christ. He is indeed in the eyes of it one of the most distinguished of human sages, an admirable philosopher and a great moral teacher. It will admit that “man never spoke like him,” but it ridicules the idea that He was “the Word made flesh.”

A morbid craving is abroad which seeks to reproduce the paganism of old. Gentile life is to be flavored by the spirit of false worship, the passions of the young, the ambition of middle life and the avarice of old age.

Secret societies are nurseries for this movement. In their rituals truth and error have been artfully comingled. Their teachings are varied to suit all men, of all creeds or of no creed. If you have religion and belong to a Church, all right; but if you belong to no Church and have no religion it is all right too, because religion is a personal and private affair. The teachings and maxims of the Gospel are not to be the rule of life, and from the lodge and not from the Church are men to learn “their duty to God, to their fellow-men and to themselves.” Intentionally or unintentionally do the lodges dispose a man to believe that if he practices the natural virtues of honesty, truthfulness, sobriety, philanthropy, etc., then he is all that a man ought to be; and also to believe that a man can practice these virtues quite sufficiently by the force of his own will, that he does not need the special help which our Lord furnishes through His Church. It is quite clear that these principles will logically have the effect of not only destroying the faith of Catholics, but also all Christian faith properly so called.

In the ritual of the Knights of Pythias we read: “The high and impassable barrier that hitherto separated man from his fellow men is broken down. All sit together as brothers in harmony and love. The descendants of Abraham and the followers of the Crescent are comingled with those of the Cross as one happy family, knowing no diversity of creed or faith.” In other words: Jew, Heathen, Moslem, Christian and Hottentot, we all believe in one God. Not only do they place all professedly Christian sects and denominations—however widely the five hundred different sects may differ from one another—on the same broad platform, but they go still further. They declare that Mumbo-Jumbo of the African and Gitchie Manitou of the American Indian is at bottom the true God, as much as the Zeus of the Greeks, Jupiter of the Romans, El or Bab-El in Babylon, Mitra in India, Mythras in Persia, Ashura in Assyria, Baal in Phoenicia, and either of these as much as Jehovah of the Jews, or God, the Father, of the Christians.

And all this is set forth in language and terms so smooth and plausible “as to deceive if possible even the elect.” Thus many a young man, with more benevolent feeling than actual experience, of more enthusiastic zeal than practice and wisdom, is prone to be led into these societies, is deceived and lost to the Church.

The rites, ceremonies and symbols of paganism are used, and will not the whole fabric of doctrine and worship of paganism grow out of the use? The seed is dropped into society and what shall the fruit be? The leaven of the principles of naturalism and modern paganism is given a chance to work silently and freely—till the whole is permeated. As I said in a former publication, the twentieth century will witness the conflict between Rome and Benares, between the principles of Christianity and Asiatic Paganism. Mohammedanism in its day tried to extirpate Oriental idolatry, but it failed. Christianity has not only to destroy both, but annihilate also, modern paganism.