Erin Manning…

…on how the grace and mercy of God saved her from the Truly True Secret Catholic Preservation Society.

The pattern, played throughout history, is that heresy tends to identify purity with sterility. It wants a world and a Church purged, free of contact with the impure. Given a choice between the risk of contact with the unsterile and the possibility of life, heresy will avoid contact with the unsterile every time. This was the core mistake of the Pharisees and it marked the fundamental point of conflict between their view of holiness and Jesus’.

Jesus’ view of holiness (and that of the Church) is that the mark of purity is fruitfulness. It is willing to take the risk of touching the leper, the prostitute, the tax collector, the bleeding woman, the dead and the foreigner in the confidence that God can bring life and defeat death. The basic blunder of the Pharisee right down to our own time is that he forgets that it is Hell and not the Church that is under siege.