I’m okay, you’re okay, God just wants us to be happy, all good people go to heaven…

“Moralistic therapeutic deism” was a term coined by sociologists Christian Smith and Melinda Lundquist Denton in their 2005 book Soul Searching: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of American Teenagers to describe the “I’m okay, you’re okay” departure from historic Christianity and its message of sin and redemption. For moralistic therapeutic deists, the authors explain, God is

“something like a combination Divine Butler and Cosmic Therapist: he’s always on call, takes care of any problems that arise, professionally helps his people to feel better about themselves, and does not become too personally involved in the process” (pg. 165).

When the term is bandied about in Catholic circles, it’s usually in derision, and rightly so: coming into the Beatific Vision and union with God Himself requires a bit more than self-congratulatory religious and moral relativism. It’s why many Catholics are frustrated by milquetoast “God Loves You!” preaching: they see “feel-good” homilies as a reduction of Jesus’ message and promising people an easy way out.

Our faith is one of constant conversion, and it’s good to remind others of it. But before you do: make sure you know who you’re talking to. When some people hear another complain,

“Man, I wish Father would stop harping on how awesome we are and how God loves us and start talking about sin,”

they internalize it as,

“Meditating on the love of God is for lazy Catholics. I don’t want to be lazy. I’ll focus on the hard stuff.”

Read the rest at Aleteia.

A must read. Author Michael Rose and his wife recently lost their teenage son to a brain aneurysm; the link is to the funeral homily, given by a Dominican priest friend of ours.

Reading the homily, I was struck by the power of the priesthood. As a woman, I can bear children into natural life, which is no small miracle. But even more amazing, priests bear their children - us - into supernatural life, that is, into union with the Holy Trinity.

The priesthood is a beautiful gift to the world.

Near the end of St. Ignatius of Loyola’s Spiritual Exercises is a curious section titled, “Some Notes Concerning Scruples.” Scrupulosity is one of those pesky spiritual problems that we don’t always recognize but can give us a lot a grief if left unchecked. Believe me, I know!

Never heard of scrupulosity? How about Catholic Guilt? Scrupulosity is Catholic Guilt run amok, or, as St. Alphonsus Liguori explains:

“A conscience is scrupulous when, for a frivolous reason and without rational basis, there is a frequent fear of sin even though in reality there is no sin at all. A scruple is a defective understanding of something” (Moral Theology, Alphonsus de Liguori: Selected Writings, ed. Frederick M. Jones, C. Ss. R., pg. 322).

When you obsess over whether or not something was done “right,” you may be scrupulous.

When a cloud of anxiety and doubt hovers over the minutiae your faith and moral life, you may be scrupulous.

When you fear obsessive thoughts and feelings and use prayer and the Sacraments compulsively in order to get rid of them, you may be scrupulous.

St. Ignatius’ advice for dealing with scruples might surprise the person experiencing them. In a world of excess, greed, and violence, where heinous sin is broadcast publicly and without shame, one might think we Christians need to practice more prayer and penance in order to be effective witnesses of God’s saving grace. I couldn’t agree more.

But for the scrupulous person, asceticism is exactly the wrong approach to living a joyful life with Jesus Christ, St. Ignatius says. His advice points the scrupulous person—and their directors—toward a different solution.

Read the rest at Integrated Catholic Life.