Born Catholics, Converts, and Contemplation
While studying scholastic theology when I was preparing for the priesthood, St. John Henry Newman inspired me to examine early apostolic Catholic spirituality. Then, over 35 years ago now, I sought out a life of semi-solitude to intensify this search and practice contemplation, and I rediscovered the sublime spirituality that we have so recently lost.
By we, I mean more specifically born Catholics, for whom the faith has become little more than a philosophy of life since the heretical Quietism of the 17th century nearly succeeded in removing contemplative prayer from Catholic spirituality, leaving us with dry moralism.
After a very long life teaching, preaching, and writing about early apostolic spirituality that was, incidentally, first lived and practiced by converts to Christianity, I have seen that it is not new converts, but born Catholics who have let our side down. And their failure has dangerous consequences for converts.
When genuine new converts join the Church, it is only to have their first enthusiasm boiled down to nominalism, externalism, moralism, and relativism, rather than having it raised to the contemplative heights that galvanised the first Catholic converts in apostolic times. I can point to certain modern converts wreaking some havoc in the Church, but this would not, could not have happened if those born Catholics who received them had embodied fully and deeply the new faith to which the converts felt drawn by God.
After nearly 10
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LewRockwell.com is a libertarian website that publishes articles, essays, and blog posts advocating for minimal government, free markets, and individual liberty. The site was founded by Lew Rockwell, an American libertarian political commentator, activist, and former congressional staffer. The website often features content that is critical of mainstream politics, state intervention, and foreign policy, among other topics. It is a platform frequently used to disseminate Austrian economics, a school of economic thought that is popular among some libertarians.
