Today's Readings

So reflective of our own time:

Jesus proposed another parable to the crowds, saying: “The kingdom of heaven may be likened to a man who sowed good seed in his field. While everyone was asleep his enemy came and sowed weeds all through the wheat, and then went off. When the crop grew and bore fruit, the weeds appeared as well. The slaves of the householder came to him and said, ‘Master, did you not sow good seed in your field? Where have the weeds come from?’ He answered, ‘An enemy has done this.’ His slaves said to him, ‘Do you want us to go and pull them up?’ He replied, ‘No, if you pull up the weeds you might uproot the wheat along with them. Let them grow together until harvest; then at harvest time I will say to the harvesters, “First collect the weeds and tie them in bundles for burning; but gather the wheat into my barn.”’”

Matthew 13:24-30

This is the dilemma of every bishop in the world, including the Holy Father. The tares are so bound up with the wheat that the destruction of the former will inevitably harm the latter. Yet it is evident that allowing the tares to remain does harm to the whole crop. Where, then, is the line to be drawn? Where is the threshold where the harm to the whole crop outweighs the damage done by uprooting the tares?

We've seen this before. Arians, Pelagians, Monophysites, Protestants, etc. It's all the same calculus. Modernism, though, takes it all to a whole new level. Recall what St. Pius X wrote in Pascendi:

Though they express astonishment themselves, no one can justly be surprised that We number such men among the enemies of the Church, if, leaving out of consideration the internal disposition of soul, of which God alone is the judge, he is acquainted with their tenets, their manner of speech, their conduct. Nor indeed will he err in accounting them the most pernicious of all the adversaries of the Church. For as We have said, they put their designs for her ruin into operation not from without but from within; hence, the danger is present almost in the very veins and heart of the Church, whose injury is the more certain, the more intimate is their knowledge of her. Moreover they lay the axe not to the branches and shoots, but to the very root, that is, to the faith and its deepest fires. And having struck at this root of immortality, they proceed to disseminate poison through the whole tree, so that there is no part of Catholic truth from which they hold their hand, none that they do not strive to corrupt.

It is a difficult thing. Pray for your Pope and the bishops that they may have the prudence, wisdom, and strength to deal with these things as God would have them.