The script:
The
world is crazy and the reason is this: there’s not enough hate. There’s not
enough hate BECAUSE there’s not enough LOVE.
To
quote Bishop Fulton Sheen: “Real love involves real hatred.”
Do you
get his point? In his splendid work, The
Curse of Broadmindedness, Sheen had this to say:
Christian love bears evil, but
it does not tolerate it. It does penance for the sins of others, but it is not
broadminded about sin. REAL LOVE involves real hatred: whoever has lost the power
of moral indignation and the urge to drive the sellers from the temples has
also lost a living, fervent love of Truth.
So do
faithful Catholics hate some things? You can’t be a faithful Catholic WITHOUT hating
some things.
We must
hate sin, evil, Satan. We must hate immorality. And we must hate the destruction
of souls.
As
Sheen so aptly puts it, if you lose the ability to hate what is evil, you have
lost the ability to love what is true.
I think
we can take that one step further, if we may be so bold as to try to add to
Sheen: if you lose the ability to love what it true, you will come to HATE
truth. It only follows doesn’t it? Truth is all-demanding; it requires complete
acceptance. Partial truth isn’t really truth at all, since Our Blessed Lord is
The Truth; how could we possibly embrace Him just partially? Not possible.
If we
could use a crude mathematics analogy…if we ask the truth of the sum of 3 plus
7, which is of course 10, and someone is willing to settle for 8, their grasp
at partial truth has left them bereft of any substantive truth at all.
While
it is true that 8 is contained as an element in 10 – you can’t get to 10
without passing through 8, in manner of speaking – 8 is a lie to the question “What
is the sum of 3 and 7?”
And so
it is with truth and love. Simply because some loves contain within themselves elements
of truth, that does not make the love whole or complete. Love is total or it is
false love…or it’s something which isn’t love at all – it’s romance or
nostalgia or fanciful thoughts or immaturity or a host of other things, but it
is NOT love.
Love
inspires people to die; to give of themselves totally; to immerse themselves in
agony if need be for the sake of the other. This choice of the will therefore
is made with full knowledge and consent – total commitment to truth.
And
because it – the free-will choice to LOVE, to commit – becomes a person (for we
are the sum of our choices), when one is in love with truth, one hates
everything that is opposed to the truth.
This is
why God can say to the serpent quite readily and with great ease that He will
put hatred between the woman and the snake, between Her offspring and his. Hate
is the only response that love can muster when truth is victimized.
Look at
Sheen one more time:
Real
love
involves real hatred: whoever has lost the power of moral indignation and the
urge to drive the sellers from the temples has also lost a living, fervent love
of Truth.
You
never have to wonder why that man is such an inspiration for what we do here at
ChurchMilitant.TV.
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"The Curse of Broadmindedness" is a *chapter* in Sheen's book "Moods and Truths"
ReplyDeleteI just purchased "Moods and Truths" from AbeBooks.com
ReplyDeleteI'm pleased that I was able to find it, and for a very reasonable price.