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Catholic Candle
❧ April 2019 catholiccandleneocities.org ❧ ❧ catholiccandle@gmail.com
Words to Live by – from Catholic Tradition
It is good for us sometimes to suffer contradiction, to be misjudged by men even
though we do well and mean well. These things help us to be humble and shield us
from vainglory. When to all outward appearances, men give us no credit, when
they do not think well of us, then we are more inclined to seek God Who sees our
hearts. Therefore, a man ought to root himself so firmly in God that he will not
need the consolations of men.
My Imitation of Christ by Thomas a Kempis, (c) 1982, Confraternity of the Precious Blood
5300 Fort Hamilton Parkway, Brooklyn, N.Y. 11219, Book 1 ch. 12.
Catholic Candle note: The article below was written by a man who has always been
Traditional Catholic and who has been continually fighting liberalism since before
Vatican II.
What Virtue is the Most Misunderstood (and is
Practiced Reluctantly, if at all)?
That virtue is humility. Why is it misunderstood and rarely practiced? Because most
people believe it's a sign of weakness and they expect to be taken advantage of. This
couldn’t be further from the truth. Our Lord was meek and humble of heart, but He
stood up to the Pharisees many times. (He twice cleared the temple of merchants and
thieves with a whip.)
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To be humble is courageous and far from cowardly. Our free will is prone to pride, the
antithesis of humility. So, we must fight against the sin of pride. Our first parents were
filled with pride and were put out of Paradise because of it.
There are many benefits from practicing the virtue of humility. With pride, stress, envy
and anger are sure to follow, whereas a humble person has continuous peace. If there is
good in you, you see more good in others, so that you may remain humble.1
Below are listed things you should know about humility and how it can affect your peace
of soul and your salvation. The points listed are from the Catholic Encyclopedia, Vol. VII,
page 544.
Humility is a repressing virtue opposed to pride.
Humility is said to be the foundation of the spiritual edifice.
Humility is the first virtue, inasmuch as it removes the obstacles to Faith.
It removes pride and makes a person subject to, and a fit recipient of, grace.
God resisteth the proud and giveth His grace to the humble.
Humility keeps the mind and heart submissive to reason and to God, and it may
therefore be said to be a universal virtue. It is, therefore, a virtue which is
necessary for salvation. Our Lord said, “Learn of Me, because I am meek and
humble of heart.”
The virtue of humility is of such importance that many Catholic authorities have
addressed it over the centuries.
The following points about humility and how it will affect your peace of soul and your
salvation are from The Imitation of Christ, Book I, Chapters 6 and 7:
1. The Imitation of Christ, Book I, Chapter 7.
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➢ When a person desires a thing too much, he at once becomes ill at ease. A proud
and avaricious man never rests, whereas he who is poor and humble of heart lives
in a world of peace.
➢ It may happen, too, that while one's own opinion may be good, refusal to agree with
others when reason and occasion demand it, is a sign of pride and obstinacy.
➢ God helps the humble and humbles the proud.
If you feel guilty when you push yourself forward, you have a start at understanding
humility. The dictionary definition of humility is: “implying absence of vanity and
arrogance; meekness, and absence of wrath or vindictiveness”. These are all qualities you
need to save your soul.
God created man and angels to have a free will, which is required for a personal and
meaningful decision of servitude. Lucifer rejected humility in favor of pride. (“Non
serviam!”) Thus, he was cast into hell for all eternity. Humility is that golden key that
opens the Gates of Heaven. Humility puts God first and ourselves second.
Humility opens a person’s heart and mind to better listen to God speak, and is a “direct
line” to know His will.
Humility does not exempt someone from hard work and doing his best to do God’s will in
his state of life or holy vocation.
The virtue of humility separates us from the animal world by controlling our passions.
Pride, the antithesis of humility, rules the world in all aspects, causing wars, murders,
etc.
Liberalism and modernism are caused by sins of pride.
Let us pray for a better understanding of humility, and that it is practiced by all,
especially traditional Catholics and priests in the real resistance.
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The false humility which is an excuse for not
standing up for the uncompromising Catholic Faith
and unadulterated Catholic Morals
One might think, either through ignorance or false humility, that because we are not the
pope (or at least a bishop), we should not “set ourselves up in judgment” regarding
whether the conciliar hierarchy is teaching the truth or not, or whether the conciliar
hierarchy’s teachings are consistent with the traditional teaching of the Church. One
might wrongly think that, failing to believe whatever the current hierarchy tells us,
shows a “Protestant mentality”, i.e., deciding for ourselves what to believe.
This ignorance or false humility is contrary to the consistent teaching of the Church that
every Catholic has the duty to discern whether the members of the hierarchy, without
exception, are teaching what the Church has always taught. For example, St. Paul
writes to his converts to whom he taught the Faith:
Though we, or an angel from heaven, preach a Gospel to you besides that which we
have preached to you, let him be anathema.
Galatians, 1:8.
And St. Paul emphasizes this point by immediately repeating it:
As we said before, so now I say again: If anyone preach to you a Gospel, besides
that which you have received, let him be anathema.
Galatians, 1:9.
But the Galatians might have objected, why should we believe your Gospel on your first
visit to Galatia and not an eventually different one on your second? St. Paul immediately
gives a first reason:
The Gospel which was preached by me is not according to man. For neither did I
receive it of man, nor did I learn it, but by the revelation of Jesus Christ.
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Here is another authority: St. Vincent Lerins, in his Commonitorium:
What then should a Catholic do if some part of the Church were to separate
itself from communion with the universal Faith? What other choice can he
make but to prefer to the gangrenous and corrupted member, the whole of
the body that is sound. And if some new contagion were to try to poison no
longer a small part of the Church, but all of the Church at the same time,
then he will take the greatest care to attach himself to antiquity
which, obviously, can no longer be seduced by any lying novelty.
Emphasis added. Note that St. Vincent gives this rule to all Catholics, not only to the
bishops or doctors of theology.
We do not give more quotes from authority here because the type of person who suffers
under this ignorance or false humility is a prisoner unable to free himself by reference to
the consistent teaching of Church authority, because his very error is that his mind is too
lowly to discern what those authorities say. Therefore, we present the following
argument of reason instead.
Humans can understand the Catholic Faith, though not perfectly as God does. Our Faith
is presented as a series of statements in each of which a predicate is said of a subject.
Even though the faithful Catholic cannot prove by natural reason, this link (i.e.,
connection) between the subject and predicate, he knows by Faith that the link exists and
thus, that the opposite statement must be false.
If one were to (wrongly) say that a Catholic is forbidden to compare current teachings of
the hierarchy, with the consistent teaching of the Church of all time, this would mean
that a Catholic is forbidden to understand what he is saying (and believing) when he is
professing his Faith. This position would instead substitute a blind obedience which
accepts a mere formula of sounds – devoid of meaning – when professing the Faith. The
Catholic Church has never professed such nominalism. Instead, the Church wants (and
requires) Her children to understand the Faith, not merely memorize sounds or words by
rote.
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Thus, whereas the Protestants set their own private judgment as the measure and rule of
all faith, faithful Catholics set the revealed truth of the Church of all time, as the
measure and rule of Faith. This is infallible Catholic Tradition. Because the Catholic is
allowed (and required) to understand his Faith, the current post-conciliar problem exists
because an understanding of the Faith shows plainly that the modern conciliar teachings
are the opposite of what Catholics have been required to understand and believe since the
earliest times.
That is, a Catholic who knows his Faith today is merely understanding what the Church
has always taught. By knowing what the Church has always taught and knowing what
the post-Vatican II hierarchy teaches, he notices that they are often opposites. To say
that a Catholic is forbidden to notice this opposition is simply to say that Catholics are
forbidden to understand, and must simply memorize the sounds of words without
understanding that they have any meaning. In other words, the Church of the past (i.e.,
the Church of all time), judges the present conciliar hierarchy’s teachings. Faithful
Catholics are doing their duty by noticing this fact.
Further, the very fact that Catholics are taught the distinction between infallible and
non-infallible magisterial teachings, is because Catholics are taught that the infallible
ones cannot conflict with the Catholic Faith but are part of it, whereas non-infallible
magisterial teachings might conflict with the Catholic Faith. This distinction is a
warning to Catholics to accept all of the infallible teachings without possibility of error,
but to accept the non-infallible ones only provided that they do not conflict with the
consistent teachings of the Catholic Church through the ages. This distinction also shows
that Catholics are required not only to understand their Faith but also to understand
when current churchmen contradict infallible Catholic Tradition.
Conclusion
Let us stand against the countless conciliar errors which attack the Catholic Faith! Let
us study our Faith so we can truly understand it and pass it on to the next generation!
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