
The only woman at the party who I didn’t know at all began
talking about this rule and that rule with an air of “how ridiculous and
senseless” dripping from every word.
Even with my divided attention it became quickly clear that what was
going to be said was going to make me about as uncomfortable as I could
possibly be and after a short while the group quickly and nearly unanimously
came to the conclusion that all the rules didn’t matter, that in fact, they
actually get in the way and that in reality “All you need is love.” Those words were literally spoken and
agreed upon as if they were some great theological truth that answered every
problem.
I might have winced.
A lot of things went through my mind and I was rather
disappointed in myself when I didn’t say anything and instead ended up excusing
myself to take a fussy Mae into the other room to nurse. My thoughts weren’t exactly charitable and
were rather jumbled, and I wasn’t sure I could present them in a coherent and
un-sarcastic fashion. I’m so much
better at writing things out than I am at articulating my thoughts in the heat
of the moment. Debate is something
Paul’s much better at and I usually leave it to him.
I’ve intended, since before the move, to write down a
response to the claim: “All you need is love and the rules of the Church just
get in the way…” but hadn’t had a chance until now. And so, here is my attempt at answering the conclusion that
everyone seemed so pleased to accept:

But for those of us still down here in the mud struggling, for
those of us who haven’t yet entered into the inner castle where the snares of
this world can do little to harm us, the challenge of day to day life is somewhat
different. After all, we get
confused about what “love” is. We
confuse pleasure with love and our pride gets in the way constantly. Concupiscence doesn’t make all of this
any easier.

Maybe those who are pretty close to perfectly aligning their
will with God’s don’t need rules because love, true love which is the Holy
Spirit, leads them to do the right thing all the time. But for people like me, people who make
wrong decisions and fall down and get back up, rules can be pretty
helpful.
Even rules that are simple matters of obedience can help us
bend our unruly wills and submit to something far greater than ourselves, an
exercise, which while not always pleasant is usually incredibly helpful. And then there are the rules that help
us understand the universe and our place in it, rules that show us the natural
order and tell us things that should be common sense, like that we shouldn’t
kill our children, even if they’ve yet to be born.

I rather like knowing the rules. It is so much easier to follow them than trying to make up my own with some sort of rational justification for them.
ReplyDeleteHow about this... *grins*
ReplyDeleteI will agree with them, your friends.
All you need is love.
But only if one can remember that LOVE is not a feeling, it is not an adjective describing somebody's emotional state.
It is an action verb. In fact it is the active participation of helping another to achieve holiness. Holiness, not "happiness". Love is actively helping someone to reach beyond themselves, to be better than they think they can be, to better than they may even want to be, to be the person that God is calling them to be - even in spite of their own ignorance and/or denial of God.
I often struggle with this. There are a couple of instances where my own moral compass conflicts with the "rules" of the Church. I literally feel wrong doing or believing what feels right - because my religion says otherwise - and I feel wrong following The Church - because it seems intuitively wrong to me. I guess most people would question why I belong to a religion that has tenets that I have moral qualms with - tenets that seem wrong on a basic level to me. Instead of leaving for an "easier" faith, I continue to try to reconcile these conflicts.
ReplyDeleteI pray about these issues a lot. I've spoken with our priest and our deacon, and read applicable Church documents. Over the summer, I prayed 30 days of consecutive Rosaries for internal peace with these issues. Wouldn't it be nice if all we needed was love? I know we need more than that.
"If you love Me, keep My commandments." Jesus said. He also said, "Not everyone who says to me 'Lord, Lord' will be saved, but he who does the will of My Father Who is in heaven..."
ReplyDeleteOf course all we need is love. But not in the way they imagine it! God is love. Love finds its best expression in sacrifice, not self-serving.
If by "all we need is love" they meant...to love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength. And also to love your neighbor as yourself, then I agree with them. For Jesus tells us that these two commandments sum up the law and the prophets. But I think that they meant rather, "I'm ok, you're ok, let's make a rainbow banner and call it Christianity."
ReplyDeleteRobin
I think that for many of them the spirit of the teaching, at least in part, was there, but there was a little confusion about why anything else matters, as was evident by the train of thought that it would be valuable to throw away most of the "rules." It was a sort of throwing the baby out with the bathwater in not understanding that the by following the "rules" we get closer to a place where we can be in union with God, submit our will to His and truly love. And a forgetting of the fact that when we "break" some of the "rules" and put ourselves in a potential state of mortal sin, we block the flow of the grace that we need in order to truly love.
ReplyDeleteIndeed all you need is love. Love the Lord thy God with all your heart, mind and soul. Love your neighbor as yourself. On this hangs all the Law and Prophets. The foolishness is in thinking that the Church stands opposed to love. Her rules are there to help us love.
ReplyDeleteGreat post. God is Love. Agapae. All you need is God, His Love. Always.
ReplyDeleteClaire
Chanced upon your blog by accident. You write so well with a good Catholic spirit. God bless you!
ReplyDelete