Last month, in the middle of writing my massive project on Marcel Văn and clerical abuse, I got into a brief exchange on X (formerly Twitter). Now, that is often an unwise thing to do. But in this case, I had to address that persistent slander about the Holy Father that I just can’t stand.

The person I started a conversation with had responded to the news that, following the passing of Benedict XVI, Pope Francis was now restoring the Vatican’s Mater Ecclesiae monastery, where the pope emeritus had taken up residence, to its purpose of housing contemplative religious who would pray for the Pope’s ministry. My interlocutor had replied with disbelief “[c]onsidering his habit of condemning contemplative religious.” As aware as I am that this is just false, I told him that the Pope’s favourite religious orders seem to be the Little Brothers and Little Sisters of Jesus, and that no modern pope has taught so much about Christian contemplation as Pope Francis. I provided a link to the “Pope Francis” tag on this blog and told him that these were the receipts to back up my claims.

Well, it turns out that everything was just as I expected—my interlocutor continued on with more falsehoods, which by now were clearly slanderous, since he had been provided with refuting evidence which he chose to ignore—but also informative. Apparently many people who think like him, which let’s call “people who treat tradition as an ideology,” got all worked up about one short passage in Gaudete et Exsultate and amplified that into their counterfactual belief that the Holy Father has it out for contemplatives. I’d encountered the rubbish assertion that Pope Francis was anti-contemplative before. Finally I knew where the “theory” came from.

Never mind the fact that Gaudete et Exsultate is an apostolic exhortation and thus a document of the Magisterium of high authority, thus very much deserving of our docility and good will as Catholics. My interlocutor and many like him actually think Pope Francis is out for contemplatives. And the reason for this nonsense has been revealed to me.

Why, you ask, do they believe, or at least say, this? Apparently the passage that created a storm among traditionalists is this one:

It is not healthy to love silence while fleeing interaction with others, to want peace and quiet while avoiding activity, to seek prayer while disdaining service. Everything can be accepted and integrated into our life in this world, and become a part of our path to holiness. We are called to be contemplatives even in the midst of action, and to grow in holiness by responsibly and generously carrying out our proper mission. (GE 26)

That’s it. Nothing more or less. Seemingly, saying this is, for people who take tradition as an ideology, the same as attacking the very existence not just of cloistered life, but of all contemplative religious life (though I doubt very much my interlocutor knows there is a distinction).

What a storm in a teacup!

Every orthodox Catholic writer on contemplation eschews quietism and says that each contemplative life requires its share of action. Every single one. In fact, it’s pretty much how you can tell that they’re orthodox—dare I say, traditional?—about what Christian contemplation is.

Here is Saint Teresa of Avila:

When I see souls very earnest in trying to understand the prayer they have and very sullen when they are in it—for it seems they don’t dare let their minds move or stir lest a bit of their spiritual delight and devotion be lost—it makes me realize how little they understand of the way by which union is attained; they think the whole matter lies in these things. No, Sisters, absolutely not; works are what the Lord wants! He desires that if you see a Sister who is sick to whom you can bring some relief, you have compassion on her and not worry about losing this devotion; and that if she is suffering pain, you also feel it; and that, if necessary, you fast so that she might eat—not so much for her sake as because you know it is your Lord’s desire. This is true union with His will… (Interior Castle 5.3.11)[1]

[T]he soul doesn’t think about receiving more but about how to serve for what it has received… and it is love’s nature to serve with deeds in a thousand ways. (Interior Castle 6.9.16–18)[2]

This is the reason for prayer, my daughters, the purpose of this spiritual marriage: the birth always of good works, good works. (Interior Castle 7.4.6)[3]

And Saint John of the Cross:

Those who do not love their neighbor abhor God. (Sayings 167)[4]

[N]o one merits love except for virtue [i.e., moral virtue, i.e., action]. And when one loves with this motive, the love is according to God and exceedingly free. If the love contains some attachment there is greater attachment to God, for as the love of neighbor increases so does the love of God, and as the love of God increases so does the love of neighbor, for what proceeds from God has one and the same reason and cause. (Ascent 3.23.1)[5]

The soul that truly loves God is not slothful in doing all she can to find the Son of God, her Beloved. Even after she has done everything, she is dissatisfied and thinks she has done nothing… She must practice the virtues and engage in the spiritual exercises of both the active and the contemplative life. (Canticle 3.1)[6]

And Saint Thérèse of Lisieux:

I do not hold in contempt any of the beautiful thoughts that nourish the soul and unite it with God; but for a long time I have understood that we must not depend on them, nor make perfection consist in receiving so many spiritual lights. The most beautiful thoughts are nothing without good works. (Ms C, 19v)[7]

I could easily multiply quotations from the most contemplative of saints on this topic. What GE 26 is saying is exactly what the contemplative saints say. Getting all worked up about it confirms at least one thing: you don’t speak Contemplative very well.

I’m no expert in dogmatics and magisterial documents over the centuries, but I’d further hazard a guess that quietism is officially a heresy, and the Magisterium has probably had to say at some point that there is no such thing as a Christian contemplative life where contemplation isn’t proved by action.

The continual and universal need for the active life is just so foundational to Christian understanding that it tells me everything I need to know about “traditionalism” that its adherents have been so worked up about GE 26 for five years and spiralled out of control to conclude that Pope Francis is an enemy of contemplative religious life. The imagined enmity of the Holy Father betokens a mind completely unhinged about the reality of a Pope who has done more for Christian contemplation than any pontiff since perhaps Gregory the Great. But even more obviously and damningly, this is not Catholic tradition at all. It’s something else masquerading as it. It’s some sort of ideology.

I suppose what all this goes to show is that, as the title of this post announces, among people trying to be more Catholic than the Pope, there are some trying to be more contemplative than a Carmelite. I’m pretty sure neither ends well.

[1] The Collected Works of Saint Teresa of Avila, vol. 2, trans. Kieran Kavanaugh and Otilio Rodriguez (Washington, DC: ICS Publications, 2017), 352.

[2] Ibid., 417–418.

[3] Ibid., 446.

[4] The Collected Works of St. John of the Cross, trans. Kieran Kavanaugh and Otilio Rodriguez (Washington, DC: ICS Publications, 2017), 97.

[5] Ibid., 308.

[6] Ibid., 490.

[7] All references to Saint Thérèse of Lisieux using the system in Œuvres complètes (Paris: Cerf / Desclée de Brouwer, 2023), with translations my own.