Catholic Apologetics #5
Back in 2005, I picked up a copy of “Christ the Lord Out of Egypt” by Anne Rice, the famous fiction writer who is known for her work on rather occult vampire novels. But I was initially pleased at the time to hear of her conversion and her desire to write a series of books on Our Lord, albeit from a fictional perspective.
The first of those books was her work on the Lord’s childhood. Especially since we are in Epiphanytide, it’s important to understand a common yet pernicious error on Our Lord’s childhood. Rather than merely being present in Anne Rice’s work, this error has been erroneously promulgated by modernism now for several years.
While Rice’s book does teach some of the Church’s truths, some areas go further than the Gospel and present outright heresy. One such instance is the Presentation of the Lord where Anne Rice writes that Christ, as a child then, did not yet know He was the Son of God.
Modernists today will claim that we cannot know for certain that Our Lord was always aware of His messianic divinity. Those who claim such are preaching outright heresy. If Jesus Christ is God, which we know to be true, how could He not have known He was God? He couldn’t. Not only is it against common sense to assert that God did not realize He was God, this error has been officially and unequivocally condemned by the Church’s Magisterium.
Pope St. Pius X condemned the insidious assertion that Christ did not always possess the consciousness of His Messianic dignity as an error in Lamentabili Sane (Syllabus Condemning the Errors of the Modernists). In his Syllabus of Errors, the saintly pontiff condemned in item thirty-five the error that namely states, “Christ did not always possess the consciousness of His Messianic dignity.”
The greatest errors being promulgated in our world today are often sandwiched between true statements. Heretics will claim that something cannot be known for certain or that some truths are not actual truths all the time because they are not universal. Situation Ethics, which was once blatantly condemned by those highest in the Church’s authority, has meandered its way back in theological discussions and displaced the notion of eternal and timeless truths.
It is incumbent on the laity to learn the errors of modernism. Modernism will often mix truth with error. Pope Leo XIII remarked while quoting an anonymous author in Satis Cognitun, “There can be nothing more dangerous than those heretics who admit nearly the whole cycle of doctrine, and yet by one word, as with a drop of poison, infect the real and simple faith taught by our Lord and handed down by Apostolic tradition” (Auctor Tract. de Fide Orthodoxa contra Arianos). Our world today is, by the description of Pope Leo XIII, home to some of the most dangerous heretics who have ever lived.
Whether we are laymen or consecrated religious or ordained clergy, it is vitally important for the sake of Holy Mother Church that we learn the errors of the Modernists and correct those who assert these false teachings in public settings, in online social media groups, or even in family dinner conversations.
The notion that Our Lord was not always aware of His divinity as a child is a pernicious error that must be countered in our world. And yet that is only one of the sixty-five errors enumerated by Pope St. Pius X in Lamentabili. Rather than spending your free time today on social media or watching television, spend it on learning what the other sixty-four errors are. And when you have read the list, pray about how you can help counter these errors.
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