If the things you did back when you were a "Jansenist" helped you to detach more from the world, that's great, but detachment from the world means NOTHING if we're not attaching ourselves to God. We all have things we need to detach from in order to have union with God, but detachment is the means, not the end. It makes perfect sense to me that the modes of detachment would vary according to time, place, and person, but the end goal is always the same throughout the ages. What if you could accept that the Church is big enough to accomodate the spirituality you've cultivated for yourself alongside many other ways of living the Gospel?
I could easily accept that. I currently accept something even broader: that all things return to their source, and that all souls will return to the Soul. I was insufficiently clear if I gave the impression that detachment was the end and not the means. Although it’s true that detachment can be aesthetically beautiful in its execution, from a young Quaker girl meditatively peeling potatoes in a barn, to an elderly Buddhist monk calmly sweeping the stone floor of a temple, it is absolutely not the end in and of itself. I am not an atheist, and I know full well that there are spiritual fruits to contemplation. That is what I meant when I spoke of having a “mental clarity and focus”—not that I was somehow sharper or intellectually boss, but that I had a keen sense of the ephemeral nature of the world and a kind of “consolation of the spirit,” an assurance that there was more to things than just the material. It was a clarity that caused me not to worry about pointless things so much (which I think probably has something to do with why someone like St. John Chrysostom was perplexed over why Christians could be so fond of vain and useless endeavors). Anyway, it was probably the closest I ever came to mysticism outside of some mystical experiences I had when I was much younger.
I realize that most traditional Catholics here will probably conclude that my so-called “Jansenism,” which they will consider prideful and perverse, opened me up to demonic influence, and that the consolations I received were diabolic trickery. I understand that. There is nothing I could possibly say to dissuade anyone from that view, and we will just have to end it at that impasse. I just wanted to say that it was not the demands of rigorism, or a disordered mind resulting from those demands, that caused me to give it (rigorism) up. It was just a calm and rational realization that traditional Catholicism was not what I thought it was. (There were other factors besides just the “Jansenist” issues, of course, but they’re not germane to this discussion). I actually agree with you that a Catholic should not expect their religion to be similar to how it was in the third century. It is clearly one that changes and evolves over time. QMR is deadly right about that much, even if no one else sees it. At any rate, I’m sorry to have sidetracked the discussion, but I have, as I am wont to do, mucked things up as usual. It wasn’t my intention to make this about me and my issues with Catholicism; I just wanted to contribute to an objective discussion of “be not conformed to this world,” since I see Early Christianity as probably the most sublime expression of that notion. So I will bow out at this point—and none too soon, either, as I notice that
Jerome himself has returned to the forum, his ban having been lifted. The thread can now go one of two ways if he decides to weigh in: either Jerome’s opponents will rise to the challenge and refute him on his arguments, or things will devolve into a terrible chorus of snark and detraction.
