There is relativism, and then there is relativism. One type of relativism says you think murder is bad but I think its dandy, you cannot tell me I am wrong. Another type of "relativism" says God will judge us each individually taking into account who we are. I think of how a specific action is a mortal sin for person X but perhaps not for person Y.
We are called to be perfect as God the Father is perfect. This is impossible - it must be setting Him up as a role model for us to strive for, but with full knowledge that its clearly impossible. Why is this example of "relativism" ok but not others? I use scare quotes because I do not consider it relativism.
Understood. I was speaking of a relativism where a discipline is deemed necessary in one age, and unnecessary in another. I agree that the example you have given here is indeed not relativism, because as you say, being as perfect as God is impossible. It was always unambiguously viewed as “a model to strive for,” as you well put it; Pope Leo XIII in the nineteenth century took the same meaning from it as St. Clement of Alexandria did in the second. If any Catholic ever taught that someone
could be and
had to be as perfect as God, god-like themselves, then such a teacher was probably excommunicated for heresy.
But it’s different when it comes to disciplines. The passage from Scripture that I was discussing with Jayne is a good example. In 1 Timothy, St. Paul says that women should be adorned with “modesty and sobriety,” and in giving examples of what not to wear, he lists pearls and fancy clothes and styled hair. This passage has two problems. If what St. Paul meant was merely “dress simply; you get the idea,” then it is curious that he used particulars, instead of the more generalized phrasing which could be read accordingly from culture to culture and age to age, and not get future generations bogged down in semantic controversies over pearls. Secondly, the Early Church Fathers took the particulars seriously, and not only that, but further, they found the spirit of the passage to apply to all kinds of personal flash and vanity, not just pearls and styled hair, but things like make-up as well.
We now live in an era where Catholic women are permitted not only make-up, but also pearls and fancy clothes and styled hair. Mind you, I am not blaming anyone in this age; it has been permitted for centuries. And aesthetically I’m impartial. I can see both sides. There is an earthly allure indeed to make-up and jewelry and teased-out hair, yet then there is a transcendent and minimalist beauty to eschewing those things. But from the Christian perspective I don’t see how the latter could not be preferable, as it bespeaks a serene, unencumbered
contemptus mundi and a keeping of one’s conversation in heaven. So relativism would have to be considered here, because the Fathers read it as both a stricture of specifics and a call to an even more devout simplicity, yet current Catholics accept it as merely rhetorical or inspirational, and wear all the things which St. Paul suggested they not.
