Allergic to grace?


If someone declares that he is allergic to “grace,” the reason is that he is first allergic to the very idea of sin. Intimidated by the reigning ideologies, some Christians think they should banish both words from their vocabularies; but they encounter considerable embarrassment when they try to find equivalents for them. For in fact, the thing they do not want to face is the very reality conveyed by these words, even though they are only half conscious of this. Their objections to the language of the Church brings up here something more than a practical problem of “adaptation” or “acculturation.” And one cannot fail to see that some of these people are so sensitive to certain claims advanced in the name of the “human sciences
” or of “modernity” that they have abdicated all their critical spirit, and bury themselves in speculations which lead to a very superficial and very uninspiring concept of man himself.

Such notions, which claim to be scientific – this sort of neutral optimism – show little resemblance to the reality that strikes every observer less wrapped up in “science.” They cannot bear comparison with the profound views that a centuries-old experience, still valid today, suggested to so many men of genius, even those who were ignorant of our faith, or who did not share it. (But for these nihilists, does the very idea of genius or heroism or sanctity still have any meaning?)