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Part 1 of this essay explained the urgency of the greatest project of our time: the conversion of the vast population of Nones and Somes. It blared out what needs to be said: that today’s prevalent notion of God, represented by Moralistic Therapeutic Deist Universalism, is heresy. Given the need for millions of conversions, with God’s help, what is the outsider’s role when in the trenches of direct engagement?
To simplify this complex project, note that all conversions share three fundamental conditions. The convert must:
- Be presented with differentiating content
- Trust the original source of that content
- Make sense of it all
Although this seems a clear-cut, linear sequence, these conditions iterate, converge, diverge, ramble, flounder, and simmer, sometimes over decades. So, we address them here in reverse order.
The convert must make sense of it all.
Not much can be said about this condition. God aptly handles this. Outsiders can help, but only with willing audiences over the long haul, as in youth ministry, OCIA, homilies, parish Bible studies, and novels and movies (Part 1). Otherwise, the prime mover, or not, is the convert’s natural psychology.
The convert must trust the original source of the content.
The operating question here is: What do you accept as the one most significant point-of-view that provides the most authentic knowledge about Truth? Except for Modernism, all major religions answer this question similarly: Truth arrives by revelation, a “through-showing” from an absolute and supernatural source. Of course, what is revealed within those revelations becomes that which differentiates each religion.
That revelatory answer competes with two other answers: the subjective and the objective. Modernists, who function according to the Moralistic Therapeutic Deism tenets, absorb both answers; that is, human experience, emotions, and perceptions, together with material world and scientific evidence, are the exclusive sources of truth. This answer is why many consider Modernism, from which Moral Therapeutic Deist Universalism derives, to be the greatest heretical enemy the Church has ever known (see Pope Pius X, Belloc).
Nones and Somes may say they “believe in God,” but when one follows up with, “Do you believe God?” distinctions happen. In fact, unless they accept that knowledge about Truth stems from Scripture- and Tradition-based revelation, not merely from senses and material things, a Christian conversion may never happen. In that case, the outsider’s role is minimal, since they are only a conduit for revelation.
But, for all conversions, God sparks the process, thankfully, because today nearly all conversions work against that Modernist perspective.
The convert must be presented with differentiating content.
Catholic conversions must transform the convert beyond Moral Therapeutic Deist Universalism to the distinct answers that Catholicism provides. But heresies like Moral Therapeutic Deist Universalism avoid these distinctions, incorporate the easy parts of a religion, and confine people where they are. As Hilaire Belloc writes, heresy “can appeal to believers and continues to affect their lives through deflecting them from their original characters.” It is “the marring by exception of that complete scheme, the Christian religion.”
That is, believing in and living out Moralistic Therapeutic Deist Universalism allows Nones and Somes to mimic Christianity and to appease their consciences. They can stay mired in their current spirituality, behave mostly by their own rules, and believe “in” and love a god that is not the Holy Trinity.
Thus, the content presented to converts must fully distinguish from Moralistic Therapeutic Deist Universalism, starting with its tenets’ topics: Reality and Purpose.
Reality answers our first two basic cosmological questions:
- Where did we come from?
- How do we fit in?
In slightly more technical terms, Reality asks: What one most true, significant, and authentic entity(ies) do humans encounter in existing? Reality describes a religion’s key subject matter—that which is most true, most significant, and most authentic.
The Catholic answer: The Holy Trinity, Who is perfect, eternal, all-powerful, and incomparable to humans and other created things; we can comprehend Him only through imperfect analogy.
Therapeutic Deist tenets regarding Reality describe a god that is standoffish, but existing on a human plane, and summoned when humans have problems. The outsider must teach of the perfect, eternal, Triune God with us and near us and of our goal to know, love, and unite ourselves with Him.
So, after presenting the differentiating Reality content, the outsider must affirm that the too-distant Therapeutic Deist god is heresy, a constrained, hubristic version of the Holy Trinity.
Purpose answers our final two basic cosmological questions:
- What should we do?
- Where are we going?
In slightly more technical terms, Purpose asks: What impels the universe, God, and humans within Reality to the most good and beautiful? Purpose describes what should impel everything that God encompasses, including humans.
The Catholic Answer: God pre-designed human life to love (agape) both Him and those in need; also, Christ clearly instructed that loving God means living out His unchanging commandments, not our own.
The Moralistic Universalist tenets regarding Purpose describe a god that is relativistic, providing malleable laws and somehow owing humans widespread, unearned, even unsought salvation. The outsider must teach that our real goal is to embrace God’s individualized grace, designed to perfect our souls as required for participation in the Beatific Vision; the ever-present Perfect Sacrifice, which is re-presented at every Holy Mass, enables this.
So, after presenting the differentiating Purpose content, the outsider must affirm that the changing and permissive Moralistic Universalist god is heresy, a constrained, hubristic version of the Holy Trinity.
In short, the outsider states in simple terms Who God is, and Who God is not.
Few have experience with these easy-to-understand yet hard-to-do initial statements directly countering Moralistic Therapeutic Deist Universalism. And the occasions for it are disturbingly rare. But the approach must be taken.
The comforting news is that what follows is straightforward. The outsider simply listens. Listen as the convert justifies one of the corollaries of Moralistic Therapeutic Deism. Each branch from one of the four main tenets, which, as the outsider may (or may not) explain and the convert hears for possibly the first time, is far from True Christianity. At this point, the content is slowly filling and expanding into the small fissures of the Modernist’s dam.
The message here is not an attack on the convert. The message here is not that the convert is failing to live up to the standards of a religion, society, the outsider, a parent, or a teacher. The message here is not that the convert is missing out on whatever benefits are owed to a member of a new religion or club.
The message is that the God they aspire to love is infinitely more perfect, more near, more demanding, and more loving than the predominant culture has led them to believe. Now God and the outsider have silently challenged the convert: How will you allow this eternal, perfect, indwelling God to love you? How will you love God back, according to the unchanging law He provides and the infinite, salvific graces He offers?
At some point in life, the convert must answer those questions and choose to act on them, or not. Indeed, all conversions are more than projects that outsiders can help with; more than a conceptual shifting spectrum of Nones, Somes, and Fulls, defined by hundreds of survey questions and base beliefs about Reality and Purpose; more than fictional prototypes. Real life is a multi-dimensional matrix of flailing souls with one judgement line. Throughout each earthly life, with the help of outsiders, the Holy Trinity draws every soul toward one side. But everything depends on where each soul chooses to dwell when their number is up.
Photo by Hunter Scott on Unsplash
