WAS POPE FRANCIS REFERRING TO SOME CATHOLICS AND NON CATHOLICS IN MACON WHEN HE REFERRED TO PELAGIANISM HERESIES? I REPORT; YOU DECIDE!

According to Pelagian heresy, original sin did not really contaminate human nature and so humans are apparently able to choose the path of goodness and avoid sin without the help of mercy. In recent decades some were averse to a return to Pelagianism because hyperactivism in the Church, trusting in human plans and projects and believing that human action is what makes the Church what it is, ends up nullifies the action of mercy and reduces everything to human ability.[Isn't this the heresy of some Catholics and non-Catholics as it regards the human sexuality? Do they not deny original sin and that all of us in one way or another are fallen and that we are oriented toward sin even in our passions? Thus ideologies develop and social change occurs that reduces everything to the human person and his accomplishments without the need of grace to overcome original sin or actual sin. It is a form of do-it-yourself salvation. If you are a good person, despite your peccadilloes, you can be saved by your goodness, you don't really need God's mercy. As long as you are good and act in good faith even in your sins, you will be saved.]

... It was the then cardinal Joseph Ratzinger himself who spoke about the “Pelagianism of the pious”. During the Spiritual Exercises of 1986 (in the book “Guardare Cristo: esempi di fede, speranza e carità” [Looking at Christ: Examples of faith, hope and charity]; published by Jaka Book), Ratzinger said: “the other face of the same vice is the Pelagianism of the pious. They do not want forgiveness and in general they do not want any real gift from God either. They just want to be in order. They don’t want hope they just want security. Their aim is to gain the right to salvation through a strict practice of religious exercises, through prayers and action. What they lack is humility which is essential in order to love; the humility to receive gifts not just because we deserve it or because of how we act…” [Here Cardinal Ratzinger is speaking of ultra-traditionalist Catholics, but there is a secular form of this that is more insidious and present in the Macon community. If a person is good, does his job and is nice, then he will be saved--no need for the Church's teaching on morality and the need to recognize sin for what it is and the need to convert by God's grace and through His mercy away from sin and seek God's forgiveness through repentance and a new way of life.Secular Pelagianism holds up sin as a good and rejects the need for change in a person but endorses that the society should accept not only the person but the sin--a reverse sort of conversion away from the Gospel and toward the secularism of our age.Enshrining an ideology against natural law, such as same sex marriage and calling it marriage equality is one such example of making a sin into a virtue and publicly so.]

My final comment: The dictatorship of secularism or relativism which we experience in our American culture today is another contrived religion of the state similar to communism and fascism. The politics of secularism becomes a dictatorship when God is manipulated as is religion to uphold the principles of secularism. Even Christian institutions have no right to uphold their teachings and demand that those they hire abide by them in the public forum and trusting in God's forgiveness in the private forum of seeking God's grace to repent and change one's life by relying on  God's grace and the means to God's grace that the Church reveals.