The Anachronists

When dealing to those who use Modernism as a religious slur, the chief difficulty is naming them back. Simply calling them anti-Modernists is using their term back at them, but it is not descriptive. Calling them Ultramontinists gets at the governance preferences, but does not really describe their overall epistemology. After Mass yesterday, the word came to me. Anachronist. This captures the full range of their error, whether it is in describing Marriage as an early sacrament (it certainly was not, at least in the Church, until the high Middle Ages),

The biggest Anachronist error is inferring that St. Paul was speaking about mortal sin, which had not been defined as such, when he wrote about receiving Communion unworthily. Paul was obviously talking about receiving without believing, something some Cardinals who have their doubts about the existence of God do today to save face. Whether doing so is a sacrilege or not depends on whether the pastoral interpretation of Paul is correct. Jesus may wish this form of Communion, even from those in crisis.

The second biggest error is inferring that Jesus was talking about all divorce and remarriage in the text where he condemns divorcing one spouse to marry a better one. That is obviously adultery. Being divorced and finding love again has nothing to do with the prior spouse, so it is not adultery against them. Once they divorce you, their property interest in you is done. Indeed, the entire Anachroinist view of marriage, where the wife is subordinate to the husband as the Church is to God is no longer applicable in modern society, on several levels.

Of course, the defiling Anachronism is continued belief in the Garden of Eden myth as fact (whether there were an actual Adam and Eve or two first parents lost to history in the Savannah's of Africa. Some even deny Darwin because of this belief. It is easier just to change how original sin is viewed. The text of Genesis is actually fairly obvious that the sin of the Fall is blame. Satan blames God for not allowing Eve to know who is good and who is evil (sinful), which is the province of God alone. Adam blamed Eve for the apple, Eve blamed the Serpent, thus completing the cycle, which was originally not about salvation, but about why we must farm rather than picking fruit from the trees.

This goes to the heart of the Faith, which for Anachronists is a noun depicting a group rather than trust in God. Anachronists believe in the transactional salvation of St. Anselm, which was used to justify indulgences and hearkens back to the Temple sacrifices to placate an angry God. This is as opposed to a modern view that Christ’s sacrifice was the emptying himself of both his mission and divine origins when he gave Mary unto John’s care in the same way a suicide gives away his stuff, from whence he cries out to God in despair, then drinks of the fruit of the fine and gives up his Spirit, making Calvary a placation of us, not the Father. The Anachroists will never consider such questions, which is their loss, their loss being a more adult faith.