It’s at this point a Medieval Inquisitor might go
“Hmm, you claim to know a lot about Cathars dont you? Regardless, it is true that chastity is a superior state than even divinely sanctioned marriage. However it is also true that refusing to shed blood is holier than the shedding of blood, and yet the Church believes in Just War and sanctions militant Holy Orders and those who advocate for all Christians to abandon all arms are clearly under the sway of the Enemy who seeks to disarm the followers of Christ so that the bastion against sin may be toppled. Additionally, it is also true that poverty is a holier state than wealth and yet we rightly condemn as heretics those Fraticelli, who desecrate the name of holy Saint Francis in their preaching against all forms of wealth and against the wealth of the Holy Church for the Adversary would be most delighted to weaken the body of the faithful preaches the message of Christ as to impoverish the Church as a whole is means by which he may also overrrun Christendom. Oh if only it were so easy as to preach to follow virtue and to avoid sin, for then Pelagius needn’t be condemned as a heretic but alas by the sin of Adam it is not in the nature of humans to avoid sin and follow virtue but instead the opposite For just as the Devil may tempt with promises of simple and straightforward means to wealth and comfort, so to does he seek to lead the faithful astray by false promises of salvation. It would not be in the nature of the Prince of Lies for all his lies to be necessarily obvious as such, hence he cloaks them promising the destination of true Christian virtue while concealing the path he presents leads not to the fires of purification but of damnation. Would it not even be superior if the entirety of the Church’s clergy also be free of mortal sin of any sort when they grant Absolution? But that is the heresy of Donatism and the Donatists desire for a church of saints not sinners led to embittered infighting against each other leading to the invasions of Vandals and later followers of Mahonet for the Church in Carthage and Tunisia had grown so weakened by struggles with its own body it lacked the ability to defend itself.
Virtues of poverty and pacifism taken to their holy extremes are things which are to be pursued by those who by means of taking up holy orders, make sacred vows as such. To try and universally force them onto the laity as a whole would clearly lead to their evil opposites overrunning. Would it be superior if none abjured the Sixth Comandment given to Moses? It would! Just as it would be superior if all could give up their wealth, if all would cease to shed blood and if the end of sin was obtained simply by instruction. But that is not in the nature of mankind, by whose fallen state it is instead the nature of to sin just as it is in the nature of the scorpion to sting. Augustine who you cite does uphold chastity and not in spite of but because of that he also says the following
“What more hideous than a hangman? What more cruel and ferocious than his character? Yet he holds a necessary post in the very midst of laws, and he is incorporated into the order of a well-regulated state; himself criminal in character, he is nevertheless, by others’ arrangement, the penalty of evildoers.
What can be mentioned more sordid, more bereft of decency, or more full of turpitude than prostitutes, procurers, and the other pests of that sort? Remove prostitutes from human affairs, and you will unsettle everything because of lusts; place them in the position of matrons, and you will dishonor these latter by disgrace and ignominy. This class of people is, therefore, by its own mode of life most unchaste in its morals; by the law of order, it is most vile in social condition.
And is it not true that in the bodies of animals there are certain members which you could not bear to look at, if you should view them by themselves alone? But the order of nature has designed that because they are needful they shall not be lacking, and because they are uncomely they shall not be prominent. And these ugly members, by keeping their proper places, have provided a better position for the more comely ones.”
One is reminded perhaps of remarks by certain Cappadocian Fathers of how the Lord even saw it fit to create demons to populate Hell as they too serve a role in the divine plan. Regardless, Aquinas also quotes Augustine and comments the following
“So too, in human government, rulers ought to tolerate certain defects in goods, lest great goods be hindered or greater evils arise, as Augustine says in the book De ordine , saying: ‘Remove prostitutes from human affairs, and you will throw everything into turmoil with lusts.”
The Universal Doctor also states
Now human law is framed for a number of human beings, the majority of whom are not perfect in virtue. Wherefore human laws do not forbid all vices, from which the virtuous abstain, but only the more grievous vices, from which it is possible for the majority to abstain; and chiefly those that are to the hurt of others, without the prohibition of which human society could not be maintained: thus human law prohibits murder, theft and such like…
The purpose of human law is to lead men to virtue, not suddenly, but gradually. Wherefore it does not lay upon the multitude of imperfect men the burdens of those who are already virtuous, namely that they should abstain from all evil. Otherwise these imperfect ones, being unable to bear such precepts, would break out into yet greater evils.”
Indeed, such defects may play a greater role in the divine plan. If it were not for the debasement of Peter’s Throne by that century of rule by whores and their yoke of wood the Holy Father may still languish under the yoke of iron of the German Emperors but because of that wooden yoke she was able to cast it off by the aid of most blessed Gregory.
Now then, having demonstrated that these excessive calls for virtue are mere toys in the Devil’s game to undermine the Church and that hypocrisy lies underneath these false prophets of virtue, where the fuck is the village hiding its gold you Cathar because it would also be holier to not engage in cruelty and yet here I am clear of conscience”
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