The New Manichaeism

A look at those who want to create their own version of Catholicism that is fitting for their 'lofty and enlightened intellects'.

From Catholic Stand'

By Rob Marco

Because that, when they knew God, they have not glorified him as God, or given thanks; but became vain in their thoughts, and their foolish heart was darkened. For professing themselves to be wise, they became fools. (Romans 1:21-22)

When I wander over to Fr. James Martin’s social media platforms, I’m always astonished at the sheer numbers of followers: 291,000 on Twitter, 600,000 on Facebook, not to mention those who attend his talks or read America magazine, where he is editor-at-large.

I think: How can so many people be taken with teachings that are so contrary to orthodox Christianity? Then I remember there is “nothing new under the sun” (Ecclesiastes 1:9). False teaching is an ancient reality. But it often presents itself in disguise, hiding under the blanket of a lofty intellectualism and philosophical avant-gardism devoid of truth.

The Seduction of Elite Thought

About five years after converting to the Catholic faith, I, too, fell into a darkened intellect under the allure of the likes of the Jesuit paleontologist Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. I felt smart, in a gnostic kind of way, reading about this theory of quantum mechanics, the “Omega Point”, what he calls the “nöosphere” and the convergence of all things into a final end point of divinization and ultimate realization.

For a while, I was helping a friend who owned a crystal shop. As a result, I had integrated a lot of New Age and Eastern/Gnostic thinking into my Catholicism. It suited me well for a time – I was seeking to retain my religion while making it more appealing to my lofty intellect and beyond the bounds of dogmatic thinking. I was adopted into the Truth, but had strayed from it…not unlike the story of St. Augustine.

The Intellectual Journey of Augustine

In his Confessions, St. Augustine alludes to the pride of the learned which ultimately leads to a darkening of the intellect:

The astronomers are flattered and claim the credit for themselves. They lapse into pride without respect for you, my God, and fall into shadow away from your light, but although they can predict an eclipse of the sun so far ahead, they cannot see that they themselves are already in the shadow of an eclipse. This is because they ignore you and do not inquire how they come to possess the intelligence to make these researches. [Even more so] when they discover that it was you who made them, they do not submit to you so that you may preserve what you have made, nor, such as their own efforts have made them, do they offer themselves to you in sacrifice.

Manichaeism was a religion of its own, a kind of ascetic Zoroastrianism which combined elements of Christianity, Gnosticism, and Paganism into a dualistic system of light and darkness, the material and the immaterial. It was a pernicious heresy, lasting from the 4th until the 13th century. Some form of it still exists today. That’s because, like an invasive weed, it gets mowed down and sprouts up in subsequent centuries under different guises.

St. Augustine was for a while under the sway of Faustus, a 4th century Manichaean bishop who Augustine considered to be “the acutest, most determined, and most unscrupulous opponent of orthodox Christianity” during his time. Augustine was a teacher of rhetoric when he moved to Carthage and was initially fascinated with the allure of Manichaeism and its elaborate cosmology. He fell in with the sect at the age of 19 until the age of 29, but he began to see holes when he posed questions about religion and the nature of existence to the astute Faustus, who could not adequately answer them.

Errors Exposed

This same deficiency – failing to recognize, give praise, and submit to the Creator – was a hole in Faustus’ neo-Platonic philosophy as well, not to mention the problem of evil which the Manichaeans failed to adequately account for.

And so, at the promptings of the bishop Ambrose of Milan, whom Augustine respected, he began to consider the Christian claims. However, his view of Christianity and their scriptures during this time was that they were coarse and ineloquent.

It was, however, the voice of a child telling him to “take up and read” these very scriptures that initiated his conversion. And what was it he read? It was Paul’s exhortation to the Romans, which commands one not to think, pontificate, or speculate, but to act: “Not in rioting and drunkenness, not in chambering and wantonness, not in strife and envying; but put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make not provision for the flesh, in concupiscence” (Romans 13:13). The voice of God spoke directly to him through the passage, not as a dead letter but as a living Word, which had the power to convert him, that is, by grace and later, by the exercise of the will.

The New Manichaeism

There is a New Manichaeism casting its spells today, not unlike the gnostic philosophy of the 4th and 5th centuries. It may or may not be dualistic, may or may not be rigidly ascetic, but at root it pontificates and develops theories of belief that suit an adopted lifestyle while refusing to humble itself and submit to truth. It worships creatures rather than the Creator and perverts orthodox teaching for avant-garde “tickling of the ears…turning away from truth for fables” (2 Timothy 4:3).

The plain, the simple, the direct, the orthodox – these attributes can sometimes fail to allure those seeking a more esoteric “higher truth”. Because it sounds lofty and sophisticated, one can think he is on a kind of special cosmological trajectory reserved for those smart enough to go down the rabbit holes of illuminated knowledge.

Augustine’s refutation of Faustus is relevant to the charges leveled by the New Manichaeans of today against Christians not living as they should: “You warn against semi-Christians, which you say we are; but we warn against pseudo-Christians, which we have shown you to be. Semi-Christianity may be imperfect without being false” (Contra Faustum, I.3).

Saved by Grace

It took the work of grace to wake me up from my flirtations with quantum neo-Gnosticism and New Ageism, from essentially creating my own pseudo religion because I did not, in my pride, want to submit to God’s Truth. I realized, eventually and by grace, that one should not have to go down cosmological rabbit-holes to discover the Truth, but “that what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them” (Romans 1:19).

The Gospel Truth is a light set on a hill, not a candle hidden under a basket which only the learned and esoteric might gain. There is a greater danger in the make-your-own-religion camp because it’s easier to veer off course and find yourself in the darkness of error.

This is what the New Manichaeans of today seek: a religion of their own making, a malleable truth not tethered to dogma, one that does not force us to change and submit and will not worship the One, True God in Truth.

It is only on our knees in humility that we can be shown the errors of our ways. It is only by grace that the will can be moved to change and turn back to what is beautiful, what is right, and what is sound – the essence of the one, true Faith.