Traditional Catholic Spirituality: The Remnant and the Poor of Yahweh

Mr Torkington argues that catechesis collapsed long before Vatican II. In fact, the author argues that it began with the suspicion of contemplative prayer after the condemnation of Molinism.

From Crisis

By David Torkington

Jesus begins the Sermon on the Mount: "Blessed are the poor in spirit..." Catholics seeking true RETVRN should start here.

I was initially shocked to hear Fr. Murr say that for over six decades there has been no proper catechetical teaching in the Church. I suppose I had assumed, or at least hoped, that what I knew to be true on this side of the Atlantic was untrue on the far side of the Atlantic. 

From 1969 to 1981, I was the director of a retreat and conference center in London, and every week in term time, Catholic schools sent me class-loads of children to give them a retreat. I was appalled at the almost complete lack of religious teaching. So, twenty or more years ago, I decided to produce a website that could provide for all serious searchers a free guide to the God-given spirituality that Jesus Christ Our Lord first practiced Himself before introducing it to the early Church. Although I completed my task by last August, I spent almost two more months writing an introduction that was divided into four podcasts that I edited. 

Thanks to a piece of outdated equipment that I was using, the quality of the sound was totally unacceptable. At my age, the prospect of rerecording everything again was daunting. I was at the point of throwing in the towel when a book that I was reading on the “Poor of Yahweh” made me think, for I was convinced that what I read must be incorporated into my podcasts. Let me explain why, because what I read has so much relevance to our predicament in the contemporary Church. 

After what were considered to be the golden days of Judaism, in and immediately after the reigns of King David and King Solomon, Jewish spirituality began to wane. It was the vocation of the great prophets to remind the people of God’s covenant with Abraham and of the great nation that they would become if they remained true to that covenant. However, it seems that it was only a comparatively few who remained faithful. These few came to be called the remnant. 

It was during the exile in Babylonia that the remnant were purified, to deepen their faith on their return and to rebuild Jerusalem. However, as the centuries passed by, even the remnant began to lose their way, as Jewish spirituality became little more than a formalism that emphasized the outer expression—rather than the inner reality—of their relationship with God. It was then that another group could be seen emerging from within the remnant since the time of the Maccabees. 

They wanted to remain true to the ancient spirituality that had first developed and grown out of their sojourn in the desert under the leadership of Moses. This group came to be called the “Anawim,” or the “Poor of Yahweh.” Some members of that group can be mentioned by name, for they appear in the Gospels. I am referring to such people as Our Lady’s cousin Elizabeth and her husband, Zechariah; their son, John the Baptist; Simeon and Anna; and, of course, St. Anne and St. Joachim; St. Joseph; and Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea. They were all characterized by a pure and simple biblical faith, born out of their inner humility, that made them realize their need of God and their need, therefore, to prepare for His coming in a pure and simple biblical spirituality. 

Their inner poverty had nothing to do with how much money they had. Instead, it was characterized by their inner spiritual poverty before God that, in the words of the beatitudes, enabled them “to know their need of God” in such a way that, in their need, they continually turned to Him in prayer. St. Luke’s Gospel was written especially for the Anawim. That is why it has been regularly called, by Scripture scholars, “The Gospel of the Poor,” “The Gospel of Prayer,” “The Gospel of the Holy Spirit,” and “The Gospel of Our Lady.” For in their all-enveloping experience of their need of God, the Poor of Yahweh regularly turned to prayer throughout their daily lives. It is this that enables the Holy Spirit to become as active in them as He was in the life of Christ, their King. 

Finally, St. Luke’s Gospel is called “The Gospel of Our Lady” because it shows how, in becoming the most perfect exemplification of the Anawim, her perfect prayerful life enables her to become the Mother of Christ. We, in our turn, must become mothers to Christ, as our prayer life enables Him to “make His Home in us,” as He Himself promised would become possible at the Last Supper: “Make your home in Me, and I will make my home in you.”

Many Catholics today like to call themselves the “remnant.” But sadly, like their Jewish predecessors, they are predominantly concerned with the outward expression rather than the inner reality of their faith. Further to this, they are deeply divided within themselves by a pick-and-mix form of spirituality that has therefore come to be called a cafeteria spirituality. 

After the condemnation, in 1687, of the Spanish priest Molinos and his pseudo-mysticism called Quietism, the ancient and hallowed teaching on how to practice selfless, unconditional loving that opens a person to God’s unconditional loving—received in contemplative prayer—was extracted from authentic Catholic Traditional Spirituality. It has left a gap that has not been filled by genuine contemplative prayer down to the present day. 

True Catholic mystical theology was thrown out, like the baby with the bathwater. Even great mystical writers like St. John of the Cross and St. Teresa of Avila were considered suspect, and their works were relegated to the top shelves of clerical libraries to gather dust. Without what St. Thomas Aquinas called the “fruits of contemplation”—namely, the infused virtues and the fruits and gifts of the Holy Spirit, who once infused Catholics with supernatural strength—Catholic moral spirituality has been in free fall for centuries. 

That is why other Christian denominations referred to Catholics as guilt-ridden hypocrites—because they cannot live the moral teaching of Christ without endless failures that impel them to keep rushing to confession in a way that was unknown in the early Church. I know because, as a young man, I was one of the very many penitents who made our parish priest work overtime on weekends. But, gradually, the contemporary zeitgeist of modernism made them not only less scrupulous but even more blasé about actions that were once considered to be sinful. The queue to get into the confessional disappeared, and Father had to take a book with him to while away the time that was once consumed giving absolution to penitents.  

Then, when the modern zeitgeist blew more powerfully, actions that were considered sins before were not considered to be sins at all, until everything was turned upside down. Vices were seen as virtues and what were once seen as virtues were seen as vices. Gradually, man recreated God in his own image and likeness and endowed Him with such unconditional mercy that it didn’t matter what you did anyway, as long as you did it to satisfy what were once considered to be evil, unruly desires and needs. Inevitably, Hell had to be closed down, and its long-standing incumbent was made homeless and so sought to be given a new home elsewhere, where he was willingly accepted!

The gap left when contemplative spirituality was taken out was filled by a plethora of devotional practices, spiritual exercises, an unhealthy fascination with private revelations, and a belief that if only the outward expression of faith in the liturgy would coincide with their own aesthetic sensibilities, all would be well. You will hardly find two Catholics alike today in the spirituality that once made their first forebears one. All have their own favorite devotions, their own self-chosen spiritual exercises, their own devotion to this or that saint, their own emotional allegiance to this or that religious order or to their own best-loved liturgical practices. 

They are all mixed together in a unique spiritual cocktail that, like all cocktails, may enable them to feel good but prevents them from living the only true perennial spirituality to which we must return without delay. This was first lived and practiced by Christ Himself before He gave it to the Church “in perpetuity.” None of the practices that I have mentioned are necessarily bad in themselves, but they are eccentric. They are eccentric in the literal meaning of the word because they lead the faithful away from the central Catholic perennial God-given spirituality first practiced by, and then given to us, by Jesus Christ Our Lord. 

The saints who should be our inspiration and our guides did not base their spirituality on that of previous saints, on the private and questionable revelations of dubious previous mystics, or on their own personal liturgical preferences. Rather, they based their spirituality on coming to know and love Jesus Christ and living the spirituality that He bequeathed to the early Church. The main source of unity, for the modern remnant, seems to come not so much from their deep union with Christ, the Head of the Church, but because they all abhor what has happened to the Church hierarchical, and most particularly to its leadership in Rome, which distracts them from living the inner spiritual lives that should be their main focus of attention. 

Endlessly scrutinizing the daily shock-horrors that come from Rome, the silence of the shepherds, their persecution of their priests, and perpetually pointing the finger at anyone other than themselves is the most common displacement activity that prevents the modern remnant from practicing the personal repentance, prayer, and sacrifice to which Our Lady called us at Fatima and at her other authentic appearances. Authentic Traditional Catholic Spirituality has been given to us by God, so beware of all man-made spiritualities designed by counterfeit gurus, who cherry-pick quotations from the Scriptures and from Catholic tradition to prove their heresies. But most of all, beware of modern deceivers who turn to the wisdom of the modern world to substitute Gospel wisdom for the wisdom of globalism in which mother earth, whom the Greeks called Gaia, is the new god. 

If that is not devilry, then what is? When you see those to whom we should turn for spiritual leadership in Rome, what do you see? On the surface, you see men dressed in familiar traditional garb performing familiar traditional rites and rituals in order to deceive the unwary. For beneath the externals, you will find in hiding neo-pagans, little more than modern Druids following modern agendas. It is not so much that they devoutly believe in the tenets of globalism, but rather, that this new secular religion gives them total license to pursue their passions that they are trying to canonize as sacraments, equate with mystical experience, and then rewrite the Bible to justify themselves. Karl Marx said that if you want to destroy an institution, simply soak it in sex, and that is what has happened to the Church, as I found out to my cost over 40 years ago.

But I am now in danger of falling into the faults that I have ascribed to others. Let me quickly return to what is of real importance: namely, the true Catholic Spirituality that is redemptive, restorative, sacrificial, and contemplative to which I must return in future articles. If you cannot wait to practice it but do not know how to begin, then simply follow the recent teaching of Our Lady, who is the perfect embodiment of the “Poor of Yahweh” which is summed up in the three words that she used to call us all back to true Catholic Spirituality, first lived to perfection by her beloved son, Jesus: namely, to repent, to pray, and to sacrifice. 

Unfortunately, all too many modern pilgrims are no more than Marian miracle-mongers, so busy seeking solace in sentimentality and spiritual sensationalism that they fail to see the message that they should be making the mainspring of their lives. Those for whom Our Lady’s teaching does become the mainspring of their lives will gradually open themselves ever more fully to receive the Holy Spirit, who will not only show them what true Catholic Spirituality is but who will give them the power—or more precisely the Love—to practice it to perfection as modern members of the Anawim, the Poor of Yahweh. 

It is from this group alone, not from the protestations of a rowdy remnant who neither seem to know nor practice the spirituality given to us by Christ, that the return to our true Catholic Faith will come.