I guess I'll show everyone an excerpt from my project, apologies for any grammatical errors, corrections would be appreciated. Also please don't jump to any conclusion, wait until I have finished this project and shown it in its entirety before giving advice:
Now what is Jansenism? Jansenism, was heresy that originated with a misunderstanding of the writings of St. Augustine, particularly his writings against the Pelagian heresy. (Which, needless to say, is the polar-opposite of Jansenism) The Jansenists, -like their Protestant equivalents, the Calvinists- developed the idea that human beings were totally depraved and couldn’t accept God’s grace with their own free will. The reason that Jansenists, in particular came to the conclusion that humanity was totally derpraved, was because they believed that human nature was grace itself, and that upon the fall, humanity devolved into completely wretched and abysmal state. In this state of total depravity, the only way they could be saved, was God simply pouring grace on some of them, Jansenists reject free will on the grounds that humanity is simply to depraved to use it. Because Jansenists viewed human beings as totally depraved, they imposed ultra-strict, puritanical discipline on their followers. Jansenism is most famous for its ultra-strict Puritanism and rigorism, but I want us to focus on the main beliefs behind the practices, for my explanation as to why "catholics" who deny that we can know absolute Truth are Jansenists.
Jansenists claimed that humanity, after the fall, were totally depraved and incapable of making any good, rational decisions without God giving them enough grace to do so. When we turn to these people who claim that we cannot know absolute Truth, what do we hear? We hear these people saying that we're just too small and puny to know such things, and that the desire to know is just a selfish, base desire for comfort and security, this is Neo-Jansenism.
This Neo-Jansenism is much worse than the old Jansenism in many ways! One way in particular that this Neo-Jansemism is worse the old Jansenism is that, as I mentioned at the beginning of this discourse, Jansenism started off with the premise that human nature is grace itself. Though the Jansenists believed that humanity was totally depraved, they will at least admit that God did not intend them to be that way, with these Neo-Jansenists, there is no reference to this at all. For the Neo-Jansenists, human beings are just these puny little creatures who just can’t know absolute Truth, period, there no reference at all to God making these creatures with any view of perfection, no ideal state, in mind.
Case in point, I remember one time attending mass, and actually ended up being the worse mass I ever attended because the homily that was give there was just outrageous! The priest was preaching a new form of Nestorianism, (Yes! Another heresy, we’re dealing with a specific group whose heresy has been described as “the synthesis of all heresies.” We’ll identify and discuss this heresy later on in this letter.) which is the belief that Christ’s Divinity and humanity are separated. This Neo-Nestorianism specifically claims that Jesus didn’t know He was God, the Gospel reading for this mass included Jesus interaction with the Syrophoenician woman, and the priest ended up blasphemously claiming that Jesus, not knowing He was God, followed His own cultural prejudices and was being racist towards the Syrophoenician woman! Neo-Nestorianism is very common heresy among these people, they often use it as a way to attempt to hide from Jesus’ hard saying by claiming He didn’t know what He was talking about. However the priest also preached a bit of Neo-Jansenism in his homily and it’s this Neo-Jansenism I want us to focus on.
At the beginning of the priest’s homily he started by pointing that Jesus was also human as well as God. The priest pointed out that Jesus was human and then went on to blasphemously claim that Jesus was a racist, in other words, humanity, according this priest, is nothing but narrow-minded bigotry! This my friends, is not Catholic! Our Lord did not come down from Heaven to save us from humanity, He came to save our humanity!
Keep praying for me. I'll see all tomorrow.
