There is a close connection between cancel-culture and the heresy of Jansenism. Jansenism’s error was to myopically assess the work of grace, and perhaps over-simplify it. As a result grace was seen as to not abound, or to be extended to all people sufficiently. As a result, a Puritan-like attitude arose, where if something was corrupt, the whole thing would be thrown out. Any slight imperfection meant the whole thing was abject and worthy of condemnation.
Looking upon the past with a cavalier attitude will only come back to haunt ourselves as the next generation sees our own blindness, and throws us into the same gutter.
Recognizing that the world is corrupted is honest. Throwing it away is reckless. Why? Because of a very sound doctrine that teaches us that evil is always adhering to something good, and by uprooting the evil, we also uproot the good. Christ himself taught us this with the parable of the weeds and the grain. The middle way is to seek to redeem what is broken, to heal what is wounded, to distinguish carefully and diligently between what is unjust and what is just.
This tendency towards Jansenism is not only seen in secular society, but I’ve observed it as well within attitudes towards cancelling the Novus Ordo, or the TLM, or the Pope, or the Bishops, or adhering to a sacred obedience. It’s a sneaky trap that transcends all political categories and seeks to uproot the good with the bad. It doesn’t enjoy the hard work of discernment, and flippantly and in an often fraudulent (fallacious) way, doesn’t distinguish between the good and the evil. It reacts, and throws the whole thing out.
If there was ever a heresy so close to Calvin’s “total depravity” this is it. God teaches to do something different. He wants what is dysfunctional and imperfect to enter a process of sanctification. He builds off what is already good, to undermine the ravages of what is already evil. He does not flip a switch of grace and make one perfect in an instant, but rather slowly unfolds a path before us that saved, is saving, and will save us.
Look toward yourself and ask: what attitudes do you bear that in 50 years will be condemned? And what does it matter? Can we be that perfect generation that has it all right? And if this is how we see ourselves, what makes us any different than those who arrogantly thought so before us?
All that really matters is that we work toward discerning humbly what is righteous, so that we may understand the errors of the past as if they could have been our own; but that we also see the grace and signs of where the good has always been.
Nero burned the whole thing down. Let’s not imitate an anti-Christ, k?
If we merely tear down a society, we end up building nothing. We must find a foundation and build up. That foundation is always Christ.
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Photo: Jeffrey Czum, Pexels / PD-US
3 thoughts on “Jansenism and Cancel Culture”
Thanks for an excellent and thoughtful article Father! Many good points to ponder.
“Look toward yourself and ask: what attitudes do you bear that in 50 years will be condemned? And what does it matter?” I strongly suspect I have less than 50 years until all my attitudes, words, actions, and inactions will be judged, and many of them will be condemned by the only Judge Who matters; I pray that I am not condemned along with them.
Thank you. I have been concerned about some friends who seem to be slipping toward Jansenism. It looks like a trend. Your article has been helpful and given me things to think about when talking to them.