"If God really does exist and if He does
in fact bother about people He cannot be so fearfully demanding as He is
described by the faith of the Church. Moreover, I am no worse than
others; I do my duty, and the minor human weaknesses cannot really be as
dangerous as all that.' This attitude is a modern version of 'acedia' -
a kind of anxious vertigo that overcomes people when they consider the
heights to which their divine pedigree has called them. In Nietzchean
terms it is the mentality of the herd, the attitude of someone who just
cannot be bothered to be great. It is the bourgeois because it is
calculating and pragmatic and comfortable with what is common and
ordinary, rather than aristocratic and erotic...
They
[pious pelagians] want security, not hope. By means of a tough and
rigorous system of religious practices, by means of prayers and actions,
they want to create for themselves a right to blessedness. What they
lack is the humility essential to any love - the humility to be able to
receive what we are given over and above what we have deserved and
achieved. The denial of hope in favour of security that we are faced with
here rests on the inability to bear the tension of waiting for what is
to come and to abandon oneself to God's goodness."
Quoted in Tracey Rowland, Ratzinger's Faith.
NB Pelagianism is the belief that original sin
did not taint human nature and that mortal will is still capable of
choosing good or evil without special Divine aid.
