I find that a lot of life and deep thoughts come to me before 7:00 a.m., especially when I am the lector at the 6:45 Mass. This morning the first reading was from 2 John, not a book or letter that I have spent a lot of time with. The readings in the Mass (in English) are taken from the New American Bible Revised Edition. The passage that I read is as follows:
“I rejoiced greatly to find some of your children walking in the truth just as we were commanded by the Father. But now, Lady, I ask you, not as though I were writing a new commandment but the one we have had from the beginning: let us love one another. For this is love, that we walk according to his commandment; this is the commandment, as you heard from the beginning, in which you should walk.
“Many deceivers have gone out into the world, those who do not acknowledge Jesus Christ as coming into the flesh; such is the deceitful one and the antichrist. Look to yourselves that you do not lose what we worked for but may receive a full recompense. Any one who is so ‘progressive’ as not to remain in the teaching of the Christ does not have God; whoever remains in the teaching has the Father and the Son.”
2 John 4–9, NABRE
The word that jumped out at me is “progressive.” I have never seen it in the Bible. And as I confessed earlier, I haven’t spent a lot of time on John’s last two letters. I also realize that “progressive” is not the word you will find in other translations, but the choice of it by those who worked on the NABRE is not misplaced. In other translations “progressive” is rendered as “goes beyond” (NRSV), “goes ahead” (RSV), “runs ahead” (NIV), “revolteth and continueth not” (Douay-Rheims).
The reason “progressive” jumped out at me is because it is such a buzz word in our culture, both secular (political, social, economic) and religious. The dictionary defines “progressive” as “a person advocating or implementing social reform or new, liberal ideas.” Progressive politicians are people like Robert Francis “Beto” O’Rourke and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. In the field of religion you might consider people like Episcopalian bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori and Jesuit priest James Martin as progressives. I hesitate to assign this nomenclature to anyone, but some seem to wear it better than others. Some might even consider our Holy Father progressive, especially as compared to his immediate predecessors Benedict XVI and St. John Paul II.
Let’s return to St. John’s warning: “Many deceivers have gone out into the world, those who do not acknowledge Jesus Christ as coming into the flesh; such is the deceitful one and the antichrist. Look to yourselves that you do not lose what we worked for but may receive a full recompense. Any one who is so ‘progressive’ as not to remain in the teaching of the Christ does not have God; whoever remains in the teaching has the Father and the Son.”
The danger of being “progressive” when it comes to the Church and God’s timeless Word is that we can run right past God’s intention and salvation plan to the point that we no longer “remain in the teaching of the Christ” and to do so is to find ourselves in that lamentable, but often unrealized place of not having God! That is another way to describe heresy or the reality of being a heretic.
Again I hate to call out people or groups of people, but something is taking place in the Christian world that deeply grieves me. A Christian denomination that I have historical ties to is taking a major “progressive” step. A very good friend of mine who pastors in that denomination is taking early retirement because he cannot conscientiously continue to support the “progressive” move. Read about the “One Church Plan” here. Another historic Christian denomination is setting in place a denomination-wide ruling on same-sex “marriage” that will take effect December 2. One bishop in Albany, New York, is standing up to the “progressive” move.
Anytime we “run ahead,” “go beyond,” or “revolt and continue not” the expressed will of God in His Holy Word and the Sacred Tradition of the one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church, we do not remain in the teachings of Christ and we do not have God. Call me “traditional,” but “here I stand!”
Caritas in Veritate 