1.3. Without passions and without passion

Let us see some implications on the formation plan of this misunderstanding. The young person is oriented along a route that reveals itself impossible: it prompts him, as a matter of fact, to eliminate a part of his ego, the part considered less noble or more humiliating, to the point of fooling him into being able to do it by intention, eliminating that part and pulling out its root; with the result that  a “lot of nothing” is eliminated, if anything everything is relegated to the unconscious, where the negated instinct continues – undisturbed – to disturb the conscious life of the subject, subtly entering as a profound motivation for apparently correct and gospel-like gestures, or as the ultimate reason for sensations, reactions, states of soul, and “unexplainable” crises.

Another very negative consequence at the formation level: a contradictory idea of herself is transmitted to the young person:  there would be, in fact, in her ego an irremediably negative area that must be dominated or that it is better to ignore, a mysterious “black hole”.  On the one hand,  we favor a certain sense of presumptiousness and sufficiency (you must dominate and eliminate everything negative”); on the other hand a negative concept of her being is insinuated, which will soon emerge as anger and sense of guilt when the subject can’t conquer and dominate, or as depression and disorientation when she is forced to recognize that she hasn’t rooted out anything at all. The result of this confusion will be that the subject is not helped to know herself nor accept herself; in a word she will not be very free with herself and with others, on whom she will tend, defensively, to project whatever creates a problem and what she doesn’t accept of herself. Finally, as already suggested, the psychic life is generally impoverished: every passion, however diabolical, contains energy; and without energy a man cannot bring about anything. He will be or risk being a person without passions but also without passion.

The advantage of the model of perfection is the extreme clarity of the project proposed, the values to reach and the discipline to practice, the distinction between what is good and what is evil, of the methodological routes and the inevitable renunciations. And that is no small thing.

In any case that model belongs to a certain past, even though not really completely past; here and there we can still recognize residuals of this mentality in certain concepts and educational practices today. At times, then, of uncertainty and disorientation like ours, there are those who hold that everything should be resolved by simply turning back to this model, with the clarity that characterizes it and the discipline that derives from it.

But we must say that, actually, this model creates serious problems not only on the psychological and formative levels, as we have seen, but also in the area of spiritual life and a correct interpretation of the Christian message, laying oneself open to the risk of perfectionism and legalism. Those who interpret a striving toward perfection in excessively realist and immediate terms, immediately favoring behaviors, actually risk falling into that syndrome of formal observance, the law for law’s sake, which Jesus himself condemned with particular vehemence and which Paul will continue to attack with equal passion.  The presumption, in fact, to build oneself into perfection with one’s own hands and muscles makes the cross of Christ vain.

That model therefore could not hold up under the renewal triggered by the Vatican Council.