Thinking on the sacrifices of saints to care for the diseased to the point of getting themselves killed, there is no doubt an element of love here and a need to express God’s love but at the same time there is a denial of being itself to express that love. How could the sacrifice be praiseworthy when it is a lack of care for one part of creation to express love for another part of creation? There seem to be acceptable and rejectable things here.
So much sacrifice only makes sense in the context of eternal life. **1 Corinthians Chapter 15:19. St. Paul: “If for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are the most pitiable people of all.” **
It has only occurred this way as a punishment for sin. Initially, God asked us to have dominion over every thing. Genesis 1:28-29. God asked us: “God created mankind in his image; in the image of God he created them; male and female* he created them. God blessed them and God said to them: Be fertile and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it.* Have dominion over the fish of the sea, the birds of the air, and all the living things that crawl on the earth.”
Reparative therapy (Nicolosi) emphasizes self-assertion as necessary for health, which is how it was in the beginning. Catholic theologians, such as Baars, Terruwe, and Fr. Dyunstee, also newly emphasized the importance of emotional love and were honored by the Popes for this. However, we have a past history of neglecting the importance of self-assertion and are thus overwhelmed with scandals in the church. For example: “On September 20, 1977, Pope Paul VI appointed Weakland Archbishop of Milwaukee. He was consecrated bishop on November 8, in the Cathedral of St. John the Evangelist by Archbishop Jean Jadot. Weakland stepped down soon after Paul Marcoux, a former Marquette University theology student, revealed in May 2002 that he was paid $450,000 to settle a sexual assault claim he made against the archbishop more than two decades earlier. The money came from the archdiocese.” (Wikipedia) Excerpt from Weakland’s autobiography: “The only love valued by the Church was volitional love, the love of the spiritual will prompting to acts of love. Emotional love and affection, simple human cordiality, if not considered evil, were looked upon with suspicion and thought potentially harmful to one’s life in and with Christ. Spiritual books left one with the impression that intercourse with the Lord presupposed a breaking of all the natural ties one can have with men, and that the mortification of human affections was ascetically laudable in the noble pursuit of solitude and withdrawal from one’s fellowmen.”
