Posted on 06/16/2016 9:22:17 PM PDT by ebb tide
Pope Francis, spiritual leader of a billion people, has just informed them that ‘the great majority’ of sacramental marriages are invalid because couples don’t go into them with the right intentions. He was speaking at a press conference in Rome. Here’s the context, from the Catholic News Agency (my emphases):
‘I heard a bishop say some months ago that he met a boy that had finished his university studies, and said “I want to become a priest, but only for 10 years”. It’s the culture of the provisional. And this happens everywhere, also in priestly life, in religious life,’ he said.
‘It’s provisional, and because of this the great majority of our sacramental marriages are null. Because they say “yes, for the rest of my life!” but they don’t know what they are saying. Because they have a different culture. They say it, they have good will, but they don’t know.’
Uh? You can read the full report here but you won’t be much the wiser. The Pope, thinking aloud in the manner of some maverick parish priest after a couple of glasses of wine at dinner, has just told millions of his flock that they are not really married.
Did he mean to say that? What does he really think? What authority do his words carry?
And why should Catholics even have to ask these questions? Francis’s off-the-cuff ramblings on matters of extreme pastoral sensitivity are wreaking havoc in the Catholic Church, as I’ve written here.
Ross Douthat of the New York Times has just tweeted this response:
Screen Shot 2016-06-16 at 23.54.41
I suspect that even the Pope’s most liberal admirers will have difficulty extricating him from this mess.
God is all-honorable and all-just. He doesn't "do" adultery.
Therefore though Mary was in one sense of the word, "legally" married to Joseph, we can safely presuppose that both Mary and Joseph knew she was not married married to him "understood in the normal sense" --- and therefore she was not lying to Joseph nor guilty of marital fraud towards him. A mutual vow of chastity (I presume that here you actually mean abstinence) would not be false if Joseph had known and agreed.
If he did NOT know, then, yes, it would be marital fraud on the part of Mary; and God would be committing adultery.
This is why the Muslims do not believe in the Gospel account of the Incarnation. They say it casts God as an adulterer.
I think the Muslims are wrong of course. But they have a logical point: if one thinks Mary had a "normal" marriage agreement with Joseph, you have to contemplate the "divine adultery" of God impregnating somebody else's wife. Which is, I would say, a blasphemous thought.
But we don't do Mariolatry.
Mary is the maternal parent, (human genetic and gestational source) from whom Jesus' body is derived; and she gave Him birth. She is not the source of His divinity. And she is not the mother of the Trinity: she is the mother of the Word-made-flesh.
She did, however, give birth to a Person who was and is, God Therefore she is God the Son's mother.
If she did not, then Jesus would not be the son of David, the son of Abraham, the son of Adam, and would not be the seed of the woman.
To deny that Mary is the Mother of God, is to deny the Incarnation: that Jesus is God.
That's the whole point.
Historically, the doctrine of "Theotokos"--- Mother of God --- was defined precisely to defend Jesus' divinity from the challenge of the Arian heresy. The Arians falsely said that Jesus was not a divine Person.
You should do a little research into the heresy of Arianism, which is refuted by the truth of the Theotokos doctrine: that Mary is the mother --- the one who gave birth --- and her son is a divine Person, Jesus, our Lord and our God.
Your previous remarks do not refute Catholic doctrine because you seriously misstate Catholic doctrine. You keep repeating that this makes Mary some kind of goddess, which is nonsense. There is an infinite difference between creature and Creator.
You constantly accuse me of "word games," but it is you who take the position that literally billions of Christians for almost two millennia had not known the meaning of their own words!! --- or that they use their own words wrongly,and only you use them right.
If you can't grasp the vocabulary derived from the Council of Ephesus, or the polemical context of Ephesus, you are not prepared to competently discuss Theotokos/Mother of God.
I'll leave at at that Any more laps around this particular track would be a waste of my time.
As noted so many times before...she was not full of grace.
The Greek renders Luke 1:28 as: Greetings, you favored with grace. Both words here are verbs. These are not adjectives.
In either case, the catholic position that Mary took a vow of chastity is not supported by her statement in Luke 1:34.
To continue to insist otherwise is to ignore the Greek meaning of the text....that is, the original intent of the author.
We have nothing to support the catholic position Joseph and Mary were not married in the normal sense and did not consummate the marriage. Matthew 1 indicates they did consummate the marriage.
However, if the catholic position on Mary is correct, in that she never intended to have children and entered into marriage with Joseph then:
Rome also considers entering marriage with the intention of never having children to be a "grave wrong and more than likely grounds for an annulment."[McLachlan, P. "Sacrament of Holy Matrimony." http://www.catholicdoors.com/faq/qu164.htm]
Refusing the matrimonial duty. In 1 Corinthians 7:3-5, we read, "The husband should fulfill his marital duty to his wife, and likewise the wife to her husband. The wife does not have authority over her own body but yields it to her husband. In the same way, the husband does not have authority over his own body but yields it to his wife. Do not deprive each other except perhaps by mutual consent and for a time, so that you may devote yourselves to prayer. Then come together again so that Satan will not tempt you because of your lack of self-control."
The duty of a married couple is to participate in intercourse with one another whenever it is reasonably asked for. To refuse one's spouse a reasonable request to participate in the act of sexual intercourse is to commit a mortal sin. Both spouses of the Sacramental marriage have a right to intercourse. Such a right was received on the wedding day.
When a spouse is denied intercourse on an ongoing basis, such can give rise to other sins or severe temptations. Examples of such sins are adultery, masturbation, separation, divorce, anger and/or drunkenness. There are occasions when a spouse can refuse the marital duty. Examples are when the person asking for intercourse is drunk, in the case of illness, when there is danger to an unborn child or similar valid reasons.
Both partners of the Sacramental marriage should be considerate of the other one's sexual needs. It is inappropriate for one spouse to always have to insist on his marital rights.
When one partner denies the other the right to intercourse, that person is no longer open to the procreation of children, such action being contrary to a Sacramental marriage as instituted by God. ["Gaudium Et Spes # 48; "Casti Connubii" # 25]
If Mary had taken a vow of virginity and entered into marriage per the catholic church she had committed a mortal sin.
Mary either committed a mortal sin by denying Joseph or she and Joseph had normal sexual relations as a married couple.
The texts of the NT favors the later.
The Catholic teaching on the perpetual virginity of Mary means Mary entered into a marriage with intent to deny Joseph which is a mortal sin and without intention to have children which is also a mortal sin. Both mean Mary committed sin rendering the immaculate conception null and void. Catholicisms own positions render these two Marian dogmas as incorrect.
So which is it for the catholic?
Another post from you and another unfounded assertion. Typical catholic apologetics.
Pure bull skat this: “To deny that Mary is the Mother of God, is to deny the Incarnation: that Jesus is God.”
I did not assert anything about Mary's blood cells crossing the placental barrier --- I will prescind, of course, from any discussion of feto-maternal microchimerism.
Every natural mother (not speaking of IVF-with-donated-ova and other artificial reproductive technologies) is the genetic and gestational source of her child's body.
Perhaps this discussion is suffering from some weird ambiguity about what "genetic" and "gestational" mean.
Mary is the genetic, gestational, parturient, lactational, legal, social, psychological and sociological mother of Jesus Christ our Lord. Previous to this very thread, I had not even imagined any Christian denying that.
realized you could not show how Mary is a genetic donor to The Jesus in her womb, so now you run away. Figures. And just when you had the chance to prove something you asserted, which is in grave doubt: you asserted that Mary is a genetic source for Jesus. THAT is pure Magic Thinking. You cannot prove such an assertion and you certainly limit God in your carnal perspective. You have made the astonishing assertion that Mary donated half of the chromosomes for the advent of Jesus. If you could prove that, you would not run away perhaps?
In Catholicism, unambiguous scripture- and tradition-based doctrine can be two different things. For the presumption of Rome is that church law is the supreme law, as it cannot contradict Scripture, if she does say so herself, and as shown above, the one duty of the flock is to simply follow the pastors, who in their time provide the interpretation of church teaching, as V2 did and this pope is.
But for one of the grounds for annulment, how can a scripture - based doctrine invalidate a marriage if one of the parties has received sacred orders? Required clerical celibacy is consistent with RC tradition, but not Scripture, in which the normal state of apostles and pastors was that they were married, and those that were not could marry. (1Tim. 3:1-7; 1Co. 9:5).
Of course, at the same time Rome sanctions marriage though one is said to have made a perpetual vow of chastity, and a marriage that excluded at the time of the wedding the right to children, before there was an "Apostolic See" was there to allow it, which it now requires for such.
Meanwhile Pope's Comments on Modern Marriage Raise Storm of Criticism
Vatican Transcript Alters Pope’s Bombshell Remark on Validity of Catholic Marriages
Is it that you think that mothers in general are not genetically related to their offspring, or just that Mary was not genetically related to her offspring?
It is that I do not have any inkling to tell me that Mary donated half of the chromosomes making up the physical body of Jesus. But you knew that ... catholiciism and you as an apologist for that religion have made assertions which claim Mary did donate half the chromosomes making up the body of Jesus. Prove it
The pope can institute all sorts of programs but the only solution to this "crisis" is repentance. People should not be making vows to God lightly.
The very word "genealogy" indicates either legal or genetic descent. Jesus was the legal son of Joseph (that puts him legally in the House of David) and the genetic son of Mary (that makes him a human being, the seed of the Original Parents, Adam and Eve.) At least one, probably both genealogies in the NT would be irrelevant if Mary was not Jesus' genetic mother.
Mary's status as genetic mother of Jesus is the precise thing that makes Jesus, "born of a woman, born under the law," "the Word made flesh," the son of David, the son of Abraham, the son of Adam: a member of the human race.
The idea that Mary was not Jesus' genetic mother is a startling innovation the like of which I have never heard of before.
But let me correct myself: I have heard of it ONCE before and that was from the Koran: that Jesus was "created" in Mary's womb, created de novo Adam, and therefre he was *neither* God nor man: not God because He was created, and not Man because he was not any woman's actual son, according to the Koran.
It is not I who have to prove this innovation: it is you.
This Pope seems to be working toward world-wide ecumenism. I’m still trying to figure out how his assault on marriage figures into his agenda. It is encouraging to find so many Catholics disturbed by this Pope’s meanderings through dogma and doctrine.
"the Savior will be "her seed." Seed = offspring, a new generation via procreation, genetic descendant." The woman referred to was Eve, and it is one of her descendants who would be mother to the Seed! You DR Bible changed the texts in that passage to make room for Maridolatry as now assumed by your post. 'She' will bruise your heel is not the way the Hebrew reads, yet Rome changed that reading, in Jerome's translation into Latin, if memory serves.
You asserted, "and the genetic son of Mary" ... you should at this stage know better than to assert as axiom that which you have been called top prove. You asserting it doesn't make it so.
You then asserted, "At least one, probably both genealogies in the NT would be irrelevant if Mary was not Jesus' genetic mother." That is a total manufacture and again asserting as axiomatic that which you have been called to prove. You are inf act wrong. Mary gestated Jesus in her womb. That does not prove she donated half of His chromosomes. The Angel stated 'What is conceived in thee'. That gives room that conception is in her womb, that being implantation. It does not prove half of Jesus's chromosomes are from AMry. That she gave her womb for His development is in itself an astonishing fidelity to GOD. She IS the Mother of Jesus the man because she gestated Him in her womb. Ges5tating en embryo does not require that half of the chromosome di[ploid be from the gestating mother. You know that, you know we have in vitro fertilization, where the mother gestating the embryonic being has not donated any of the chromosomes yet she gestates that child to birth. ... Or perhaps you are not aware of that reality?
"The idea that Mary was not Jesus' genetic mother is a startling innovation the like of which I have never heard of before." You leap to many unfounded conclusions, but it is hardly surprising that this would not be a known factor until in vitro fertilization came about. As to the Koran, satan has many servants. The Koran is no more sacred scripture from god than Joe Smith's Book of Mormon. But that was a weak try to tie the notion to the Koran. Sad that ...
When a sentence says conceived IN THEE and not conceived OF THEE, the text should be consulted to see if there is a way to discern the truth. You have yet to do that. I did it a long time ago, in the Greek, which is interesting in itself since the Angel likely spoke to Mary in Aramaic or Hebrew. In Hebrew there is a specific way to indicate conceived OF thee, or the alternate conceived IN thee. Look it up, you can handle both Greek and Hebrew ...
"en autē gennēthen" 'in her having been conceived', [ ἐν αὐτῇ γεννηθὲν, 'from (the) Spirit' ἐκ Πνεύματός, 'is Holy' ἐστιν Ἁγίου· ]
If Mary was not Jesus' genetic mother, she did not conceive Jesus in her womb, but just toted Him around like some kind of incubator. If that's the case, then Jesus was not a Jew --- nor, for that matter, a member of the human race.
And if that is the case, then Jesus was mistaken when He said that "Salvation is from the Jews" (John 4:22). Come to think of it, all the Messianic Scripture prophecies about "Abraham and his seed," and the Messiah as inheriting the throne of "David his father," are reduced to nonsense. And if Jesus is not a Jew, he could not have been the Jewish Messiah.
As I say, this denial of Mary's true motherhood obliterates Jesus' human and Jewish genealogy and kinship. It is --- outside of the Koran --- a completely new bit of weirdness. I find it mind-boggling.
Tagline from Acts 2:30
No the one who introduces this innovation, that Mary is not really Jesus’ mother, needs to prove it.
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