Posted on 05/11/2005 10:04:08 AM PDT by NYer
It has to be one of the strangest things in the world: So many Christians who love Jesus with all their hearts recoil in fear at the mention of His mother's name, while many who do love her find themselves tongue-tied when asked to explain why.
Most of the issues people have with Mary are really issues about something else. "Where is the Assumption of Mary in the Bible?" isn't really a question about Mary. It's a question about the validity of Sacred Tradition and the authority of the Church. "Why should I pray to Mary?" isn't really about Mary, either. It's actually a question about the relationship of the living and the dead in Christ. "Do Catholics worship Mary?" isn't a question about Mary. It's concerned more with whether or not Catholics countenance idolatry and what the word "honor" means. And curiously enough, all these and many more objections both pay homage to and completely overlook the central truth about Mary that the Catholic Church labors to help us see: that her life, in its entirety, is a referred life. Sublime Neglect The Cultural Obstacles The Heart of Marian Doctrine Defeating Destructive Ideologies
Mary would, after all, be of absolutely no consequence to us if not for her Son. It is because she is the mother of Jesus Christ that she matters to the world at all. If He hadn't been born, you never would have heard of her. John, with characteristic economy of expression, captures this referred life in her own words: "Do whatever He tells you" (Jn 2:5). And, of course, if this were all the Church had to say about her, Evangelicals would be more than happy to let her refer us to Jesus and be done with it. What baffles so many non-Catholics is the Church's tendency to keep referring us to her. "Ad Iesum per Mariam!" we say, to which many non-Catholics nervously respond, "Isn't Christianity supposed be about a relationship with Jesus Christ? Why do Catholics honor Mary so much?"
That question sounded reasonable — right up until another question began to bother me: If Catholics honor Mary too much, exactly how do we Evangelicals honor her "just enough"? For the reality was that my native evangelicalism recoiled from any and all mention of Mary.
This was odd. After all, Evangelicals could talk all day about Paul and never feel we were "worshipping" him or giving him "too much honor." We rightly understood that God's Word comes to us through St. Paul, and there's no conflict between the two (even though Paul exhibits more character flaws than Mary).
Yet the slightest mention of Mary by a Catholic immediately brought a flood of warnings, hesitations, scrutinies of her lack of faith (allegedly demonstrated in Mark 3:21), and even assertions that Jesus was less pleased with her than he was with His disciples (because he called her "Woman," not "Mom"; and because He commended His own disciples as "my brother and sister and mother" (Mk 3:35)). And all this was despite the fact that not just God's word (e.g. the Magnificat), but God's Word, came to us through Mary (Jn 1:14). As Evangelicals we could say, "If not for Paul, the Gospel would never have reached the Gentiles." But we froze up if somebody argued that, "If not for Mary, the Gospel would never have reached the earth." Suddenly, a flurry of highly speculative claims about how "God would simply have chosen somebody else!" would fill the air, as though Mary was a mere incubation unit, completely interchangeable with any other woman on earth. "No Paul, no Gospel for the Gentiles" made perfect sense. But "No Mary, no incarnation, no death, no resurrection, no salvation for the world" was just too extreme.
Indeed, from evangelical piety and preaching as it is actually practiced, one could be forgiven for getting the sense that Jesus didn't really even like His mother (like a teenager irritated because Mom just doesn't understand him). Having "Mary is No Big Deal" hammered home whenever her name was raised tended to give you the feeling that — after her brief photo-op for the Hallmark Christmas card industry — Jesus was glad to spend time away from the family, in the Temple discussing higher things. The position in evangelicalism was more or less that we should do likewise and not lavish any attention on the mother who was too dim to understand Who He was, and whom He "rebuked" by saying, "Why were you looking for me? Did you not know that I must be in my Father's house?"
And so, our claims to honor her "just enough" effectively boiled down to paying no shred of positive attention to her beyond singing "round yon Virgin, mother and child" each Christmas. The rest of the time it was either complete neglect or jittery assurances of her unimportance and dark warnings not to over-emphasize the woman of whom inspired Scripture said, "From this day all generations will call me blessed."
It was a startling paradigm shift to realize we treated her so allergically — and one which, I have since noticed, isn't unusual for converts. Dale Ahlquist, President of the American Chesterton Society, told me once that when he was still hanging back from the Church because of Mary, a blunt priest he knew asked him, "Do you believe her soul magnifies the Lord? It's right there in Scripture." Ahlquist reflexively answered back, "Of course I do! I know the Bible!" But even as he replied he was thinking to himself, "I never really thought of that before." It can be a disorienting experience.
But, in fact, it is right there in the Bible. Her soul magnifies the Lord, and from that day to this all generations have called her blessed. So why, when we Evangelicals looked at Jesus, did we never look at Him through the divinely appointed magnifying glass? Why were we so edgy about calling her "blessed" and giving her any honor? That realization was my first clue that it was, perhaps, Catholics who were simply being normal and human in honoring Mary, while we Evangelicals were more like teetotalers fretting that far too much wine was being drunk at the wedding in Cana.
Part of the problem, I came to realize, was that evangelical fears about Mary are visceral and not entirely theological. Indeed, much of the conflict between Catholics and Evangelicals is cultural, not theological. Evangelical culture (whether you're a man or a woman) is overwhelmingly masculine, while Catholic culture (again, whether you're a man or a woman) is powerfully feminine. And the two groups often mistake their cultural differences for theological ones.
The Catholic approach tends to be body-centered, Eucharistic, and contemplative. Prayer, in Catholic culture, is primarily for seeking union with God. Evangelical approaches to God tend to be centered on Scripture, verbal articulation of belief, mission, and on the Spirit working in power. Prayer, in such a culture, is primarily for getting things done. Both are legitimate Christian ways of approaching the Gospel. Indeed, they should both be part of the Catholic approach to the Gospel. But because of these unconscious differences Evangelicals and Catholics often clash about culture while they think they're debating theology. The feminine spirituality of the Catholic can regard the masculine evangelical approach as shallow, noisy, and utilitarian, lacking an interior life. Meanwhile, Catholic piety can be seen by Evangelicals as a cold, dead, ritualistic, biblically ignorant, and cut off from real life. Thus, Evangelicals frequently criticize the Catholic life as a retreat from reality into rituals and rote prayers.
Not surprisingly, the heroes of the two camps are (for Evangelicals) the Great Human Dynamo of Apostolic Energy, St. Paul; and (for Catholics) the great icon of Contemplative Prayer Issuing in Incarnation, the Blessed Virgin Mary. As an Evangelical, I found Paul much easier to appreciate, since he was "biblical" — he wrote much of the New Testament, after all. You could talk about Paul since he'd left such a significant paper trail. Not so with Mary. Apart from the Magnificat and a couple remarks here and there — plus, of course, the infancy narratives — she didn't appear to occupy nearly as much psychic space for the authors of the New Testament as she did for Catholics. Marian devotion looked like a mountain of piety built on a molehill of Scripture.
Looks, however, can be deceiving. For as I got to know the Bible better, it became obvious to me that the authors of Scripture were not nearly as jittery about Mary as my native evangelicalism. Furthermore, they accorded to her honors which looked a great deal more Catholic than evangelical.
Luke, for instance, likens her to the Ark of the Covenant in recording that the Holy Spirit "overshadowed" her. The same word in Greek is used to describe the way the Shekinah (glory of God) overshadowed the tabernacle in Luke 1:35. Likewise, John makes the same connection between Mary and the Ark of the Covenant when he announces in Revelation 11:19-12:2:
Then God's temple in heaven was opened, and the ark of His covenant was seen within His temple; and there were flashes of lightning, voices, peals of thunder, an earthquake, and heavy hail. And a great portent appeared in heaven, a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars; she was with child and she cried out in her pangs of birth, in anguish for delivery.
The chapter goes on to describe the woman as giving birth to a male child who rules the nations with an iron scepter and who is almost devoured by a great red dragon.
As an Evangelical, my own tradition found it remarkably easy to detect bar codes, Soviet helicopters, the European Common Market, and the Beatles encoded into the narrative of Revelation. But when Catholics suggested that the woman of Revelation might have something to do with the Blessed Virgin occupying a place of cosmic importance in the grand scheme of things, this was dismissed as incredible. Everyone knew that the woman of Revelation was really the symbolic Virgin Daughter of Zion giving birth to the Church. A Jewish girl who stood at the pinnacle of the Old Covenant, summed up the entirety of Israel's mission and gave flesh to the Head of the Church saying, "Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word" — what could she possibly have to do with those images? Why, that would suggest that she was the Virgin Daughter of Zion and the Flower of her People, the Model Disciple, the Icon of the Church, the Mother of Jesus and of all those who are united with Him by faith and...
Come to think of it, Scripture was looking rather Catholic after all.
That was the revolutionary thought that made it possible for me to press on, as a new Catholic, to find out what the Church was trying to get at with her Marian teaching. In coming to understand this, it seemed to me, I'd come a long way toward understanding why Mary figures so prominently, not merely in the heads, but in the hearts of Catholics.
The first question that arises, of course, is, "Why Marian dogma at all?" Why not just dogmas about Christ and let Catholics think what they like about Mary? Why bind consciences here?
The answer is that Catholics do think what they like — not only about Mary, but about lots of things. And sometimes they think deeply erroneous things. When they do, and that thought imperils some revealed truth to the point it threatens the integrity of the Church's witness, the Church will, from time to time, define its doctrine more precisely. This is a process that's already at work in the New Testament (cf. Acts 15), and it continues until the return of Christ.
So, for instance, in the fifth century there arose (yet again) the question of just who Jesus is. It was a question repeated throughout antiquity and, in this case, an answer to the question was proposed by the Nestorians. They argued that the mortal man Jesus and the Logos, or Second Person of the Trinity, were more or less two persons occupying the same head. For this reason, they insisted that Mary could not be acclaimed (as she had been popularly acclaimed for a very long time) as Theotokos, or God-bearer. Instead, she should only be called Christotokos, or Christ-bearer. She was, they insisted, the Mother of Jesus, not of God.
The problem with this was that it threatened the very witness of the Church and could even lead logically to the notion that there were two Sons of God, the man Jesus and the Logos who was sharing a room with Him in His head. In short, it was a doorway to theological chaos over one of the most basic truths of the Faith: that the Word became flesh, died, and rose for our sins.
So the Church formulated its response. First, Jesus Christ is not two persons occupying the same head. He is one person possessing two natures, human and divine, joined in a hypostatic union. Second, it was appropriate to therefore call Mary Theotokos because she's the Mother of the God-Man. When the God-Man had His friends over for lunch, He didn't introduce Mary saying, "This is the mother of my human nature." He said, "This is my mother."
Why did the Church do this? Because, once again, Mary points to Jesus. The dogma of the Theotokos is a commentary on Jesus, a sort of "hedge" around the truth about Jesus articulated by the Church. Just as Nestorianism had tried to attack the orthodox teaching of Christ through Mary (by forbidding the veneration of her as Theotokos), now the Church protected that teaching about Christ by making Theotokos a dogma. That is a vital key to understanding Marian dogmas: They're always about some vital truth concerning Jesus, the nature of the Church, or the nature of the human person.
This is evident, for instance, in the definition of Mary as a Perpetual Virgin (promulgated in 553 at the Council of Constantinople). This tradition isn't so much explicitly attested as reflected in the biblical narrative. Yes, we must grant that the biblical narrative is ambiguous in that it speaks of Jesus's "brothers" (but does it mean "siblings" or merely "relatives"?). However, other aspects of the biblical narrative strongly suggest she remained a virgin.
For instance, Mary reacts with astonishment at the news that she, a woman betrothed, will bear a son. If you are at a wedding shower and tell the bride-to-be, "You're going to have cute kids" and she responds "How can that be?" you can only conclude one of two things: she either doesn't know about the birds and the bees or she's taken a vow of virginity. In short, the promise of a child is an odd thing for a betrothed woman to be amazed about... unless, of course, she'd already decided to remain a virgin even after marriage.
Likewise, Joseph reacts with fear at the thought of taking Mary as a wife. Why fear? Modernity assumes it was because he thought her guilty of adultery, but the typical view in antiquity understood the text to mean he was afraid of her sanctity — as a pious Jew would be afraid to touch the Ark of the Covenant. After all, think of what Mary told him about the angel's words: "The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be called holy, the Son of God."
I'm not even a pious Jew, but with words like that echoing in my ears about my wife, I'd find it easy to believe that Joseph, knowing what he did about his wife, would have chosen celibacy.
"But nothing is sure, based on the text alone. It's still ambiguous," says the critic. Right. The biblical text alone doesn't supply an unambiguous answer to this or a myriad of other questions, including "Is the Holy Spirit God?," "How do you contract a valid marriage?," and "Can you be a polygamist?" But the Tradition of the Church in union with the biblical text does supply an answer: Mary had no other children, a fact so commonly known throughout the early Church that when Jerome attacks Helvidius for suggesting otherwise, nobody makes a peep. In a Church quite capable of tearing itself to pieces over distinctions between homoousious and homoiousious, you hear the sound of crickets in response to Jerome, punctuated with the sound of other Fathers singing hymns to "Mary, Ever-Virgin." The early Church took it for granted and thought Helvidius as credible as Dan Brown.
But why a dogma about it? Because, again, Mary's life is a referred life. Her virginity, like Christ's, speaks of her total consecration to God and of our call as Christians to be totally consecrated as well. Her virginity is not a stunt or a magic trick to make the arrival of Messiah extra strange. It is, rather, a sign to the Church and of the Church. And that matters for precisely the reason I'd thought it did not matter when I was an Evangelical: because Christianity is indeed supposed be about a relationship with Jesus Christ. But a relationship necessarily involves more than one person.
It comes down to is this: Jesus can do a world of wonderful things, but there is something even Jesus cannot do: He cannot model for us what it looks like to be a disciple of Jesus. Only a disciple of Jesus can do that. And the first and best model of the disciple of Jesus is the one who said and lived "Yes!" to God, spontaneously and without even the benefit of years of training or the necessity of being knocked off a horse and blinded. And she continues to do so right through the agony of watching her Son die and the ecstasy of knowing Him raised again.
This is why the Church, like the Gospels, has always called Mary our Mother: because Mom is the best model for training children. The command to call her "Mother" comes, of course, from Jesus Himself. John doesn't record the words "Behold your mother" (Jn 19:27) because he thought his readers might be curious about domestic arrangements for childless Jewish widows. Rather, as with everything else John writes, "These are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing you may have life in His name" (Jn 20:31). In other words, he doesn't record everything about Jesus, only those things that have a significant theological meaning. This includes Christ's words to the Beloved Disciple. For the Beloved Disciple is you and not merely John. Mary is your mother and you are her child. And so we are to look to her as mother and imitate her as she imitates Christ.
This brings us to the last two (and intimately related) Marian dogmas. Given that Marian dogma is always a commentary on Christ and His Church, what is the Church saying in its dogmatic teaching that 1) Mary was preserved at the moment of her conception from the stain of all sin, both original and actual; and 2) Mary was assumed bodily into heaven at the end of her earthly existence?
The great crisis that faced the Church in the 19th century (when the Holy Spirit, doing His job of leading the Church into all truth, led the Church to promulgate the dogma of the Immaculate Conception) was the rise of several ideologies — still very much with us — that called into question the origins and dignity of the human person. Darwin said the human person was an unusually clever piece of meat whose origins were as accidental as a pig's nose. Marx said humans were mere ingredients in a vast economic historical process. Laissez-faire capitalism saw people as natural resources to be exploited and thrown away when they lost their value. Eugenics said human dignity rested on "fitness." Much of Protestantism declared humans "totally depraved," while much of the Enlightenment held up the myth of human innocence, the "noble savage," and the notion of human perfectibility through reason. Racial theory advanced the notion that the key to human dignity was the shape of your skull, the color of your skin, and your membership in the Aryan or Teutonic tribe. Freud announced that your illusion of human dignity was just a veil over fathomless depths of unconscious processes largely centering in the groin or emerging out of issues with Mom and Dad.
All these ideologies - and many others - had in common the degrading rejection of human beings as creatures made in the image of God and intended for union with God (and the consequent subjection of the human person to some sort of creature). In contrast to them all, the Church, in holding up the icon of Mary Immaculate, held up an icon of both our true origin and our true dignity. That she was sinless was a teaching as old as the hills in the Church, which had hailed her as Kecharitomene, or "full of grace," since the time of Luke, and saluted her as Panagia, or all-holy, since the early centuries of the Church. So then why did the Holy Spirit move the Church to develop and focus this immemorial teaching more clearly?
Because what needed to be said loud and clear was that we were made in the image of God and that our fallenness, though very real, does not name or define us: Jesus Christ does. We are not mere animals, statistical averages, cogs in a machine, sophisticated primordial ooze, or a jangling set of complexes, appetites, tribal totems, Aryan supermen, naturally virtuous savages, or totally depraved Mr. Hydes. We were made by God, for God. Therefore sin, though normal, is not natural and doesn't constitute our humanity. And the proof of it was Mary, who was preserved from sin and yet was more human than the lot of us. She wasn't autonomously innocent, as though she could make it without God. She was the biggest recipient of grace in the universe, a grace that made her, in a famous phrase, "younger than sin." Because of it, she was free to be what Irenaeus described as "the glory of God": a human being fully alive. And as she is, so can the grace of Christ make us.
The 19th-century ideologies didn't, however, remain in libraries and classrooms. In the 20th century, they were enacted by the powers of state, science, business, entertainment, education, and the military into programs that bore abundant fruit in such enterprises as global and regional wars, the Holocaust, the great famines, the killing fields, the "great leap forward," the sexual revolution, and the culture of death, which is still reaping a rich bounty of spiritual and physical destruction. In short, as the 19th-century philosophies assaulted the dignity and origin of the human person, so the working out of those philosophies on the ground in the 20th century assaulted the dignity and destiny of the human person.
So what did the Holy Spirit do? Once again, in 1950, in the middle of a century that witnessed the biggest assault on the human person and on the family that the world has ever seen, the Church again held up Mary as an icon of who we really are and who we are meant to become by promulgating the dogma of the Assumption of Mary. Just as the Immaculate Conception held Mary up as the icon of the divine dignity of our origins, so the Church, in teaching "that the Immaculate Mother of God, the ever-Virgin Mary, having completed the course of her earthly life, was assumed body and soul into heavenly glory" was now holding her up as the icon of the divine dignity of our destiny.
The Church is repeating, in effect, that the God Who loves the world does not will that our fate be the oven, the mass grave, the abortuary, the anonymity of the factory, the brothel, the cubicle, or the street. The proper end of our life is supposed to be for us, as it already is for her, the ecstatic glory of complete union with the Triune God in eternity. Once again, God shows us something vital about our relationship to Himself through her, His greatest saint.
And that, in the end, is the point of Marian devotion and theology. Through our Lady, we see Jesus Christ reflected in the eyes of His greatest saint. But we also see "what are the riches of His glorious inheritance in the saints, and what is the immeasurable greatness of His power in us who believe, according to the working of His great might" (Eph 1:18-19). For what He has already done for her, He will one day do also in us.
Did or did not the RCC accept and build on Aquinas's geocentric cosmology?
Let me be blunt, Petronius. You don't know what you are talking about. That's not an insult. It's simply a fact. You throw around phrases like Aquinas's cosmology. If by cosmology you mean the Ptolemaic view of the universe, then the answer is no, because that was a scientific theory and no doctrinal or dogmatic Church statement ever enshrined the Ptolemaic or Newtonian scientific theories as dogma--for the simple reason that science and philosophy/theology do different things.
If by Aquinas's cosmology you meant belief that God created the heavens and the earth and actively sustained them, then the Church of course dogmatically asserts that--but Ptolemy and Aristotle wouldn't have touched that with a ten-foot pole and Aquinas knew that and dealt extensively with the differences between Christian belief in creation and ancient Greek belief in the eternal existence of the universe etc.
Your assumption that Aquinas was taken in by a "false" cosmology and that the Church foollishly endorsed it shows that you don't know the first thing either about the philosophy of science or theology or how the two both relate and differ from each other.
The Ptolemaic theory was the best theory anyone had come up with based on the data they had. It was as "true" as any scientific explanatory model ever is. All scientific theories or explanatory models are by their very nature temporary, ripe for revision--unlike eternal truths of philosophy and theology. The Church did not endorse the Ptolemaic model because the Church does not do science in her doctrinal teaching. Most Christians before Copernicus accepted the Ptolemaic model of explanation because it was the one that made the most sense. The time of transition between reigning scientific paradigms is always a time of controversy and confusion. The Galileo case and the debate over the shift from Ptolemy to Copernicus/Kepler would have been just another scientific debate if scientists and philosophers on both sides of the issue had not been foolish--Galileo in claiming philosophical implications for the scientific theory he had embraced that were not within the province of science and Galileo's opponents (many of whom were scientists who were also philosophers and theologians) who likewise did not keep the proper distinctions between the two forms of knowledge clear. But give them a break--it was a time of momentous philosophical and scientific change and it would be surprising if no confusion between theology, philosophy, and science had taken place.
In disciplining Galileo the Church was making a disciplinary action, not a dogmatic doctrinal teaching. And the officials erred in some aspects of their discipline of Galileo, even as he erred in some aspects of his behavior toward the Church. That is what the JPII commision findings essentially boil down to. There was a miscarriage of justice, not a miscarriage of doctrine.
Yet, in the courts of the Papal States and the Roman Inquisition at that time you received a far fairer trial, had more opportunity to know the accusations against you and defend yourself than you had in any of the courts of the kings of Europe of that day. In England there was the Star Chamber court where you had no rights whatever and the Carthusian martyrs under Henry VIII were left to starve to death without even a trial of any sort. Philip II of Spain, the Swedes, and so on down the line were far more arbitrary and unjust in their legal systems and failure to provide due process than the Papal States were at the time. That is the consensus of a wide variety of secular historians of the Inquisition: Henry Kamen, John Tedeschi, Edward Peters. Yet it is only right to say, as the JPII commission did, that Galileo was the victim of injustice in his trial. Scientists and anti-Christian philosophers who embrace scientism have used the Galileo case to make philosophical and theological points for which it is not relevant. And by employing it the way you have employed it, you too are blurring the boundaries between scientific knowledge (always temporary, based on always increasing, changing data that eventually forces a paradigm shift in explanatory models) and theological and philosophical knowledge that has to do with "perennial things," eternal truths.
And it also suggests that you get your information about the Catholic Church from modern scientistic sources that have it in for the Catholic Church, have distorted her record on matters of science and faith to support the "big bad Church and poor innocent persecuted scientists" myth, a myth that Protestants have taken a major part in perpetuating because they thought it served their anti-Catholic purposes, not realizing that it turns around to bite them in the form of scientistic attacks on Bible-believing Protestants.
You anti-Catholic, you live with a chip on your shoulder against Catholics, despite all your "let's just be friends" rhetoric, and in this case it has led you to accept some very bad science and very lousy history.
Correction in last line of 1121: "You are anti-Catholic.
Serious question ...
Were you trained to interpret any questioning of your beliefs as an attack ?
Yes, of course, regarding temporal mundanities, I'm sure there was no lack of variation based on time and setting.
But He was also a faithful Jew who followed closely the laws of Moses. The Pharisees may have accused Him of running afoul by performing miracles on the Sabbath, but Jesus rebuked them for allowing their self-righteousness to distort "the law" as God intended when He gave it to Moses. So, in essence, Christ did not have "pragmatic freedom" when it came to fulfilling His mission, but walked a very narrow path to the Cross. Christ's will was to do the Father's will. In essence, He was perpetually in bondage to the Father's will - and by manner of His own free will. 2 Corinthians 3:17
"... where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom."
Galatians 5:1
"For freedom Christ has set us free;"
Yes, but "the Truth will set you free". Truth is rigid, not flexible. Facts are imprisoned by truth. They cannot deviate or have pragmatism applied to them. In other words, 1 + 1 = 2. It's never anything different. The formula doesn't equal "three" when it's raining outside, or in certain time zones. It's rigid.
The same can be said for the Truth which "sets us free". This Truth is not made of putty. It can't be reshaped for the sake of pragmatism. Jesus didn't say, "Do something kind-of sort-of like this in memory of me." It was "do this in memory of me."
So, yes, the Old Testament is certainly more replete with rules and regulations, but so is the New Testament:
You shall love the Lord God with all your heart, etc.
Do unto others...
Love your enemies
Turn the other cheek
Forgive 70 times 70 times
etc. etc. etc.
In fact, the only pragmatism Christ applied to His teaching was in using parables. And the reason He used parables was that the sinfulness of that generation (and the others before) prevented them from seeing and hearing what the Apostles could see and hear in Christ's Word.
In sum, the story of salvation is the story of contradictions. Because man does not think like God, what is Truth can oftentimes run contrary to our natural inclinations. We give in order to receive; we forgive in order to be forgiven; we die in order to have eternal life; Christ "became" sin in order to conquer Satan; poverty here stores riches in heaven, and in order to be free, one must surrender to Truth and follow wherever the Shepherd leads.
The Truth is one and always. There has to be a guarantor of the Truth and a body to receive an affirm it. That gurantor is the Holy Spirit; that body is the Catholic Church, built on Peter, the rock.
You have emptied out the value of the bible. I'm afraid I'm a bit too discouraged to continue. I simply can't seem to do what I want to do, as my SN implies, and make the bible seem important to you.
So what IS the value of the Bible? The quality of paper? The most recent translation? God inspired a rulebook but doesn't inspire its application and tradition?
The fact is, we don't even know who wrote the Gospels, but you take on faith that they were inspired by God. On what do you base that faith? Scripture?
So, yes, the Old Testament is certainly more replete with rules and regulations, but so is the New Testament:
You shall love the Lord God with all your heart, etc.
Do unto others ...
Love your enemies
Turn the other cheek
Forgive 70 times 70 times
... etc. etc. etc.
Yes ... such as you list above is a good representation of the commandments set forth in the NT.
I am reminded that Paul sets out love as the basis for any valued service in the kingdom of God.
If love is not the root of what we do ... then whatever we do has no value.1 Corinthians 13:1 Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, ... but have not love, I have become sounding brass or a clanging cymbal.In fact, the only pragmatism Christ applied to His teaching was in using parables. And the reason He used parables was that the sinfulness of that generation (and the others before) prevented them from seeing and hearing what the Apostles could see and hear in Christ's Word.
2 And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, ... but have not love, I am nothing.
3 And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, ... but have not love, it profits me nothing.
Actually, this isn't quite the case ...
Pragmatics ran afoul of Old Testament Law when Jesus and His disciples gleaned corn from the fields on the Sabbath, ... and in the matter of the disciples not washing their hands before eating.Mark 2:23 Now it happened that He went through the grainfields on the Sabbath; and as they went His disciples began to pluck the heads of grain.
24 And the Pharisees said to Him, "Look, why do they do what is not lawful on the Sabbath?"
25 But He said to them, "Have you never read what David did when he was in need and hungry, he and those with him:
26 how he went into the house of God in the days of Abiathar the high priest, and ate the showbread, which is not lawful to eat, except for the priests, and also gave some to those who were with him?"
27 And He said to them, "The Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath.
...................................................................
Mark 7:5 Then the Pharisees and scribes asked Him, "Why do Your disciples not walk according to the tradition of the elders, but eat bread with unwashed hands?"
6 He answered and said to them, "Well did Isaiah prophesy of you hypocrites, as it is written: 'This people honors Me with their lips, But their heart is far from Me.
7 And in vain they worship Me, Teaching as doctrines the commandments of men.'
8 "For laying aside the commandment of God, you hold the tradition of men -- the washing of pitchers and cups, and many other such things you do."
9 He said to them, "All too well you reject the commandment of God, that you may keep your tradition.
"...and make the bible seem important to you."
The Bible IS important to me. I prayed from the Divine Liturgy this morning - 3 Psalms and a reading from the Scriptures. Read today's Gospel from Mark. Read the last three chapters of Galatians, with my study notes. During lunch, I will pray 3 more Psalms. Later, I will meditate on the Gospel (which would be very pertinent to this conversation - I HIGHLY suggest you read it, Biblewonk - Mk 9:38-40 Oh, heck, it's short. Here it is: "Now John answered Him, saying, 'Teacher, we saw someone who does not follow us casting out demons in Your name, and we forbade him because he does not follow us.' But Jesus said, 'Do not forbid him, for no one who works a miracle in My name can soon afterward speak evil of Me. For he who is not against us is on our side. For whoever gives you a cup of water to drink in My name, because you belong to Christ, assuredly, I say to you, he will by no means lose his reward.").
Before turning in, 3 more Psalms will be prayed. I will also read more commentaries on the second half of Galatians later, but I am at work, so it depends on that schedule first.
Does this look like the schedule of someone who doesn't consider the Bible important? Again, I remind you, Catholics do NOT take EVERYTHING from the Scriptures. God speaks also through Apostolic Tradition. The decisions of the Councils (the precedence we saw in Acts 15). The teachings of the Church, such as from encyclicals. The Bible is at the center, but it is not all-encompassing.
JESUS IS!
Beware of worshipping the Bible! It is a book meant to lead us to Christ, not an end in of itself.
Here is another reading from Scripture that I humbly present to you:
Also Jesus spoke this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous, and despised others: "Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee stood and prayed thus with himself, 'God, I thank You that I am not like other men--extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even as this tax collector. I fast twice a week; I give tithes of all that I possess.' And the tax collector, standing afar off, would not so much as raise his eyes to heaven, but beat his breast, saying, 'God, be merciful to me a sinner!' I tell you, this man went down to his house justified rather than the other; for everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted." (Luke 18: 9-14)
I can't help but think of this parable when you write as you do regarding "those RC's who don't read the Bible 3 times a year for 18 years".
Regards
The fact is, we don't even know who wrote the Gospels, but you take on faith that they were inspired by God. On what do you base that faith? Scripture?
The universal testimony of the church.
Furthermore, Christ was referencing a common practice of various Kings of that age, who would literally entrust the keys to their castles to one person, who would effectively become the point-man for the monarchy, and speak for the King when dealing with subjects outside the walls.
Also, in reference to the "Gates of Hell", a king would station his most battle-hearty troops at the gate, so when Jesus says, "the Gates of Hell", He's referring to the most powerful demons assaulting the Church.
This is an oxymoron. The mere existence of Protestantism belies any assertion of "universal testimony" outside the Catholic Church - "catholic", of course, meaning " universal.
In fact, one could say that Protestantism is a collection of many thousands of "parallel" universes, with no two testimonies coinciding...
Do you celebrate the pagan-rooted holiday of Christmas? Do you attend services on Sunday? Heck, do you think Sunday is a "holy" day?
The universal testimony of the church.
This is an oxymoron. The mere existence of Protestantism belies any assertion of "universal testimony" outside the Catholic Church - "catholic", of course, meaning " universal.
The centrality of Jesus Christ and the integrity of the scriptures are point of commonality for all of the churches.
Do you celebrate the pagan-rooted holiday of Christmas? Do you attend services on Sunday? Heck, do you think Sunday is a "holy" day?
I celebrate the Incarnation.
I attend services on Sunday, Wednesday, and sometimes Saturday.
I do not consider Sunday to be a day any more holy than any other.
I am reminded that Paul sets out love as the basis for any valued service in the kingdom of God.
If love is not the root of what we do ... then whatever we do has no value.
Agreed. And this is the crux of what Christ was condemning when He castigated the "traditions" of the Pharisees. It was not a condemnation of tradition per se, but the hypocrisy of approaching ceremony without a loving disposition. If Christ did not support tradition, He would not have followed the laws of Moses to begin with. He would not have become the Paschal sacrifice and the Last Supper would have simply been "dinner with friends". He would not have been circumcised or presented to His Heavenly Father.
But I agree, wholeheartedly, ceremony or ritual approached without love is a slap in the face of God -- but it doesn't invalidate the tradition anymore than a heretic invalidates the Bible.
"Do this in memory of Me"...
The fact is, we don't even know who wrote the Gospels, but you take on faith that they were inspired by God. On what do you base that faith? Scripture?
Are you saving that the bible is worth even less than we have said so far? Am I a fool for taking on faith that they are inspired because it says so and a Christian told me it was so? Am I a fool for believing that John wrote John and Luke wrote Luke?
And it ends there. Everyone who speaks English shares a universal alphabet - it doesn't mean everyone knows how to spell.
Here is another reading from Scripture that I humbly present to you:
Also Jesus spoke this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous, and despised others: "Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee stood and prayed thus with himself, 'God, I thank You that I am not like other men--extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even as this tax collector. I fast twice a week; I give tithes of all that I possess.' And the tax collector, standing afar off, would not so much as raise his eyes to heaven, but beat his breast, saying, 'God, be merciful to me a sinner!' I tell you, this man went down to his house justified rather than the other; for everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted." (Luke 18: 9-14)
I can't help but think of this parable when you write as you do regarding "those RC's who don't read the Bible 3 times a year for 18 years".
That hurt. I'm worshipping the bible because I read it and believe it and worshipping the bible is wrong? I can only assume that worshipping the bible is not worshipping God's Word because it is just a book and God's Word Jesus Himself, to an RC. I'm also out of line for noticing that people who have less regard for the bible read it less and I am trusting that I am righteous because I read the bible. So I should quit reading the bible so I can quit trusting that I am right in my understanding of what it says and then I won't be on the wrong side of the prayer hill in Luke 18.
I have to say, that's sounds pretty twisted to me.
But WHERE does it say so? And why THESE four Gospels? What about the other forty? Who had the authority to determine the canon of the New Testament and why?
Am I a fool for believing that John wrote John and Luke wrote Luke?
No, you're not a fool, just uninformed. In fact, you'll probably lose your lunch if you do a little scholarly research and realize that Matthew is a composite of Mark and the "un-inspired" Gospel of "Q", and written not by Matthew, but his disciples. The Gospel of Matthew, in its entirety is infallibly inspired. "Q" by itself is not. And God obviously inspired "Matthew" to use elements from "Q" to round out his work. But it's an attributed work of Matthew, not an evident one.
The centrality of Jesus Christ and the integrity of the scriptures are point of commonality for all of the churches.
And it ends there. Everyone who speaks English shares a universal alphabet - it doesn't mean everyone knows how to spell.
Jesus set forth Himself (or "His Name", specifically) as the common point fof the Christian community (the church) ... He did not insist that we all follow in an identical way.
From jo kus' previous posting ...Mark 9:38-40 Now John answered Him, saying, "Teacher, we saw someone who does not follow us casting out demons in Your name, and we forbade him because he does not follow us."
But Jesus said, "Do not forbid him, for no one who works a miracle in My name can soon afterward speak evil of Me. For he who is not against us is on our side.
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