Posted on 01/27/2006 7:37:26 AM PST by NYer
Because it may not be true. I really don't know that much about the theory.
I thought "truth cannot contradict truth?" Maybe the stupid Church Fathers were as ignorant about the Bible as they were about natural science and must step aside to What We Now Know?
What is it that "we now know?"
I hope the Catholic Church will be equally willing to place all its teachings in the dock of science and modernity, however, and not just the Bible.
Modernism is different from empiricism, or "science." Modernism is rife with philosophical errors. And Church doctrines aren't quantifiable and measurable empirically.
When some passage of scripture seems to contradict what is known with scientific certainty, the contradictory biblical passages must be seen as figurative. For example, there are passages in the Bible indicating that at times the sun has stood still. Many Catholics, and Luther and the other so-called Reformers, believed this to be literally true. But other Catholics, like Cardinal Bellarmine, stated that should we learn that the earth orbits the sun, this passage would have to be seen as idiomatic, as it indeed is.
We don't have certain scientific knowledge regarding human origins or the generation of life generally, so it remains an open question, to some degree anyway.
Is it not ever possible that the uniformitarian scientific assumption must yield?
Of course. The accounts of miracles and possession contradict uniformitarianism.
You mean the "universal consent of the Fathers" isn't definitive?
With regard to faith and morals, yes.
How many liberal theories must Catholics sift through in order to arrive at a "conclusion?"
Some questions are unsettled.
I note your refusal to deal with the issue of hypocrisy in defending Catholic traditions while subjecting the Jewish traditions that delivered the Bible to you to scientific criticism. Isn't this precisely the attitude of Protestants who accept the "Catholic" Bible while rejecting Catholic traditions about it?
You're projecting beliefs onto me and the Church.
BTW, at which point in Genesis do its characters suddenly cease to be mythical and become historical? I assume after Chapter 11?
The Church holds all of the people in Genesis to be historical figures. Whether they lived for centuries is another question.
ping - howdy!
You're probably right. I have two ocicats in my home and I truly believe they know I have been miserable since my break-up with the heartless-woman-who-shall-not-be-named. They are constantly near me, purring and trying to keep my attention. It's strange but when I start to get really down they come running and rub up against me until I focus my attention on them. Good little lads, Ignatius and Benedict.
It is literally true ... the Sun DOES move around the Earth.
If you fix your frame of reference on the Earth, that is. All motion is relative to your fixed frame of reference.
A heliocentric solar system is 'merely' a convenience ... the equations are an AWFUL lot simpler if you set your frame of reference at the center of mass of the solar system. Which happens to be really close to the center of the sun. But for everyday living, a geocentric model is easy enough to work with. I bet you use it, too. And it's not wrong. It's jut grossly inconvenient for many purposes.
You're starting from a fundamentally incompatible assumption, which is that God could, would, and did create a universe which lies to us about how it was actually created, in order to test our faith.
I'm not sure why I should believe that God lied in creation and told the truth in Torah any more than I should believe that God lied in Torah and told the truth in creation. It seems to me like you're just the opposite extreme from a hyper-Darwinist who thinks there is no God and everything happened by random chance.
And I don't find your extreme position any more attractive than his. Find me a third way, where God told the truth in both places, please, because the God I know doesn't lie. (And no Christian, not even your Bible Belt literalist buddies, can believe in a God who lies, because the Epistle to the Hebrews flatly rules that possibility out.)
bttt
My cat's name was Agnes. She died last year, almost 20 years old. She didn't like the children much after they were born, but she was very friendly when I was pregnant!
I do not mean any disrespect to Fr. Euteneuer -- I mean only to raise a question to see if anyone here can help me understand.
Just last night I was listening to a recording of Art Bell's first interview with Malachi Martin. One of the first questions Bell asked him was how long the typical exorcism lasts. Fr. Martin told him, "We measure them in terms of weeks. Sometimes it's only a week; sometimes only hours. It depends on the tenacity of the demon in possession. It depends on the antecedents of the person. It depends on so many factors, you just can't perdict." He said that the longest one he was involved with was 17 weeks.
So it confuses me to hear that a "tough" exorcism lasted a "full" nine hours, and also that a priest who began an exorcism with a person hoped that he would not "miss" any of his "long-awaited" scheduled appointments.
Can anyone here help me out in comprehending this?
Like you, I relish the company of my two bassets who more than amply compensate for the heartless-man-who-shall-not-be-named. Even the household felines have more compassion than he ever did :-)
Sometimes pets are the right kind of friends!
I think I'll stick with Fr. Martin. Regardless of some of his opinions on other matters, he is undoubtedly correct that exorcisms are better measured "in terms of weeks." The examples given in his Hostage to the Devil, Oesterreich's Possession : Demoniacal and Other, and similar books are usually not 9-hour endeavors. Or at least the "tough" cases are not.
It's very simple really, Satan deceives in any way possible. There is nothing more to say.
http://www.booksforcatholics.com/mm5/merchant.mvc?Screen=PROD&Store_Code=B&Product_Code=1929291639&Category_Code=
Only $22 and so much wisdom. And, you are right! He is the father of lies.
Theologically unsound?! Well, I'm pretty sure patting the gerbil is still considered a sin.
The context is that the author of, say Genesis did not know exactly the meaning of the stories he was recording. He just wrote. Rationalists are prone to the notion that the Scriptures are "fictions." But a good pagan might have conceded that what was recorded were visions, something like those that Mohammed claimed to have had. Theologians have the habit of dismissing this notion of revelation, but "dreams" and "visions" continue to this day.
That's what my mother thought - especially when the gerbil was on the dinner table. (My daughter has a weird sense of humor.)
Oh, it IS gooey. Perfect word.
Thanks :-).
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