Posted on 06/10/2007 3:02:20 PM PDT by NYer
Many modern people have the notion that the principal mission of the Catholic Church is to impose belief on unbelievers. The reality is that most of its time is spent trying to restrain belief in everything from spoon-bending to the aliens who allegedly speak to us through a cat in Poughkeepsie.
The riptides and cross-currents of religious enthusiasm in American culture are kaleidoscopic and dizzying. Cradle Catholics can be forgiven for just ignoring the whole thing and many of them do. But it’s still worth taking into account because some religious trends can have decided real-world effects.
Some of the effects of unrestrained belief can be amusing.
For instance, after five centuries of being told by Protestant polemicists that we “Romanists” do not trust the saving grace of Jesus Christ and ignorantly seek salvation by the works of the law, it is a weird thing for a Catholic to see the spectacle of kooky apocalyptic Protestants eagerly excited about the birth of red heifers because this will (they hope) be the prelude to rebuilding the Temple of Solomon and the re-institution of the Mosaic sacrificial system. Just how that Temple will be rebuilt when the Dome of the Rock is situated on the site of the Temple is not quite as clearly worked out.
Which brings me to something just as kooky, but less amusing.
Recently, James Dobson, a leading Evangelical and a usually sensible man, hosted on his show one Joel Rosenberg, author of something called Epicenter: Why Current Rumblings in the Middle East Will Change Your Future. Rosenberg claims to know “what the Bible says” about what is happening in the Mideast and is not shy about making “predictions regarding the fate of the Middle East regarding issues such as Iran’s nuclear threats against Israel, the arms race and ultimately ... Armageddon.” Here’s a snippet:
Dobson: “Well, Joel, let’s explain to everybody how Ezekiel 38 turns out, because Israel is about to be attacked, and a huge number of troops from Russia and Iran are coming toward Israel to destroy it, and what happens?”
Rosenberg: “Well, God is going to move. You won’t find in the Scriptures that the United States is coming to rescue Israel or the European Union, but God says he is going to supernaturally intervene — we’re talking about fire from heaven, a massive earthquake, diseases spreading through the enemy forces. It is going to be such a clear judgment against the enemies of Israel that Ezekiel 39 says that it will take seven months to bury all the bodies of the slain enemies of Israel. “
Such standard-issue Evangelical prophetic cocksureness is an excellent example of why a magisterium is so useful and necessary.
Not only does the magisterium help us know what is essential to the faith, it also helps us remain free of what is unessential. For the various species of Protestantism, in addition to denying real biblical truths such as the Real Presence or infant baptism, also have a tendency to invent “biblical truths” that do not exist and impose them by means of a sort of cultural pressure via charismatic preachers with pet theories who, in their own sphere, are granted an infallibility the Pope could never dream of.
Now, a Catholic is quite free to have a kooky private reading of Ezekiel 38-39 as a prophecy of the “coming resurgent Soviet Union” and its alliance with Muslims, communist Chinese or whoever, all in a vast Cecil B. DeMille battle against Israel. The Church has all sorts of room for eccentrics, and everybody needs a hobby.
But a Catholic is not free to go around telling everybody that “this is the clear teaching of the Bible” and demand it be believed. For the fact is, this kooky theory is emphatically not the clear teaching of the Bible, nor does it have any sanction whatsoever from the Church, the tradition, the Fathers, the councils or the popes. It is a pure novelty we can and should ignore.
What we should not ignore is Rosenberg’s claim that, “Given the events going on in our world today, people at the Pentagon, people at the CIA, people at the White House are asking to sit down and talk about these issues, to understand the Biblical perspective, because it is uncanny what is happening out there and it deserves some study.”
I suspect that Rosenberg is exaggerating his clout with the big cheeses in DC. I doubt that the Pentagon’s intel meetings are dominated by exegeses of Ezekiel 38.
But I do think it matters if a significant portion of the American polity drinks in such bizarre theories as if they were God’s revealed Truth.
Ideas have consequences, especially crazy ones. Most crazy ideas do no harm.
Crazy ideas about the Middle East, backed by the force of arms, stand a better than average chance of killing millions.
A universe without comedy would be a joke..
Evil takes itself very serious as joy is prone to laugh..
I Cor 2;9 is a pregnant promise.. and a challenge...
Mad Dawg why is there a discrepency in the lineage of Jesus? Catholics give Joachim and Anna as the parents of Mary when Luke 3:23 tells us that Heli was her father.
Matthew 1: further confuses things with giving the lineage of Joseph. (Some believe, as shown, that it was Joseph, Mary's husband, others believe it was that of Joseph, Mary's father).
Where do I find Joachim and Anna in the Bible?
I have a beautiful copy of Chamber’s devotions, had not heard of him, but it was in a used bookstore, red leather, gold embossed writing on the cover so I bought it.
“May God rebuke him, we humbly pray”
I know now that I’ve read this, that I will use it some day.
We Swedenborgiians don't take oaths to "defend the faith". Really isn't necessary because we'll all find out soon enough.
As Swedenborg wrote, there is a Heaven, hell and a world of spirits. Angels are in Heaven, devils and satans are in hell. They are there because after death, their love during their live determine where they end up. If someone had affection for doing useful services for the neighbor, htey would find their way to the spiritual Heaven. A wicked person full of cruelty and hatred who is full of self love would choose an appropriate hell. That's their 'last judgement'. No do overs. No reincarnation.
And, evil people who on their deathbed confess to the Lord with their lips do have their entire lives to answer for.
So, Swedenborg conversed with angels and spirits and wrote some 30 volumes in English on theology. Some scholars of systematic theology have stated Swedenborg is the most complete they have seen -- no paradoxes, no mysteries and it adheres to the Lord's Word.
You might find his work Heaven and Hell (PDF) interesting.
You cannot find it in the scriptures....you will find it here: Infancy
Heli is indeed Mary's Father [Luke 3:23] per scripture.....Joaquim by tradition.
Heli was his rap name.
heh heh heh.
It's an awesome prayer. I have to restrain myself from gesticulating, punching air, etc. when saying it. It ends, And do though, by the power of God, cast into hell Satan and all the evil spirits who prowl about the world seeking the ruin of souls.
Once at the beginning of a weekday PM Mass, I found a tick crawling up my leg. The pew in front of me was empty so I put her on it and, since the wood was light colored and the church brightly lit, I was able to keep half an eye on her for the whole service. She walked all the way down to the far end of the seat of the LONG pew, climbed to the top of the seat back, and walked all the way back to me.
Then at the end of the service, as the priest exits the laity recite the St. Michael prayer, and I just about burst out laughing at my prowling tick. I picked her up and carried her out of the church. I don't usually cut a break for a tick, but I let this one live.
.30Carbine: Pray … and get out of the way
LOL! That is perfect. Thank you!
Or to put it yet another way, every time we lay a burden (whether a person or a thing) at the Cross and then pick it up again, He lets us. And then we have to lay it down all over again, all the while wondering why God didn’t answer our prayer. LOL!
Conversely, when we lay it at the Cross and trust Him with it, never picking it up again – we have the peace that passes all understanding, and He deals with the burden for us according to His will – and His will is our first priority. We trust Him.
BTW, this sometimes puts me in an awkward position with my brothers and sisters in Christ on this forum who keep pleading for additional prayers for the same, specific thing. My solution is once I have joined in lifting up the burden to Christ for healing, I thank God right then - and then thankfully receive all updates from the poster. But as far as additional prayers are concerned, I lift the person himself up to God generally and try very hard not to pick up what I have already laid down.
For if ye forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you: But if ye forgive not men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses. – Matt 6: 9-15
Indeed, but sadly man cannot seem to resist superimposing his own reasoning or rules of logic on God, e.g. Aristotle’s Law of the Excluded Middle or Law of Identity – or causality, time, space and other such creature-as-the-observer concepts which cannot be applied to the Creator.
When he does this, he anthropomorphizes God into a small “god” he can comprehend or else creates a convoluted, bulky attempt to explain or justify God via commentary, doctrines and traditions.
Truth, on the other hand, is elegant – so much so, it is spoken in parables, written and yet hidden in plain view.
Mad Dawg: I expect Reports on each from each of you by the end of next week
LOL! Actually that would be fun if time permits.
Aquinasfan: : This idea [that faith can contradict reason] is self-contradictory, because all faith propositions (all truth claims) are logical formulations or formulations based in reason. If reason is not absolutely trustworthy, then faith propositions must be untrustworthy.
Our positions cannot be reconciled. I aver that faith and reason are complementary but that reason cannot substitute for faith. That was the futile hope of the Greeks:
For it is written, I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and will bring to nothing the understanding of the prudent. Where [is] the wise? where [is] the scribe? where [is] the disputer of this world? hath not God made foolish the wisdom of this world?
For after that in the wisdom of God the world by wisdom knew not God, it pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe.
For the Jews require a sign, and the Greeks seek after wisdom: But we preach Christ crucified, unto the Jews a stumblingblock, and unto the Greeks foolishness;
But unto them which are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God, and the wisdom of God. Because the foolishness of God is wiser than men; and the weakness of God is stronger than men. – I Cor 1:18-25
In what way does the Trinity not contradict Aristotle’s Law of Identity? The law (A=A) is that an object is always the same as itself:
Ditto for Aristotle’s law of the Excluded Middle, i.e. either/or. Even when man realizes that law doesn’t even apply consistently in nature (wave/particle duality) he still tries to apply it to God. And thus even more doctrines and traditions stem from the never-ending debate of predestination v free will, do not kill v kill, do not judge v. judge righteous judgment, contend v. don't strive and so on.
If man were capable of figuring it, he would have by now. Indeed, Plato would have.
Aquinasfan: How do miracles contradict reason? A miracle is not a contradiction. We can know the existence of God through reason, and that he is the Creator of all things. As the Creator of all things, he can suspend the laws of nature as He sees fit.
You and Greg F are both making the same point, namely that the existence of God is reasonable and thus miracles and such are also reasonable. That is fine but when the Christian is an empiricist, he is separating himself from the knowledge of God Himself, i.e. the power of God.
To the empiricist, all knowledge comes from sensory perception and reasoning. If he holds a concept of God, and even if he has received that definitive divine revelation that Jesus Christ is Lord, he will nevertheless insist that God must comply with his own ability to comprehend Him. On principle, whether he realizes it or not, He rejects the Spiritual insight that God’s ways are not our ways, His thoughts are not our thoughts. He always anthropomorphizes God.
Aquinasfan: Faith is superior to reason, but dependent on reason.
We Christians believe that God was enfleshed in the body of a virgin, died on a Cross for our sins, was resurrected and now sits at the right hand of God and will return again. We also believe that while He was enfleshed, He made water into wine, made the blind to see, the lame to walk, the dead to rise, walked on water and so on.
This is all “reasonable” to us Christians. And yet many who see the vision of Fatima as likewise reasonable, reject the testimony of God the Creator that He made all that there is in six days. Or perhaps they find unreasonable the Noah flood, the ages of the patriarchs, Jonah and the Whale and so on.
If a Christian truly holds faith as superior to reason but dependent upon reason, he would not mitigate any of these revelations of God. But people are disingenuous – believing what they want to believe and rejecting what they do not want to believe or consider to be an embarrassment.
Aquinasfan: A true revelation may be superior to knowledge derived naturally. But false spiritual discernment and false supernatural (demonic) revelations will contradict right reason.
Why go beyond the revelations of God in discerning the spirits by adding “right reason” to the test?!
God the Father has revealed Himself in four ways: through Jesus Christ His only begotten Son, through the indwelling Holy Spirit, through Scripture and through the Creation, both physical and spiritual.
And the Father has given us these tests of the Spirit, which apply in the same order and hierarchy to His own revelations:
The messenger must display all of the fruits of the Spirit (good tree/good fruit Matt 7, Gal 5): love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness and self-control.
The message must agree with the whole of Scripture (Berean test, Acts 17)
betty boop: But truth is often smothered by dogma. Where God wants us to live in direct communion with Himself and His truth (for which we are equipped to be responsive partners in the divine-human dialogue), a dogma is a reduction or "hypostatization" of truth, not the living truth itself.
Oh so very true, dearest sister in Christ!
So many have missed the point that Jesus Christ is the Living Word of God (John 1, Revelation 19)
betty boop: Without faith, reason itself becomes unreasonable -- as you have pointed out before, my dearest sister in Christ!
So very well said, my dearest sister in Christ – and a much better way of making the point than to say that faith never contradicts reason.
hosepipe: Angels seem to have a different or no bodies like humans bodies since they can be invisible to men.. they are spirits.. It is possible that "what humans ARE" can be some of the angels that bought the lie(but repented) getting a second chance..
The revelation of God in Jude contradicts that conclusion (as do a number of pseudepigraphral texts):
So very true! Only a childlike faith in God will do:
Woe beget the rebellious toddler who thinks himself a man and challenges the father toe-to-toe and eye-to-eye (Job 38-42).
DaveMSmith Living faith is true faith -- if out heart is rooted in charity to the neighbor and performing useful endeavors, and we shun evils as sin, the Lord will open our spiritual eyes so we can see heaven.
Actually I must quibble with you just a little bit. If anyone could be good enough to get to heaven, then Christ died for nothing:
1. Often to read and meditate on the Word of God.
2. To submit everthing to the will of Divine Providence.
3. To observe in everything a propriety of behaviour, and to keep the conscience clear.
4. To discharge with fidelity the functions of my employments, and to make myself in all things useful to society.
And the second [is] like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.
On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets. – Matt 22:37-40
"The person is truly conceived when the soul is created and infused into the body..."
Is there a difference between physical "conception" and "true conception"?
What is the time frame?
Disposing of this "conceived" but not "truly conceived" person (non-person) would be ok with you?
What a magnificent essay/post, my dearest sister in Christ! His Spirit has certainly been with you!
WRT the above italics, I agree with your conclusion: If reason alone were sufficient, Plato probably would have figured it all out. The point is he didn't and so it's not. Without Christ Jesus, reason has no truth. The Logos is the Ratio by which reason and reasoning can be proved. There is no other basis. My two cents' worth....
Thank you so very much for this superb essay/post!
My understanding, if you'll pardon the overstatement, was that someone was saying that "the RCs" are trying to establish that Mary's Mom and Pop immaculate. I'm all over Mary being Immaculately conceived (even if it requires saints from, ugh, FRANCE! -- and Portugal, no less!) But Mary's Parents? Wuzza' and wherefore?
But yeah, my, again alleged, understanding is that one of the reasons the Angelic Doctor was hemming and hawing over the Immaculate Conception was that he didn't think animation happened until (I believe, I never checked this out) "quickening" or maybe a little before. The very term quickening does not refer to the pace with which the gravid women scoots off to the bathroom but rather to junior beginning to use her bladder as a punching bag, which is to say showing signs of life.
My groggy mind suspects that what you are quoting is trying to say whenever "animation" takes place (whether with computer graphics or the old way with millions of artists) defines when sho' 'nuff, what-you-might-call meaningful, conception takes place.
I don't know when this article was written and on dial-up I aint' finding out neither, but I've garnered the impression that these days animation is supposed to take place when sperm meets ovum.
I am very open to correction on this -- no skin in the game.
Is any of this blather responsive?
Thanx for the ping ... I’m trying to catch up.
To the empiricist, all knowledge comes from sensory perception and reasoning. If he holds a concept of God, and even if he has received that definitive divine revelation that Jesus Christ is Lord, he will nevertheless insist that God must comply with his own ability to comprehend Him. On principle, whether he realizes it or not, He rejects the Spiritual insight that God’s ways are not our ways, His thoughts are not our thoughts. He always anthropomorphizes God.
You don't have to be a tool to use a tool!
I read the link you provided. There was an interesting sentence contained in it -
(1) In the sixth month of her pregnancy, Joseph came from his house-building and went into the house to find her swelling. (2) And he struck his face and threw himself on the ground in sackcloth and wept bitterly, "How can I look to the Lord God? What will I pray about her, for I took her as a virgin from the temple of the Lord and did not guard her? (4) Who has set this trap for me? Who did this evil in my house? Who stole the virgin from me and defiled her. (5) Has not the story of Adam been repeated with me? For while Adam was glorifying God, the serpent came and found Eve alone and deceived her and defiled her - so it has also happened to me."
Apparently it was known that the serpent defiled Eve. I wonder when that became hidden?
To complicate (or simplify?) things further, I'd like to assert that not only is the Logos of God the Ratio (the standard of judgment that reason must submit to), but it is also the Radix (the root of human reason itself).
If someone wants to discuss when the human spirit is first present with the human soul, well, that's a different kettle of fish. Mormons apparently believe the spirit isn't with the soul/body at implantation embryo stage since men like Orrin Hatch contend there is no human being yet if the alive embryo is in a petri dsh and there is only a human being when implantation occurs in a human female's womb. One wonders what Orrin will babble when shown the evidences of alive human embryos allready attached to extra-corporeal uterine tissue as in the experiemnts already carried out at Harvard. But that too is a different kettle of fish.
Informative? No. :-) or :-(
Frankly, I had never seen nor heard this argument. I have always thought conception was either a "1" or a "0".
Further, the RCC doesn't make any distinction concerning "conception" and the infusing of the soul. It seems to come from the mind of the person who wrote the article for the Catholic Encyclopedia.
The Catechism Of The Catholic Church
491 Through the centuries the Church has become ever more aware that Mary, "full of grace" through God, was redeemed from the moment of her conception. That is what the dogma of the Immaculate Conception confesses, as Pope Pius IX proclaimed in 1854:
The most Blessed Virgin Mary was, from the first moment of her conception, by a singular grace and privilege of almighty God and by virtue of the merits of Jesus Christ, Savior of the human race, preserved immune from all stain of original sin.
Well, Hosepipe, I decided to give you whatever answer appeared first in google. Here it is! Are you ready? The answer to the question at the top of Google's searchlist:
What Is Life?
I am not going to answer this question — J. B. S. Haldane (1)
Carry on.
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