Posted on 05/17/2010 9:46:10 AM PDT by markomalley
I wish you the best, hope to see you there.
“I just disagree so much with the way the Catholic church says things like if you’re not a good person you’ll die and go to Hell
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Exactly what I said on a catholic thread the other day, that is the message of that church, completely opposite of what the true Gospel says, that all our good works are as filthy rags, we are saved by the Cross, nothing more, good deeds will not earn a place in heaven.”
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That error is so — I don’t know, inside out and backwards? — that I can’t even wrap my mind around it, much less explain to the obdurate how to reason their way out of it.
Yes, our salvation is made possible by the bitter passion and death of Our Lord, and yes we are enjoined to become the best people we can become.
All of us *can* become worthy to spend eternity with God; some will. All fall short, all can be forgiven for that.
The notion that some are predestined for salvation or damnation is an insult to God. It is not merely stupid; it is deeply, almost unimaginably, demonically stupid. It is not intellectually, theologically, or scripturally respectable. It is ludicrous.
The physical universe is a device. It’s purpose, or at least one of them, is that we *become* something that God wants us to become. This is why free will is crucial, and why predestination is an idea that only the Earl of Hell could have spawned.
Yet they believe that somebody like my niece is predestined to hell because she can't consciously believe in Jesus. My niece has cerebral palsy. She is 16 years old. She cannot feed herself, she still wears diapers, she cannot talk, and I don't even know if she can truly understand what we are saying. Therefore, how can she have true faith in the proper sense of the word?
Now I don't know if the Protestants would say to me, yes your niece has been damned. But if that is what they believe, than they can't accuse us of being hateful.
I don't believe that God allows children like my niece to be born simply to send them straight to hell for not being able to acknowledge him or his son. I think that God allows these children to be born in order for us to see Christ. Who do you see Christ in the most? People skipping around with but a care in the world, or those who suffer and are handicapped.
As Catholics, we feel that being born the way my niece was born is a grace. My niece cannot sin. She can't be evil like we can. She can't gossip, curse you, hurt you on purpose, and most of all she cannot hate. She is a mirror of our Lord. She suffers greatly and is without sin.
I don't know if I am saved. I don't think that anyone truly knows. I think God knows. He is a merciful God. Therefore he will take all things into account when judging us. True Catholics don't walk around condemning people to hell.
As a Catholic you should know that we also recognize predestination.
“As a Catholic you should know that we also recognize predestination.”
From the Catholic Encyclopedia:
“It was Calvin who elaborated the repulsive doctrine that an absolute Divine decree from all eternity positively predestined part of mankind to hell and, in order to obtain this end effectually, also to sin. The Catholic advocates of an unconditional reprobation evade the charge of heresy only by imposing a twofold restriction on their hypothesis: (a) that the punishment of hell can, in time, be inflicted only on account of sin, and from all eternity can be decreed only on account of foreseen malice, while sin itself is not to be regarded as the sheer effect of the absolute Divine will, but only as the result of God’s permission; (b) that the eternal plan of God can never intend a positive reprobation to hell, but only a negative reprobation, that is to say, an exclusion from heaven. These restrictions are evidently demanded by the formulation of the concept itself, since the attributes of Divine sanctity and justice must be kept inviolate (see GOD). Consequently, if we consider that God’s sanctity will never allow Him to will sin positively even though He foresees it in His permissive decree with infallible certainty, and that His justice can foreordain, and in time actually inflict, hell as a punishment only by reason of the sin foreseen, we understand the definition of eternal reprobation given by Peter Lombard (I. Sent., dist. 40): “Est præscientia iniquitatis quorundam et præparatio damnationis eorundem” (it is the foreknowledge of the wickedness of some men and the foreordaining of their damnation). Cf. Scheeben, “Mysterien des Christentums” (2nd ed., Freiburg, 1898), 98—103.”
So we clearly see that the Catholic concept of predestination is quite different from that which I addressed in the note to which you replied.
The same word is used, but the concepts are worlds apart.
Very moving.
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