Posted on 08/27/2010 6:52:49 AM PDT by markomalley
If you concede that some men may be holier than others, wiser than others, or have assistance from the Holy Ghost not enjoyed by each individual, or if you concede that generations of men laboring down the centuries may add to and refine our understanding of the Scriptures in a way no single lifetime would allow...
Well, then, it becomes impossible to claim that one’s own understanding is as good as anyone else’s, or that one can open up the Bible on any old day and read any scripture, and understand it completely and correctly.
As G. K. Chesterton wrote, “There is no other case of one continuous intelligent institution (The Catholic Church)that has been thinking about thinking for two thousand years. Its experience naturally covers nearly all experiences; and especially nearly all errors. The result is a map in which all the blind alleys and bad roads are clearly marked, all the ways that have been shown to be worthless by the best of all evidence: the evidence of those who have gone down them.”
To maintain faith in ones own personal interpretation of scripture, one must cavalierly dismiss twenty centuries of the spiritual and intellectual work product of history’s greatest minds and holiest men as nothing more than something done by other men. LUDICROUS!
- But why isn’t anyone pointing out the obvious root cause of this latest moral and legal debacle? Why isn’t anyone hammering on contraception?
- public acceptance of contraception has led to (among other things) “[s]maller and more broken families, rampant homosexuality, pornography, and China’s coercive one-child policy.”
- the real problem—one that very few will admit: “Rather than holding to the Christian and common sense view that sex belongs within marriage between a male and a female committed to each other for life and open to children, our culture thinks that sex is quite simply for pleasure—and that almost any combination of consenting individuals may morally seek that pleasure without any commitment, without an openness to children.”
- “Contraception: Fatal to the Faith and to Eternal Life,” “The spectacle of broken families, broken homes, divorce and annulments, abortion and the mania of homosexuality—all of this has its roots in the acceptance of contraception on a wide scale in what only two generations ago was a professed Catholic population.”
- Clearly, many wise people have understood—and warned us about —the cost of contraception. But not everyone is on this page.
- For example, rather than setting forth facts regarding the nature of sexual sin and its tragic consequences, many members of the Catholic clergy have either been totally silent or have said things that not only confuse fact with fiction but further marginalize Catholic teaching.
- the U.S. Catholic bishops “acknowledged that most married Catholics—96 percent, according to their own estimate—use birth control, and the bishops said they recognize that the [C]hurch’s teachings on homosexuality are contested in American society.”
- Excuse me, but those percentages do not change truth. In fact, they should drive more bishops back to boldly teaching their people instead of gauging the content of their message on public acceptance of what they have to say.
- He did not say nor did he make reference to the obvious fact that this very sad state of affairs would not exist in the first place if contraception had been rejected long ago. He was simply silent on the point.
- This is why I recommend that rather than dialoguing, as a whole, every Catholic bishop and every Catholic priest should be teaching, preaching and exhorting. Nobody really knows what America or its court decisions would look like today if the Catholics of this nation had been properly catechized for the past 42 years on matters pertaining to human sexuality.
- What we do know is that today America and, most importantly, Catholics, are sliding toward a moral hell.
- It’s high time many more Catholic leaders in the U.S. stood up and clarified the difference between good and evil, right and wrong, sinfulness and sinlessness. Why? Because the only treatment for the deadly bacteria raging through the veins of this society is a very strong dose of the same message Christ gave to His disciples a very long time ago: “Try your hardest to enter by the narrow door, because, I tell you, many will try to enter and will not succeed” (Luke 13: 24).
- The narrow door is always open, and frankly, anything less than fighting tooth and nail to get there will not heal this ailing body politic we know as America.
I concede that the Catholic church has been thinking about what it means to be Christian for a long time. Their history is checkered with missteps just as any other institution. Sometimes they learned from their mistakes and others times they did not. The Church is still an institution of men in the name of God.
We must always question right and wrong but seek what has come before to validate those truths. Experience is the best method by which a lesson is learned and understood. I reject the idea that any Church has all the answers and such a view is potentially dangerous. It leads to a blind following, a faith if you will, in a institution that can become (and was at some points in history) corrupt.
God and his word are immutable truths that will never be corrupted. So long as there is direct access to his word and guidance there can be no corruption if your heart is of pure intent. Sure we might fail in interpretation or lose some context of understanding but that is the process of learning. We cannot be faulted for seeking the truth in earnest.
Any man or institution that believes he/they have all the answers believes themselves to be god. That is heresy in and of itself and dangerous to the good of society.
As for your doctor analogy. I’ve solved a very complex medical condition that none of my doctors were able to diagnose properly. How did I do it? I sought the truth, on my own rather than “trusting” in their understanding an knowledge. I took that which was rightfully mine, it was not given to me and for that I will lead a longer healthier life. The same can be said of faith.
While I appreciate the efforts of the various pastors and ministers of the past, I alone made the choice. They helped to open my eyes but only I could have kept them open and hungered for more. The minutia of doctrine can easily lead to shut eyes and the false sense of security and trust even when being led astray. We are meant to question everything, it is our nature and to do less is to give up our identity.
LUDICROUS, I think not, wisdom is the acceptance that we don’t know everything but would like to and never will. The greatest minds are only so within the context of their time. The lack of worldly understanding can lead us to foolish notions and irrational fears. Great minds that come later can overcome the earlier lack of understanding and biases of historical paranoia’s and superstitions.
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