Posted on 10/22/2011 1:21:35 PM PDT by NYer
Catholics get a bad rap for thinking we somehow “merit” or “earn” our own sanctification (and salvation) through “works” that we do. But that’s a misunderstanding of what the Catholic Church actually teaches. Our sanctification (our being made holy) happens only by the Grace of God. But it does require a response on our part. We must cooperate with it. This submission to and cooperation with God’s Grace, Catholics call a “work” and it takes various forms.
Some identify this response to God’s grace as a kind of “saving” or “justifying” faith (a faith that produces or is accompanied by works of conversion, hope and charity) as opposed to a “work” – something we do. Such a position is reconcilable with Catholic teaching once we understand each side’s terminology. On the other hand, I think it’s confusing to refer to this cooperation with and submission to God’s Grace as simply “faith alone” – which is one reason Catholics don’t refer to it that way (and probably one reason the Bible says we are “not” saved by “faith alone” – James 2:24).
Anyway, here Fr. Barron speaks a little bit about some of these sanctifying practices of the Church and what we mean by “Purgatory” (an extension of that sanctification) in the super-natural sense.
What the Church means by purgatory? - Watch You Tube Video
This exclusive preview clip was from CATHOLICISM, Episode X: “WORLD WITHOUT END: THE LAST THINGS”.
Explore the Church’s conviction that life here and now is preparation for an extraordinary world that is yet to come – a supernatural destiny. Father Barron presents the Catholic vision of death, judgment, heaven, hell and purgatory as he journeys to Florence, Ireland and Rome.
The vision of the Church sees beyond this world and invites us to consider a world without end. Father Barron shows how this vision is supported by the mystery and truth of the Resurrection of Jesus.
View exclusive preview clips from all episodes of the CATHOLICISM series coming out in Fall 2011.
OSAS (Once Saved Always Saved) is even less Scriptural than Sola Scriptura. Were it in fact God breathed then this whole life and universe is an unnecessary Divine Kubuki Theater and Hitler would have been forgiven his sins had he received Grace as a young man.
Exactly. And even looking at the Old Testament GOD poured out His mercy and forgiveness to some pretty rough persons. Abraham was one. I can't imagine a man letting someone nearly marry his wife. Let's not forget him trying to hurry GOD's plan up either as we are still paying for that one. Then there was Noah who after the flood was drunk and naked. There was King David who sent his friend into battle to die to take his wife from him. {what sort of misguided logic was he thinking}. Solomon the wisest of men ever to exist tried a life of sin and pleasures. Through David's sin came Solomon. Also because of David's sins David suffered much sorrow as well in his lifetime. Yet these men live.
By the Grace of GOD Christ found me in my early teens. My late teen to mid twenties adult life I am not in the least proud of. Many things I did {sin] I thought would make me happy made me full of regret and remorse as it should have. GOD had a plan and when I was 27 it began unfolding very quickly and started with a grief I had not known. That plan is still part of my life and only because Christ is with me can I live in that plan.
The Lord had a one on one with me one night in an intensive care unit {I was not the patient} during a laying on of hands for healing. When I surrendered my will to Thy Will Be Done amazing things began to happen. That doesn't mean pain didn't come with the things too follow. But it changed me and is changing me 27 years later. I acted in faith making some prayerful choices for my own and several others lives. Some choices in some churches would require a Priest permission {of whom was my first cousin a VG LOL} such as a marriage to a divorced person of whom the divorce was due to the other spouses adultery and abandonment as well as abuses. But there was not time for it.
My second marriage came in a Catholic Church ran hospital in the Chapel. A Baptist preacher officiated and a Priest and Nuns were in attendance as well. Their care, literally physically defending, and spiritual ministry, to my now wife I will never forget and may GOD Bless them richly for that.
Any person at any time can reject their salvation. There is a very, very, huge difference between sinning and the conscious act of rejecting the salvation of Jesus Christ by literally saying that there is no GOD or Christ. That is where the heart becomes so hardened toward GOD the person with full understanding rejects it. IF you are in this state when you die there is no salvation. If an event in your life brought you too this point in anger or hurt and you repent and ask forgiveness that is another matter also as I believe it can be forgiven. Yes GOD understands. The rejection of Christ is also not Preacher Jones who for his life served GOD is laying in a Dementia unit cursing GOD. Preacher Jones knows not what he does.
GOD gives us free will. Hitler made his own choice. Either the seed of salvation was planted in him and he let it deliberately die even after The Holy Spirits attempt to teach him or he never in earnest asked for it to start with. Only GOD knows the truth.
Believe it... she is after all the dispenser of all grace :(
Blind idolatry...I thank God for saving me out of that ...
Sin is a conscious choice; to know what is wrong and to choose to do it. It is abuse of the freedom that God gave us; a rejection of Good and with it Salvation."
..."the conscious act of rejecting the salvation of Jesus Christ by literally saying that there is no GOD or Christ"
There is no specific incantation to reject Salvation, but there are conscious choices that negate it and regain it No one is completely cut of from Salvation, nor confident of it until the moment of their death. Your admission is that "Always" doesn't always mean always, though.
Hitler was baptized Roman Catholic..so once a catholic always a Catholic...hey he may be in Catholic purgatory
I doubt that anyone is stupid enough to believe that, proving even more loopholes in Calvinist theology and that the evilest among us have chosen to reject Catholicism.
So hope you don't die right after you loose your temper and call the guy a direct relation to a dog while flipping him off huh? LOL
There is no specific incantation to reject Salvation, but there are conscious choices that negate it and regain it No one is completely cut of from Salvation, nor confident of it until the moment of their death. Your admission is that "Always" doesn't always mean always, though.
I have never believed once saved always saved as such. Your sins after receiving salvation affect your treasures in heaven. It is much better to try not to sign and live right by GOD's Word. Note I said TRY. Through FAITH we can be confident indeed. Not because of our efforts but rather because of the Grace offered us through the Blood Covenant of Jesus Christ. Doubt is the work of the devil putting it there trying to weaken you.
Hitler is a person to ponder on and wonder why? If he was in fact at one point a believer then what happened? Did someone elses actions against him drive him to such a horrid fall? Or was it a choice he made simply for the lust for power? Judas as well at one point was a follower of Christ.
It's interesting Peter denied three times knowing Christ and was saved because he repented. Judas didn't simply deny Christ but rather he rejected and betrayed him for gain. Another person comes to mind as well. A certain man whom made a fortune in porn who was shot and claimed to have become a Christian and immediately was doing blasphemy against Christ. I think we all know of whom I speak. At some point I think it goes back to Christ warning "By their fruits you shall know them".
Good question! If, as Cronos, says we can never "pay enough" to get finally purified/sanctified by the Lamb of God, then why the insistence on indulgences, Mass for the dead, prayers for the dead, candles for the dead, alms for the dead? If "Purgatory" is a final place of cleansing before one can enter into the "beatific" vision (Heaven for us regular folk) and it doesn't mean further suffering, then why do some say we need to say special prayers/novenas for the "suffering souls in Purgatory"? Why speak of "pains" in Purgatory that God must be beseeched to ease?
Thomas Aquinas in Summa Theologia, Two Notes on Purgatory, says:
It seems likely enough that the fires of punishment of hell and of purgatory are in the same place. Just as the same fire can be used to purify gold and to burn dross, so the one type of punishing fire may purify souls from venial sin and merely afflict souls in mortal sin. Still, no one can say for sure that the one fire afflicts both the souls in purgatory and the damned in hell. Nor can anyone say with certainty just where purgatory is located.
I seems that most Catholic "theologians" who address the subject of Purgatory agree only on the point that God requires that there be "temporal" punishments due for venial sins not previously repented of. From the link:
The punishments of purgatory purge the souls there of venial sins and cancel the debt owed for venial guilt. Not all venial sins are cleansed from a soul simultaneously; the more persistent or habitual venial sins are more slowly wiped out both as to guilt and punishment. Thus one soul may be liberated from purgatory more quickly than another soul which had committed the same factual venial sins; only the soul first liberated had not committed the sins with the persistency or intensity of the other.
However, those who know and trust from Holy Scripture recognize that Christ has cleansed us from ALL sin and, when we die, those who have accepted Christ go to meet our Savior the next instance clothed in the righteousness of God in Christ. The "need" for another place of purging outside of the cross is false and would negate the whole purpose of the redemption. Jesus IS our place of purgation! There is no other.
THANK YOU!
Short answer: bad habits of will — vices.
(too tired to defend or to go into detail. Somebodyelseis going to have to carry the ball.)
The closest I can come is Col 3 somewhere Paul says “mortify the old funky members” (more or less). The important aspect, again, is that he sees a role for us in this ‘mortifying’.
Oh, I’ll try again tomorrow. Mind utterly played out.
If he was granted the grace of repentance and as his last act (or very nearly) invited Jesus into his heart, why not? He'd sho' have some vicious dispositions to be purged.
But the smart money is on his going to the toaster oven.
1 Cor. 3 teaches otherwise, and I, being Catholic, go by the scripture and not by Protestant feel-good theological fantasies.
Not exclusively, it says "the fire shall try every man's work" and does not say "every man's work in building the body of believers". Further, whoever it is that is being tested he "suffers loss but is himself saved". Where is your first-class ticket now? His luggage got lost?
This is very good point. The Catholics are never alone reading the scripture as we read it in the company of the Fathers of the Church and in conversation with them. Modernity, with all its reformations, aggiornamentos, and whatever else is thrown our way cannot shake that.
I guess for us mortal, sinful humans the thought that an all-knowing, all-loving Creator God could know everything before anything even existed yet who still went ahead and created everything anyway is a hard thing to swallow. But I don't see any other explanation, can you? Though it may appear as "Divine Kabuki Theater" to mortal, bound by time, sinful humans, I have to accept that God has his reasons for it all. I also trust, as he promised us, that one day we will "know even as we are known" and then it WILL all make sense. But nothing is a surprise to God and his will is done whether we "get it" or not.
1 Corinthians is talking about Pastors building the church. If they build a church of only milk fed Christians when they are “tried by fire” they will be “burned up” they will fall away. If they are meat filled Christians and they are “tried by fire” they will prove to be valuable and will abide the fire having been better grounded in knowledge. Read the first part of the chapter. If you truly “go by scripture” you should know that.
7 So then neither is he that planteth any thing, neither he that watereth; but God that giveth the increase.
8 Now he that planteth and he that watereth are one: and every man shall receive his own reward according to his own labour.
9 For we are labourers together with God: ye are God's husbandry, ye are God's building.
10 According to the grace of God which is given unto me, as a wise masterbuilder, I have laid the foundation, and another buildeth thereon. But let every man take heed how he buildeth thereupon.
11 For other foundation can no man lay than that is laid, which is Jesus Christ.
12 Now if any man build upon this foundation gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, stubble;
He’s talking about the preachers and teachers within the church. It’s those who are the leaders of the church that build the church and each one of those leaders work will be tried whether they fed the people in the church with milk (weak teaching for new Christians) or meat (deeper teaching and understanding) for those who are growing stong in the faith.
If they are fed meat intended to grow strong Christians in the faith the “work” they did will last. If they have only fed milk and the Christians are still babes and weak in the faith they will fail or fall away when tried.
No, because he says "every man's". I already answered to that.
Besides, is it your opinion then that the clergy goes through purgatory but no one else?
"According to the grace of God which is given unto me, as a wise master builder, I have laid the foundation, and another buildeth thereon. But let every man take heed how he buildeth thereupon. For other foundation can no man lay that that is laid, which is Jesus Christ." 1 Cor. 3:10,11.
Religions who follow Peter as the rock, for the Messianic Church of Israel, are in sad shape during the dispensation of the grace of God. Paul laid this foundation for the Church the Body of Christ.
Just as the Messianic Church, the Kingdom Church, was built on the foundation of Christ as Messiah, the Church the BOdy of Christ is founded upon Christ. However, Peter did NOT lay the foundation for the Church in this present dispensation. It was laid by Paul, through direct revelations from Jesus Christ.
Peter and Paul, then, both built upon the same foundation, but whereas the millenial church will be built upon the Lord as Israel's Messiah, the church of the present dispensation of grace is built upon Him as the glorified Head of the body, rejected on earth, but exalted far above all, at God's right hand in heaven. This distinction is clearly brought out by comparing Acts 2 with 2 Tim. 2.
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