Christ’s Church will win out in the end. Did you get that message? The serpent’s head will be crushed.
Just remember:
One
Holy
Catholic
Apostolic
All churches have sinners within them.
What church do you attend?
I attend a Baptist church and it’s the only one I answer for. The one thing I can say with certainty is that if anyone (nevermind an elder) was found to be doing what Bernie Law did, he’d be brought staight to jail. What did you and your fellow Catholics do?Something I can also say with certainty we’d never do, reward him with your tithes that feed him lobster and his luxurious lifestyle alongside the Pope. Just humor me and at least tell me that bothers you a teeny little bit.
But it will not be the woman that crushes the serpent's head under her own heel, but was written to be the seed of the woman (which is chiefly Christ?) that shall bruise the serpents head, and the serpent bruise his heel.
http://bible.cc/genesis/3-15.htm
Check all the other versions there. The Douay Rheims has a slight problem...it stands lonely in it's choice of gender in this crucial passage, which so much has been attributed to;
The gentle RC apologist Jimmy Akin, notes;
and, here skipping a paragraph, he shares further;
The reason for the difference in the renderings is a manuscript difference. Modern translations follow what the original Hebrew of the passage says. The Douay-Rheims, however, is following a manuscript variant found in many early Fathers and some editions of the Vulgate (but not the original; Jerome followed the Hebrew text in his edition of the Vulgate). The variant probably originated as a copyist error when a scribe failed to take note that the subject of the verse had shifted from the woman to the seed of the woman.
As far as another modern RCC approved version, this from United States Conference of Catholic Bishops;
I don't know that there is true scholarly support for it anywhere, (outside of the RCC)
Why the persistence of the "copy mistake"? (or as here above, a sly change). Because so much of the past-times infallibly declared liturgy is dependent upon that one mistake!
Here's a calm discussion which makes some note of the old error, but more speaks of what can be wider seen of this verse. http://www.blueletterbible.org/faq/don_stewart/stewart.cfm?id=756 though he skips over the "woman" can indeed be Mary, even as he makes it plain that Mary herself cannot be the seed herself, while it is also plain that it not precisely be her own foot doing the crushing. The silly art work spoken of previous is misleading. The old problems of mistaken identification I have been attempting to speak of here on this site for the last handful of days, once again coming to the forefront...
We can see the church triumphing, but not Mary's or any other particular singular woman's alone "heel" bruising the serpents head. It's just not there, for the seed of the woman in the verse, is a HE, not a she. Ask the Jews, they should know. It's THEIR language.
Here, from "Complete Jewish Bible" English translation now available online at http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Genesis+3&version=CJB the passage;
Truly enough Mary can indeed be the woman, even as she herself is at the same time part of the bigger overall picture, (descended from the tribe of Levi), but to translate the text *Genesis 3:15* and change not just gender, but wider sense QUITE LITERALLY in that one passage for reason that the "seed" can refer to many or a line of descendants, is still translation by reasoning into the text itself both the word and concept "they". It can be argued, it is what one (the RCC in particular) needs desperately to find --- or proved cover for, to give wiggle room for the prior claims to infallibility in regards to various aspects of Mariology.
The gentle Akin again, offering solace in his conclusion;
Thus Jesus crushed the serpent directly and was directly struck by the serpent; Mary, through her cooperation in the incarnation and her witnessing the sufferings and death of her Son, indirectly crushed the serpent and was indirectly struck by the serpent.This has long been recognized by Catholics. The footnotes provided a couple of hundred years ago by Bishop Challoner in his revision of the Douay state, “The sense [of these two readings] is the same: for it is by her seed, Jesus Christ, that the woman crushes the serpent’s head.”
That verges on double-speak, as line of reasoning. Which sort-of underwhelms me, in light of the approach you yourself and some other Catholics here & elsewhere otherwise take...which seem so often if not go straight to Mary with her foot directly on the serpent, personally, her own self, then it protects the idea of that by whatever twist and turns can be brought through reasoning and argumentation/apologia, fortifying all the rest of the adoration/veneration which fairly well gallops towards being worship. Some go quite overboard with it.
What of the Jews? What of her linage? What of the promises given directly to them through the prophets? This is important too. Who was this sweet, innocent maiden named Mary? Though she was of Levi, she was no priestess, for she could not be formally a priest, at all. What was she but what that people, two thousand years removed from Abraham, produced from their own lives, their hope, perseverance & faith, not of the Law foremost, but of the Promise, the very promise the Lord Himself swore to keep.
He raised her up, saw her from far off, even as Moses, and then David, saw Christ from afar. She herself born more of that promise than the law (though again, of the tribe of the temple priests, who did what? -- prepared the sacrifice!), that plan, that intent, at that particular time & place, through the Spirit & Promise before the law, like a gentle lamb, or tender ewe herself, brought forth (for she was worthy) the Lamb Himself, she as vessel chosen by the most High.
That does not make her into later being or becoming "Queen of heaven", for she herself, like Adam, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, David, all the rest, were and are merely created beings, not eternal God, not the Creator.
As Christ told the woman at the well, "Ye worship ye know not what: we know what we worship: for salvation is of the Jews".
If we are to stay within the Judeo-Christian construct, let's not forget the Judeo part. Stick with the original plan, eh?