Posted on 05/09/2020 5:32:43 PM PDT by ebb tide
”Prophets of doom.” This is how “La Civiltà Cattolica” - the magazine of the Rome Jesuits that goes to press after having been seen and approved by the pope - defines and dismisses those among the Catholics who are claiming that the coronavirus pandemic is “a punishment from God, enraged against a sinful world.”
It has done so in its latest issue, under the byline of a Jesuit of the first rank, David M. Neuhaus, professor at the Pontifical Biblical Institute of Jerusalem, born Jewish, a citizen of Israel and a convert in his youth from the Jewish faith to the Christian.
Neuhaus does not mention names. But it is clear that in his crosshairs are among others Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò and Professor Roberto de Mattei.
There are above all two - Neuhaus writes - passages of the Bible that the supporters of divine punishment “bend for their own use and consumption.”
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The first is taken from chapter 24 of the second book of Samuel. And it is the story of the plague with which God punished the people of Israel for a fault committed by King David, that of having ordered a census with the presumption of considering as his own a people who instead belonged to God.
Although David repented, it says that “the Lord sent the plague to Israel, from that morning until the appointed time. From Dan to Beersheba seventy thousand people died among the people.” And only when the exterminating angel stretched out his hand over Jerusalem did the Lord say to the angel: “Enough now! Withdraw your hand!"
Indeed, the biblical image of the angel putting the sword back into its scabbard has been adopted by Christian art, which has repeatedly resorted to it in depicting the cessation of a plague. For example, in Rome, on the top of Castel Sant'Angelo (see photo).
But for Neuhaus it is wrong to keep to the letter of this account. Anyone who deduced from it that the plague and any other calamity are an instrument of divine punishment “would be making a warped interpretation of the text, ignoring both its historical and narrative context, the author's intentions, and the underlying theological message.”
“The narrative of the census, in fact,” Neuhaus explains, “is part of a long history that begins with the entry into the promised land, in the book of Joshua, and moves uninterruptedly up to the destruction of Jerusalem and the temple. This extensive saga, written around the middle of the sixth century BC, is the literary fruit of an author or a school of authors that scholars call ‘Deuteronomist.’ The burning problem of the time was that of meditating on the disaster of the destruction of the temple, which Solomon had built, and of the city of Jerusalem, with the consequent exile to Babylon. In short, the question that text answers is: How is it possible that God gave the land to Joshua and that this was lost with the Babylonian invasion?
“The whole Deuteronomist narrative tradition was written in a context of devastation: everything had been lost. The people had to re-read their own history to take responsibility for it and ask for forgiveness from God. The biblical page does not intend to affirm the plague as a divine punishment, but rather the need for the people - like David - to accept their responsibility for the events that led to the exile.
“Of course, according to the understanding of God in Scripture, which is always evolving, there is still a religious mentality here that tends to refer everything to God as the first cause and to connect every adversity with a sin committed by the individual or by others. After the subsequent ‘correction’ by the prophetic texts - for example Ezekiel - according to which each one pays only the consequences of his own sin, it will be Jesus who contradicts this religious logic of strict dependence between guilt and punishment, as in the case of the episodes of the tower of Siloam and the man born blind.”
Jesus speaks of the collapse of the tower of Siloam in chapter 13 of the Gospel of Luke: “Those eighteen upon whom the tower of Sìloam fell and killed them, do you think they were more guilty than all the inhabitants of Jerusalem? No, I tell you, but if you do not convert, you will all perish in the same way.”
While the healing of the man born blind is narrated in chapter 9 of the Gospel of John, with the disciples asking Jesus: "Rabbi, who sinned, he or his parents, that he was born blind?” And Jesus replies: “Neither he sinned nor his parents, but it is so that the works of God might be manifested in him,” that is, precisely his healing by the one who is “the light of the world.”
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The second biblical passage that Neuhaus wants to wrest from the hands of the “prophets of doom” is not from the Old but from the New Testament. It is in chapter 16 of Revelation, where “a heavenly voice orders seven angels: 'Go and pour upon the earth the seven bowls of God’s wrath’,” meaning plague, fire, blood, darkness, and other terrible calamities.
Should one also infer from this text a “divine punishment inflicted on a world without faith?”
No, Neuhaus replies. The text should be seen in its context: "In the book of Revelation, as moreover in the apocalyptic prophecies of the Old Testament, three elements are intertwined: discernment, clarity of vision, and response.”
Discernment “outlines the forces drawn up in this world and what is at stake, which involves putting oneself on God's side.”
Clarity of vision “is based on profound faith in the fact that Christ has already won the battle, and in the end he will defeat evil, even if the conflict will last a long time.”
And the response “does not result in a bleak prophecy of doom. Everything instead depends on how believers transform their lives in the light of the awareness that in the end Christ will be victorious. They must actively engage in bearing witness and in resolutely changing the world. It is a call to act, to contribute to building the Kingdom through the imitation of Jesus, a meek lamb sacrificed for the salvation of the world.”
Neuhaus writes in conclusion of his article:
“In our times, Revelation is reminding us that the Church is called to not go along with a dominant culture imbued with fear, accusations, confinements, and isolation. If the world offers a vision of the future built on fear, the Church instead, inspired by the Bible and the book of Revelation that concludes it, offers a different perspective, inspired by and founded on the certainty of the Good News of Christ's victory. When everything seems dark, the disciple of Jesus is called to radiate the certainty that the time of darkness is limited, that God is coming and that the Church is called with prayer and testimony to prepare for this coming. This means that our reading of the word of God in the Bible must be translated into a message of Good News that calls to conversion a world in crisis, not into a moralistic judgment or a prophecy of doom. […] There is a theme that runs through the Christian Bible from beginning to end: God has not allowed, does not allow, and never will allow sin, darkness, and death to prevail.”
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The full text of the article by Father David M. Neuhaus in “La Civiltà Cattolica” of May 2-16, 2020:
> Il virus è una punizione di Dio?
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The page of the second book of Samuel with the story of the plague inflicted by God on the people of Israel, commented on by Father Neuhaus, acts as the first reading at the “Missa pro vitanda mortalitate” in the missal of the old rite.
But this Mass no longer appears in the new missal currently in use. Nor is the passage of 2 Samuel 24 found there anymore.
In the rubrics for Mass “in time of pandemic” distributed by Cardinal Robert Sarah on March 30, in conjunction with the spread of the coronavirus, the proposed readings are Lamentations 3:17-26 (“It is good to wait in silence for the salvation of the Lord”), Romans 8:31b-39 (“Neither death nor life can separate us from the love of God”) and Mark 4:35-41 (“Who is this whom even the wind and the sea obey?”).
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But this Mass no longer appears in the new missal currently in use. Nor is the passage of 2 Samuel 24 found there anymore.
Not sure.
Could be, or it might not be. It could be for certain people, and not for others. Dunno. Won’t know until much later.
Is the existence of Kathy Griffin a chastisement from God? Rosie O’Donnell? Ellen Degeneres? Robert Deniro? Every office holder in the Democrat Party?
No, but I think it’s meant to get our attention, which is not the same as chastisement.
Are all the children at st. Jude’s with cancer being punished by God?
Those with dementia? Alzheimer’s? Diabetes?
You know what you can do? A whole bunch of people can go around flogging themselves on the back like they did during the Black death :-) it helps things a lot :-)
I don’t try to understand why good or bad things happen. I don’t try to make believe I can understand God completely. It would be like an ant understanding us.
what I do think is God would really be annoyed with people wasting their time posting and talkin about nonsense when there are real issues going on in the world and lots of people they could be helping.
as for the Catholic Church, the current Pope is a communist and a fraud. So we live by the Bible until that is rectified. Gnashing teeth only makes you need a dentist :-)
another good thing to remember in life is that the permanently outraged get boring after a while :)
Ciao
You know it by its fruits.
But if it is not a punishment it should definitely be seen as a trial, like the test of Job.
Only if you consider Bill Gates and George Soros to be the gods they believe themselves to be.
Your mockery of the Black Plague victims is duly noted. May Sts Sebastion, Roch and Charles Borromeo pray for you.
Not saying I know God’s will but have some belief either the rebuilding of Sodom and Gomorah or the destruction of America is imminent.
Don’t really think anyone can say that 100% absolutely.
Look at the country and as a country we sure deserve chastisement. Look at the world and we sure do deserve chastisement.
Hard to absolutely rule it out given the evidence.
Let’s see. the 7th anniversary of Bergoglio’s election to the papacy is celebrated with a near-worldwide shutdown of the Catholic sacraments... inflicted on the world by the same ChiCom bastards with whom Bergoglio has been playing footsie with to sell out the Christians in that benighted country. But, no, no chastisement from God. Nothing to see here. Move along...
We deserve a lot more than just chastisement, IMO.
Many people think that the OT continually portrays God as being a God of judgment, zapping any sin as soon as it happens.
However, after reading the OT a few times I began to see how much God did NOT want to judge Israel. He gave them warning after warning about continuing on the path they were on. Much of those warning came as things like attack from enemies and plagues. He warned them time and again of impending judgment if they did not repent and all that was to try to get their attention to get them to stop sinning.
There is precedent for it.
So, no, I can’t say for sure that it is not chastisement, but I strongly suspect that it’s more attention getting to get us to repent and turn to Him again before he finally has to bring down judgment.
When other idols of this pagan goddess were tossed into the Tiber River, Bergoglio stated, "“As bishop of this diocese, I ask forgiveness from those who have been offended by this gesture.”
The gesture being the tossing of the idols in the river, not the worship of the same idols that he had approved.
And with that same scamdemic, we are now suffering an almost universal deprivation of public Masses and also many of the the Church’s sacraments.
Indeed. I remember many faithful Catholics warning back then that Bergoglio was courting disaster bringing pagan idols & worship practices into churches in Rome. Such warnings were of course laughed off as the racist ramblings of Eurocentric reactionaries. A few months later all the churches in Rome are closed. Coincidence? Yeah, right.
We can always count on Bergoglio to supply the most wrongheaded take.
Could it have been Bergoglio’s Pachamama that cancelled a public Pascha?
Glad somebody interviewed God and got His take on things. Where would we be without the Jesuits?
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