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Locked on 04/24/2022 5:40:39 AM PDT by Religion Moderator, reason:
Childishness |
Posted on 03/06/2022 11:16:06 AM PST by CharlesOConnell
A man commits a serious crime, then he gets released. He has "paid his debt to society". But wait a minute, he's only ready for the half-way house. He's unlikely to get a prestigious job in his new prison suit coat, or any job at all; he has civil impediments, he can't vote or hold certain offices. His crime was serious enough that he won't be presumed to have been completely rehabilitated until he performs a notable service to society, or at least spends many years on the straight and narrow, so that his crime can be truly overlooked or forgotten.
In Catholic faith, your "debt to society" is paid by Jesus Christ on Calvary. It's called "eternal punishment", without Christ it keeps you from going to heaven. Supposing that you do take advantage of His sacrifice, you're truly sorry, have a firm purpose of amendment, if you relapse, you go again for forgiveness (to the Sacrament of Confession).
But your sin leaves a strong trace at another layer of impurity called "temporal punishment due to sin", like the civil impediments facing the half-way house prisoner. Because "nothing impure can enter heaven", there is a place or a state, a condition of purification to render you fit for heaven after Christ has finally saved you from hell. The Catholic Church calls it purgatory.
(Where is it in the bible? Where is the word Trinity in the bible? Where does it say that you only need a personal relationship with Jesus Christ? Many valid principles aren't stated explicitly in the bible, but it does say to "hold fast to the traditions you have learned, whether by word or by letter", because much of the Gospel wasn't written down, as Jesus only wrote in the sand, the majority of the Gospel was taught from word to ear to people who couldn't afford expensive books, the exceptions were what tended to get written down. But the implication that there is a purgatory, is contained in the bible--see the comments.)
The ex-con can receive a pardon or commutation of his probation from a Governor, if he performs some heroic deed, saving numerous lives, or, like Chuck Colson, performs a long-lasting, valuable community service helping numerous people who can't help themselves.
In the Catholic Church there are 2 ways for the residual, temporal effects due to sin to be expiated: suffering in this life, or after life, undergoing purifying suffering along with other people who will finally be saved, but have to suffer for long without the vision of God--that is what causes them their pain.
Their suffering isn't meritorious enough to grant their release, the saints in heaven and those on earth suffering and practicing virtue can pray for the suffering souls in purgatory. In no way is their release by slow transfer of suffering or practice of virtue, "buying heaven". It's a long, excruciating process.
How the misunderstanding arose that Catholics think they can buy their way into heaven, is involved with history more than 500 years old. For a millennium of Christendom between roughly 410 and 1410, there was a Medieval civilization with harmony between faith and government.
Many small farmers would cluster around the manor house of a military lord who would protect them, in exchange for a certain fixed obligation of labor and agricultural produce. In most cases, those "serfs" had much more leisure than factory workers of the industrial revolution; there were a large number of holy days without work, and except for planting and harvesting, there were long stretches of idle time.
Another large sector of the economy surrounded monasteries, where the monks developed most of the farming practices that stabilized the serfs and their manorial lords. The monks who worked those monastic lands were sworn to poverty, so that monasteries built up large accumulations of economic value over decades and centuries of labor.
At the beginning, when lands were being cleared and put into production there weren't prominent town fairs ruled by merchants and bankers. Money wasn't used for sustenance, not even much barter occurred, life was mostly agrarian.
Charity was woven into the economy of monasteries. It was estimated that you only need travel 12 miles in medieval England between monasteries, where you could get a meal and minimal lodging for free, based on need. And the charity was also spiritual, including the ancient Catholic principle of prayer for the dead, which is biblical. (See "prayer for the dead" in the original King James Bible in the comment.)
There were foundations and benefices for praying for the dead, that allowed a person of means to support monasteries' charitable works, and in proportional response the monks would pray for the souls of the donors.
It happened at the close of the middle ages, that militarily strong nobles cast their eyes on the labor value accumulated by the poverty-sworn monks of the monasteries, which those nobles perceived as monetary wealth, especially where gold and jewels had been donated by the devout to adorn churches.
(Protestant writer William Cobbett wrote in his 1824 "A History of the Protestant Reformation in England and Ireland", an anecdote, that an incredibly valuable, hand illustrated bible was stripped of it's bejeweled, gold cover, the much more valuable hand-illumined manuscript, thrown in the mud and trampled by horses hooves by raiders suppressing the monasteries in Henry VIII's England.)
A new religion growing up around this seizure of monastic lands and valuables, that sought to discredit the Catholic Church, spread the black legend that the "sale of indulgences" was abusive. But this was very exceptional. Today the stipend of a Mass said for the dead is $10.
I think the biggest reason I don’t believe in evolution, is because God created them male and female. They were created whole and complete. No evolution needed. 👍
“Modern medicine does NOT believe in evolution.”
BS
Your inability to accept evolutionary theory has nothing to do with whether or not it’s true.
Amen! Very much agreed, Mark.
—> Your inability to accept evolutionary theory
Pretty sure it has nothing to do with inability and everything to do with straight out rejection.
Your ability to respond to a comment not directed to you is astonishing.
I never directed any comment to you, but you responded to me. That is astonishing. It’s an open forum. AMPU can respond to anyone. He is right, however, I don’t have an inability to accept the THEORY of evolution. I just totally, completely, 100% outright reject it. You can believe whatever you like. I don’t believe in evolution, at all. Never will. I will not discuss evolution with you any further.
Does my post 2887, about sum it up? 👍😀 Sorry, but I am simply not going to discuss it, and I couldn’t care less what anyone thinks about it. 😊
That should about sum it up, Sir.
Thank you. It’s a theory from the lowest part of the lake of fire.
That is no doubt its true source because it did happen to come directly from Babylon of all places. It was not original with Darwin or his grandfather’s Lunartic Society (pub club) who tried to pass it off to Darwin as real, not knowing he’d believe it and go forth with it.
(This info used to readily available on the Internet until TPB started their scrubbing.)
Good morning bro. 😀
I was pretty sure it started long before Darwin came along. 😀😊
I ask you again, whom do you believe the Remnant to be, Phil?
No articles, please. You’re presumably a grown man who can speak for himself.
What law is being referred to in post 2520 (every example)?
You’re presumably a grown woman who can speak for herself.
——>Why don’t you call the law firms of those who have documented EGW’s plagiarism?
I’m still waiting for you to show me one.
You are out of touch with science.
Science cannot definitively say whether something is true or not. Nor does a theory rise to the level of certainty of a law, which is still not truth, but simply is something that has not been disproven YET.
Nothing in science is settled because science cannot “prove” anything. It can only disprove things.
Nor is the ToE that well supported. Variation within species does not translate into the kind of evolution necessary to support the current understanding of the theory.
Perhaps you could show me some situations where a change in the number of chromosomes of an individual in a species does NOT have a deleterious effect on that individual. Something that would be enough of a change genetically to cause a species change. In humans, as a far as I’ve ever seen, any changes in the genome ALWAYS results in a compromised and less fit individual.
Change my mind.
Can I take it that you didn’t much care for my Biblical quotes regarding the remnant?
——>You’re avoiding the question like the plague, Phil. Are you part of the remnant or not?
Of course I am.
Hit me up when you get your mind changed. Ha, ha.
Says the FReeper who jumped into a conversation about a topic where (s)he was neither pinged nor addressed.
Such rank hypocrisy.
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