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To: HockeyPop
Go and irrationally insult your own religion or lack thereof. What a maroon!

I am too busy right now to flame further but I will be back before too long to deal with the specifics.

17 posted on 04/20/2002 2:53:32 PM PDT by BlackElk
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To: BlackElk; Romulus
I will be back before too long to deal with the specifics

Perhaps I may be of some assistance with the following outline. You could begin with the following quotations from the Catechism of the Catholic Church:

839 "Those who have not yet received the Gospel are related to the People of God in various ways." [Lumen Gentium 16]

The relationship of the Church with the Jewish People. When she delves into her own mystery, the Church, the People of God in the New Covenant, discovers her link with the Jewish People, [cf. Nostra aetate 4] "the first to hear the Word of God." [Roman Missal, Good Friday 13: General Intercessions, VI] The Jewish faith, unlike other non-Christian religions, is already a response to God's revelation in the Old Covenant. To the Jews "belong the sonship, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the worship, and the promises; to them belong the patriarchs, and of their race, according to the flesh, is the Christ", [Rom 9:4-5] "for the gifts and the call of God are irrevocable." [Rom 11:29]

840 And when one considers the future, God's People of the Old Covenant and the new People of God tend towards similar goals: expectation of the coming (or the return) of the Messiah. But one awaits the return of the Messiah who died and rose from the dead and is recognized as Lord and Son of God; the other awaits the coming of a Messiah, whose features remain hidden till the end of time; and the latter waiting is accompanied by the drama of not knowing or of misunderstanding Christ Jesus.

In addition, there is this passage from Mit brennender Sorge:

16. Whoever wishes to see banished from church and school the Biblical history and the wise doctrines of the Old Testament, blasphemes the name of God, blasphemes the Almighty's plan of salvation, and makes limited and narrow human thought the judge of God's designs over the history of the world: he denies his faith in the true Christ, such as He appeared in the flesh, the Christ who took His human nature from a people that was to crucify Him; and he understands nothing of that universal tragedy of the Son of God who to His torturer's sacrilege opposed the divine and priestly sacrifice of His redeeming death, and made the new alliance the goal of the old alliance, its realization and its crown.

Finally, you might wish to discuss the absurdity of the notion that human actions, such as the production of a Red Heifer, or, even, the establishment of the modern state of Israel, could somehow "force God's hand," as it were, and cause Him bring about the End of the Age. The argument usually given in support of this notion relies on a Calvinist understanding of predestination. Philosophically, then, the concept denies causality. You may wish to use this as an example of defective theology actually resulting in harmful temporal as well as spiritual consequences, since it is presently being put forth as a justification for lighting the fuse on the powder keg which is the Holy Land. There is, of course, no guarantee that the looming violence will in fact be the Armageddon of Revelation and not just an enormous human tragedy, but the perpetrators will deny culpability, since they deny as well that they possess free will.

25 posted on 04/20/2002 7:45:11 PM PDT by neocon
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