Posted on 09/06/2007 3:27:02 PM PDT by annalex
The Marian dogmas were big problems. I still thought [around 1984] the Catholic claims on Mary were outrageous. I went back and read some essays, and concluded that the Bible alone wouldn't compel acceptance of the Marian dogmas; the Bible alone wouldn't lead you to them, yet sustained theological reflection on Jesus' relationship to His mother; if you take the humanity of Jesus with the utmost seriousness, and you take Mary as a real mother, not just a "conduit," and you begin to think about motherhood and sonship, and you think about what it means to receive a body from your mother: flesh . . . God didn't make Jesus' flesh in Mary's womb; He got Mary's flesh. If God had wanted to, He could have made Jesus as He made Adam: from the dust of the earth. But He didn't. He decided He would use a human being to give Jesus His humanity. And so what kind of flesh is Jesus gonna get? If He's gonna be perfect humanity, He'd better have perfect human flesh untainted by sin. To me the Immaculate Conception, seen in that light, made sense. The Assumption also seemed to me to make a great deal of sense. There were precedents to it: Enoch and Elijah, those who rose from the dead at the time of the rending of the veil of the Temple. And if Jesus is going to give anybodye priority; if He's going to truly honor His mother and father, wouldn't He give Mary, whose flesh He received, priority in the Resurrection? So I think that's what the doctrine of the Assumption preserves. I could go on and talk forever on the distinctive doctrines of the Church.
Artificial contraception . . . Dave wanted me to go into that [I had asked a question earlier]. I had a very difficult time seeing it as good logic. The Church insists that the multiple meanings of sexual intercourse always be exercised together. Since one of the meanings is procreation and another is intimacy or the what's called the "unitive function", those things can't be separated from one another licitly. I didn't like that, because it seemed to me that if intercourse served multiple purposes, then there's no reason why, at any particular time, one purpose ought to retain priority or even exclusivity in the exercise of that act. They were both good. I think that the change came when I finally hit upon an analogy; I had to see another human act in which multiple meanings had to be exercised together, and not separately. And I thought of eating food. Food serves multiple purposes: nutrition, secondly, pleasing our senses. God likes tastes; that's why He gave us taste buds. He wants food to taste good. What do we think of a person who says, "I really like the taste of food, so I'm going to disconnect my eating of food from nutrition, and I'm just gonna taste it." Well, we call him a glutton; we call him a "junk food junkie." What do we call a person who says, "I don't care about what food tastes like; I'm just gonna eat for nutrition's sake." We call him a prude or we have some other name for him. We think that they're lacking in their humanity. That helped me in understanding sexual intercourse. I think it's sinful just to eat for the taste, or merely for the nutrition, because you're denying the pleasure that God intended for you to receive, in eating good food. I say the same thing with sexual intercourse. You're sinful if you separate the multiple meanings of it. If you procreate simply to make babies, and you don't enjoy the other person as a person, I think that's sinful, and I think that if you merely enjoy sexual intimacy and pleasure, and are not open to sharing that with a third life: a potential child, then you're denying the meaning of sexual expression. That was a continuing realization that the Catholic Church had been there before me.
When I learned that you [me] were interested in the Catholic Church, it was kind of funny, because by that time I had been pursuing this on my own, and feeling like I was a little bit odd. So it was good for me, . . . I was their pastor for a while at Shalom, and Dave and Judy and Sally and I have known each other for many years, and I've always liked Dave and Judy. We've had some disagreements at times over the years, and a little bit of even, "combat," but I always was fond of them, because I always recognized them as people who were willing to live out their convictions, and that always means a lot to me. I like to be surrounded by people like that because it's very easy to just live in your head and not get it out onto your feet. So I knew that they were committed to living a Christian life. They were interested in simple living, and interested in alternate lifestyle. They saw themselves as being radical Christians. And I always liked that. So even when we disagreed, I was always fond of them, in that I respected what they were doing. So it was heartening to me, to find that my return to the Church was in its own way being paralleled by Dave's acceptance of Roman Catholicism. It was a queer parallelism. When we went to see Fr. John Hardon that night, I thought it was interesting and odd that you were doing it, but I told you that night: "it seems to me there are only two choices: either Orthodoxy or Catholicism." It was reassuring. I met Catholics through rescue that I actually liked, and that was heartening.
I returned to the Catholic Church, because, for all its shortcomings (which are obvious to many evangelicals), both evangelicalism and Catholicism suffered from the same kind of "immoral equivalency." All the things that I once thought were uniquely bad about Catholicism, I also saw in Protestantism, so it was kind of a wash. I stopped asking myself all the so-called practical questions, and made the decision based on theology alone. That way I got to compare theology with theology. People love to compare the practice of one group with the theology of another. So you end up with the theology of a John Calvin versus the practice of some babushka'd Catholic woman. And it's just not fair. You gotta compare apples with apples. Evangelicals tolerate pentecostal superstition and fundamentalist ignorance, without breaking fellowship. So why criticize the Catholics for tolerating some superstition and ignorance? Evangelical churches are largely made up of small, dead, ineffectual fellowships. Two-, three-generation fellowships that have lost their reason for existence, and they just keep rollin' along. The vast percentage of evangelical churches are about 75 people. And they're not doin' much. So what's the problem if Catholic churches are full of dead people too? It's a wash. Evangelicals tolerate and even respond positively to papal figures like Bill Gothard, Jimmy Swaggart, Pat Robertson, and men whose teachings or decisions explicitly or implicitly sets the tone of the discussion and suggests and insists upon right conclusions. And these men are not just popular leaders, they are populist leaders. In other words, they often appeal to the anti-intellectual side of the uneducated. They stir up resentments between factions in the Church Politic and the Body Politic. The pope, on the other hand, is not a populist leader. You don't see the pope, in the encyclicals I've read, taking cheap shots, driving wedges between the intelligentsia and the masses; you don't see them doing cheap rhetorical tricks, like you do find among popular evangelical leaders. If the pope plays his audience, it's usually through acts of piety. He's not trying to stir up resentments.
Evangelicals are currently seeking more sense of community and international community, more accountability -- you hear more talk about confessing your sins to one another; they're looking for a way to justify the canon, visible signs of unity. Catholicism has all these things. It offers them already. And then of course evangelicals seem only to be able to preserve doctrinal purity by separating, dividing, and splitting and rupturing the unity of Christ. That's their method for maintaining the truth: divide. And that to me is the devil's tactic: "go ahead, divide 'em; it's easier to conquer them that way." Even in the area of their strength (the Bible), evangelicals are not without serious shortcomings. Matthew 16 is a great example of that. What's worse?: to omit clear biblical teaching, or to add to it? Evangelicals omit fundamental biblical teaching about Peter as the rock, about the apostolic privilege of forgiving or retaining sins. These things are not unclear. They're only unclear in the Scripture if you've adopted a certain type of theology, and then you have to dance around, doing hermeneutical gymnastics to avoid the clear intention of the verse. The binding and loosing passages in Matthew 16 and 18 are as plain as the nose on your face.
So I returned to the Catholic Church because I am absolutely convinced that the Roman Catholic Church preserves and retains (for all its shortcomings) the biblical shape of reality. It retains sacramental awareness, human mediation (which is a very prominent biblical theme which has been lost in evangelical churches), a sense of the sacred, which is present in the Scripture; and recognizes typology as having not only symbolic value, or pedagogical value, but also ontological value. It retains memorial consciousness and corporate personality, the idea of federal headship, doctrinal development. All of these things are lectures in and of themselves. But these things that people always wanna talk about (purgatory, saints, Mary), all fit into those categories. The structure of biblical reality is more present in Catholicism than any other tradition that I'm familiar with. And I'm really quite convinced that I don't have extravagant expectations, either. I think these things are really there. It's not a pipe dream.
[someone asked, "why not Orthodoxy?"]
Competing jurisdictions, which basically told me, "you need a pope." If the point is that you need a visible display of unity for the work of evangelism to have lasting success, how can you have the Russians and the Greeks fighting with one another all the time? I know conservatives and liberals fight in the Catholic Church, but it's structured in such a way as to be able to end the debate at some point. God acts infallibly through the papacy. The discussion can be settled. It can't be settled in Orthodoxy at this point. They're always fighting over jurisdictions. The laxity on divorce . . . I heard a saying recently that "your doctrine of ecclesiology will affect your doctrine of marriage, or vice versa." If you believe in divorce, then you believe in the Reformation, because you believe that Christ will divorce part of His Body. If you believe that the relationship between Christ and His bride, the Church, is indivisible, then you will believe that (among Christians, anyway) marriage is indivisible. There should be no divorce. And I think that the Orthodox are lax in that area. I think that they're too ethnic - that's probably due to a type of caesaropapism, and that their views of culture don't seem to work out very well. Those are some of the reasons. Also, it just wasn't around. Where do you go? You have to work too hard to find a place, and then you have to worry about whether they'll do it in English. I went to St. Suzanne's first of all because it was around the corner, and I believe that geography has a lot to do with community.
[I asked, "what was the very last thing that put you over the edge?"]
It was very incremental. Instead of their being one moment of decisive realization, there were moments of little pinpricks of light along the way. In one sense I crossed the line when I heard Fr. Stravinskas describing the Mass as a re-presentation of Christ's sacrifice, and I realized that the worldview that he was presenting was the worldview that I had believed for a long time, but had not been able to articulate. But I didn't know where to go from there. I think it was the same day that that happened, the one man who had been most influential on my thinking on the relationship between religion and culture during the 1980s, Richard John Neuhaus, announced that he had become a Catholic. I said, "oh my God!" His book, The Naked Public Square, really shaped my thinking on the relationship between religion and public life.
And another one would be the Scott Hahn tapes on Mary. What Scott did for me was, he managed to draw enough suggestive biblical material, that my ideas of development now could be fed from the Scripture. You have to understand that the Marian dogmas just seemed excessive. It's not that I had any intrinsic hostility to them. I thought they were kind of nice in their own way. But I didn't see the biblical precedent to it. He gave me enough biblical material to ignite a spark of hope about them, and then when I began reading the theology on them, I said, "I can receive this now." We're talking months.
I remember now: I needed reassurance. I'd forgotten all about this. What was on my mind was the work of the kingdom, and whether I could be as effective within the Catholic Church, as I could be in the Protestant church. I hadn't nailed down everything about Catholicism, but I recognized that the shape of Catholicism was a lot closer to the Bible, than a lot of what I was seeing in Protestantism. But practically speaking, you don't see Catholic evangelists out there very much. It came down to this: what justified staying apart? "What reason do I have for not being there?"
On Marianism.
Absolutely Mary is blessed among women, and absolutely she will be called blessed by all generations. There is a far cry from being blessed though, to being venerated and prayed to.
Note that Mary refers to her humility (in the Magnificat), and says God has done great things TO her. She rejoices in God. Nowhere does she exalt herself, or place herself as a person who should be prayed to or venerated.
Throughout the scriptures, godly prayer is directed only towards God... all else is idolatry. It is one of the marks of His divinity that we are instructed to pray in Jesus' name (Jn 14:13). Some would say that we are only asking Mary to pray for us, as we might ask any other person to pray for us, but especially with Mary, this walks a dangerously thin line.
Similarly for worship, we are told to worship God alone. It is again noteworthy that Jesus accepts worship from people during His time (see Jn 9:38).
The healing of the woman who touches Jesus' clothing is a fascinating question. Is God's power 'magic' that can be invoked and used by men because it inhabits and resides in objects... or was the 'power going out of Jesus' done through her faith and the grace of God? I would say the former goes strongly against what God tells us about Himself throughout scripture. There is no power in the Spear of Destiny, the Holy Grail, or any other object. Power and our faith reside in God alone, and in Him alone do I place my trust.
Jesus is never a bad son, but He is absolutely a true Son to our truest Father, the God of Abraham and Isaac, who is ever faithful. Does Christ exist to fulfill our wishes and make us 'happy'? Does He exist to make His human mother happy? Or does He exist and derive perfect joy from doing the will of our Father in heaven? Note the incident where Christ stays behind after the Passover. When His parents find Him, Mary says,
"Son, why have you treated us like this? Your father and I have been anxiously searching for you."
"Why were you searching for me?" he asked. "Didn't you know I had to be in my Father's house?" (Luke 2:48b-49)
Is Christ a bad son here, or a perfect son?
Does Mary exist to call Christ to her desires and will, or is she the servant of the Lord?
"I am the Lord's servant," Mary answered, "May it be to me as you have said." (Luke 1:38)
Oh... and to be honest, I don't read much about Catholicism. The whole Protestant/Catholic debate is a rather dead issue to me, and I'm actually quite surprised to see people still beating the poor dead horse.
Oh, understood about your comment about considering scripture in it's totality, but there are clear and definite instances where it is clear that people have not even attempted this.
In all things, may God be glorified, and we be humble.
In the Gospel according to Patton (admittedly a debated work) the word is, "Do not take council of your fears."
I find nothing that tells me the road to salvation is anything other than straight and narrow - a thin line, the transgression of which is perilous. So yes, it's a dangerous line. I walk it boldly and invite you to do so as well. Let's rock 'n roll!Shall we say, "I can't risk this because it's dangerous?" Safety is staying in bed -- and now there are bedbugs, so nothing is safe. Might as well go after adventure!
or was the 'power going out of Jesus' done through her faith and the grace of God
Clearly In Mary's case, that of the handmaid of the Lord, such "power" as "Goes out" involves her faith. And it's ALL grace upon grace!
It is because, and only because, of the great things that God has done for Mary that we venerate and celebrate her. This hit me in a big way this Assumption Day when I realized anew that What Jesus holds out to all the faithful is already fulfilled in her.
In her is realized, by grace and grace alone - grace manifested in faith which enabled her to give a whole-hearted Yes to God - what I hope for you and me, the union of the created will with the Creator's will.
It is only cartoon imagery that has Mary bending Jesus to her will. And much beyond that and we get into how/whether prayer affects God's will, where I fear to tread.
Are you a parent? It seems to me it's all there implicitly, all in parenthood. Two things keep me from wholeheartedly wanting what the 'orrible brat child wants: (1) She doesn't always want what's best, (2)Sometimes I'm selfish.
If I could rely on the 'orrible brat child's always wanting the very best, and if I were always ready to set my will aside in favor of the very best, then my will would always conform to that of the 'o.b.c.
Mary's Child always wanted what was best. Mary (and I suppose this is more controversial) had already at the moment of His conception (if not before) given herself as God's handmaid, in a way us guy type individuals will never quite 'get'.
< pant, pant > ;-)
Since you don't know that much about us filthy Papists, let me say that the finding of the young Jesus in the temple is one of the "mysteries" of the Rosary. So over the years I've had the chance to give it a LOT of thought! (I started with the Rosary in 1967. I'm old. Have pity! Get me a beer!) And yeah, I think it a wonderful example of what you get when an adolescent boy is also God the Son of God, namely: confused parents. But I think it is our projection that make Mary's question a rebuke. I don't think saying "Um, Son? What was THAT about?" is necessarily querulous.
basta!
Can you show me anywhere in the bible that says Jesus got his flesh only from Mary? No, of course you can't, because it isn't there. The fact remains, if his flesh was only hers, Jesus would have been female. Obviously, God created the flesh of Jesus in Mary's womb.
Nevertheless she stands out, for obvious reasons.
Agreed, and we should respect and honor her as an outstanding servant of God. In fact, I already stated that we should. What we need to be careful of, however, is elevating her above the level of a human being.
The word "obvious" or "obviously" always get my attention.
It seems to me God could have reached in there and turned one X chromosome to a Y chromosome without adding anything to the "flesh" there. I'm not saying that happened, I'm just gunning for the "obviously".
My understanding (such as it is) of genetics in those days was that it was thought at least by some that the Mommy provided the stuff of which the child was made while the Daddy provided the sort of template. I've often wondered how they could maintain that in face of so many children looking like their mothers.
Modern genetics seems to make the Incarnation harder to understand, but then we never understood it much anyway. But I don't see how it is "necessary" for God to do anything more on the bio level than turn one 'X' into a 'Y'. SO I wouldn't say it's obvious that God created the flesh of Jesus any more than he did the flesh of any child. Or any less.
“I asked for historical proof.”
And I gave it.
“What you HAVE managed to do is to repeat a lot of misinformation.”
Nope.
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This author admits in the first paragraph that the Marian doctrines of the RCC are not biblical.
No need to read further.
Okay! Once I saw the profound reasoning, the compelling arguments, the unquestionable facts contained in that one simple four-letter word, I was convinced of your point of view.
"Nope!" Who can argue with that?
/ sarc off.
Do please come back when you have something to say.
Yes. We disagree with Protestants. That's why we are not Protestants. Yes, Protestants disagree with us. That's why they're Protestants.
If you're not going to engage, that would be great. Please take all of those who attack our doctrines before they take the trouble to find out what they are along with you.
And, yeah, we have a moral burden NOT to obfuscate, but we didn't make up Marian Doctrine for fun, y'know. We really believe them and we see them, as I have tried to present, as coming our of Christology and out of what is common knowledge about the parent-child relationship.
In other words, simplicity is good, but not so good that one should be inaccurate to preserve it. We actually do believe this stuff.
I think in fact when somebody receives a great gift, we praise the giver AND the recipient. "Congratulation" is such a nice word, suggesting joining in "little thanks".
I think part of the confusion is the sort of spectacular nature of the private prayers of Marian devotion. It is played up by the media and by protestants who find it exotic and repellent. But in my daily prayers I spend maybe 20 minutes max on the Rosary and probably 90 minutes on Mass and office. And the bulk of my study is NOT Marian.
I am "all over" the "miraculous medal", so I suppose I am part of the problem of seeming to presenting Mary as equal to Christ. But I took care that the medal I usually wear is imposed on a cross, as if to say, "What Mary offers through her intercession is founded entirely on the Cross of Christ and has and can have no other basis."
We aare beginning another round of RCIA (as it were "enquirer's) classes. They will go weekly (with vacations) until the end of April. Maybe 24 classes. Part of one will be given to Marian doctrine and practice, and those who stick with the class all the way to the end will learn how to pray the Rosary, and on our class quiet day we'll actually pray one together. But it's not proportional to our practice and teaching to react as if Mary dominated it. Mary helps bring me to Jesus, as do all the Saints.
IF the Marian doctrines can’t be found in scripture anyplace, at all, never, nada, nicts: then you do have a different place for scripture than do we.
We have a place for it.
You don’t.
(At least with Mary....in which case you have an inconsistent place for it.)
Hey MD,
I’m afraid we’ll just have to accept that we disagree on Marianism. The question is never what the intent of Marianism was (I’m sure it was with the best of intentions), but rather whether it is scripturally justified and glorifies God.
Please give it some thought, and may the Spirit guide us both in our thinking.
That the place we have for the Scriptures we preserved edited and compiled, a place discussed so often on FR that I simply cannot believe that it is news to you, differs from yours does not mean that we have no place at all for it. It may mean that you do not understand the place we have for it, or that you do not care to understand it.
It is a general rule that it is easier to denigrate and mock the inventions of one's own mind than to determine what is in fact the case.
As to glorifying God, I have no question that I praise God in His Saints.
But as is now being discussed (for the ninety-eleventh time) Catholics have this notion of Tradition which is not endorsed by most Protestants. Consequently our attitude toward Scripture, which we tend to interpret traditionally, differs from that of most Protestants. By our lights our Marian teaching and practice are eminently Scripturally justified.
The big "meta" question is "What does 'to prove from Scripture' mean and how can one tell when one has done it?"
I invite people who I think would be interested in the conversation. I didn’t see that you had placed a “Catholic Caucus Only” sign on the thread.
I’m sorry I missed that.
I think we disagree strongly on whether Marian dogma is biblically justified, as I think you’d find would be the case with most non-Catholics (which the RC sometimes lumps together under the rather vague term ‘Protestant’).
I have no doubt that you believe you glorify God.
You’re right that Catholic ‘tradition’ is the main stumbling point. Catholics tend to assign near scriptural authority to the writings of many Saints, Popes, or synods... wrongly in my opinion, but that is to be expected in this case.
The question though is whether my opinion in this case is of man (in which case it should be disregarded), or of God (in which case we should heed it carefully and with thanks).
As to your question, “What does ‘to prove from Scripture’ mean and how can one tell when one has done it?”, I think that’s an excllent question.
My answer would be to seek the ‘answer’;
1) through prayer
2) through contemplation of scripture
3) with fasting
4) by waiting and listening for an answer
5) by testing your ‘answer’ against mature believers
6) by leaving behind your preference/assumption, and humbly seeking what God says
We are also told that we are one body, and there are those within the body who are gifted in the interpretation of spirits and in prophesy. Depending upon the question, those members of the body should also be used. Ultimately, the answer does not reside in us or human wisdom (though we are to love the Lord our God with our mind as well), but spiritual answers have a spiritual source, and the answer lies in the Holy Spirit.
Normally when ‘Catholic’ is capitalised, it is intended to refer to the Roman Catholic church.
The small ‘c’ catholic normally refers to the body of all believers.
My apologies if you were already aware of this.
I would agree with you though that the ‘meaning’ of the statement is not the Roman Catholic church, but rather the body of believers in Christ, and it is to these that the Holy Spirit is given, not to any human ‘denomination’.
James reminds us that in Christ, there are no denominations, but that we all have Christ alone as our head.
I’m afraid we’ll just have to accept that we disagree on Marianism.
That's a HUGE 10-4. What I do want to accomplish is to show how a reasonable person of good will (clearly not me, but there's got to be one somewhere ...) could think this way. Selling is not my forte.
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