Posted on 04/01/2008 4:23:02 PM PDT by NYer
She loves to drive. She hopes to become a mechanic in the military, and then have an auto-restoration business. Reminds me that I need to look for an auto-mechanics course for the summer.
Uh oh ... look who got the last laugh!
Do you have any actual sources, like with URLs, which you can adduce to support the allegation that the Cahtolic Church teaches that Mary collaborated with God before the foundation of the world?
Do you have even ONE official Catholic Source which makes that suggestion?
Or is this just another instance of a false and unsubstantiatable charge?
It's so limiting to have to confine oneself to the data, isn't it?
Interesting. To which post are you referring? There are several which claim that we believe what we do not believe. There are others which change the subject when a charge is refuted with evidence. There which one which implies that grammar has nothing to do with what one is saying.
There is at least one "spirit" which encourages false conclusions, bogus argumentation, and statements contrary to easily ascertainable fact. One can speak "spiritually" and even think "spiritually", without any significant involvement of the Spirit of Christ.
Well my daughter is Keeping company with a very fine air force mechanic. I think it would be SO GREAT to have a mechanic in the family. Unfortunately it’s more of a “just friends” thing than anything romantic.
Amen!
In the end if we have Faith and go back to the Scriptures we will see the Truth.
These threads do reveal how important it is to understand what the Five Solas mean and why they are so important.
ah. I can't see you. Are you laughing?
How does someone, in Catholic theology, get joined forever to the HS, to the extent that she is the HS, and is the one standing between mankind and Jesus Christ, and not be divine? Pretty good trick
You get joined forever to the Holy Spirit by the Grace of God. All the blessed (however you pronounce it, it always means those who have received or are receiving a blessing) in Heaven are joined forever to the Holy Spirit.
to the extent that she is the HS,
I'd need to see this fleshed out a little. (or maybe a LOT.) Mary is NOT the Holy Spirit in any normal sense of those words. However, there is a relationship between the saved and the Spirit of Christ which is mentioned (mostly by allusion) by Paul. We are dead and now Christ lives us. When we don't know how to pray (in my case, all the time) the Holy Spirit intercedes for us with sighs too deep for words. That kind o' stuff. In terms of the KIND of relationship with the Holy Spirit, I don't think Mary is or is taught to be essentially different from any of us.
(IN that connection, the assumption is to be understood in an eschatological or temporal way: Mary CURRENTLY enjoys what all the blessed WILL enjoy, NOT something essentially different.)(It is in Marxist thought that a difference in degree is taken to imply a difference in kind, not in our thought.) is the one standing between mankind and Jesus Christ
Again, I'd need to see an official De Fide type statement and discussion of that before I undertook to say anything I was certain of on that topic.
But there is some sense in which Mary brought IHS to Elisabeth and John the Baptist, and was "between" them and Him. There is a sense in which she brought Him to us.
Protracted Analogy Alert:
It is not exactly right, but it is not all wrong either, to consider my daughter a gift of my wife to me. And that is about not just the conception and gestation, but also the nurturing, caring for ... all the parental stuff that the boss-lady did after the 'orrible brat child was born.
And since for a while there, I was the "primary care giver" (beats work!) the boss-lady is not exactly right but not all wrong to consider the 'orrible brat child my gift to her.
Nuance is out friend in these things. Consider: my wife tells my child it's time to get me a birthday present. My child comes to me and asks for some money to buy me a birthday present. My wife takes my child shopping and advises her what can be gotten for my miserly amount of money. She carries it to the counter and hands the money to the clerk. They come home and the little one (this WAS a few years ago) makes a scribble on a piece of paper with a crayon. The boss-lady wraps the gift, puts the scribbled piece of paper on it.
And on "That great and terrible Day" my child presents it to me proudly. SHE knows, with her young mind that it is not all from her. I certainly know it. And what do I do?
I receive the present, make appropriate expressions of delight and gratitude. I hug my child to my breast and make much of her, and looking over her at my wife, I mouth, "Thank you!" to her. And in my heart, and later aloud, I thank God for my gift, my child, my wife -- along with all the other things for which I thank Him.
Knowing that every good gift comes from Him, that my wife's life and love, my child's life and love are all from Him, am I wrong to thank them and love them? To me the gift is unspeakably rich, coming as it does from God. It is even richer, coming as well "from", or possibly "through" my wife and then richer still, coming "through" and "From" my child, who also came "through" my wife (who came from God) and from God.
Heck, when I go out dining, once every five years, a good waiter gets more "Face time"-type thanks from me than the cook and the owner, though as I've matured, I've come to appreciate all the labors and laborers who brought my dinner to me.
Certainly, the "bulk" of my time in prayer is NOT spent on Mary, or "through her" to Jesus, and through Him to the Father. Certainly it is to the Holy Trinity that I turn whenever I begin my prayers, even when I begin a Rosary, which is predominantly, but not only, addressed to Mary.
So it is in a very qualified and even, one might say, attenuated way (compared to the involvement of the Holy Spirit) that my approach (so to speak) to God or the Son is "through" Mary.
Even if I were to agree, which I don't, that Mary was "THE ONLY" way to Christ, I can still see how that is without her being "divine" in the same way that the Three persons of the Trinity are divine.
It helps to "Get into" two things: First, Paul's use of "in" when he's talking about spiritual things. Second, the medieval and Gothic mind with it's delight in portraying things in series and gradations. (This is not an argument in favor, just an explanation of the kind of images one finds.) God, utterly divine, is mediated to mankind though the God-Man, Jesus. Then Jesus is "brought forth" to us through the Human, but very Holy Mary. At the end of the series of givers is, the human but not so holy me, the shepherd or, possibly, a king who receives access to God through all these givers.
Certainly, one Mary is "elected" which after all just means "chosen" to be the God bearer, she is, in a particular, NOT a general, way standing between mankind in Jesus.
When all is said and done, the Salve Regina is a "fulsome" in the old sense -- though I suspect you all may find it fulsome in the modern sense -- wheedling to Mary for permission to see her baby, just as I might ask any mother if I might see and maybe even hold, her child.
Most of the objections voiced here (and elsewhere on FR) about Marian devotion take the matter far further than we do and then insist that ALL our language ONLY describes the view from that barren and deadly outpost. And that's why we spend so much time arguing not for what we believe but against the misstatement of what we believe, because mostly misstatement is what we get.
Now see, we find this idea ridiculous and we see it as such because it flies in the face of everything that God teaches through the written word.
Jesus is not a little child, nor does he need his mother interceeding for us to him. By taking this view, it appears that far from acknowledging the work of the cross, you diminish it. You make her increase and him decrease and to us, this will never fly.
by the way, did you know the Greek goddess "Hera" was also given the title "The Queen of heaven" and, she renewed her perpetual virginity by bathing. Catholic views of Mary, not being biblicaly based, get mixed up with dare we say it -- pagan beliefs.
Hebrews 5:7-10 7Who in the days of his flesh, when he had offered up prayers and supplications with strong crying and tears unto him that was able to save him from death, and was heard in that he feared;
8Though he were a Son, yet learned he obedience by the things which he suffered;
9And being made perfect, he became the author of eternal salvation unto all them that obey him;
10Called of God an high priest after the order of Melchisedec
If you go to a Chinese Buddhist temple, as I have done , on the upper West Side of Manhattan and ask the "osho" for a summary of his belief, he will say that mankind is unable to save itself so the Buddha came to earth to save us. Drat! Pagan belief! I guess we have to stop believing or saying that about Jesus, huh?
And as to the Salve Regina, I take it you don't sing Christmas Carols? Is it hour idea that since Jesus' birth is, like, SEW two millennia ago, we should stop with the drummer boy and the Come bring a torch Jeanette, Isabella, and O Little Town of Bethlehem and just get over it? Does the idea of Christian Poetry seem wrong to you? Do you REALLY think it is somehow going to be NEWS to me that Jesus grew up? (I've been asking myself why it isn't the figure of a neonate on those crucifixes. Thanks for clearing that up for me.)
nor does he need his mother interceeding [sic] for us to him
WHERE, show me exactly where I said anything about Jesus NEEDING Mary to intercede.
Okay, I gave you a detailed response and now you reply with "flies in the face of everything God teaches through the written word." Did you READ what I wrote or just look for something with which you could disagree? Then finding nothing substantial, you made up the "need" issue -- which has been addressed several times on FR and maybe even on this thread, and you bring in the way Hera has some vague similarities to our Lady and then make a charge of mingling with paganism.
You asked a question It was based on a fabulous and almost incredible misapprehension of what we in fact teach. I attempted to respond to the question you raised. Now I have to think it wasn't a real question, it wasn't honest, it wasn't the raising of an issue to communicate and to gain understanding. It seems to have been some kind of a trick.
My thesis in a lot of this thread has been that many (not all) Protestant invent stuff to argue against. You are demonstrating that thesis. WHO said "need"? Where? What's the URL? I don't say it. Not only do I not say, and have never said it, but I have also argued against the idea that we "need" Mary's intercession or Jesus "needs" it.
So where did the charge come from?
Is it just possible that at least some of those who argue against us come to the table "knowing" that we're wrong and then pervert what we say and invent stuff (not consciously, mind you) and say we said it because they are just so sure we are wrong that they simply can't read what we in fact write? But this doesn't bother them because they never intended to find out what we really think, since it's so much more fun to argue agasiint what we don't think.
Sorry if this seems angry. But when I take the time to explain something -- NOT to defend it, as such, just to flesh out what it is we in fact believe and how we think of it, it is really frustrating to get back "need" and Hera and sweeping statements.
Does any of you care to understand, not to agree, just to understand, what we in fact believe and think or is, somehow, the WORD Catholic so dreadful and vile that what we actually do and believe is irrelevant? Or are ALL of you Sado-evangelists to whom the assurance of the knowledge that they are right provides permission to ignore what is actually said, believed, and thought by those against whom they pretend to argue because the REAL deal is that Catholics and Orthodox should just be abused and that if ignoring them or twisting their words irritates them why, so much the better! It's just a foretaste of the damnation they are calling down on themselves for not agreeing with whichever of the different Protestant beliefs happens to have the floor at the time.
AMEN!
Men love their "vain imaginings" because they point to the creature and not the Creator.
AMEN! We're supposed to become as little children. Not Christ! Christ is "the rock higher than we."
Yet again the RCC has it all backwards.
by the way, did you know the Greek goddess "Hera" was also given the title "The Queen of heaven" and, she renewed her perpetual virginity by bathing. Catholic views of Mary, not being biblicaly based, get mixed up with dare we say it -- pagan beliefs.
lol. Oh, go ahead and say it.
How did Jesus become Joseph’s son (John 1:45) if he was not married to Mary? I am sure there probably are some great mental gymnastics that explain that, probably along the same line that explains away all the brothers and sisters.
What? You can’t hear the laughter all they way up there in Denver? Your NCAA picks failed you, my friend.
If you study Buddhism, you will find that man must save himself. He must sit in a meditative state until he realizes that all is illusion, and, that he is God, and his reward for realizing this is to be reborn in a lotus petal in a pond somewhere in Nirvana. Not only that but he must be reborn over and over until he gets it right, and the same is more or less true in hinduism
All pagan beliefs at the heart, is man finding God and saving himself.
One God, not a plethora of gods and goddesses and saints and devas and ascended masters and all that jazz.
Right. Wake me up the next time you get them all in the final 4. :-)
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