I agree, and I wasn't really really offended by the DI. I just took it as an attitude from the other side. I.e., OK, so they are separatists. That is perfectly fine if they believe that their Christian ways are the only true Christian ways. No problem. Perhaps why so many Protestants got upset is that many don't understand that the "ways" part of Christianity is so much more important to Catholicism.
What I thought Papa Ben was saying was that the intention, the act of will, in becoming Lutheran or Calvinist or Anglican in the 16th century was of a different sort from the act of will involved in becoming or remaining ... when we have had 400+ years of division and when lots of good work and good piety (the hymns alone for crying out loud!) in these other bodies.
OK, I think I see. So IOW, a schismatic is one who really accepted the Catholic faith first, and then turned. According to PB XVI then, people like Luther would go into this group, but modern day Protestants who have ever only known Protestantism would not, necessarily. If that is a fair "IOW", then I'm not sure it's fair. :) If Luther, et al., as a boy was led to Christianity, then there was only one practical "official" choice at that time.
Plus, it wouldn't seem fair to anyone then or now who was raised as a Catholic without the real opportunity to choose. Totally out of my control, I COULD have been raised in a practicing Catholic home. That would make me a schismatic today, and presumably in worse shape than I am in now, as it turned out. :)
So we simply cannot reasonably turn around and say that other outfits are "just as good". We can't both be right about Mary or about the Eucharist, and these are important matters.
That is all very true and understandable.
But again, there is clearly good and beautiful thought coming out of the "Separated Brethren" (where "separated" is not, in itself, a put-down but just a description of the status quo).
I think "Separated Brethren" is a fair and accurate term which both sides can agree to without being insulting to either. I think that DI unnecessarily hurt that idea.
If/When we say Protestants "cannot have churches", I think we mean primarily there is only ONE Church, and it is manifested in varying degrees of "fullness". If that causes offense, all I can say is nothing is further from my desire.
And I believe you without giving it a second thought. I cannot say that the Pope shares your view in this by his document (IMO). He above most very learned theologians SHOULD know that to deny a Christian his church is to publicly deny his very faith in Christ. That's PERSONAL. :) I understand that he probably didn't mean it to be that cutting, but he HAD to know how Protestants would react. I still don't understand the NEED to put us down publicly. (Was there a scare that Protestants were converting Catholics in large numbers or something?) Why not just reiterate what Catholicism stands FOR?
This Catholic needs to fish or cut bait. (I know a woman who hasn't been to confession in maybe 10 years but is otherwise very devout. I think she has issues about "personal space".) IF she is truly not aware of any grave sin, this is okay, but not great.
In 10 YEARS! Come on. :) Here is what I found in the Catechism:
1857 For a sin to be mortal, three conditions must together be met: "Mortal sin is sin whose object is grave matter and which is also committed with full knowledge and deliberate consent."131
1858 Grave matter is specified by the Ten Commandments, corresponding to the answer of Jesus to the rich young man: "Do not kill, Do not commit adultery, Do not steal, Do not bear false witness, Do not defraud, Honor your father and your mother."132 The gravity of sins is more or less great: murder is graver than theft. One must also take into account who is wronged: violence against parents is in itself graver than violence against a stranger.
1859 Mortal sin requires full knowledge and complete consent. It presupposes knowledge of the sinful character of the act, of its opposition to God's law. It also implies a consent sufficiently deliberate to be a personal choice. Feigned ignorance and hardness of heart133 do not diminish, but rather increase, the voluntary character of a sin.
Now, have you EVER known of a person to go 10 years passing this test? :) I wouldn't even pretend to put myself on such a scale in terms of years, or even months, even weeks. And I'm a pretty decent guy! LOL! So, if even looking at a beautiful woman and just THINKING an unclean thought is adultery, then imagine what must count for bearing false witness. :) IOW, according to the Bible and the Catechism I don't see how anyone can go for this kind of time without what the Church calls grave sin.
As to the Scriptural witness of the sufficiency of the Grace of God, I would say it's like this: There is indeed a banquet spread before us. But still one has to "arise and eat," as the angel said to Elijah. Now some of us will pick you up and carry you to a couch near the table, will cut up your meat and put a morsel on a fork and help you lie it to your lips, but at some point you have to open your mouth and chew and swallow.
On the one in ten chance you'll get this: the Reformed way is more like the Ferengi way. :)
So she [a convert wanting to join the faith] went in [to confession] and came out, and she was all dazed and happy and said, "THAT is the, without a doubt, world's best weight-loss program!" Does that SOUND like a burden?
That's a great saying and it sounds like she is getting the message. Confession is always good, AND I can understand there being burden coming from shame. I think there should be confession and there should be shame. The mature Christian can put it all into perspective, and in one sense that makes it easier. However, in another sense it seems fit to him to confess things that don't even occur to us, so there's sort of a balance there. Ultimately, Jesus says that His burden for us is light and that He wants us to confess. So, I guess there is our answer. :)
The problem your hypothetical person has is that she needlessly deprives herself of a great gift which confirms our faith and seems to give graces to act more out of a certainty of God's love and good will than a sense of guilt and fear. She should know better, and if she has had good catechesis, then she is guilty of despising God's gifts, of treading pearls underfoot.
THIS is the critical point to my whole prior post. By your above, does God NOT tend to give graces if one confesses directly to Him? Does one really despise God's gifts by communing directly with Him? These things seem unimaginable to me. How could we possibly be better off going through a human to confess to God than doing so directly? I know that the Catholic Church does not frown on praying to God directly, so why would it frown on seeking forgiveness directly?
Just to review: I AM getting paid by the word, right?
If only from your lips to God's ears. I'd be a millionaire. :)
It can be done by something called GRACE,Dear Brother. As far as I know, protestants and catholics are in agreement on this?
If we are aware of certain sins and vices and freely keep committing them- than we cannot expect God to give us the Grace to overcome these sins.
I used to make the mistake of thinking certain vices were impossible to stop and continually would ask God to forgive me. It does not work that way(I have learned) It takes an effort on our part to love God SO much that we hate the sin
To put it bluntly,it is our lack of love for God and our OWN SELF desire that causes us to sin.We need to be honest with ourselves and see it this way
Frequent confession helps me a great deal with venial sin,I highly recommend it to keep oneself humble. This is something I constantly need to be reminded of
Plus, it wouldn't seem fair to anyone then or now who was raised as a Catholic without the real opportunity to choose. Totally out of my control, I COULD have been raised in a practicing Catholic home. That would make me a schismatic today, and presumably in worse shape than I am in now, as it turned out. :)
The mind reels! :-)
I'm getting that from your POV the condition of lots of "denominations" is a good thing. I'm guessing that this is part and parcel of the "invisible Church" line of thought.
I say this because from my POV lots of denominations is a bad thing. It might help that I generally have been a "bloom where you're planted" kind of guy as far as parish membership is concerned. I now only drive PAST one RC parish to go to my current place of worship because I was administrator at the nearer church and I think former administrators should disappear. (The fact that I much prefer my current parish -- and I preferred it before I left the other, is just a happy thing.) Since I trusted in the sacramental ministrations of the nearer church as much as I do in the farther one, I was willing to look at the rest of what was there as a call from God for me to help. I wasn't there, outside of the sacraments and worshipping with bro's and sis's, for what I could get, but for whatever adventure happened to come my way.
He above most very learned theologians SHOULD know that to deny a Christian his church is to publicly deny his very faith in Christ. That's PERSONAL. :)
This blows what used to be my mind.
I would say, "I hope what I think about 'God 'n Jesus ' stuff' is right, but I seek to pray to God not as I think He is but as He knows Himself to be."
Even as enthusiastic a Papist as I knows that we are more wrong in our personal thought than we are right, that there are touchstones - sacraments, precepts, basic dogmata, but even those I scarcely understand or appreciate and that the wonder of God as He is will make me, like some guy in Dante whom I forget who was a theologian and when He got to heaven he found out he was wrong, and he laughed and laughed!
I keep thinking about Ps. 50, where God pretty much mocks Temple worship -- and that's to the GOOD guys! "If I were hungry, you think I'd tell YOU?"
I still don't understand the NEED to put us down publicly. (Was there a scare that Protestants were converting Catholics in large numbers or something?)
It was Tammy Faye's eyeshadow. That and the snakes.
Well, I think I was trying to say that this was about what we could and could not bring to the table in Ecumenical efforts. But I don't really know the sitz-im-leben of DI. I will find out somehow, and report back.
But one of the things we stand FOR is an ecclesiology which asserts an important, ah, coincidence between the Body of Christ and those groups in communion with the See of Rome and possessing Apostolic succession.
As far as the not-going-to-confession lady, I'm not defending her. I'm just reporting. The "Real" dynamics of the situation are complex.
You MAY be underestimating the important of "full knowledge and deliberate personal choice". I think the occasional inadvertent "hubba hubba" is venial. It's almost hard-wired. Going girl-watching and engaging in a full, rich fantasy life which implies total de-valuation of the babe in question as a person for whom Christ was content to die .. now we're getting to mortal sin territory, especially after someone has explained to one what is wrong about that, and maybe even given some hints about how to avoid falling into that.
THIS is the critical point to my whole prior post. By your above, does God NOT tend to give graces if one confesses directly to Him?
Degrees and subtleties and whatnot.
For me to apologize to God quietly in my room about, say, checking out a porno site is one thing. Actually to say that to another human type being whom I can imagine reacting and everything as I speak (or in my case, since I do the face-to face thing and not the hide-behind-a-screen thing, SEE reacting .... only they never do, they've heard it 1000 times) well, that calls on more from me. I've already had to commend myself to God's Love and Forgiveness before I stagger into the itty-bitty room. And the experience is correspondingly more powerful.
I know people who say, "But AM I forgiven?" and when you assert all the full 8-cylinder, ninety-to-nuthin' Gospel say, "Yes, I KNOW that, but AM I REALLY forgiven?" That happens a lot less in my (limited so much as to be scarcely useful for any reliable conclusion) experience. You don't run across that as much in people who made a real, live, real-time confession to an official holy-dude, Father so-and-so who is visiting from East Overshoe.
I think that in general we often get "Solid" knowledge of grace and love when God brings them to us through people. He is content even to work through such as you and I are.
Again, there's an understanding of "priesthood" which is not confined to "holy orders". If you were to visit me for a week, and assuming you aren't already way better at this than I am) I could teach you how to make a good pastoral visit to a hospitalized person. And you would find that by listening lovingly and by offering in prayer little more than what the patient told you was on his mind, you would have been at least a catalyst to that patient's finding himself to be in God's presence. Sometimes it just takes another human being to do whatever it is that leads to the person experiencing the Love of God.
I don't try to explain this. But the tears and smiles and increased confidence and peace persuade me that we ALL have a priestly ministry and, if the word MUST be used", "power".
So I find that taking it a step further to official ordained type guys is not a big leap for me.
blah blah blah.