Posted on 01/05/2010 9:46:47 PM PST by the_conscience
I just witnessed a couple of Orthodox posters get kicked off a "Catholic Caucus" thread. I thought, despite their differences, they had a mutual understanding that each sect was considered "Catholic". Are not the Orthodox considered Catholic? Why do the Romanists get to monopolize the term "Catholic"?
I consider myself to be Catholic being a part of the universal church of Christ. Why should one sect be able to use a universal concept to identify themselves in a caucus thread while other Christian denominations need to use specific qualifiers to identify themselves in a caucus thread?
[HarleyD:] Do you see anywhere in those scriptures that the Church has made you a new creation. This is blasphamy.
Dawg: DISTINGUO! Annalex did NOT say the Church has made you a new creation. The subject of the verb was "The Sacraments of the Church." "Church" was the object of the preposition 'of'.
HarleyD, to make his paraphrase stick, has to show that "The Church" = "the Sacraments of the Church."
Further, since what we're about here is something more than Sophomore High School debate club, we have to bear in mind that Annalex was speaking loosely in the interests of conserving phosphors for future generations.
A lengthier and more precise way of saying it would be, God makes us a new creation through the Sacraments of thee Church, specifically Baptism.
There's plenty to argue about once we get what Annalex was really saying. Indeed, one could argue that the distinction I'm making is not real. (I would disagree, but it's worth looking at.)
But let's proceed deliberately.
Q1: Whether the sacraments are magick.
Videtur: ("It would seem," for those of you in Rio Linda) that the Sacraments are magic because through them the minister commands God; God is Spirit and powerful; and when a human commands a powerful deity, that is magic.
Sed Contra: Ps 136: For His mercies endure for ever.
Respondeo: The first sign we have that the Sacraments are not magic is that they are consistent in their effects while magic, as Bacon said (I have no idea where), is always uncertain. The second sign is that the Power of the Sacraments is not in the Sacraments as in a first cause or in the minister of the Sacraments. The power is in God and it is certain because of the certainty of God's promise. Neither the minister, nor the matter, nor the form has power intrinsically but through God's gift.
Consequently God is not commanded but besought to keep the promises he made to the Church through the Apostles and by His Son.
And what's with this final 'k' stuff on 'magic', anyway?
Whence the reply to objection 1 is clear.
Q2:Whether the sacraments are efficacious? [Most of the text seems to have been lost, the fragments surviving are incoherent.]
Videtur: that the sacraments are not efficacious because I am just as big a jerk today as I was the day before I was baptized. At least that's what my family says.
Sed Contra "It ain't over till it's over" (Saint Casey of Stengel)
When one gets a 'flu shot, outside of what doctors and nurses CALL a "pinch" or "a slight discomfort" but the illuminati know to be a real OWWIE!, there are no subjectively perceptible effects. But the inoculation is effective without its effect being felt.
So the effect of the sacrament can be real even though the recipient of the sacrament does not subjectively perceive God working in him in any particular way.
[the rest of the text is obscured by marginal notes, which we reproduce here:
Large
pepperoni
Artichoke hearts
Anchovies?
I love the smell of Scholasticism in the morning!
Some mistake adumbration and explication for change. Some being taught by teachers who do whatever they can to paint the Church in the worst possible light, become wedded to the thrill of looking down on the Church and her teachings. As the Church explores and refines what she says, these people claim that she is flip-flopping, only because she doesn't say what their teachers assured them (a)she did say; and (b) gave them reason, they thought, to despise her.
I understand how frustrating it is to get a good hate on and then find that what one thought was a good reason was a misunderstanding. The first thing one has to learn IF one is going to play the "What is Catholic Teaching anyway?" game is to move circumspectly, deliberately, and carefully. One's failure to do so does not justify saying the Church changed her view.
What is correct, however, is that the emphasis and stresses change. On another thread a Catholic whom I would describe as a rigorist says I am too squishy. If his side got a hold of the printing presses, one would get a mistaken idea of what we teach and think (IMHO, In HIS HO I am giving a mistaken view. I am confident, though, in having recourse to the already oft-cited passages from the Catechism and from Vatican II)I can see how it seems that the position has changed. But I don't think it has.
Short answer: NO I learned it here on FR.
Longer answer:Actually, yeah, kind of, some of them. My academic background was unconventional and more philosophically centered than that of most of my peers. So I was oriented toward meaning of words, the relationships among ideas. I became friends with our Systematic Theology prof because I started arguing with him on the first day of class, and we argued for the whole year. He once called me "The Troubler of Israel," which I took as a great compliment. He was a great and a happy guy, and I miss him. His widow died yesterday, I found out late last night.
The whole task of hermeneutics, of interpretation is massively complex, IMHO. The whole Church needs the insights of all here members to do it well. Leading lights (and I'll put Calvin among the contributors despite my thinking that he was disastrously wrong in a few areas, even a good mistake can be progress) help us to sort and organize our questions and quests, while philosophers and others help us consider and express what we find "in a language understanded of the people." (That, BTW does not necessarily mean a language EASILY understanded.)
But when the predictable response to a distinction or a question is to be accused of using a rubber dictionary or of prevaricating in some other way (it's too early for me to remember all the charges) then, yeah, I think there is a failure to want to use language as a means of communication and an excessive eagerness to use it as a club.
And that's just on my first cup coffee!
LOL
(What’s the first one? Looks Slavic.)
Mary's doing so is different in degree, GREATLY different in degree, from that of the rest of us, but different in KIND from the work of Christ.
And the link for why I care?
Your accusation is of about a disagreement. Your side seems to take it as a personal offense that there IS another side and uses that carefully harvested and cherished injury as an excuse to give useless and gratuitous offense.
I already knew we disagreed. Saying so again does not develop the argument.
A critical difference is that we offer the Sacrifice of the Mass only to God. For us, the Mass is true worship. ......... Just talking to God, although that can be a part of worship, isn't sufficient as worship. Thus, talking to any saint, praying to the court for relief (that's what they say in the courts here in Maryland, that we “pray relief” of the court), whatever, just yacking with people, whether on earth or in Heaven, doesn't qualify, by itself, as worship.
OK, I would agree with you that prayer by itself does not constitute the full idea of worship. But just on the subject of prayer alone, do you (you all) share the exact same substance and specifics of your supplications to Mary (or another Saint) that you do with God?
If someone asked me what constituted worship I think I would first point him to these passages:
Would Catholics agree that this is an excellent expression of how to worship and give glory to God through worship? I don't know enough about the Mass to say, but would you say that it covers these ideas that it is God's mercy that motivates us to worship, and that we are to present all of ourselves openly to God by the renewing of our minds in the knowledge of truth which (I hold) is found in God's word? Or, in what way(s) does the Mass constitute worship in accordance with Rom. 12:1-2?
However, it would be nice if you did recognize that for us, the Mass, the Eucharist, is the source and summit of our faith, the keystone of our worship of the Most Holy Trinity.
I am happy to recognize whatever anyone says his belief and faith is, even if I disagree with it. :) But I have one question about the above. If someone asked me what the source of a Catholic's faith is, I should answer that it is the Eucharist and the Mass? That is, as opposed to God Himself?
Query: Can one praise with faint damns?
:-)
The good Doctor’s “side” is quite different from the “side” of other posters — we have Lutherans, Baptists, Pentecostals, Israelo-Christians, even individual seekers, so there seem to be multiple sides and I don’t think we should ascribe the good Doctor as representative of all of these.
IMHO this leads to a kind of seam in theology: God made all things good. Human nature is ab origine good. What we SEE empirically is corrupted human nature -- excessive here, deficient there, and perverted over there.
When they speak of "human nature" they are speaking of this empirical thing. When we speak of it we look at the implied excellences and speak of them, and then say that, in a way, the humans we encounter fail to live in accordance with their nature, and that that is one way of describing sin.
While they appear to have Occam playing on their side, they implicitly give up the excellence of creation OR end up losing the illusory simplicity of the seemingly empirical derivation of their ideas of human nature.
Good point. Thanks.
“Christ does not show us the way. Christ is the way.”
“We are justified by Christ’s righteousness imputed to us. To get that wrong is to just about miss the point of the Christian faith entirely.”
AMEN(BTTT)
This is not an answer so much as it is a hint or a dancing around the answer.
Background: Structure of Mass (SKETCHY!)
I Liturgy of Word
II Liturgy of Table
(I) has Scripture, Sermon, Creed, Prayers.
(II) has offertory (more later), prayer, communion.
Offertory is NOT just the “collection”. It is when the money and the bread and wine are brought to the altar. We can call all these “the gifts,” and since you can have a Mass w/o loot but not without bread and wine, they are the sort of premier gifts.
The gifts are “the work of human hands.” They represent, if you like “labor and capital”! They represent US. When we offer them, we offer ourselves.
THEREFORE, when I was an Episcopal priest, at the beginning of the offertory, where a verse from Scripture and or hymns and anthems are appropriate, I almost ALWAYS used that verse from Romans, as if to say “God doesn’t want just your money and your stuff, he wants YOU.”
So, in that clear ritual and ceremonial way, YES the Mass includes and requires a self-offering, and as the gifts are transformed so we also pray to be transformed.
I hope that’s in the ballpark.
Is this the position of the Church, “The Sacraments of the Church make us a new creation?”
Ah shaddup!
;-)
Where does you water come from, the faucet or the well?
BUT that's not quite right either, because of what Sacrament means.
I fear I'm going to end up saying the faucet is an essential aspect of the source/well/spring. The other feeble attempt is that a mountain summit is an area as well as one geometrical "tippy-top" point. So the Eucharist is Summit while Jesus is the "tippy-top"? Maybe?
Stuff to play with, anyway.
Ping The answer is "Loosely speaking, yes."
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.