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Thanks. Anything I have managed to understand is due to needing to figure out how to explain all this stuff to 8 year olds while still being able to talk about it with grownups. I think children in general, but certainly my children specifically, will find any holes and poke them mercilessly.

I don't know how but kids can be dogmatic fideists and rationalist skeptics AT THE SAME TIME. My 9 year old daughter will find the most obscure loose end in something and unravel everything in a matter of seconds, it's not fair that I have to have a copy of "Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma" and the Summa just to teach 5th grade religion. The temptation to say "it's that way because it's that way" is very strong.

Someone earlier said something like "I wonder how the Catholics feel knowing they're on the same side as an agnostic" or words to that effect. I thought how weird it is that people don't see the point of knowing what one doesn't believe... apparently in opposition to not knowing what one does believe.

You may find my post 7751 relevant.

Good grief, now that I've read it I almost think I need to point out that posts 7750 and 7751 were not written in consultation. lol

Your use of the word ransom reminded me of this:

figures of this kind [ransom] are perilous in the hands of those who press them too far, and forget that they are figures. This is what happened here. When a captive is ransomed the price is naturally paid to the conqueror by whom he is held in bondage. Hence, if this figure were taken and interpreted literally in all its details, it would seem that the price of man's ransom must be paid to Satan. The notion is certainly startling, if not revolting. Even if brave reasons pointed in this direction, we might well shrink from drawing the conclusion. And this is in fact so far from being the case that it seems hard to find any rational explanation of such a payment, or any right on which it could be founded. Yet, strange to say, the bold flight of theological speculation was not checked by these misgivings.

That from the online Catholic Encyclopedia. Apparently that idea floated around for 1000 years.

for about a thousand years it played a conspicuous part in the history of theology. In the hands of some of the later Fathers and medieval writers, it takes various forms, and some of its more repulsive features are softened or modified. But the strange notion of some right, or claim, on the part of Satan is still present. A protest was raised by St. Gregory of Nazianzus in the fourth century, as might be expected from that most accurate of the patristic theologians. But it was not till St. Anselm and Abelard had met it with unanswerable arguments that its power was finally broken.

I think that one of the great disasters in Christian history is the rejection of the authority of the Church to set the limits on figures, types and analogies. "I am of Peter, I am of Apollos, I am of Paul... I am of Christ" It's that last group we really need to watch out for, they're the ones running with the theological scissors.