Posted on 10/06/2010 7:56:37 AM PDT by Alex Murphy
Overall, Catholics liked the movie "The Nativity" but had several problems with it. For one thing they changed Scripture during the closing of the movie. On the screen they flashed the Bible passage from Luke 1:46-54. But they left out the words "for me" from middle of the sentence "The Lord has done great things for me, and Holy is his name." I don't think they should have taken that out of the Word of God, without using any elypses to show they skipped it. Another issue with the movie is they showed Mary screaming and pushing in pain as she gave birth to Jesus.
The Early Church Fathers are almost unanimous in the assertion that the birth was painless and had no loss of Mary's virginal integrity during the birth. In other words, her Hymen didn't break. St. Augustine said "Jesus passed through the womb of Mary as a ray of sun passes through glass." Pope Martin in 649 AD defined the doctrine that Mary:
We’re not approaching the ‘quantum foam’ with this, are we?
Were I to criticize it, I would say it does not develop the concept enough. But we are indeed slaves of our own concept of right and wrong, justice and injustice. And part of the cost of that slavery is that we do not understand our own reactions and deeper thoughts.
I think generally, humans are drawn to nibble at mysteries. When we manage to chew off a chunk, we wave it around and tell everyone that we've got the whole thing. And of course that means the great, huge, hulking mystery, with its glowing opacity, is ignored in favor of the small fragment.
Anyway, a consequence of the mystery of righteousness and unrighteousness, of purity and impurity -- cleanness and uncleanness, is that no one doctrine of the atonement can be sufficient to comprehend the wonder of what Christ did.
To join this or that earthly tribe, some mutilation or scarring, some bodily decoration, some amulet, some ceremony is required. To join Christ's tribe, we must die -- daily -- and be revived with His breath.
I totally love the ‘cousins’ story!
Of course. But I must act on the idea given to me.
Once we take "life for life; eye for eye" as the standard, we have limited the scope of recompense for injury. So within that scope, if A puts out B's eye, he can sit down with B and ransom his own eye. If B's lust for revenge is too great, he will be stuck with nothing more than A's eye, which isn't worth much. So some point of resolution can be reached.
OF COURSE.
Which I think you know I do have respect for.
To join this or that earthly tribe, some mutilation or scarring, some bodily decoration, some amulet, some ceremony is required. To join Christ’s tribe, we must die — daily — and be revived with His breath.
Masterfully put.
Thx.
I always try to stay away from these types of threads. This statement is well written. Very effective point made beautifully!
Kind of you to say so.
I think we have to pray hard and think hard on this.
I said something about a cinder block, after a 9 lb., 18” baby was born! Mammals giving birth is mammals giving birth, in many ways, although humans aren’t as well-constructed for it as many other species, because of the size of the babies’ heads. My last one was like laying an egg ... “O rly, there he is? Cool!”
I don’t like the “magical birth” idea, “ray of light passing through a window pane” and all that. It implies that Jesus did not have a truly human body during His earthly life. Manifestations such as passing through walls involved His resurrected body, not His body before the Crucifixion. Even walking on water was a human possibility, since Peter did it, too.
There’s an ugly strain of misogyny in some of the Fathers, perhaps influenced by Aristotle. They don’t like women, and they *really* don’t like women’s bodies and their normal biological functioning.
“To join this or that earthly tribe, some mutilation or scarring, some bodily decoration, some amulet, some ceremony is required.”
Baptism? With Communion (or the Lord’s Supper, or Eucharist) as a regular joining? And, as you say, “To join Christ’s tribe, we must die — daily — and be revived with His breath.”
We fear what we do not understand.
I'm about 51% kidding.
One of the triumphs of Xty is that the cultural (universal?) contempt by men for women has been mitigated greatly. (And I think the cult of the Virgin has contributed to this improvement.)
I have been trying to endure this current severe cold by reading Wodehouse. Wow, could that boy write!
In more than one of the ridiculous stories a motivating force in the plot is the desire of a man to be worthy of a woman's love. Of course Wodehouse is being silly, but we all know what he's talking about.
I think Plato would have had no idea whatsoever. “Worthy? WORTHY? Of the affection of a WOMAN? You've GOT to be kidding.”
On the other hand, to ‘save’ the Fathers, I humbly offer this, that our Blessed Mother went into parturition supported by the deepest confidence and faith. How often do we exacerbate pain by resisting it?In general even when we find we must reject the teaching of our elders, it's good to pick through the manure to find the occasional gem which might be buried there.
Or an affirmation of membership? "Re-upping"?
Definitely.
When I was living on the streets, I was impressed as never before that, ideally, any eating is a communal act. And how much more the meal that we as "the blessed company of all faithful people" share. Even the word "company" is about shared bread!
If you want to see someone’s head spin, ask them if Jesus ever needed to use ‘the facilities’ during his teaching of the Sermon on the Mount. Of course he did. Food and water doesn’t stay inside forever - but the earthiness of it offends our concept of God. God with a sunburn? God stung by a wasp? God, stumbling with exhaustion, or sitting by a well needing water? Even God, passing thru the birth canal? And in an animal stall?
I have no particular interest in convincing Catholics about the physical details of the birth of Jesus. I do hope, however, they understand that in believing the Christ was born of the flesh, and that Mary didn’t need to remain a virgin, I mean no more disrespect to Mary than I do to Jesus. Jesus, who knew hunger and thirst and pain and exhaustion and sneezing and sweat and dirt and other bodily functions.
“Great indeed, we confess, is the mystery of godliness: He was manifested in the flesh, vindicated by the Spirit, seen by angels, proclaimed among the nations, believed on in the world, taken up in glory.”
Hmmm...kind of like repeating the oath of enlistment in the military, or retaking the officer’s oath upon promotion. Rededication, renewing one’s commitment, “Because there is one bread, we who are many are one body, for we all partake of the one bread.”
An Afghan who converted to Christ would make an interesting theologian...
I do hope, however, they understand that in believing the Christ was born of the flesh, and that Mary didn’t need to remain a virgin, I mean no more disrespect to Mary than I do to Jesus.
I don't think it's disrespectful to either Jesus or Mary to recogize that both were fully human, and that Mary was *only* human. And, to belabor the point, giving birth does not make a woman "not a virgin." Having sex makes a person "not a virgin."
When I wrote a blurb about our Lady for the newsletter of my "chapter" (union local) of lay Dominicans, I resorted to my standard reference to the woman with an "issue of blood" who touched the fringe of our Lord's tunic. The article was sort of 'pocket vetoed' after an expression of disgust at the mentioning of so unseemly a disorder.
So what the Lord called 'clean' is often rejected as unclean by those who think themselves quite pious.
To me one of the functions of the great mysteries is to serve as brick walls against which I can repeatedly run with my head lowered. For some, they are to be filed, categorized, tucked away, and forgotten, buried in a pile of violets and other flowers.
My head may hurt, but I'm a happy guy with perhaps the tiniest glimpse of what Paul means when He says that with the Lord it is always YES!
Wow. Yes, indeed!
After the 9-11 I called up all the Muslims I knew and invited them to Thanksgiving dinner. Only one was able to come -- an Afghani, very secular, had come to the US to become a nurse and was working for the Red Cross.
I had made the rule that everyone of our guests had to bring a joke. He said that jokes were not really part of Afghani culture, but ridiculous tall tales were. And he explained that tribes are made the butt of "joshing" (as we Virginians do with West Virginians, and Massachusetts folks to with Mainiacs) -- and proceeded to tell a pretty funny story.
I was impressed with the 'foreignness" of a culture without jokes as well as with the tribalism.
But to imagine so tribal a culture coming to terms with salvation on a retail basis .... wow!
Then why do you guys side with Aquinas??? You guys don't argue from scripture because you can't...You argue from your human reasoning and your catechism...
Just because you pull a verse out of the book and try to justify it with some spurious writings or philosophy is not arguing from scripture or submitting to the authority of scripture...Sounds good tho, don't it???
How did people get to be so ignorant about something as basic as reproduction?
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.