Posted on 03/14/2015 6:43:21 PM PDT by ebb tide
The Philippines’ top prelate decried the clergy’s harmful treatment of lesbian and gay people during a recent address in London, saying modern science and social attitudes must be integrated into the church’s pastoral efforts.
(Excerpt) Read more at newwaysministryblog.wordpress.com ...
St Thomas Aquinas; Summa Theologica
Totally irrelevant. Thomas is talking about the theological virtue of faith. I wasn’t. People can worship God, even though their knowledge of him is defective.
Some people—Jews and Muslims—worship the one, true God, without having the theological virtue of faith, because their knowledge of God is defective.
In your scheme of things, it seems, a person is either a Catholic or a knowing, willing Satanist.
Why the need for the Catholic Church? In order to know the truth, and to have the ordinary means of receiving grace, the sacraments.
In your scheme, a person is either a well-catechized Catholic, or a fully-conscious Satanist.
Of course a person in the state of mortal sin cannot PROPERLY worship God, because he cannot, for example receive any of the sacraments of the living. But if he prays, or if he attends Mass, he is certainly worshiping God.
I am saying that people with a certain knowledge of God can worship God.
Your argument is that only those with perfect knowledge of God can worship him at all, and that all those whose knowledge of God is imperfect or partial are idolaters and Satanists. That is preposterous.
Note that St. Thomas is talking about a PERFECT act of faith--and people who have the theological virtue of faith.
Since I wasn't talking about people who have the theological virtue of faith, this quotation of St. Thomas is irrelevant. And it indicates that you have not been comprehending what I have been saying.
I have been talking precisely about those who do not have any of the theological virtues and whose worship of God is highly imperfect.
A totally invalid analogy, because worship is an act of the mind and will, while the whereabouts of the Maserati is independent of the mind.
You can think your mother lives in Baltimore, even if she lives in Philadelphia. But if you think you love your mother, you love your mother. It is impossible for you to think you love your mother without loving her.
There's no way to answer the question because you haven't defined the word "truly." Does it mean "perfectly"?
A person in the state of mortal sin cannot receive the Eucharist. He still has the obligation to attend Sunday Mass--i.e., to worship God. I conclude that he CAN and DOES worship God, imperfectly.
What I learned is that it is possible for men to know about God through the use of human reason unaided by supernatural grace. Men can come to know God through natural revelation, and, indeed, all men are obligated to know God in this way, in proportion to each one’s intellectual capacity. I think that when you talk about the moslems believing, it is the God they can know through reason.
But it isn't always black and white. The Latter Day Saints believe that they know God, and even baptize in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. But the god[s] that they identify doesn't share all that many of the attributes of the true God who is knowable by human reason. The god they identify is not infinite, all-knowing, all-powerful, all-present, eternal (at least as we mean it), supreme, almighty, or even a trinity as we know it.
Yet, I've known LDS folks who seem to have drawn close to Jesus in their prayer life. Interestingly, some of these that I've met seem ultimately to de-emphasize the false ontology of the LDS god, almost as if the true God is drawing them close, and causing them to slowly shed their false beliefs about Him. I speculate that perhaps these become Christians through something akin to baptism of desire.
The question is, do the moslems believe in the one God? They seem, formally, to believe many things about God that identify the one in whom they believe as the one God - all-powerful, supreme, eternal, transcendent.
Many of the things they believe or don't believe are not so much errors as omissions. They don't believe in the Trinity. They don't believe in the divinity of Jesus.
In many ways, this puts them in a similar situation as Jews, and I wouldn't say that the Jews don't worship the one, true God.
But there are a few things that moslems believe that are not so much omissions of believe but outright misidentifications of God. They believe that God can and does lie. But that would mean that God is not Truth. It would mean that God is not perfect, and thus, is flawed, incomplete, and in need. They do not believe that we are made in the image and likeness of God. But that is to deny, then, that God is rational. It means that God is capricious, and thus, untrustworthy. They believe that God authorizes the moslems to rape, murder, pillage, plunder, and enslave generally. But that is to make God an accessory to murder, adultery, theft, covetousness, and every manner of evil. It means that God is immoral, that he is not holy, he is not morally perfect. Frankly, the god of the moslems seems more like, in some way, one of the gods of the Greeks or Romans, with many of the flaws of sinful humans.
Of course, the difficulty is that there is no moslem magisterium, and thus, it's difficult to nail down just what islam is - what is “true islam.” In that islam is an utterly false, satanic religion given to mo by Satan himself, I'm inclined not to even concede that there is a “true islam.” Just a pile of landfill waste masquerading as religius faith.
Nonetheless, I've known a fair share of moslems in my life, and not all want to behead us, rape our women, enslave our sons, or throw us in cages and set us alight. There are a few moslems who wish to live in peace, worship the God who created the splendor of the universe, who put more emphasis on the mercy of God, and reasonableness of God's actions. I've known a few like this.
It's difficult for me to look at these people and say that they worship a false god, as it appears to me that they seek Him in sincerity and good faith. To me, it appears that they seek the true Bod, but through a false religion. They worship the true God, but falsely.
All this suggests to me that moral atrocities like ISIS, and the hundreds of millions of moslems who desire strict sharia, who give their assent to murder, rape, pillage, plunder, rape of little boys, adultery with married women, are, indeed, pagans, worshiping a false god of their own creation, or even of demonic origin, while the small remnant of moslems who seek the God of mercy, the God who is just, holy, and liberating, who eschew that God commands all manner of evil, merely worship the true God falsely.
sitetest
I think you’ve put it very well.
People’s ideas about God can be a mixture of truth and error. And they can worship the one, true God, even while believing errors about him.
I have noticed on FR that some are determined to say, not merely that Muslims believe many errors about God, but that “Allah” IS Satan, and that all Muslims must be knowingly worshiping Satan (or a Moon god) rather than God. That is just stupid. “Allah” is clearly the name that Muslims (and many Christians!) use to refer to God.
I think it is obvious that Satan has much to do with Islam. Islam is anti-Christ. It denies the Trinity and the Incarnation of the Second Person of the Trinity. That is the very definition of anti-Christ.
I am sure that there are many great, holy mystics among Protestants, Jews, Muslims, and even pagans, and that many in those religions have experienced baptism of desire, and thus have the theological virtues and sanctifying grace, and will enter into the Beatific Vision when they die. The Catholic Church has always taught this. The claim that only those who are baptized with water in the Catholic Church and are registered members of a Catholic parish can be saved has been explicitly condemned as a heresy.
So if I THINK a piece of bread in my house is the BODY of Christ then it is?
Honestly. Just because someone THINKS they believe in the true God doesn’t mean he truly does.
The Muslim religion is diabolical. Muhammed did not get his beliefs from God.
Is this what they taught you in the post Vatican II seminary? Nothing about salvation?
I disagree. Many people "think" they love this person or that when in reality they do not.
"Many"? You are "sure"? Where does the Catholic Church teach that Baptism of Desire is something that happens often and where does the Catholic Church teach that we can be sure and hope that there are many people ....in non-Catholic religions.... that will be saved by it? Father, with all due respect, you have been drinking the Vatican II Kool-Aid for too long.
Utter nonsense and against God’s will and teachings.
There are about six billion non-Catholics in the world. If 1% of them have received Baptism of desire, how many is that?
If you claim that that isn’t “many,” then how about inviting them all to dinner some evening soon?
Now you are just being cantankerous.
Tell how someone can receive grace from the sacraments without being saved?
Once again, you are simply putting a negative construction on everything I say, and then disputing that. That’s being cantankerous and contrary, not engaging in argument.
I was referring, of course, to someone who KNOWS he loves his mother, and has DETERMINED to love his mother, not to a mental patient who lives in delusion.
No, I just happen to think that you are colored by the false ecumenism of Vatican II. I get, that as a post Vatican II priest, that you are expected to do so.
I haven’t said one thing that the Church hasn’t taught for centuries.
I haven’t said anything that the Church hasn’t always taught. It appears from your posts that you are a Feeneyite.
Nope. I believe in Baptism of Desire as taught by the Catholic Church. You seem to think that its application is much broader than what the Church has taught. You entertain “good hope” that others are saved outside the Catholic Church. You are certain that many non-Catholics have been saved. This is NOT Catholic teaching on BOD. You also have not shown that the Catholic Church has always taught that the Muslims “adore the same God as we do”.
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