Posted on 12/08/2021 2:19:08 PM PST by MurphsLaw
s it possible for a memorandum to be a masterpiece? A few paragraphs long, dashed off ex tempore, for a friend, not polished? Various columns in TCT have appreciated masterpieces – a poem, a painting, a musical work. But could a memorandum ever be accounted a “masterpiece”?
I have in mind Newman’s “Memorandum on the Immaculate Conception” – written off by the Cardinal,” his editor says, “for Mr. R. I. Wilberforce, formerly Archdeacon Wilberforce, to aid him in meeting the objections urged by some Protestant friends against the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception.”
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That’s it, “written off” – a memorandum is something written off, dashed off, tossed off.
Surely a master can “dash off” a masterpiece: witness the Gettysburg Address, a Shakespeare sonnet, a Scarlatti sonata. And so we look to Newman’s “Memorandum” without worries as truly a spiritual masterpiece.
Newman begins: “It is so difficult for me to enter into the feelings of a person who understands the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception, and yet objects to it, that I am diffident about attempting to speak on the subject.” He adds, “I was accused of holding it, in one of the first books I wrote, twenty years ago. On the other hand, this very fact may be an argument against an objector – for why should it not have been difficult to me at that time, if there were a real difficulty in receiving it?”
Already, astonishing brilliance. He imagines someone raising difficulties, and his task would be to understand those difficulties and reply to them. But he can’t see any difficulties. Maybe he’s incompetent even to speak on the subject?
He turns this concern on its head. Many years ago, as a young Anglican minister, long before the pope’s definition, Newman had already come to hold that doctrine, naturally and easily. But he couldn’t have done if it had involved difficulties. So he has the requisite competence, which is to speak to the naturalness of the doctrine!
Here is that earlier passage, from the Parochial and Plain Sermons:
Who can estimate the holiness and perfection of her, who was chosen to be the Mother of Christ? If to him that hath, more is given, and holiness and divine favour go together (and this we are expressly told). . . .What must have been her gifts, who was chosen to be the only near earthly relative of the Son of God, the only one whom He was bound by nature to revere and look up to; the one appointed to train and educate Him, to instruct Him day by day, as He grew in wisdom and stature? This contemplation runs to a higher subject, did we dare to follow it; for what, think you, was the sanctified state of that human nature, of which God formed His sinless Son; knowing, as we do, that “that which is born of the flesh is flesh,” and that “none can bring a clean thing out of an unclean?”
Then come a series of devastating arguments as to why there are no difficulties in the doctrine. If there is no difficulty in saying that Eve was created without sin – if there is no risk of turning her into a deity – what is the great difficulty in saying that Mary was created without sin? If we hold that John the Baptist was cleansed of original sin in the womb, then why not Mary from an even earlier point in the womb? If there is no difficulty in saying that you and I are cleansed from original sin at some later point in our lives by baptism – if our saying so in no way detracts from the merits of the Lord – then wouldn’t Mary’s being cleansed even earlier in her life make her even more dependent on the Lord?
"We do not say that she did not owe her salvation to the death of her Son. Just the contrary, we say that she, of all mere children of Adam, is in the truest sense the fruit and the purchase of His Passion. He has done for her more than for anyone else. To others He gives grace and regeneration at a point in their earthly existence; to her, from the very beginning."
Newman then considers the antiquity of the doctrine. Why? Because “No one can add to revelation. That was given once for all; – but as time goes on, what was given once for all is understood more and more clearly.” You might wish to copy out these lines as proof of what Newman meant by “development of doctrine.” It did not allow for any new revelation. What it means, rather, is this: “The greatest Fathers and Saints in this sense have been in error, that, since the matter of which they spoke had not been sifted, and the Church had not spoken, they did not in their expressions do justice to their own real meaning.”
He focuses on the contrast between Mary and Eve in the earliest writings of the Fathers, and especially the proto-evangelion: “See the direct bearing of this upon the Immaculate Conception... There was war between the woman and the Serpent. This is most emphatically fulfilled if she had nothing to do with sin – for, so far as any one sins, he has an alliance with the Evil One.”
Newman’s masterpiece concludes: “I say it distinctly – there may be many excuses at the last day, good and bad, for not being Catholics; one I cannot conceive: ‘O Lord, the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception was so derogatory to Thy grace, so inconsistent with Thy Passion, so at variance with Thy word in Genesis and the Apocalypse, so unlike the teaching of Thy first Saints and Martyrs, as to give me a right to reject it at all risks, and Thy Church for teaching it. It is a doctrine as to which my private judgment is fully justified in opposing the Church’s judgment. And this is my plea for living and dying a Protestant.’”
Mary sure does seem to stir up you Prots.
She stirs up Satan also.
The IC is not whether or not Jesus was conceived by the virgin Mary - THAT topic I would gladly defend as it is one of the major Christian tenets about the Messiah and His deity - instead it is the Catholic dogma that contends Mary was born without a sin nature and she remained sinless in order to give birth to the Son of God who was without sin. I disagree with this.
And you're right...it's a thread topic that I think is intentionally provocative in order to stir up arguments. It's been rehashed dozens of times here.
As usual you are wrong. It’s not Mary - the Biblical Mary Protestants love and respect - but Catholicism’s version of her and their insistence that everything they declare is truth IS truth and every Christian MUST accept it or be damned to hell. Even when there is no Biblical proof, or worse when there is contradiction with Scripture, Catholicism declares she is equal to the word of God. I guess next you will probably tell me I’m going to hell because I’m no longer a Catholic, right?
That's a lie.
I don’t necessarily believe your soul magnifies the Lord.
God bless you, Brother.
Nonsense.
Why would you say that? How is it you think this was aimed at you? This is a Holy day for us Catholics. It’s not all about you.
TY, U2!
“The IC is not whether or not Jesus was conceived by the virgin Mary ... instead it is the Catholic dogma that contends Mary was born without a sin nature and she remained sinless in order to give birth to the Son of God who was without sin.
_________
The IC is not whether or not Mary was not born without Original Sin, but more than that, i.e., whether or not she was conceived without Original Sin.
Saint John the Baptist was cleansed of Original Sin when the Blessed Virgin Mary visited her cousin Elizabeth when the latter was pregnant with the Baptist, resulting in the fact that he was born cleansed of all sin, including Original Sin.
Mary never required such cleansing, as she was never so soiled. At the time, she was the only human being who had ever trod the earth in such a condition since Adam and Eve 1.0 (i.e., the pre-fall condition of Adam and Eve). When Jesus, the Christ of God, was born, he joined Mary, Adam and Eve, became the fourth of four in such a condition. No connection whatever, at any time, to sin.
Pious belief, admittedly not required of any Catholic, has it that Saint Joseph, Jesus’ earthly father, was in the same condition as Saint John the Baptist, i.e., cleansed of Original Sin, while in the womb. For what it’s worth, Dr. Taylor Marshall is of this opinion, following the opinion of a saint he cites and whose name escapes me for the moment.
Surely you would not shortchange Mary when it comes to being at least equivalent among conceived individuals to the pre-fall version of unconceived Eve?
You didn't answer my question about Sobieski.
There is a whole lot of what you wrote that isn’t found in the scriptures..
Here’s a dilemma with the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception of Mary..
The premise of the doctrine infers that Mary and Christ had different flesh, sinless human flesh, incapable of sin.
Flesh that isn’t the same as the rest of humanity has.
The bible says He most assuredly was tempted.
It wasn’t His Holy Spirit that was tempted.
It was His human flesh.
The flesh with the sin nature.
The scriptures warn that those who confess Jesus didn’t come ‘in the flesh’ is a Spirit of Antichrist.
By this you know the Spirit of God: every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God; and every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God; this is the spirit of the antichrist, of which you have heard that it is coming, and now it is already in the world.
2 John 1:7
For many deceivers have gone out into the world, those who do not acknowledge Jesus Christ as coming in the flesh. This is the deceiver and the antichrist.
Some may see ‘coming in the flesh’ as that He was real,not a ghost or a hologram.
Some may see ‘coming in the flesh’ as having the same sinful human flesh nature, yet having His holy Spirit conceived, where the rest of us, have the serpent seed of our earthly father cast down to our mothers egg..
That’s what made Him different.
Not His flesh was different.
But His Holy Spirit.
His mother was conceived by her fathers seed and her mother’s egg..
She wasn’t a super human with different flesh unable to commit sin.
That sort of doctrine, according to scripture, is Antichrist.
And may be why Protestants and Catholics fight one another constantly.
They may ultimately realize that they have two different Mary’s and two different Jesuses. Or they’re arguing over the wrong Jesus.
Maybe thanks to this one doctrine.
Among other things taught about Mary and Jesus, like the 15 promises..
Dogma and doctrine may be best left to one’s own group.
If it gets into the hands of others, they may be compelled to test and prove all things with Genesis to Revelation.
Did Eve sin?
“We eat of the trees in the garden, but of the fruit of the tree which is the midst of the garden, God has said, you shall not eat of it, neither shall you touch it, lest you die..”
-Eve.
“The serpent beguiled me and I did eat”
-Eve..
Unto the woman He said, I will greatly increase your sorrows, and your conception,. In sorrow will you bring forth children, and your desire shall be for your husband, and he shall rule over you.
- God
It was a yes or no question.
<< Why couldn’t God create a human without original sin to bear His Son? >>
When we support doctrine with the argument, “Why couldn’t God...” we might run into some trouble. We could stumble into the abyss along with the Jewish leaders and their “Tradition of the Elders” which Jesus condemned as “teaching for doctrine, the commandments of men.”
Scripture teaches that faith is a work of God. i.e. God creates faith.
If God can create faith in a man, then why can’t he create faith in a baby?
Voice from the back of the room:
Then why can’t God create faith in a dog, or a tree, or a stone? Probably not that hard; he is God, you know.
Just sayin’.
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