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.’”
Did Eve sin?
You are stuck in a mental rut. The Word of God indicates that she did since she too lost her sinless nature in the Garden. BUT that is irrelevant to the question of the Mother of Jesus, since Mary inherited the Adamic sin nature from her father who is a male descendant from Adam.
“You are stuck in a mental rut.”
Don’t presume to know what is going on in the head of another. To do that and then use your presumption as a cudgel against another is abusive.
Are you, you personally, 100% satisfied, based on all of the information at your disposal, that Eve sinned?
Have nice day.
In like a lion, out like a lamb. The March of freepers.
I don’t entertain fools. I will not entertain you further.
Whatever it is you do or not do with or to fools, you apparently don’t answer certain questions. At least not directly.
The problem, of course, is that there is no end to development of doctrine, such that a woman can be called a man and vice-versa, because “what was given once for all is understood more and more clearly.”
This is the claim made over and over again by the US Supreme Court in setting forth its more and more radical doctrines.
You want to argue, argue with what The Word of God relates regarding Adam and Eve.
Both Eve, and the new Eve, were pure, unstained by sin. Full of grace.
By her magnificent obedience, the new Eve negatived Eve’s horrific disobedience.
That’s more or less what I was hoping to get across to you and your fellow snipers.
LOL
Living Out of the Loop?
!
“... he was not always greeted with open, unsuspecting arms into the Church either.” Which Church? Or are you again assuming there is only one true church, the Catholiciism ORG?
The Spirit pinged my mind duuring my nap before you even wrote that sentence, directing me to the notion of what Jesus said on having life more abundantly through Him.
In your sentence you conflate The One True Church Body of Christ with the Church of your religion, catholicism. That glares at me as typical of deceived Catholics, by implying that only those in your religions church are the redeemed in humanity.
Second, do you even understand what Jesus was referring to with 'have life more abundantly'? To truly understand that assertion by The Lord Christ you will need to understand what was lost by Adam and Eve, what part of their existence died when died the day they disobeyed God. And that understanding relates to what Jesus went ot the Cross to redeem. He did not go to the cross to redeem your/our flesh (the soul and body of our reality). He went to the cross to redeem via paying the penalty for sin, all sin, which holds the spirit in a state of deadness, spiritual deadness; alive in body and soul but dead in the eternal spirit. By believing on Whom God sent for this transaction LIFE is come to the spirit of the born again. It is a reality in the now, stretching across eternity.
Because you do not comprehend this Truth you are easily swept up in acts which point to the flesh and not the spirit. Jesus has Promised to give every member of His Body of Believers a new physical body and new sinless soul (behavior mechanism), to meld with the already eternally alive spirit which has His Spirit abiding therein, in the now. The Rapture is denied by your religion because to believe in the details of the Rapture of the Body of ALL Believers in Him is to erase the efficacy of the many rituals in your religion that are focused upon the flesh not the spirit.
If eating the flesh and blood and soul and divinity of Jesus would/could render you eternally alive right then ( render you as a member of His Body eternally alive), why do your priests repeat this ritual at every Mass?
If there existed a place your religion calls Purgatory, where is the Salvation moment Jesus explained again and again of Believing in Whom God sent in need of extra striving through suffering cleansing? That is, albeit you are blinded to the truth, works based religion because there is something you must do (suffer to cleanse you?) to finally receive eternal life in Heaven.
The spirit body is alive in Christ with those who are born again, with the Spirit of God abiding in their born again/born from above spirit. Why would such a God abiding in your spirit need 'extra cleansing through suffering in a purgatory'? He is abiding in a sinless born again human spirit to seal you to the Day He Raptures you out of here! Your flesh/soul and body is destined for destruction as a sin tainted vehicle you occupy until Rapture or death then Rapture later.
How can your religion of catholiciism claim power to save anyone when your religion is focused upon the flesh, the body and behavior mechanism as if THAT is what your priesthood delivers to God? Jesus did not go to the cross to save your flesh. He went the Cross to redeem your dead spirit to the spiritual based life He defines as life more abundant.
As for your specious Jack Chick reference, well that just reveals more of your preconceived religious bigotry. If your spirit does not come alive in Christ in the now, you will eventually be cast off and the landing zone is an eternal bad place.
Perhaps you have never considered that a man or woman has a dead spirit until Christ brings His Life into that spirit. Yet that dead spirit is to exist eternally even in a state of spiritual deadness yet consciousness. Can I help you to understand that better with more references from The Word of God?.
Meant to include you in the ping.
LOL. You are correct sir. Elsie, we need your little horny old goat story. 😀 By the way, I think Mary’s original name, was Semiramis. The unholy trinity, of Nimrod, Semiramis and Tammuz. I think the religion of Nimrod, was widespread in the world, in the time of Jesus. I think it’s still, loosely widespread in the world today. Wait till the tribulation time, and we will see how widespread false religion will be. 👍
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