Posted on 07/31/2002 9:27:40 AM PDT by Polycarp
| Title: | It Came From The Roman Church . . . |
| Author: | David Mills |
| Title: | It Came From The Roman Church . . . |
|
|
|
| Larger Work: | This Rock |
|
|
|
| Pages: | 12 - 15 |
|
|
|
| Publisher & Date: | Catholic Answers, Inc., San Diego, CA, April 2002 |
| Includes: | Identical text with no graphics. |
| Description: | Catholic horror stories told by Evangelicals (and ex-Catholics) and how to respond to them. |
|
|
|
"It Came From The Roman Church . . . "
Don't Flee From Catholic Horror Stories
By David Mills
In the brief time since my family became Catholics, some of my Evangelical friends have gone out of their way to tell me Catholic horror stories. They will tell me about some near-pagan example of Catholic folk religion they once saw, or an oppressive priest (reactionary or liberal) they once knew, or a Catholic family next door who went to Mass regularly but didn't know anything about the Bible and the faith, or a married friend who happily carried on a long affair supposedly by going to confession after each visit to his girlfriend.
Some of them like to talk about "recovering Catholics" who were supposedly so horribly damaged by growing up Catholic that they just had to become Protestants. (They are always surprisingly unskeptical about these stories.) These people suffered by being made to feel guilt and shame about everything they did or to feel that they could not ever satisfy all the rules God insisted they obey before he would love them.
This is both a personal and an evangelical problem for Catholics. Almost any Catholic who talks very long to a serious Evangelical will be told in some way that though the Pope is a wonderful man, and some Catholics really love the Lord, and thank God for the Catholics in the pro-life movement, the average Catholic parish is either a den of iniquity or simply dead spiritually.
The Evangelical will often claim, by contrast, that Evangelical churches are alive, and, since our Lord said we shall know them by their fruits (Matt. 7:16), Evangelicals are the real Christians. (This ignores, of course, that what Jesus said applied to individual teachers, not to movements or theological systems.) The implication is that if you're a Catholic you've been had.
It is probably worse for a convert, because his friends sometimes speak as if he were either a dullard who hasn't noticed the problems or a romantic who refuses to see them. "You won't live in Rome, you know," one close friend told me — meaning, I suppose, that the Catholic faith I would encounter wouldn't be pure — as if this would be shocking news to me, the mere stating of which would bring me to my senses.
What To Think
How can one respond to this line of argument?
First, you must admit that the Evangelical has enough facts to make a reasonable charge. The truth is that many Catholics do not lead a visibly faithful life. Most, for example, do not obey the Church's teaching on contraception. Few (amazingly to me) go to confession.
On the other hand, many Evangelicals and their churches appear to be models of faithfulness. They study Scripture, try to order their lives by its teaching, share their faith with others, and at some sacrifice minister to the world in many ways. We can learn much from them.
Second, you must listen with sympathy yet question the horror stories. Most of us have trouble doing this, because something in our culture trains us to accept any story of suffering without question and to assume that the Church must have been guilty of almost anything it is accused of.
Take the stories of "recovering" Catholics. Of course, some people have suffered real abuse and have been treated badly. But most of these stories I have heard from the allegedly "recovering" Catholics themselves do not ring true.
What I hear, beneath the emotion and the anger, is usually one of two things. The first is an unwillingness to grow up and forgive what seem to be the sort of offenses we have all suffered from parents or teachers or pastors. The second is an unwillingness to live the Catholic life, leading to a desire to blame the Catholic Church rather than admit this. I say this because the offenses they describe were often surprisingly minor, even trivial, and were often simply attempts — some clearly clumsy or unkind, but some apparently not — to get them to live a fully Catholic life.
For example, many (I do not know how to put this delicately) left the Church when they wanted to remarry after a divorce, and the conjunction of their remarriage and their enlightenment is too convenient for me to accept the latter at face value. (In my experience, it is rare to find an ex-Catholic in Episcopal churches who is not divorced and remarried, and friends tell me that this is also true in many Evangelical churches.)
And of course the Catholic life is a difficult one to live and some people do not want to try. My wife works a few hours a week in the nursery of a budding megachurch nearby, and several of the other women she works with were once Catholics. They have all told her they left the Church because they "found Jesus" elsewhere. I suggested she look them in the eye and say, "You're using contraception, aren't you?" (She didn't.)
Now, I do not mean that you ought to tell the "recovering Catholic" that you do not believe his story. That would be unkind and perhaps drive him yet further from the Church. I suggest only that you have a mental reservation, based on a reasonable reading of the evidence.
Hard To Argue With
Third, you must remember that the Evangelical has a different idea of the local church. He is comparing apples with oranges and complaining that the oranges aren't red enough.
For the Evangelical, the local church is primarily a gathered community of those of like mind and social class that forms a fairly complete alternative community for its members. For the Catholic, the local church is primarily the place we — people of different minds and classes — gather to meet the Lord in the Mass and from which we go out to exercise our vocations in the world.
The Evangelical church will therefore produce lots of public ministries, from Bible studies to short-term mission trips. The Catholic church may or may not have a lot of these ministries, but in either case they are not essential to its life and not stressed in the way they are in the Evangelical church.
The time and energy Evangelical put into their churches' public ministries Catholics may be putting into other, less visible religious activities. They may go to daily Mass when the Evangelical would go to a midweek Bible study, but for some reason going to Mass is not counted as a sign of "life."
Fourth, you must remember the practical differences between Catholics and Evangelicals. There is less attachment to a particular local church in Protestant circles because these churches are more transitory: They get created, split, and cease to be much more regularly than do Catholic parishes.
The Evangelical church therefore has to provide its people with the nourishment that deeper roots provide those who have lived there longer. The type of social interaction that the Catholic may have in his extended family the Evangelical may have to find in his church. The Evangelical church will seem livelier, though it is only giving its members what the Catholics have already. Its social homogeneity helps a great deal as well. There is more potential for interaction among its members due to greater similarities, interests, goals, et cetera. More diversity — which you find in many Catholic parishes — means less potential for interaction.
Because the two churches are different in theory and in practice, the Evangelical church can be presented as livelier than the Catholic church next door, because its life is much more public, while the life of the second is largely hidden from view. The Catholic parish may be producing saints by the dozen, but it may not produce enough visible efforts to get credit for "life."
Fifth, you must remember that as a Catholic you are tied down in a way the Evangelical is not. Anyone who doesn't meet the standards of holiness or zeal required in a particular Evangelical church may either leave or be disinvited to attend. The Evangelical can simply declare that the offender is not a "true Christian." But Catholics cannot disown bad Catholics. A Catholic is stuck with every other Catholic in the world, no matter how badly he behaves.
Besides this disadvantage, the Catholic Church does not even get to claim her own saints on her own behalf. Because they feel any good Christian must in some sense be one of them, Evangelicals will often adopt a Mother Teresa as a sort of honorary Evangelical and try to take credit for her as well. (This, I should make clear, has happened to me in discussions with my Evangelical friends.)
The Evangelical World
Sixth, you must realize that though there is much to admire in Evangelicalism, things are not exactly as they seem. A Catholic will have to note that even the most conservative Evangelicals have capitulated completely to the contraceptive mentality and for the most part to the divorce culture as well. Almost all neglect the sacramental life, and though they all recognize the authority of Scripture, they are enmeshed in intractable disagreements over what it means.
And even one of their own pollsters, George Barna, has found that they are doctrinally a confused body. Over one-third do not believe in Jesus' physical Resurrection, and over half do not believe in the existence of the Holy Spirit. About two in five "born again" Christians believe that "it does not matter what religious faith you follow because all faiths teach similar lessons about life," and from half to three-quarters believe "there is no such thing as absolute truth."
I bring this up not to put down our Evangelical brothers and sisters, who on most issues are our closest allies and often are models of faithfulness. I bring it up only to encourage those who have been left tongue-tied by the sort of argument I've described. Out of charity, you should not be quick to quote these statistics in return but will, I hope, be able to listen with some serenity to someone put down the Catholic Church as inferior to Evangelicalism.
A Sign
Finally, you must see that realism about the Catholic Church implies a surprising proof of her claims. My Evangelical friends think that comparing lax Catholics to lively Evangelicals will make me an Evangelical. Their horror stories may be disturbing to me personally, but not to my faith. They do not make me doubt the claims of the Catholic Church. Fallen men in groups rarely keep a high standard and almost never do so over any length of time.
As a barely Christianized teenager, listening to classmates in my social studies class sneer at Christianity because the Allies and the Germans both sang hymns as they killed each other, I thought that such a thing was only what one would expect. That Christians in 1915 thought that God was on their side did not seem to me to have much to do with the question of whether Jesus of Nazareth was the Son of God who rose from the dead almost nineteen hundred years before.
Laxity seems to me almost inevitable in something as big and as old and as embedded in the culture as the Catholic Church. But I do not suggest that Catholics console themselves with a realistic view of the Catholic Church as a human institution, because in the body of Christ sociological inevitability does not have the last word.
I began to love the Catholic Church in part because she kept reviving when she seemed to be dying and men of the world were writing her obituary. Time after time, when sociologists predicted her death, she exploded into new life. These revivals have always seemed to me a sign of her unique divine life. We are, I think, at the beginning of such a revival even now.
What To Do
But what to do, when a friend tells you Catholic horror stories? It is trying, being treated as a dolt or a fool. I have found the best way to respond is simply to say, gently, "I'm not stupid, you know." This will usually send your friend into retreat — though not always, I've found. While he tries to apologize you can begin to tell him about the one Church whose status is not affected by her members' sins and failings.
And then you can admit that most Catholics are not perfect Catholics and explain that in the Catholic Church you have found all the graces by which God will help you pursue God. You can say that you love and respect your Evangelical brothers and sisters, but only in the Catholic Church are these graces to be found in their full range and power — which is why all the horror stories in the world will not discourage you.
David Mills is the author of Knowing the Real Jesus (Servant/Charis [2001]) and a senior editor of Touchstone: A Magazine of Mere Christianity.
©2002 by Catholic Answers, Inc.
|
They are certainly different, they are certainly infighting, and given the fact that they have respective nomenclatures for their positions, they are certainly denominated from eachother theologically
I do not share that which can only be described as an obsession with Calvinists, namely the desire to define absolutely using human words and understandings the nature of Divine Providence and election, predestination versus Free Will.
Its a mystery, OP. Get over it. Neither of us can or will be able to define the infinite mystery and wisdom of God.
Therefore, the Church of Rome, in her WISDOM, has refused to definitively define that which absolutely cannot be defined by men and mens words and mens finite intellect.
And that is why I flee violently from those who are so PROUD as to think theirs and theirs alone is the correct "soteriological position."
Think about it OP, and a light bulb will explode in your mind and soul.
And then your entire approach to Christian apologetics and evangelization will change and see far greater fruit than what it does now.
LOL. See my last post to you. I flee from your prideful insistance that yours and yours alone is the last word regarding God's Sovereignty and Absolute Predestination
You wanna convert me to being an OP?
Hide that little debate tactic away for a while. Its counterproductive to anyone who has studied the history of the debate over Predestination.
In fact, it proves to me that I never will have to take your claims seriously.
“Who wrote the Bible” is a question that can be definitively answered by examining the biblical texts in light of the external evidences that supports its claims. 2 Timothy 3:16 states that “All scripture is inspired by God….” In 2 Peter 1:20-21, Peter reminds the reader to “know this first of all, that no prophecy of scripture is a matter of one’s own interpretation, … but men moved by the Holy Spirit spoke from God.” The Bible itself tells us that it is God who is the author of His book.
BigMack
Heb. 1:1-2: "In many and various ways God spoke of old to our fathers by the prophets; but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son...".
God's speaking to us by his Son is the culmination of his speaking to mankind and is his greatest and FINAL revelation to mankind.
(The exceptional greatness of the revelation that comes through the Son, far exceeds any revelation in the Old Covenant as noted over and over again in the first and second chapters of Hebrews).
Once the writings of the New Testament apostles and their authorized companions were completed, we have everything that God wants us to know about the life, death, & resurrection of Christ, and its meaning for the lives of believers for all time. In this way Hebrews 1&2 shows us why no more writings can be added to the Bible after the time of the New Testament. The canon is now closed.
It is not accidental that the apostle John wrote that warning (about adding or subtracting to the words of Scripture) in the very last chapter of the very last book of the Bible. [Rev.22:18-19]
For many books, their placement in the canon is of little consequence. But just as Genesis must be placed first (because it tells us of creation), so Revelation must be placed last (because its focus is to tell us of the future and God's new creation). The events described in Revelation are historically subsequent to the events described in the rest of the New Testament and require that Revelation be placed where it is.
Thus, it is not appropriate for us to understand this exceptionally strong warning at the end of Revelation as applying in a secondary way to the whole of Scripture.
Placed here, where it must be placed, the warning forms an appropriate conclusion to the entire canon of Scripture. Along with Heb.1&2 and the history-of-redemption perspective implicit in those verses, this broader application of Rev.23:18-19 also suggests to us that we should expect no more Scripture to be added beyond what we already have.
The warning God gave through John in Rev.22 shows that God himself places supreme value on our having a correct collection of God-breathed writings, no more, no less. He's quite able to see to it that we have them. The closed canon we have today is God's doing. What we have didn't depend on men.
In fact, some of the earliest writers CLEARLY distinguished the difference between what they wrote and the writings of the apostles. In A.D.110, Ignatius said, "I do not order you as did Peter and Paul; THEY WERE APOSTLES, I am a convict; they were free, I am even until now, a slave".
Jesus promised that the Holy Spirit would see to it that the disciples would be able to remember and record without error all that he had said to them when he was with them. [John 14:26; 16:13. See also: 2 Pet.3:2; 1 Cor.2:13; 1 Thess.4:15; and Rev. 22:18-19].
So in compiling the canon of Scripture, the work of the early church was not to bestow divine authority or even ecclesiastical authority upon some merely human writings --- but to RECOGNIZE the divinely authored characteristics of writings that already had such a quality.
This is because the ultimate criterion of canonicity is divine authorship --- (as Jesus promised) --- NOT human or ecclesiastical approval.
I realize that unless one has "the mind of Christ" he will consider the infallible Word of God (Scripture) as "foolishness" and won't be able to discern spiritual truth from error, so what I wrote above is only for those who have "ears to hear".
Becky
What a joke, OP. I can prove all Christians taught contraception was wrong for all time.
You've got nothing to hang this assertion on except the disputed interpretations of one Church Father's writings, Augustine.
I finally realized it, though I've been intimidated by your debate tactics for quite some time.
Your whole claim to orthodoxy just tumbled to the dust. I no longer need to fear that you will come up with an argument I cannot answer.
You have no claim to orthodoxy whatsoever, specifically because you claim to orthodoxy revolves around a single mystery that simply cannot be definitively defined by man.
Well, as an uncompromising Orthodox Protestant, I rarely consider the self-defense actions of Protestants in the Reformation to be "crimes" against Rome. We were under concerted, direct military assault.
On the other hand, I have no such fig leaf with which to dis-avow the blatant and obvious American Protestant attempt to use Government Force to undermine and de-catholicize Roman parish schools by instituting anti-catholic Public Skools in their place. This was a protestant crime against American Roman Catholics, nuff said. (I take some solace in that the break-away faction of Orthodox Presbytery was founded from its inception by libertarians who opposed such social engineering, but I'll still accept my protestant share of the guilt for this Sinful protestant attempt to steal and coerce American Catholics by the power of the state).
By the same token, I am equally content to accept that Modern Protestanism is in the main Wrong and Sinful in its endorsement of contraception. I do currently remain unconvinced of the Roman argument of "onanism" in regard to non-chemical methodologies, and think that even if you are right, NFP is just your own romanistic "fig leaf" to avoid having to tell Parishioners to "bite the bullet" and become pure providentialists. But it seems obvious to me that any chemical contraception in any situation is a violation of the Sixth Commandment -- and I don't need "magisterium" to tell me that, I've got "Decalogue" on my side. In endorsing chemical contraception, American Protestantism has the blood of unborn children on our hands -- and we are silent because we do not want to admit it.
That's about all the conciliatory common-ground I have for you tonight; sorry, I'm fresh out. ;-)
best, OP
Knowing this first, that no prophecy of the scripture is of any private interpretation [2 Pet. 1:20].
“Knowing this first.” Simon Peter says that this is the first thing we are to know. The word knowing is a knowledge that comes, not only from the Word of God, not only from facts that can be ascertained—if you have an honest heart, you can find out whether the facts in the Bible are accurate or not—but these are things which you can know by the Holy Spirit’s making them real to you.
As I have said before, I have long since passed the stage when I wanted the Bible proved to me. When I was young, I did want the Bible proved to me; and if I found that archaeology had dug up a spadeful of dirt somewhere that proved a fact in the Bible, I would clap my hands like a little child and shout, “Wonderful!” I don’t do that anymore. I don’t need a spadeful of turned-up dirt to prove the Bible to me. The Spirit of God Himself has made the Word of God real to my heart. I know there is a transforming power in God’s Word. There is power in the Word of God. This is something that we can know, and the facts, confirmed by the Holy Spirit, make it real to us.
“No prophecy of the scripture is of any private interpretation.” What Peter is saying here is that no portion of the Scripture is to be interpreted apart from other references to the same subject. That is the reason I put up such an objection to the idea of pulling out one little verse of Scripture and building a doctrine on that one verse. If you cannot get the whole body of Scripture to confirm your doctrine, then you had better get a new doctrine, my friend.
I think a good illustration is the difference between riding in a good, solid, four-wheeled wagon and on a unicycle. If you have ever seen a person ride on that one wheel of a unicycle, you have noted that he does a lot of twisting and turning and maneuvering around to stay balanced on that one wheel. In the circus I once saw a man riding way up high on a unicycle, and all of a sudden it went out from under him, and he fell backwards. Believe me, he had a bad fall. And I thought, Oh, how many Christians are like that today. They base what they believe on a single verse.
While it is wonderful to have one marvelous verse of Scripture, if it tells a great truth, there will be at least two or three verses and usually a whole chapter on it somewhere in the Bible. Simon Peter is telling us that no passage of Scripture should be interpreted by itself. We need to confirm it with other Scriptures.
BigMack
You recommended just reading the catechism. Here is the Catechism of the Catholic Church - Vatican website, 6th commandment
dealing with contraception at #2370,
2370 Periodic continence, that is, the methods of birth regulation based on self-observation and the use of infertile periods, is in conformity with the objective criteria of morality.157 These methods respect the bodies of the spouses, encourage tenderness between them, and favor the education of an authentic freedom. In contrast, "every action which, whether in anticipation of the conjugal act, or in its accomplishment, or in the development of its natural consequences, proposes, whether as an end or as a means, to render procreation impossible" is intrinsically evil:158and #2399,Thus the innate language that expresses the total reciprocal self-giving of husband and wife is overlaid, through contraception, by an objectively contradictory language, namely, that of not giving oneself totally to the other. This leads not only to a positive refusal to be open to life but also to a falsification of the inner truth of conjugal love, which is called upon to give itself in personal totality. . . . The difference, both anthropological and moral, between contraception and recourse to the rhythm of the cycle . . . involves in the final analysis two irreconcilable concepts of the human person and of human sexuality.159
2399 The regulation of births represents one of the aspects of responsible fatherhood and motherhood. Legitimate intentions on the part of the spouses do not justify recourse to morally unacceptable means (for example, direct sterilization or contraception).But the basis cited for these two are not bible verses, but footnotes:
157 HV 16. (Humanae vitae)And these (encyclicals, I'm guesssing?) are not provided (at least not on the same Vatican website - though I will search elsewhere - rest assured I'll be quite frustrated if they're not available in english.
158 HV 14. (Humanae vitae)
159 FC 32. (Familiaris consortio)
So how does one study the basis for the RCC teaching on Contraception, as an example since the subject has arisen above?
A concession from OP. I can die in peace tonight.
You're a good man, OP, seriously. You are the sole protestant I have seen admit this on this forum. I like brutal honesty.
I'll restore my profile page HTML tomorrow. There you will find more than you ever wanted to know about the basis for the RCC teaching on contraception.
Cool. I'll look for it. Though you need not rush. I'll ping you if, say a week goes by...
Hey, that is progress! Remember your introductory post on the 1500 post thread about Protestantism only being completed by Catholicism? We've come a long way since then, OP.
We'll have to hash out this "Absolute Predestination = Orthodoxy" versus "Absolute Predestination = denial of mystery and an attempt to define the undefinable and as such is no measure of orthodoxy" in the future.
I'm not willing to concede one inch on this, since reading Fr. Most's analysis of the history of the development of Christian thought regarding predestination and free will.
If I may offer my thoughts. The way I see it is that the difference is that Protestants institutionalize their disagreements (i.e. Lutherans are different from Baptists, who are different from Anglicans, who are different from Presbyterians, who are different from...) and often relegating their differences to "Christian freedom" whereas with Catholics, there is a place where the buck stops.
In regards to the Thomist/Molinist debate, it is still, for Catholics, a valid and open area for discussion and disagreement. If the Church ever definitively ruled on the matter, that would be the definition of Catholic orthodoxy on that matter. Would the other side be disappointed that their view didn't, for lack of a better term, win out in the end? Undoubtedly. Would some reject the teaching of the Church? Sure. Would nearly all submit? Most likely.
On the other hand, if I go to different denominational Protestants and ask, "What does your denomination teach about Baptism?", the different answers I would get would be in direct proportion to the different denominations asked.
On the various issues which there is vigorous dissent in the Catholic Church today(i.e. contraception, women priests, the nature of the Church, etc...), there is still authoritative teaching with which to cling to which will never change, regardless of what the dissenters say. Seriously, who am I to believe, some theologian priest from South Bend or the Pope? I'll go with the Pope every day of the week and twice on Sunday.
The Church Fathers infallibly defined the Absolute character of God's Sovereignty for us. We don't have to question them; they have defined the Faith for the Church.
Remember: Jesus, James, John, Paul, and Peter were Church Fathers themselves. And they unanimously defined Absolute Predestination as the Faith of the Church.
That which God has revealed, it is a form of blasphemy to call a "mystery". It amounts to telling God that He doesn't know what he is talking about.
Therefore, the Church of Rome, in her WISDOM, has refused to definitively define that which absolutely cannot be defined by men and mens words and mens finite intellect.
Balderdash. By the same token, you could say that it is Protestant WISDOM to say that the Decalogue "cannot be defined by men" and men's finite intellect.
But God has defined the Decalogue. Abortifacient chemical contraception is murder, and violates the Law of God. Anyone who says that this subject is a "mystery", therefore, is just looking for an excuse not to teach True Doctrine on the Sixth Commandment.
Same with the unanimous affirmation of the Church Fathers (Jesus, James, John, Paul, and Peter) in support of Absolute Predestination.
What a joke, OP. I can prove all Christians taught contraception was wrong for all time.
Likewise, I can prove that all Christian Authority once taught that Absolute Predestination was the Faith of the Church.
You cannot claim that Jesus, James, John, Peter, and Paul were not Church Fathers, Polycarp. Your OWN CHURCH says that the Bible is the very heart of Tradition, the very fount of the Magisterium. Indeed, for the Early Church, the writings and recorded words of the Church Fathers (Jesus, James, John, Peter, and Paul) were all the Magisterium they had to go by in reading the Old Testament.
And the unanimous teaching of the earliest Church Fathers (Jesus, James, John, Peter, and Paul) was that Absolute Predestination was the Faith of the Church.
If the modern "church" has apostasized therefrom, it is no more legitimate than their Apostacy in questions of Moral Doctrine.
Think about it Polycarp, and a light bulb will explode in your mind and soul.
You've got nothing to hang this assertion on except the disputed interpretations of one Church Father's writings, Augustine.
Augustine came late to the game. Augustine appeared over three centuries after the Church Fathers (Jesus, James, John, Peter, and Paul) had infallibly defined that Absolute Predestination was the Faith and the Magisterial Teaching of the Church. Augustine should be credited at beat for simply upholding the universal teaching of the Church Fathers of the First Century (Jesus, James, John, Peter, and Paul).... nothing more.
The teaching of the Church Fathers of the First Century (Jesus, James, John, Peter, and Paul) on Absolute Predestination is every bit as explicit as the teachings of later Church Fathers on the immorality of abortifacient contraception.
Those who say otherwise just don't like what the Church Fathers have defined as the Faith of the Church... exactly like pro-aborts and contraception-supporters just don't like what the Church Fathers have defined as the faith of the Church.
To call Predestination a "mystery" is as much an insult to the Church Fathers of the First Century, as calling Anti-Contraception a "mystery" is an insult to the Church Fathers of the Second Century.
And these (encyclicals, I'm guesssing?) are not provided (at least not on the same Vatican website - though I will search elsewhere - rest assured I'll be quite frustrated if they're not available in english.
For your edification:
Humanae Vitae
Familiaris Consortio
I remember the bru-hah-hah, but I don't remember the particular post (link it if you like)... but knowing myself I don't imagine that I have moved an inch.
I probably meant every word, and would probably say the same thing today (please do feel free to "refresh my memory" if you want... just for old-times sake).
Natch, I prefer to believe that I have not myself "mellowed", you have just become more accustomed to my confrontational style in theological argumentation -- Theology is the "queen of the sciences" (did Aquinas say that?) and so is always pretty serious stuff... but it's nothing personal, just business.
I don't think I have mellowed, I think that you have gotten accustomed to my confrontational style. But I like that and I compliment you for that. Our Lord Jesus hit the pharisee Nicodemus with all His confrontational guns blazing... and Nicodemus did not take personal offence. He listened, and discussed.
By contrast, the other Pharisees got all riled up in their personal pride, and put Jesus to the execution-stake.
Here is my quick summary:
1)All Barrier methods are condemned by the Onan incident in Genesis 38 (in which Onan was killed by God for coitus interuptus), according to every single Christian theologian who ever commented on it prior to the year 1930.
2)All chemical methods are abortifacient at least part of the time. This violates "Thou Shalt Not Kill."
3)Sterilization is essentially a barrier method. It is also self mutilation, a violation of Natural Law whereby a body organ that was not broken is "fixed" or medically broken. The body is the temple of the Holy Spirit. Self mutilation is wrong.
4)Sex is for babies as well as for love. The two cannot be separated without consequences. To eat food then vomit forth its natural function, just to enjoy the taste without partaking of the nutrition, is an eating disorder called bulimia. To engage in sex then vomit forth the natural function of sex is a sex disorder.
The protestant reformers all called contraception sodomic sin, including Luther and Calvin. In other words, they thought it was as bad as homosexuality. They considered any sexual act deliberately made sterile to be sodomitic sin, whether it was masturbation, contraceptive sex, homosexual sex, sterilized sex, etc. God made our procreative organs for procreation as well as recreation, but only when its in the context of a covenantal marriage. Christian covenantal marriage is always between a woman and a man. Thus fornication, adultery, and homosexuality are all gravely sinful, either because they are non-procreative or exist outside of a Christian marital covenant or both.
That's a thiumbnail sketch, more on my profile page tomorrow.
Oh, NFP is intrinsically neutral. The comparison between NFP and contraception is similar to the comparison between eating disorders like bulimia and dieting.
Unlike bulimia, a dieter does not eat then throw up. A dieter just does not eat as much.
In NFP the couple does not have sex then "throw up" the natural consequences, like bulimia. They simply do not enage in the activity at certain times, like dieting. There is a fundamental difference between dieting and bulimia. There is also a fundamental difference between NFP and contraception.
Of course, NFP can be used selfishly too. But contraception is inherently (in other words, "always by its very nature") sinful. NFP is morally neutral. It is the motivation of the couple for not simply being "providentialist" and letting children come at God's pleasure, but using NFP to limit or space pregnancies that determines whether NFP is used sinfully/selfishly or not.
IMHO, Fr. Most is basically a Molinist who is looking for an excuse to repudiate the universal teaching of the First Century Magisterium (Jesus, James, John, Peter, and Paul) on Absolute Predestination by nit-picking a Fifth-Century defender of that Magisterium, saint Augustine.
In short, he's an Apostate against the First Century Magisterial doctrine of Absolute Predestination.
OP, give me the scriptures, then we'll swap the countering scriptural proof texts, then we'll swap early church fathers proof texts, etc., OK?
Then we'll see whether all Christian Authority once taught that Absolute Predestination was the Faith of the Church, OK?
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.