There was a large discussion about the election and one person said they did not vote for Romney. A woman then told him that he was therefore no longer a Catholic and will go to hell. long discussion ensued and he finally quoted “judge not, lest ye be judged.” and the woman told him that was an invalid argument for anything. He said those were Scriptural Words! and she then told him that did not matter, that the Catholic Catechism was more important than the Bible and the highest authority we have, that “nothing” was more important than the catechism. He said he follows Jesus’s teachings and God’s Word. She then said the catechism is more important and the only thing he should be following. I was dumbfounded…please tell me she is extreme in her thinking!
He was wrong, but so was she, at least in the way she phrased it.
Catholics do not substitute ‘one book’ for ‘another book’.
Yes indeed, the Bible is very important.
First, the woman who said the man who did not vote for Romney was ‘no longer a Catholic’ is absolutely wrong. Anybody who is a baptized Catholic is a Catholic.
Also, telling a person he will go to hell might be true (but not because the person ‘judged’ it), but is not the most correct way to phrase it. She doesn’t KNOW that the person who voted for Obama is in a state of mortal sin, and indeed, the actual voting might not have been mortal sin. A lot of people are confused and truly do think that voting for a particular candidate, even one whose views are against Catholic ones to an extreme degree in one area, might be permitted under the so-called ‘lesser of two evils’ theory. So, again, the woman is wrong here.
Now here is where the MAN goes wrong. He is correct to say that no human may judge the state of another person’s SOUL, but he is NOT correct in his implication that we cannot judge an ACTION as intrinsically wrong. John Doe who goes out and shots Jane Doe and kills her has committed an intrinsically wrong action (murder) --but if John was blindly drunk at the time, or high on drugs, his culpability is lessened, and that is just one example.
The man goes wrong by what we call ‘cherry picking Scripture’, because Jesus does not simply say, "judge not lest ye be judged’ as though we can never, ever, judge an ACTION. In fact, He tells us that we must be vigilant in DISCERNING and DISCRIMINATING between good and evil. Now, how could we possibly do that if we didn’t ‘judge’ actions as good or evil?
The woman again goes wrong by her statement that this was ‘an invalid argument for anything’. Again, it is certainly correct that we may not judge another’s soul. That is for God. But it is EQUALLY invalid to imply that we may not judge an ACTION as good or evil.
And this is where the woman again goes wrong. It is true that the Catechism (itself DEEPLY Scriptural) is an important tool to help us determine the meaning behind some Scripture (which as we know is NOT something that should be personally interpreted, as stated in 2 Peter). But the Catechism is not something we use ‘in place of’ Scripture. We use it along WITH Scripture and WITH Sacred Tradition and WITH the Magesterium and WITH the Holy Spirit and the Church to guide us and be our authority.
Yes, sadly when some Catholics mean to set things ‘right’ they sometimes err.
And of course, if the man was Catholic, he is right to follow Jesus’ teachings and words, but if he limits himself to the Bible only, he doesn’t follow ALL Jesus’ teachings and words because Scripture itself notes (John) that NOT everything Jesus said OR TAUGHT is in Scripture, and The Bible itself NEVER claims to be the authority for a Christian. So in order to follow Jesus’ teachings and words in the MOST PERFECT way, we need to follow through the Church, because the Church was instituted by Christ to do JUST THAT, because the Church is protected by the Holy Spirit and guaranteed that it will not teach in error on faith and morals, and because the Church can be trusted as an authority on such matters.
We all know that we ourselves, though we have goodness within, are often blinded by our own egos into thinking that ‘OUR way’ is the right way, and we reject God. If we only had as authority ‘what WE thought’, Christianity would fracture into a billion churchs with a membership of ONE, each person interpreting as "God’s word’ only what he or she THOUGHT it MEANT, and nobody having assurance that his idea was the correct one.
I’m sorry that two people who probably are closer in their beliefs than they recognize would be unclear in expressing themselves and further ‘separate’ the unity of believers when a little more clarity AND charity might have led them to a true understanding and greater unity, but hopefully by recognizing the errors on both sides (and let’s be fair, probably neither one truly expressed the entirety of what he/she believed, and probably each person truly cared for the soul of the other person), we will all come together.
