Thank you. Neither do I. However, it is not obvious to me that “Catholics have been doing it to everyone else”. Do you have something (name removed by moderator)articular in mind here?
Sure. Only within the past 150 years or so has there been real recognition that someone could innocently err. Up until then it was presumed that all non-Catholics were so due to an evil disposition and psychological desire to rebel against God. Even at Vatican I someone attempted to say that there were Protestants who really loved Jesus, and he was completely drowned out with cries of “Heresy!!”
Yes. I understand this instinctive reaction, I used to share it. But if you accept basic Catholic notions like “we infact do not belong to ourselves” (which flies in the face of the zeitgeist, especially the feminist one which gave us abortion), and which in turn stems from the notion that the pot doesn’t tell the potter what to do; and if you further trust that God is the embodiment of all perfection, which includes both his mercy and his justice, then the fall becomes much easier to accept and understand.
I’ve read all rationalizations for this. They all fail. They all amount to, God did it, so it must be good, which is equivalent to saying, might makes right. Any loving human parent would have behaved differently.
But a challenge to God’s perfection cannot go unnoticed, for justice is good and must be served. If we trust God this becomes easy to accept.
Yes, but what is the definition of justice? The definition of justice is giving someone what he deserves, but it is also fulfilled by giving him more than he deserves. God didn’t have to punish the entire human race for the sin of one man. He wasn’t obliged to do so. He didn’t have to wait thousands of years to send a Redeemer. He could have done that, right on the spot. And, He could have cured men from the effects of original sin. If He could do that for the Blessed Virgin, He could do it for anyone. The exsultet says, happy fault. I deny it.
And BTW what if we don’t trust God? What evidence do we really have that He is really all that concerned about men? If He were so concerned, why aren’t there 10^9 more graces out there then there are? Justice cannot be brought into the issue here, since the Crucifixion and Death of Jesus are supposed to have an infinite value, such that there could be 10^100 more graces without any insult at all to justice. If He is withholding His grace for the mere purpose of creating “vessels of wrath” so that His justice can be “glorified” that to me is the action of a megalomaniac. I simply deny that this is really all that loving of a God.
Understand that mercy and justice are codependent notions. Mercy is meaningless apart from justice. Love is meaningless apart from freedom. (And by the way the fact that we even have awareness of such concepts is evidence that we are distinct from the beasts).
I understand all that, as concepts.
Your point is well taken. It is a problem perhaps without a clear, definitive answer.
No argument there!
Modernists, if they are honest and choose to argue from the perspective of the magisterium would have to admit that if the teachings of Vatican II are infallible, then implicitly, the prior teachings of the Church, for some 1933 years, were wrong. This is just as illogical as the position of which you accuse me.
Unless, doctrines are evolving, just like life forms. Under that supposition Modernism isn’t illogical at all - it involves no internal contradiction.
And there’s evidence for doctrines evolving even prior to Vatican II, on issues like geocentrism, usury, and no salvation outside the Church. Of course Vatican II would have to represent a major saltational or punctuated equilibrium event.
However the problem is easier for traditionalists as the magisterium has anticipated it and has spoken to it… So If we have to decide, where is the church, on the evidence, and with reliance on the magisterium (since the teachings of tradition and those of Vatican II are often diametrically opposed) the traditionalist case is cogent.
That is a good argument, but there would be a Church with no visible hierarchy, which also contradicts Catholic teaching. There is now no one in the Church (under the sedevacantist thesis) who has any jurisdiction at all. But there has to be a visible hierarchy in the Church; the Church is not an invisible, inchoate mere spiritual organization, according to Catholic teaching. The theologians claimed the means to deal with a heretical Pope would not be lacking. But they were. There is no Catholic today who has not denied some doctrine of the Church, at least implicitly. This has been forced by circumstance.
Wow! Where did this come from? You’re usually so logical, terrific in argument. How did my explanation of love’s being necassarily linked to freewill get turned into a rape? What ax is being ground here?
It’s an analogy, or rather a demonstration of how your analogy does worse than limp, it’s totally crippled. A love coerced under threat can hardly be a “freely” given love even though free will is involved. Yet God can coerce our love under threat, and that counts as requesting a “freely” given love. If you do not love Me, He says, I will punish you by extreme torture for all eternity.
All this is admittedly way off topic. Perhaps we should start another thread.
