Doubts about Religion

[CarloMagnus]

To start, I don’t know if this belongs here; so if it doesn’t, move it.

As of late I’ve had a lot of doubts…about religion as a whole.

While I love Catholicism, I love history too. And then I wonder, considering that the Bible has its parts that are allegory(Didn’t really happen) and the parts that are historical (Did happen); it makes me question on how one can connect one part that didn’t happen with something that did happen. If we’re all dealing with the imagination of someone from the past, then how do we know if what we do know isn’t a lie?

While I’m already convinced that it’s impossible for creation to occur without a source. That source requires an intellectual being of some kind to produce creation. The Catholic answer is a God. A being that transcends beyond space and time. The atheist lack a response. I read an article on atheism and the creation and beginning of the universe and mankind. Their answer was so unsatisfactory, so lacking, everything built on it was basically to bash on theism. That’s not an answer!

Here! Look at this:
positiveatheism.org/india/gora31.htm#CREATION

They didn’t answer a thing!

Ergo, the lack of answer is no way to live. So I refuse that way of life. It’s contradictory, more so than religion. At least religion maintains a standard of belief of beginning. Even the Protestants defend their literal sense of Genesis.

To try and be fair(regarding the atheists), I am open to the possibilities.

But…for Genesis to be taken literally would simply be easier. I mean, the Knights of the middle ages all believed that…Deus simpliciter est (God simply is). And if God is, then allegory isn’t necessary, is it?

And then there’s the books of the Bible. The Muslims claim that the Bible is corrupt. Yet, isn’t it? With all these interpolations, isn’t the work corrupted with what isn’t true? How can we believe a work that gives authority to the Pope, yet that work is lacking truth. If an event didn’t happen, then can it be trusted?

And more than that, how does this, the Bible, we Catholics, and the Pope expect to spread Catholicism to Asians? Isn’t the existence of the Asians farther of reach than thought? The world of the Asian looks so vastly apart from ours. They’ve lived for ages under Buddhist influence, and they didn’t even need Christianity to stop human sacrificing. They simply saw through it and then moved away from it.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_sacrifice#China

A lot of this troubles me and I feel like I’m spinning in a circle of Catholicism and agnosticism.

Remember when I said I lived historically? While I understand that the Catholic Church made it known that they allow the vernacular in Church, I simply can’t see any connection with that and what the Catholics of the past have fought for. Aren’t we getting rid of several saints if we allow the vernacular? Like St. Gregory the Great and St. Thomas More? While I know that we’re not “getting rid of them”, they’re simply just not being recognized by the Church enough; I mean by the people, enough. I saw a video, I can’t remember which, but it was about a Pope and Vatican II that pretty much stated that they were getting rid of “the bland and unemotional Gregorian chant.”

These sorts of things make me question a lot. And they confuse me. They upset me. And it makes the Church unappealing to me. While to others, it’s great, they have their truth. And the truth says,“This is it.” I can’t help feel disappointed.

If I don’t say anything, I feel like I’ll simply become some Culture Catholic. Calling myself one, but not really doing things as one. And I just couldn’t live that way, I’d be lying to myself.
I need to resolve my doubts. Otherwise, I feel I might drift away.

I hope people could try and make this discussion coherent and accurate. And please, don’t use your emotions when you write. That doesn’t help me, as I’ve already used plenty of emotion to write myself.

-Karl

 

[AndyP2010]

Karl

Well it is a sign of you growing in your faith. Your starting to think more deeply about what you believe and why and it has you thinking. Doubts or at least healthy ones are simply your way of challenging yourself. As to your question about the book of Genesis, remember that the Bible is tackling a subject greater than human or natural history. The subject is God. Next time you read Genesis ask yourself, ’ What truth does this reveal about God?’ rather than ‘Is this historically accurate?’ If your someone who excepts both the truth of faith as well as science, think about how Genesis might read written from a scientific / historical perspective. “And on day 1,293,444,543 God cause a slight course change in the path of asteroid 6J59 Delta Delta that would wipe out the Dinosaurs 300 million year later, all praise his name.” Think about how the gospels would sound without Jesus’ parables. Also sometimes when you read the Bible you should read it more with your heart instead of your brain.

 

[choliks]

-snip-

Remember when I said I lived historically? While I understand that the Catholic Church made it known that they allow the vernacular in Church, I simply can’t see any connection with that and what the Catholics of the past have fought for. Aren’t we getting rid of several saints if we allow the vernacular? Like St. Gregory the Great and St. Thomas More? While I know that we’re not “getting rid of them”, they’re simply just not being recognized by the Church enough; I mean by the people, enough. I saw a video, I can’t remember which, but it was about a Pope and Vatican II that pretty much stated that they were getting rid of “the bland and unemotional Gregorian chant.”

-snip-

-Karl

Yes, the Church allowed the use of the vernacular in the liturgy, but She didn’t abrogate the use of Latin either. The Church actually asks us to still use Latin in the Ordinary Form, and allows us to offer the Traditional Latin Mass or Extraordinary Form of the Mass whenever possible.

I don’t see though the connection between the language used and the Saints. The use of the vernacular does not in anyway “disregard” Saints. Maybe you’re talking about the feast days?

I think it’s best that you don’t watch videos that are clearly propaganda. The Church did not say that Gregorian Chant is bland and unemotional. In fact, the Church holds Gregorian Chant in high esteem.

 

[iohanne]

While I love Catholicism, I love history too. And then I wonder, considering that the Bible has its parts that are allegory(Didn’t really happen) and the parts that are historical (Did happen); it makes me question on how one can connect one part that didn’t happen with something that did happen. If we’re all dealing with the imagination of someone from the past, then how do we know if what we do know isn’t a lie?

But…for Genesis to be taken literally would simply be easier. I mean, the Knights of the middle ages all believed that…Deus simpliciter est (God simply is). And if God is, then allegory isn’t necessary, is it?

Actually, when confronted with the ubiquitous philosophy of the Greeks, many hellenised Jewish intellectuals began to allegorise huge chunks of the Scriptures, including Genesis, long before Jesus Christ. The famous Alexandrian Jew, Philo, was one such Jew - a contemporary of Jesus Christ - who attempted a synthesis of the ancient Israelite religion and what was conceived of as the “superior” Greek platonic thought. Many hellenised Jews felt incredibly embarassed that the philosophical monotheism proposed by Greek thinkers involved a transcendent mathematical unified Deity, utterly separate, utterly perfect, utterly unchangeable, utterly omnipotent, eternal and omniscient whereas the deity in their Scriptures was clearly anthropomorphic in many scenes, emotional, passionate, not-omniscient (because God asks non-rhetorical questions), etc. The earliest Christians were primarily of the lower, uneducated classes and didn’t initially incorporate this system of thought. It was only later when pagan intellectuals converted to Christianity did allegorising begin to occur more much. So we have, in the Christian tradition, people like St. Augustine who were already arguing for a non-literal Genesis.

The advent of modern biblical criticism, though initially viewed with suspicion by Catholics, brought on a revolution in the way we think of the Bible and how we treat and think about Holy Scripture. The papal encyclical *Divino Afflante Spiritu * (you should read it ASAP) reared up a generation of Catholic scholars trained in the modern methods of Biblical hermeneutics and textual criticism to tease out and elucidate a much more coherent Catholic view of the Scriptures. I’d like to try and summarise how Catholic scholars generally approach the Bible:

Revelation doesn’t occur in a vacuum. God is always speaking to a specific community - the people that he has chosen as his own to be a light to other nations. In the OT, that was a specific group of west Semitic peoples: the Hebrew tribes that later developed a monarchy and evolved into the Israelite civilisation and who later became the Jews. Our God is a God of history - He makes himself known in the events of history, in the psyche of those involved, etc. This was unique to the Israelites, the claim that their God acted within history, “I am the LORD your God who took you out of Egypt!” Like all peoples and civilisations, they carried with them a set of mythologies, folklore, legal traditions, cultural customs, religious practices etc. History and archaeology reveals that the earliest Israelites were not purely monotheistic and probably carried on many Semitic mythologies, folklore, legeal traditions, cultural customs and religious practices. It was only later redactors who probably formed part of an aristocratic elite, probably the Levitic priestly caste, who were championing monotheistic Yahwism and who attempted to compile all these pagan Semitic traditions into one coherent worldview (though with significant telltale cracks). In forcing these polytheistic and heontheistic traditions into a monotheistic worldview, they had to slightly change common motifs, symbols and folklore in order to react against the civilisations and societies against them and to decry their pagan polytheism. Thus we have multiple flood myths in several Semitic mythologies but only ours links it to the moral depravity of mankind rather than the whim of cruel and capricious Gods. So, their relationship with that one God became the lens through which they interpreted older traditions and in this way is Holy Scripture deeply, profoundly and uniquely Divinely inspired. No other group of people - except the later New Testament Church - can claim that God is at the heart of their inner life and that His Holy Spirit inspires them throughout history to add to the evolving deposit of Revelation.

It is this sensitivity to the historical background, genre, period and culture of the peoples that we can tease out the messages and eternal truths that are embedded in the Scriptures. No one in the ancient world really attempted to write down “history” in the way that we have it today - in an unbiased, accurate, chronologically accurate way. Histories were primarily didactic - they had a moral and ethical message that was considered far more important than the accurate portrayal of the event. Very few Catholics take Genesis literally but none of us would argue that it isn’t divinely inspired. Yes, it includes common Semitic motifs like talking serpents, trees of life, a flood and a saved man who releases doves and ravens, etc. but the Christian faith doesn’t rest on these culturally-constrained ways of conveying eternal truths that some random Israelite was divinely inspired to express. It is the message that he’s trying to express, not the genre’s form that is Divine Revelation. The Christian faith takes away from Genesis story creatio ex nihilo, the Fall, the promise of redemption, the effects of sin, the importance of “wrestling all night with God”, the faith of Abraham, etc. The Christian faith wouldn’t fall if we somehow magically found out that Abraham wasn’t the historical ancestor of all Jews and Arabs.

John
ICXC NIKA

 

[iohanne]

And then there’s the books of the Bible. The Muslims claim that the Bible is corrupt. Yet, isn’t it? With all these interpolations, isn’t the work corrupted with what isn’t true? How can we believe a work that gives authority to the Pope, yet that work is lacking truth. If an event didn’t happen, then can it be trusted?

Muslims claim that the Bible is corrupt but we have numerous manuscript traditions that show only very slight variations in the actual text. Nowhere is there an NT manuscript variation that can seriously pose a challenge to the claims of Catholic and Orthodox Christianity. Slight variations aren’t at all a problem in the Catholic worldview - we don’t consider Revelation to have plopped out of the sky, perfectly written and made. We don’t believe that God literally possesses His prophets to start chanting out the text perfectly like Muslims do. Slight variations are actually harmonious with the way we view the development of canonical Scripture.

Oh and again, when interpreting our Bible, you have to be sensitive to genre. Is it love poetry? Is it a victory hymn? Is it a liturgical prayer to be said in the Temple? Is this Israelite myth? Is this history? Is it an Israelite legal tradition? Is this an example of west Semitic covenant treaty? And once we identified the genre, we have to understand the cultural constraints of that genre, the most common literary devices employed in that genre, the structure and form that genre requires, etc.

And more than that, how does this, the Bible, we Catholics, and the Pope expect to spread Catholicism to Asians? Isn’t the existence of the Asians farther of reach than thought? The world of the Asian looks so vastly apart from ours. They’ve lived for ages under Buddhist influence, and they didn’t even need Christianity to stop human sacrificing. They simply saw through it and then moved away from it.

The truth isn’t the truth because it’s practical. For example, extra-dimensional mathematics exists and expresses certain axiomatic truths regardless of whether or not a second grader is aware of it or not. Just because people are capable of extraordinary levels of nobility, excellence and morality outside of Christianity that doesn’t make their religion any more true or our religion any more false. God gives His grace to whomever He wills even if for Catholics, His grace is normatively accessed through the sacramental system.

A lot of this troubles me and I feel like I’m spinning in a circle of Catholicism and agnosticism.

“Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God.”

Jesus Christ tells us that the human faculty that is capable of perceiving God is not the educated and knowledgeable intellect capable of defending against atheists. There will always be someone more intelligent than you who is an atheist and can confound you with the most sophisticated arguments and syllogisms. But God is beyond human comprehension or else he would not be God. Jesus Christ tells us that the human faculty that is capable of perceiving God is the heart. Our capacity to love, our capacity to be open to another person is what points to the Triune God - it’s iconic of the Trinity.

Amo ergo credo.

Remember when I said I lived historically? While I understand that the Catholic Church made it known that they allow the vernacular in Church, I simply can’t see any connection with that and what the Catholics of the past have fought for. Aren’t we getting rid of several saints if we allow the vernacular? Like St. Gregory the Great and St. Thomas More? While I know that we’re not “getting rid of them”, they’re simply just not being recognized by the Church enough; I mean by the people, enough. I saw a video, I can’t remember which, but it was about a Pope and Vatican II that pretty much stated that they were getting rid of “the bland and unemotional Gregorian chant.”

Each generation will have its popular saints. Catholics have forgotten the names of literally hundreds of obscure saints that in their time and place were venerated and honoured for decades and in some places, centuries.

Contrary to what many people think, the Latin of the early Church was intelligible to Romance speakers until about the 8th or 9th century. It wasn’t exactly the “vernacular” because it was always a more refined level of the spoken language but the Novus Ordo’s language is nowhere near the level of informal language most often used by my peer group these days.

If I don’t say anything, I feel like I’ll simply become some Culture Catholic. Calling myself one, but not really doing things as one. And I just couldn’t live that way, I’d be lying to myself. I need to resolve my doubts. Otherwise, I feel I might drift away.

Talk to God about your doubts and beg for His mercy and grace to get you through this. Pray the Psalms that are all about lamentation and doubt. Pray some of the lamentations written in the book of Job. You are not alone. Saints have experienced this.

Second, don’t let your faith become too cerebral. Do some volunteer service at a Catholic soup kitchen or some other charitable work. And I would suggest doing an examination of conscience every single night and going to confession very often. And pray for others. When someone is going through a rough time, resolve to pray for them and do it. When you see someone acting out of hatred, violence, cruelty, egotism, selfishness, etc. pray the Jesus prayer as an ejaculatory prayer on their behalf right then and there. Awareness of the brokeness of humanity and my own utter helplessness in my sins, my incapacity to love fully, my egotism, my selfishness, my pride, my folly have done for my faith than any kind of intellectual advancement.

John
ICXC NIKA

 

[CarloMagnus]

Karl

Well it is a sign of you growing in your faith. Your starting to think more deeply about what you believe and why and it has you thinking. Doubts or at least healthy ones are simply your way of challenging yourself. As to your question about the book of Genesis, remember that the Bible is tackling a subject greater than human or natural history. The subject is God. Next time you read Genesis ask yourself, ’ What truth does this reveal about God?’ rather than ‘Is this historically accurate?’ If your someone who excepts both the truth of faith as well as science, think about how Genesis might read written from a scientific / historical perspective. “And on day 1,293,444,543 God cause a slight course change in the path of asteroid 6J59 Delta Delta that would wipe out the Dinosaurs 300 million year later, all praise his name.” Think about how the gospels would sound without Jesus’ parables. Also sometimes when you read the Bible you should read it more with your heart instead of your brain.

I regard faith and intelligence to be connected. Cogito ergo credo. (I think, therefore, I believe). I think that might be what I’m trying to say.

That makes no sense to me. If you mean,“read with emotion” then wouldn’t that get in the way of the brain? We should all maintain our scholarly attitudes on every subject, and our criticisms expressed, to make a thorough evaluation of the text/verse/chapter/times/events, etc.

That might be fine for a Protestant or perhaps even for a regular vernacular Catholic, but I’m a scholar and a very thorough one. Unless the subject bores me, then I won’t have difficulty pushing through it, for it, around it, etc.

Yes, the Church allowed the use of the vernacular in the liturgy, but She didn’t abrogate the use of Latin either. The Church actually asks us to still use Latin in the Ordinary Form, and allows us to offer the Traditional Latin Mass or Extraordinary Form of the Mass whenever possible.

I don’t see though the connection between the language used and the Saints. The use of the vernacular does not in anyway “disregard” Saints. Maybe you’re talking about the feast days?

I think it’s best that you don’t watch videos that are clearly propaganda. The Church did not say that Gregorian Chant is bland and unemotional. In fact, the Church holds Gregorian Chant in high esteem.

I’m aware. I stated that.

The connection I’m pointing out to is that these saints became greatly known for their Latin works. St. Thomas More defended the Latin and opposed the Vernacular. St. Gregory the Great created the Gregorian Chant; which was sung from 609 to 1969 (Vatican II). After that, Churches no longer sing Gregorian Chant. It’s one of the great tragedies of the 20th century.

How can we suddenly say,“But the vernacular is fine.” Without having to affect those of the past? While the Church maintains reverence for the Gregorian Chant, why isn’t most of the other faithful doing the same thing? Churches are sung in the vernacular, preached in the vernacular and done in the vernacular. How can we possibly relate to men like St. More and St. Pope Gregory I when they built what they built around the Latin? With the Latin gone in so many places, isn’t this a step away from them?

The common Catholic knows less and less about the Saints every day. Yet it was from the saints in which we achieve inspiration to be inspired by Rex Iesus Christus. How can we venerate St. Thomas More and St. Gregory the Great if we speak the vernacular, yet they defended the Latin?

It’s contrary. It’s almost contradictory. It’s inconceivable.

While, again, I state that I recognize that the Church has not abrogated the Latin, isn’t allowing the vernacular creating this conflict? St. Thomas More would be rolling in his grave if he saw the world today. We have to recognize these people with what they taught. Yet, today the Church has been teaching vernacular. Doesn’t anyone else see the conflict?

-Karl

 

[CarloMagnus]

Muslims claim that the Bible is corrupt but we have numerous manuscript traditions that show only very slight variations in the actual text. Nowhere is there an NT manuscript variation that can seriously pose a challenge to the claims of Catholic and Orthodox Christianity. Slight variations aren’t at all a problem in the Catholic worldview - we don’t consider Revelation to have plopped out of the sky, perfectly written and made. We don’t believe that God literally possesses His prophets to start chanting out the text perfectly like Muslims do. Slight variations are actually harmonious with the way we view the development of canonical Scripture.

Oh and again, when interpreting our Bible, you have to be sensitive to genre. Is it love poetry? Is it a victory hymn? Is it a liturgical prayer to be said in the Temple? Is this Israelite myth? Is this history? Is it an Israelite legal tradition? Is this an example of west Semitic covenant treaty? And once we identified the genre, we have to understand the cultural constraints of that genre, the most common literary devices employed in that genre, the structure and form that genre requires, etc.

The truth isn’t the truth because it’s practical. For example, extra-dimensional mathematics exists and expresses certain axiomatic truths regardless of whether or not a second grader is aware of it or not. Just because people are capable of extraordinary levels of nobility, excellence and morality outside of Christianity that doesn’t make their religion any more true or our religion any more false. God gives His grace to whomever He wills even if for Catholics, His grace is normatively accessed through the sacramental system.

“Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God.”

Jesus Christ tells us that the human faculty that is capable of perceiving God is not the educated and knowledgeable intellect capable of defending against atheists. There will always be someone more intelligent than you who is an atheist and can confound you with the most sophisticated arguments and syllogisms. But God is beyond human comprehension or else he would not be God. Jesus Christ tells us that the human faculty that is capable of perceiving God is the heart. Our capacity to love, our capacity to be open to another person is what points to the Triune God - it’s iconic of the Trinity.

Amo ergo credo.

Each generation will have its popular saints. Catholics have forgotten the names of literally hundreds of obscure saints that in their time and place were venerated and honoured for decades and in some places, centuries.

Contrary to what many people think, the Latin of the early Church was intelligible to Romance speakers until about the 8th or 9th century. It wasn’t exactly the “vernacular” because it was always a more refined level of the spoken language but the Novus Ordo’s language is nowhere near the level of informal language most often used by my peer group these days.

Talk to God about your doubts and beg for His mercy and grace to get you through this. Pray the Psalms that are all about lamentation and doubt. Pray some of the lamentations written in the book of Job. You are not alone. Saints have experienced this.

Second, don’t let your faith become too cerebral. Do some volunteer service at a Catholic soup kitchen or some other charitable work. And I would suggest doing an examination of conscience every single night and going to confession very often. And pray for others. When someone is going through a rough time, resolve to pray for them and do it. When you see someone acting out of hatred, violence, cruelty, egotism, selfishness, etc. pray the Jesus prayer as an ejaculatory prayer on their behalf right then and there. Awareness of the brokeness of humanity and my own utter helplessness in my sins, my incapacity to love fully, my egotism, my selfishness, my pride, my folly have done for my faith than any kind of intellectual advancement.

John
ICXC NIKA

Thank you for comment to my thread. I will get back to it as soon as I come back from my daily necessities during the day.

-Karl

 

[choliks]

I beg to differ, CM.

I’m aware. I stated that.

The connection I’m pointing out to is that these saints became greatly known for their Latin works. St. Thomas More defended the Latin and opposed the Vernacular. St. Gregory the Great created the Gregorian Chant; which was sung from 609 to 1969 (Vatican II). After that, Churches no longer sing Gregorian Chant. It’s one of the great tragedies of the 20th century.

Churches still sing Gregorian Chant, most especially parishes and chapels that offer the TLM. Religious congregations such as Miles Cristi (mileschristi.org/schola/) even celebrate the OF in Latin with Gregorian Chant.

This is a parish in the Philippines that offer the EF [and OF] regularly: unavocephilippines.blogspot.com/2012/03/visit-of-canon-moreau-to-philippines.html

So, I think it’s a bit of an over generalization to say that Churches don’t sing Gregorian Chant.

IMHO, the reason for Latin not being commonly used nowadays is that a lot of people don’t know the language. Imagine a Korean Catholic who only knows his native tongue. If the Mass is offered in Latin, it would just be empty words and prayers because he doesn’t understand a thing. I will concede though that a lot would be lost in the translation from Latin to Korean.

How can we suddenly say,“But the vernacular is fine.” Without having to affect those of the past? While the Church maintains reverence for the Gregorian Chant, why isn’t most of the other faithful doing the same thing? Churches are sung in the vernacular, preached in the vernacular and done in the vernacular. How can we possibly relate to men like St. More and St. Pope Gregory I when they built what they built around the Latin? With the Latin gone in so many places, isn’t this a step away from them?

The common Catholic knows less and less about the Saints every day. Yet it was from the saints in which we achieve inspiration to be inspired by Rex Iesus Christus. How can we venerate St. Thomas More and St. Gregory the Great if we speak the vernacular, yet they defended the Latin?

It’s contrary. It’s almost contradictory. It’s inconceivable.

While, again, I state that I recognize that the Church has not abrogated the Latin, isn’t allowing the vernacular creating this conflict? St. Thomas More would be rolling in his grave if he saw the world today. We have to recognize these people with what they taught. Yet, today the Church has been teaching vernacular. Doesn’t anyone else see the conflict?

-Karl

As far as I know, St. Thomas More defended the Church from heresies of the reformation (e.g. Responsio ad Lutherum, A Dialogue Concerning Heresies, etc.). He didn’t need to defend Latin because it was not necessary. He used Latin though in some of his personal letters.

St. Gregory the Great was a Latin Father, which means we was an Early Church Father who wrote in Latin. Like St. Thomas More, he didn’t defend the use of Latin because it wasn’t necessary. What he did was revise the Roman Rite.

IMHO, they wouldn’t roll in their graves, because they were faithful Catholics, and they would assent to what the Church says. I would think that St. Gregory the Great would affirm what his successors declared for the Church. At the end of the day, that is what all of us ought to do if we are truly faithful Catholics. Our opinions won’t matter. If we believe in the authority given by Christ to the Church, what she says is all that matters.

Peace.