Fr. Witherup, S.S. on Fundamentalism, What Every Catholic Should Know

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Has anybody gone through that book? The author describes it as what Catholics at the beginning of the 21st century should know about fundamentalism.

I get a hollow feeling about the advice in the book. If it is necessary to know all the things he recommends for Catholics reading the Bible, then there should be other books, nice and short like this one, explaining how to be cautious about other elements of Catholicism, such as the mysticism (and accompanying private revelations) that are so commonplace.

For example, there is a widespread devotion to the Chaplet of Divine Mercy which is apparently commended by the Pope. This is based on a lot of alleged private revelations. How much more cautious should we be about these, when there is so much skepticism about the Bible, which has been around for many centuries?
 
Have you ever read the Diary of Divine Mercy by Saint Faustina?The scripture have been around for a long time but you would be surprised how non-catholics can pick scriptures out of context and lure vulnerable people out of the Church under false pretenses.God Bless
 
Fr Witherup was writing about biblical fundamentalism and contrasting the fundamentalist and Catholic approach to biblical interpretation.

Fr Mitch Pacwa S.J. has written a book called ‘Catholics and the New Age’ which may be of help. The Vatican has also written about the New Age. If you enter ‘Vatican, New Age’ in Google the document should come up.

The devotion to Divine Mercy is an approved private revelation. As a private revelation you are free to have nothing to do with it if you feel that it is not helping your spirituality.
 
Generally the church’s rule is that if a devotion does not contradict church’s teaching, than it is not dangerous. The Divine Mercy chaplet basically asks us to trust in God’s mercy, which can be supported by biblical passages. The diary has some Biblcal references to support instructions that Sr. Faustian believed she recieved, and most of her actiosn, praying and fasitng for the converstion of sinners and souls in purgatory are nothing new.

The idea of trusting in God’s love and mercry is not new. Not only is it in the Bible, but also many private revelations have similar messages. Granted if you are weary of private revelations, than this argument may not provide much consolation for you.

But I have been particularly inspired by the many revelations people have claimed to receive from Jesus in reference to the abundance of tenderness that is available in his heart. I think the fact that so many of these messages are written by mystics who were barelty educated, and had little or no background on prior infmration about previous revelations, but still resemble each other so much in their format (being instructed to write their messages by their confesors or supperiors and writing in the text that they have great hesitation to do so, because they feel it is too proud an act to divulge graces they believed they persoanlly recieved, when they feel so unworthy), and in the nature of the mesages themselves (the Biblical references and church reading they site, how insulting it is to believe that God can not forgive any contrite person who implores him), have to many similarities for all of them to be mere coinicidences and the perogative of mentally unblanced or deliberately devious people. It’s interesting that Fuastina’s confessor died on the same date as Margaret Mary’s confessor, whcih was also the feast of Faustina’s saint name (but that sounds very Kennedy-conspiracyish).

The more widelty accepted messages also seem to come before cataclysmic events that effec the communities of those who receive them. Such as Gertrus of Helfa in the 1200s; Julian of Norwich, Francis of Assisi, Birgitta of Sweden and Catherine of Siena in the 1300s; Theresa of Avila and John of the Cross in the 1500s; Margaret Mary in the 1600s; Fatima before the first World War, and Faustina before the second World War in Poland. I also think it is amazing how the images of the heart radiating mercy and love are have changed in visual representation from the throbbing heart of thorns, to a heart radiating beams…very modern age representation…like laser beams, now that manipulated light is more in vogue than it was during the ages of candles and gas.

Sorry to have gone on so long about this, but I am having a rough time in my life, so I decided to read many of the mytics who claimed to recieve private revelations from God, to learn of his messages of divine love, and to see what adivce he gave his visionaries, and what what adivice they gave others in their writings, in order to see what words of advice I might find for myself.
 
Oh, I accept private inspiration, and I think I believe it is obvious that many people have many insights, particularly regarding the meanings of scripture.

To expand on my original thought: Fr. Witherup offers several guidelines for Catholics reading scripture:
the “Do’s”]
  1. Read the Bible, even every day, to learn its contents
  2. Learn to read the Bible in context, both locally to the verse in question and to the whole Bible
  3. Learn the Church’s tradition
  4. Learn to express your faith to others.
    the “Don’ts”]
  5. Be open to multiple interpretations of scripture even among Catholics; be open to experts who have studied scripture
  6. Be respectful of fundamentalists, even though we don’t totally agree with them; don’t “ridicule” them
Witherup’s book runs around 90 pages. The first part of the book deals with stating the Catholic Church’s opposition to Fundamentalism, particularly the literal interpretation of scripture.

Among the so-called experts even in the Catholic Church, there’s a lot of skepticism about the historical accuracy of both the Old and New Testaments. (I keep saying some should tell me what pages to tear out of my Bible. And, after eleven years of saying that, I now add, which “experts” should we listen to. Historical criticism simply shreds the Bible. There’s nothing supernatural, to begin with, and not much historically accurate either, in their opinion.

My point in this thread, is to discuss Witherup’s condemnation of Fundamentalism. Does anyone else see the problem in his guidelines? It’s quite historic for our Church to be so officially skeptical about the Bible.

Why aren’t we similarly skeptical about private revelations, which have so much authenticity to them (ie, not approved by councils, for example)? Does anyone else notice that the proponents of mysticism in the Catholic Church sound very fundamentalist?
 
I may be under the wrong impression, but I thought that private revelations undergo much, much scrutiny by the Church before they are “officially approved.”
 
Wow.

I am pretty smart I think and I have a friend. One friend is very smart and we talk about problems in the church and stuff. He threw out the word Fundmentlism and I did research. It seemed like it was very based on ecomunication between all religons and it seemed like it had a very hidden agenda. In that they are very generic and non descriptive of their Goals.

I for one am very against global religons, sepicially with Islam. I think it is pushing us towards the New World Order. I like the Pope but I think it is disrespectful to us he kissed the Quran. If I Wanted to join a kooky global unified crackpot religon I would goto the Unitarian church.

I also am pretty good at discerning things. I love the whole thing with divine mercy. Except with the first line of the Chaplet. Lord I offer you the divinity of CHrists Flesh and Blood.

Why would I offer God his sons Sacrifice? Its nothing less than returning a CHristmas Gift. If Jesus Gave his life for me. Than I can only accept it. God needs no sacrifice, but I can accept it at the very least, to ease my suffering.

A great saint said life is full of woes and too short.
 
I recommend this book “Catholocism and Fundamentalism” by Karl Keating.

It is about the attack on “Romanist” by the “Bible Christians”. He names names and devotes about 20 short and to the point chapters, to his Apologetics and he may be the very best at this.

I bought it at Amazon for about $17.00.It has 360 pages. I love it.
 
I greatly enjoyed that book. I think that was the first apologetics-type book I ever read. Supposedly it brought some sort of renaissance to the Catholic apologetic movement.
 
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