How do you define the word dead?

  • Thread starter Thread starter sk98
  • Start date Start date
Status
Not open for further replies.
sk98 said:
Thanks for the answer.

What is an example of someone who is dead?

Would that be someone who is in hell?
Click to expand...
Exactly… But there are also deadly acts as well, as in “faith without works is dead”… In other words, to have faith while not acting on it accordingly is done so without God. Hence it is dead.
 
When people go to hell it is because they turned away from God. Hell is the complete seperation of God which lasts for eternity.

It is existance without Gods love.
 
The Church is very clear on the meaning of death. “Death can mean decomposition, disintegration, a separation,” Pope John Paul II said in a 1989 address to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences. “It occurs when the spiritual principle which ensures the unity of the organism no longer exercises its functions in and upon the organism, whose elements, left to themselves, disintegrate.”

. no longer living; deprived of life: dead people; dead flowers; dead animals.
2. brain-dead.
3. not endowed with life; inanimate: dead stones.
4. resembling death; deathlike: a dead sleep; a dead faint.
5. bereft of sensation; numb: He was half dead with fright. My leg feels dead.
6. lacking sensitivity of feeling; insensitive: dead to the needs of others.
7. incapable of being emotionally moved; unresponsive: dead to the nuances of the music.
8. (of an emotion) no longer felt; ended; extinguished: a dead passion; dead affections.
9. no longer current or prevalent, as in effect, significance, or practice; obsolete: a dead law; a dead controversy.
10. no longer functioning, operating, or productive: a dead motor; a dead battery.
11. not moving or circulating; stagnant; stale: dead water; dead air.
12. utterly tired; exhausted: They felt dead from the six-hour trip.
13. (of a language) no longer in use as a sole means of oral communication among a people: Latin is a dead language.
14. without vitality, spirit, enthusiasm, or the like: a dead party.
15. lacking the customary activity; dull; inactive: a dead business day.
16. complete; absolute: dead silence; The plan was a dead loss.
17. sudden or abrupt, as the complete stoppage of an action: The bus came to a dead stop.
18. put out; extinguished: a dead cigarette.
19. without resilience or bounce: a dead tennis ball.
20. infertile; barren: dead land.
21. exact; precise: the dead center of a circle.
22. accurate; sure; unerring: a dead shot.
23. direct; straight: a dead line.
24. tasteless or flat, as a beverage: a dead soft drink.
25. flat rather than glossy, bright, or brilliant: The house was painted dead white.
26. without resonance; anechoic: dead sound; a dead wall surface of a recording studio.
27. not fruitful; unproductive: dead capital.
28. Law.deprived of civil rights so that one is in the state of civil death, esp. deprived of the rights of property.
29. Sports.out of play: a dead ball.
30. (of a golf ball) lying so close to the hole as to make holing on the next stroke a virtual certainty.
31. (of type or copy) having been used or rejected.
32. Elect.
a. free from any electric connection to a source of potential difference and from electric charge.
b. not having a potential different from that of the earth.
33. Metall.(of steel)
a. fully killed.
b. unresponsive to heat treatment.
34. (of the mouth of a horse) no longer sensitive to the pressure of a bit.
35. noting any rope in a tackle that does not pass over a pulley or is not rove through a block.
36. dead in the water, completely inactive or inoperable; no longer in action or under consideration: Our plans to expand the business have been dead in the water for the past two months.
37. dead to rights, in the very act of committing a crime, offense, or mistake; red-handed.

—n.
  1. the period of greatest darkness, coldness, etc.: the dead of night; the dead of winter.
  2. the dead,dead persons collectively: Prayers were recited for the dead.
—adv.
  1. absolutely; completely: dead right; dead tired.
  2. with sudden and total stoppage of motion, action, or the like: He stopped dead.
  3. directly; exactly; straight: The island lay dead ahead.
 
I would save it is safe to say the the word dead has different meanings based on the context.
 
sk98 said:
I would save it is safe to say the the word dead has different meanings based on the context.
Click to expand...
You would be right. I presume the context here is within humanity. Dead has both a spiritual and material context. Generally, dead means lacking life.
In a spiritual sense lacking life means lacking God’s life-giving presence in one’s soul.
In the physical sense it means lacking the autonomous ability to maintain one’s physical presence through the basic functions characteristic of life: respiration, circulation, metabolism, nutrition, etc.

But more importantly, what is the point of the question?
 
Philthy said:
You would be right. I presume the context here is within humanity. Dead has both a spiritual and material context. Generally, dead means lacking life.
In a spiritual sense lacking life means lacking God’s life-giving presence in one’s soul.
In the physical sense it means lacking the autonomous ability to maintain one’s physical presence through the basic functions characteristic of life: respiration, circulation, metabolism, nutrition, etc.

But more importantly, what is the point of the question?
Click to expand...
The point is some critics say that Catholics pray to the dead. If there is not a clear definition by the Church of who is being communicated to, than there is no way to say whether the communication is with the dead or living.
 
sk98 said:
The point is some critics say that Catholics pray to the dead. If there is not a clear definition by the Church of who is being communicated to, than there is no way to say whether the communication is with the dead or living.
Click to expand...
Absolutely not, Catholics do not pray TO the dead, we pray FOR the dead. We may ask for the intersession of a Saint, who is not dead, to intercede for us with God to shed light on someone who is dead but it is a mortal sin to pray to the dead.

When we become saints, (we all become saints when we live in heaven) we are not dead.
 
TEPO said:
Absolutely not, Catholics do not pray TO the dead, we pray FOR the dead. We may ask for the intersession of a Saint, who is not dead, to intercede for us with God to shed light on someone who is dead but it is a mortal sin to pray to the dead.
Click to expand...
I’m not sure I’m understanding you.
We do pray to the saints. It is very common terminology among Catholics to speak of praying (for example) to Mary, or St. Joseph, or…" On the back cover of the Missalette our parish uses is the “Prayer to St. Michael”.
In addition to speaking/praying to God, we use the term “pray” to mean speaking to a person who has died (and whom we believe to be either in heaven or purgatory) to seek their intercession, thank them, … We are members together in the Communion of Saints.
 
sk98 said:
What is the offical Catholic definition for dead?
Click to expand...
In the modern world, when somebody dies, its as if they cease to exist. They are spoken of in the past tense, they were alive once, but now they are dead, gone, they cease to exist. We print their obituaries in the newspaper, show old pictures or film of them and talk about OUR memories.
In the ancient world, and in many parts of the world today, this is unknown. To the Hebrews, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob were just not some names in history, they were part of a Covenant that transcended time itself.
God called Himself the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. He is the God of the Living, not of the dead. Hebrew ancestors were NEVER spoken of as some forgotten point of history, but as a LIVING part of the Covenant.
In the early church, this thinking never changed.
When a Christian died in the Early Church, they ‘fell asleep’. They were never spoken of as just ‘dead’.
 
The First Death

Adam & Eve were originally gifted with immortality. Through Original Sin they lost this, and the human race inherits Original Sin. As Romans 6:23 tells us, “The wages of sin is death”. Because we are not immortal, our earthly existence will end in physical death (i.e., death in the biological order of things).

Through Baptism the culpability of Original Sin is removed, but the effects of sin remain. The effects include concupiscence and physical death. This death is the First Death. But for those who accept the gift of salvation offered by Jesus, the First Death is not truly death, but the doorway to eternal life in heaven.

The Second Death

For those who reject the gift of salvation offered by Jesus, the First Death leads to the Second Death, which means hell. “But as for the cowardly, the faithless, the polluted, as for murderers, fornicators, sorcerers, idolaters, and all liars, their lot shall be in the lake that burns with fire and brimstone, which is the second death” (Revelation 21:8).
Zooey said:
And for;) Monty Python fans: “He is an **ex-**parrot!”
Click to expand...
The parrot assures me that he is not dead yet, and is getting better.
 
Nita said:
I’m not sure I’m understanding you.
We do pray to the saints. It is very common terminology among Catholics to speak of praying (for example) to Mary, or St. Joseph, or…" On the back cover of the Missalette our parish uses is the “Prayer to St. Michael”.
In addition to speaking/praying to God, we use the term “pray” to mean speaking to a person who has died (and whom we believe to be either in heaven or purgatory) to seek their intercession, thank them, … We are members together in the Communion of Saints.
Click to expand...
Right, right, we pray to the saints because they have become the brothers and sisters of Jesus, and can interecede for us.

I was just saying that there is no point in praying to the dead, because they have little to no relationship with God. They are bound to satan.

Besides, praying to the dead seems more like witchcraft or like mediums who claim to “talk” to the dead… It’s a sin.
 
sk98 said:
The point is some critics say that Catholics pray to the dead. If there is not a clear definition by the Church of who is being communicated to, than there is no way to say whether the communication is with the dead or living.
Click to expand...
Uhhh, yeah, well that’s the reason context is important! Im not sure anyone would have guessed thats where you were going with the first post…
Lets break down the term, “Catholics pray to the dead”.
First off, when it is said that Catholics “pray to” the dead, what is meant by Catholics is that they ask others to pray for them. It is exactly the same thing as asking for your friends and family to pray for you in virtually every respect. But there is a difference: you can see, hear and interact with your friends and family. Not so with “the dead”. In the sentence in consideration above, the dead refers to those who have passed from their earthly life into Heaven: the Saints. These folks belong to a special group of people who have been officially recognized and declared as citizens of Heaven. Famous examples of such folks are Mary, Joseph, St Augustine, St Francis, St Thomas, etc etc etc. So they are “dead” in the physical sense that their earthly life has ended, but they are alive in the spiritual sense that they are forever united to God in eternity.
 
sk98 said:
What is the offical Catholic definition for dead?
Click to expand...
From the Modern Catholic Dictionary:

DEATH. The cessation of the bodily functions of a human being through the departure of the soul. It is part of revelation that, in the present order of divine providence, death is a punishment for sin. According to the teaching of the Church, death is a consequence of Adam’s sin, as declared by St. Paul: “Sin entered the world through one man, and through sin death” (Romans 5:12). In the case of those justified by grace, death loses its penal character and becomes a mere consequence of sin. All human beings, therefore, are subject to death, although in the case of Christ and his Mother, because of their freedom from sin, death was neither a punishment for sin nor a consequence of sin. Yet, as they were truly human, death was natural for them.

Death is also the end of human probation or testing of one’s loyalty to God. It ends all possibility of merit or demerit.

Properly speaking, only the body dies when separated from its principle of life, which is the soul. However, the Bible speaks of a second death (Revelation 20:6), referring to the souls in hell, who are separated from their principle of supernatural life, which is God.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top