DavidB:
But the Church admits this date is not established on tradition.
This is not true. No such admission has been made. It is true you can find some Catholic theologians that will make such personal educated guesses. That does not make it an official admission of the Church! And I am I ever thankful for that, as we have educated theologians such as Fr. O’Brien saying all kinds of weird things are Catholic, that are definately not Catholic.
DavidB:
The earliest recorded guess is from Clement who guessed it to be May 20th. The Dec 25th date wasn’t established for 300 years after Clement’s guess. So we can be pretty confident that it wasn’t handed down from the Apostles.
Oh, no, there are earlier recorded mentions of Dec. 25. Yes, Clement guessed and admitted so. He said that there are “people who say…” [this or that date]. So it is an established fact that there has been a long history of speculation about the date.
What I propose is, can the Holy Spirit, amidst the speculation and guesses about the true date, preserve the actual date of the Incarnation? And use the Catholic Church - even with all the fallible people in it - to do that for us?
We Catholics know this is not a stretch. It can be done and has be done.
Then another question is, would the Holy Spirit do that? I say, why would the Holy Spirit not preserve the date of the birth of our Savior?
I also ask: Would the authorities of the Church not seriously pray over such a matter? I say, of course they would!
We have no evidence Liberius made his decsion based on one-upping a pagan holiday. That is pure speculation, though oft-repeated.
DavidB:
If you read Sungenis’s article, the guessers tell you how they came up with the guesses. No one claims to have heard from a long-standing tradition .
Sugenis’ article is good. There are many others. Here is one with some additional information:
doig.net/NTC09.htm
And there are more interestig facts here:
newadvent.org/cathen/03724b.htm
And there’s lots others!
DavidB:
Agreed. Dec 25th has a 1/365 chance of being correct purely from a statistical standpoint.
David
Well, you can do all kinds of things with statistics. Yet these seem to be quite off by anybody’s standards! Wouldn’t you consider the earliest guesses to have more statistical weight than, say, Oct. 10, which no one has mentioned to be a possible date?
I think saying Dec. 25th has a 1/365 chance of being Chistmas is
way off. A very poor statistical guess!
And remember, our Church’s tradition is to make rulings based on tradition and prayer and with the guidance of the Holy Spirit - not “science” alone. And there is no evidence that prayer or tradition were abandonned or unconsidered when officially naming the day that the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.
