God saying “take it or leave it” is the God you know in your relationship. The God I know says “take it, please, I love you and I want you with me.”
A distinction without a difference. It would be absurd for the God of the universe to do what He did without love and for the fact that He wants our highest good for any lesser reason. The “take it or leave it” is simply my way of emphasizing the
freedom involved in the offering.
Okay, give me a scenario of “willful ignorance”, and we can analyze it.
I gave you my own case and you were rather silent on the matter.
Willful ignorance is done in ignorance, in my observation.
Willful ignorance is in fact
willed. You are
choosing to ignore something based upon the concern that upon knowing what you are trying to ignore you would then be compelled by that knowledge to change your behavior. You already
know that at the very least you have an obligation
to know,
to not remain ignorant.
Yes there is a somewhat circular aspect, but it ends with this question: “How does one know what one does not know?”
Again,
everyone knows the natural law. That’s the whole point of Romans 1 & 2 is to demonstrate that all men, both the Jews who received the law from God and the Gentiles who have the law “written on their hearts”, so no one has any excuse. “For it is not the hearers of the law who are righteous before God, **but the doers of the law who will be justified.”/B]
Christ has come, so the “times of ignorance” have long since been over in regards to the moral law.
I just got finished reading Introduction to Christianity
by Cardinal Ratzinger, and such heterodoxy is contained in that single book! I am going to start a thread on it sometime soon. It isn’t heterodoxy, though, really. The doctrine is there, and it leaves room for the tone and content of different relationships, as it should.
Given your interpretation of the Catechism I have to wonder if you’re reading it according to his thought. In any case if you’re going to cite him, either quote it or don’t bother bringing it up. You can’t just use to Cardinal Ratzinger’s name as another appeal to authority, turn around and just claim that his words are in my terms “heterodoxy” while conveniently leaving them out!
Or at the least cite the chapter or page so I can have a point of reference.
Okay, present an example of blindness, and we can try to determine whether it is willed or whether it is triggered, automatic. Would you like me to present an example?
Nancy Pelosi, her profession of being “Catholic” and her position on abortion.
I don’t know what you are referring to on these. Please try to be more specific.
I quoted precisely what you said.
and
now. “The yoke is easy, the burden light” does not refer to the afterlife, Amandil. Discipleship is freedom
today. Salvation is a
real freedom in this life on Earth, not just an afterlife phenomenon. It is a way of joy, a way of love, a way of serenity.
Salvation starts when we choose to accept it. Just as it ends when we choose to reject it.
completely free from the burden completely, to the degree that we can? No one I have met. Everyone has some issue that still burdens them, something that has to be resolved. So, yes, I am using “salvation” in a somewhat different context. “On Earth as it is in Heaven”
Free of the burden of temptation or concupiscence? No. But you can still possess salvation while carrying that burden. That is not “degrees of salvation” but
degrees of sanctity.
Now, you are talking about “best”! Yes, it would be best for the individual to correct his ignorance, but then you get back to the question, “How do you know what you don’t know?”
You
know that you have an obligation to know,
not remain like an ostrich with your head in the sand.
I posed the same question to Glenda: Would you allow one of your children to make a very bad choice without knowing why it is a bad choice? Would you say, “Don’t do it because I said so.” and leave it at that, or would you do all you can to make your child aware of the consequences? And I mean really aware, deeply aware, profoundly
aware.
This is a father’s wisdom:
I tell them “You do “X” and “Y” will happen to you. If that’s what you want, have at it.”
They can either see the wisdom and not do it, or they can think that they know more than me and do what they want anyway. And when they come back after reaping the consequences of their stupid decision to do it their way, they realize that humility is the greater part of wisdom.
FYI: this is precisely the way God does it.
You keep missing the point. You keep thinking that a person who has a will bent on sin will listen to reason. “Oh, if they just know the right thing to do, they will choose to do it.” The entire history of Israel in the Old Testament proves this assumption wrong. Israel
knew God’s commandments better than anyone, yet at every turn they disobeyed God and did what they wanted to their own destruction.
Just as with people bent on drug and alcohol addiction, they know that what they’re doing is sinful, they know it’s wrong, they know it’s destroying them;
and they simply don’t care, or they think that they’re at the point where the effort to overcome their sinfulness is too difficult and thus not worth the effort.**
