Problem with the Catechism?

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PJM said:
Very good:)

But what I think these passages are relaying is that:

1 God has a precise plan for both the Universe and creation of humanity

2 The Universe exist that man MIGHT discover God through its exostence

3 Man alone [who also alone emulates our GOD] is able to discern this

Isaiah 43: 7 &21

[7] every one who is called by my name,
whom I created for my glory,
whom I formed and made."

[21] the people whom I formed for myself
that they might declare my praise.

4 God remains in charge

God Bless
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Thank you all valid points.
 
Arnaud said:
I think there are in the Scriptures scientific, historical… errors, but they’re there used, assumed as vessel, vehicle, to pass a message, and as such are part of the inspiration, though incidental to it.
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Would not quite put it that way. It is not the poets intention to write history or science etc. What is not asserted is not asserted. What is a way of speech etc is not error.

Catechism:

110 In order to discover the sacred authors’ intention, the reader must take into account the conditions of their time and culture, the literary genres in use at that time, and the modes of feeling, speaking and narrating then current. "For the fact is that truth is differently presented and expressed in the various types of historical writing, in prophetical and poetical texts, and in other forms of literary expression."76

scborromeo.org/ccc/p1s1c2a3.htm#105
 
Bookcat said:
Would not quite put it that way. It is not the poets intention to write history or science etc. What is not asserted is not asserted. What is a way of speech etc is not error.

Catechism:

110 In order to discover the sacred authors’ intention, the reader must take into account the conditions of their time and culture, the literary genres in use at that time, and the modes of feeling, speaking and narrating then current. "For the fact is that truth is differently presented and expressed in the various types of historical writing, in prophetical and poetical texts, and in other forms of literary expression."76

scborromeo.org/ccc/p1s1c2a3.htm#105
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*Now it came to pass, when men began to multiply on the face of the earth, and daughters were born to them, 2 that the sons of God saw the daughters of men, that they were beautiful; and they took wives for themselves of all whom they chose.

3 And the Lord said, “My Spirit shall not strive with man forever, for he is indeed flesh; yet his days shall be one hundred and twenty years.” 4 There were giants on the earth in those days, and also afterward, when the sons of God came in to the daughters of men and they bore children to them. Those were the mighty men who were of old, men of renown.

5 Then the Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. 6 And the Lord was sorry that He had made man on the earth, and He was grieved in His heart. 7 So the Lord said, “I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the earth, both man and beast, creeping thing and birds of the air, for I am sorry that I have made them.” 8 But Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord.

Gn 6: 1-8.*

I don’t know for you, but I have great difficulty and find it rather unreasonable to consider the above history. Yet it is written as though it tells the past. Exegetes would call that a myth or legend. And by definition a myth either isn’t historical at all or is only partly historical in the sense of having a seed of history underlying it. Hence what I said about Scriptures having scientific, historical inexactitudes.

The author gives a reason as to why there was the flood. It was the Divine justice in reason of the exceeding wickedness on earth at the time. God was fed up and His patience had reached its limits. But Noah because he was righteous and not perverted was to be spared, together with his close family says the following chapter. And why was the earth then so filled with corruption? The author suggests that part of the reason, apparently an important factor, was that some beings (heavenly beings? angels?) called ‘sons of God’ did evil by taking women as wives and had children by them, referred to as ‘nephilim’ often translated ‘giants’, and these would have exercised a bad influence.

The story can tell us certain things, about God, man and evil. But history, I doubt it is.
 
Bookcat said:
Would not quite put it that way. It is not the poets intention to write history or science etc. What is not asserted is not asserted. What is a way of speech etc is not error.

Catechism:

110 In order to discover the sacred authors’ intention, the reader must take into account the conditions of their time and culture, the literary genres in use at that time, and the modes of feeling, speaking and narrating then current. "For the fact is that truth is differently presented and expressed in the various types of historical writing, in prophetical and poetical texts, and in other forms of literary expression."76

scborromeo.org/ccc/p1s1c2a3.htm#105
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Catholic Answers main site can have more for you on this subject …and your particular questions I imagine too…
And prescending from the exact comment there you made - it is important to note that it is a question of what is actually being* asserted* by the human author in this or that text.
 
Bookcat said:
And prescending from the exact comment there you made - it is important to note that it is a question of what is actually being* asserted* by the human author in this or that text.
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What do you mean being asserted, the assertion; could you tell me what you have in mind? Thanks.
 
Richca said:
Yes, I believe that the realm of the spirits of the dead Christ went too was under, in, or in the heart of the earth. That is what Jesus said as you quote above. Who am I to contradict or disbelieve Jesus, the God-Man who is the Way, the Truth, and the Life? It is an article of the faith that Jesus descended into hell (Apostles Creed). Jesus “descended into the lower parts of the earth” (Eph. 4:9). I cannot doubt this without doubting the faith of the Catholic Church and the word of God, i.e., Holy Scripture. I do not presume nor does the Church presume to know more about God, the world, and truth than the inspired biblical writers themselves or Jesus. Because the ancients believed it and we moderns are ‘smarter’ than them is no argument nor has it been disproved that Christ did not descend into the lower regions of the earth. “The grass withers, the flower fades; but the word of our God will stand forever” (Isaiah 40:8). “Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away” (Matt. 24:35).
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Arnaud said:
I think there are in the Scriptures scientific, historical… errors, but they’re there used, assumed as vessel, vehicle, to pass a message, and as such are part of the inspiration, though incidental to it.
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The actual teaching of the Church is that since God is the principle author of Holy Scripture, Holy Scripture is without error of any kind whatever whether of a religious, science, or historical nature. To admit error to Holy Scripture is to admit error to God which is not only inadmissible but impossible.

From PROVIDENTISSIMUS DEUS
ENCYCLICAL OF POPE LEO XIII
ON THE STUDY OF HOLY SCRIPTURE

But it is absolutely wrong and forbidden, either to narrow inspiration to certain parts only of Holy Scripture, or to admit that the sacred writer has erred…For all the books which the Church receives as sacred and canonical, are written wholly and entirely, with all their parts, at the dictation of the Holy Ghost; and so far is it from being possible that any error can co-exist with inspiration, that inspiration not only is essentially incompatible with error, but excludes and rejects it as absolutely and necessarily as it is impossible that God Himself, the supreme Truth, can utter that which is not true. This is the ancient and unchanging faith of the Church, solemnly defined in the Councils of Florence and of Trent, and finally confirmed and more expressly formulated by the Council of the Vatican [Vatican I]…

It follows that those who maintain that an error is possible in any genuine passage of the sacred writings, either pervert the Catholic notion of inspiration, or make God the author of such error.

POPE BENEDICT XV in the encyclical SPIRITUS PARACLITUS on St Jerome reiterated the teaching of Pope Leo XIII. POPE PIUS XII in the encyclical DIVINO AFFLANTE SPIRITU follows his predeccessors and reiterates what Pope Leo XIII said in the above encyclical that freedom of error of whatever kind in Holy Scripture is solemnly defined by the teaching and councils of the Church. After quoting Vatican I, Pope Pius XII says “… this solemn definition of Catholic doctrine, by which such divine authority is claimed for the “entire books with all their parts” as to secure freedom from any error whatsoever”.

How we are to interpret difficult passages of Scripture or genres or what appears to be ‘scientific error’ , for example, the sun rising or setting (which we still use today), the above encyclicals go on to explain. I recommend reading the above encyclicals to which Vatican II points us too and more in the dogmatic constitution on Divine Revelation.

I also recommend from Fr. William Most “Free From All Error: Authorship, Inerrancy, Historicity of Scripture, Church Teaching, and Modern Scripture Scholars” which can be found online at the following link:

catholicculture.org/culture/library/most/getwork.cfm?worknum=216

“And if in these Books I meet anything which seems contrary to truth, I shall not hesitate to conclude either that the text is faulty, or that the translator has not expressed the meaning of the passage, or that I myself do not understand.” (St Augustine)
 
I take note of everything that you said, but why, then, does the document titled ‘The interpretation of the Bible in the Church’, presented and published by the Pontifical Biblical Commission in 1994, which I linked in a comment before, say this:

*…] It (fundamentalism) refuses to admit that the inspired word of God has been expressed in human language and that this word has been expressed, under divine inspiration, by human authors possessed of limited capacities and resources. For this reason, it tends to treat the biblical text as if it had been dictated word for word by the Spirit. It fails to recognize that the word of God has been formulated in language and expression conditioned by various periods. It pays no attention to the literary forms and to the human ways of thinking to be found in the biblical texts, many of which are the result of a process extending over long periods of time and bearing the mark of very diverse historical situations. …]

Fundamentalism likewise tends to adopt very narrow points of view. It accepts the literal reality of an ancient, out-of-date cosmology simply because it is found expressed in the Bible; this blocks any dialogue with a broader way of seeing the relationship between culture and faith. …]

Without saying as much in so many words, fundamentalism actually invites people to a kind of intellectual suicide. It injects into life a false certitude, for it unwittingly confuses the divine substance of the biblical message with what are in fact its human limitations.*

Scroll down and read the whole chapter F. Fundamentalist Interpretation >> ewtn.com/library/CURIA/PBCINTER.HTM#3

It’s very much evident that there are things in the Scriptures that do not match with modern scientific knowledge.

Take just this exemple:

…] Then God said, “Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters.” Thus God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament; and it was so. And God called the firmament Heaven. So the evening and the morning were the second day. …] Gn 1: 6-8.

The Hebrews back then, as the peoples around them, thought that the sky was a solid vault having an ocean of water above it >> wp.patheos.com.s3.amazonaws.com/blogs/exploringourmatrix/files/2012/11/Ancient-Hebrew-view-of-universe.png

Listen to this presentation >> sites.ualberta.ca/~dlamoure/wlas3/index.html

Pope John Paul II knew this and that’s why he once said during a seminar on cosmology and physics (I think at the Pontifical Academy Of Science):

…] Cosmogony and cosmology have always aroused great interest among peoples and religions. The Bible itself speaks to us of the origin of the universe and its make-up, not in order to provide us with a scientific treatise, but in order to state the correct relationships of man with God and with the universe. Sacred Scripture wishes simply to declare that the world was created by God, and in order to teach this truth it expresses itself in the terms of the cosmology in use at the time of the writer. The Sacred Book likewise wishes to tell men that the world was not created as the seat of the gods, as was taught by other cosmogonies and cosmologies, but was rather created for the service of man and the glory of God. Any other teaching about the origin and make-up of the universe is alien to the intentions of the Bible, which does not wish to teach how heaven was made but how one goes to heaven. …] ewtn.com/library/PAPALDOC/JP2COSM.HTM

So there must be other ways to look at the encyclicals which you quoted some extracts from. What they said must have been clarified or improved or I don’t know…

Recently I’ve heard that the Pontifical Biblical Commission published not long time ago a new document titled ‘The Inspiration and Truth of Sacred Scripture’ amazon.com/Inspiration-Truth-Sacred-Scripture-Salvation/dp/0814649033/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1479696574&sr=1-1&keywords=The+Inspiration+and+Truth+of+Sacred+Scripture%3A+The+Word+that+Comes+from+God+and+Speaks+of+God+for+the+Salvation+of+the+World I ordered it and I’m waiting to receive it in 2 or 3 weeks.
 
I did a “find on this page” word search for the word “entropy” on all three pages of this string and did not find it.
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Originally Posted by Arnaud View Post
It’s very much evident that there are things in the Scriptures that do not match with modern scientific knowledge.
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This “entropy” is the word that modern scientific knowlege uses to define what Amaud is referring.

CCC400 describes this as quote: “to its bondage of decay”.

Yes this is conventional science from the past 15000 years to date.

Now on-the-other-hand what if we being creationalists somehow believed in a form of ‘coming to order’ a kind of negative entropy, maybe negentropy a true form of creation and healing.

In order to contrive such a mechanism you would need to employ some sort of phase conjugate technology, which contemporary science does recognize speaking in the technical sense.

They, the scientists then go on to weaponize this “ancient alien” hence ‘before Adam’, hence ‘before the fall’ hence ‘Atlantean’ technology in the skunk works of their black ops.

Trouble is “negentropy” is not pure techo-phenom but primarily intelligence.
 
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