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Tantum_ergo
Guest
You need to be accurate, St.A.
There are two types of abortion. You can’t just say "abortion’; there is a distinction between a spontaneous abortion and a therapeutic abortion.
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There are two types of abortion. You can’t just say "abortion’; there is a distinction between a spontaneous abortion and a therapeutic abortion.
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Tantum_ergo
Guest
If necessary, I’d be willing to bring this to the moderators. There is a difference between spontaneous abortion and therapeutic abortion. One cannot simply use the word ‘abortion’ and have it refer to ‘both’ without making it clear that the two kinds exist, because most people do NOT have the medical knowledge that the word is (medically speaking) used to refer to natural miscarriage (spontaneous abortion) and to deliberate outside death of the fetus (therapeutic abortion.)
The average person hears ‘abortion’ and equates it ONLY with therapeutic abortion (deliberate outside death). It is not fair to use ONLY the word ‘abortion’ and have it mean ‘both.’
That’s why most people use the word miscarriage in place of ‘spontaneous abortion’. It makes things clearer. It’s one word (instead of two) and it keeps people from becoming confused. . .especially because the word ‘therapeutic’ is considered to be a ‘good’ thing but certainly in the context of deliberate abortion is BAD!
The average person hears ‘abortion’ and equates it ONLY with therapeutic abortion (deliberate outside death). It is not fair to use ONLY the word ‘abortion’ and have it mean ‘both.’
That’s why most people use the word miscarriage in place of ‘spontaneous abortion’. It makes things clearer. It’s one word (instead of two) and it keeps people from becoming confused. . .especially because the word ‘therapeutic’ is considered to be a ‘good’ thing but certainly in the context of deliberate abortion is BAD!
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StAnastasia
Guest
There are many on CAF who would disagree with you, who argue that God does indeed abort pregnancies and confer childhood diseases, either to chastise us or to test our strength of character.
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StAnastasia
Guest
Buffalo asked whether there was a right to euthanasia. That had not been in contention.
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buffalo
Guest
Chastisement stems from the fall. Death, sickness, spontaneous abortions all stem from the fall.
Chastisement is a result of our own free-will choices and lack of prayer and faith.
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StAnastasia
Guest
That’s curious, as death, sickness, spontaneous abortions occurred for 350 million years before the “Fall.” If they *antedated *the “Fall,” how do they stem from it?
If God is chastising the faithless and unprayerful for our lack of faith by terminating pregnancies, isn’t that using those babies only as a means to an end? Immanuel Kant would view that as a violation of the Categorical Imperative: “Always act such that you treat another rational being as an end in itself, rather than as a means only.” Of course, God could have other reasons for killing fetuses in utero, unrelated to our chastisement; the chastisement would be merely an intended side effect. These are intriguing theological questions indeed!
StAnastasia
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buffalo
Guest
You must learn the Catechism.
399 Scripture portrays the tragic consequences of this first disobedience. Adam and Eve immediately lose the grace of original holiness.280 They become afraid of the God of whom they have conceived a distorted image - that of a God jealous of his prerogatives.281
400 The harmony in which they had found themselves, thanks to original justice, is now destroyed: the control of the soul’s spiritual faculties over the body is shattered; the union of man and woman becomes subject to tensions, their relations henceforth marked by lust and domination.282 **Harmony with creation is broken: visible creation has become alien and hostile to man.283 Because of man, creation is now subject “to its bondage to decay”.284 Finally, the consequence explicitly foretold for this disobedience will come true: man will “return to the ground”,285 for out of it he was taken. Death makes its entrance into human history.286 **
401 After that first sin, the world is virtually inundated by sin There is Cain’s murder of his brother Abel and the universal corruption which follows in the wake of sin. Likewise, sin frequently manifests itself in the history of Israel, especially as infidelity to the God of the Covenant and as transgression of the Law of Moses. And even after Christ’s atonement, sin raises its head in countless ways among Christians.287 Scripture and the Church’s Tradition continually recall the presence and universality of sin in man’s history:
What Revelation makes known to us is confirmed by our own experience. For when man looks into his own heart he finds that he is drawn towards what is wrong and sunk in many evils which cannot come from his good creator. Often refusing to acknowledge God as his source, man has also upset the relationship which should link him to his last end, and at the same time he has broken the right order that should reign within himself as well as between himself and other men and all creatures.288
The consequences of Adam’s sin for humanity
402 All men are implicated in Adam’s sin, as St. Paul affirms: “By one man’s disobedience many (that is, all men) were made sinners”: "sin came into the world through one man and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all men sinned."289 The Apostle contrasts the universality of sin and death with the universality of salvation in Christ. "Then as one man’s trespass led to condemnation for all men, so one man’s act of righteousness leads to acquittal and life for all men."290
403 Following St. Paul, the Church has always taught that the overwhelming misery which oppresses men and their inclination towards evil and death cannot be understood apart from their connection with Adam’s sin and the fact that he has transmitted to us a sin with which we are all born afflicted, a sin which is the “death of the soul”.291 Because of this certainty of faith, the Church baptizes for the remission of sins even tiny infants who have not committed personal sin.292
404 How did the sin of Adam become the sin of all his descendants? The whole human race is in Adam “as one body of one man”.293 By this “unity of the human race” all men are implicated in Adam’s sin, as all are implicated in Christ’s justice. Still, the transmission of original sin is a mystery that we cannot fully understand. But we do know by Revelation that Adam had received original holiness and justice not for himself alone, but for all human nature. By yielding to the tempter, Adam and Eve committed a personal sin, but this sin affected the human nature that they would then transmit in a fallen state.294 It is a sin which will be transmitted by propagation to all mankind, that is, by the transmission of a human nature deprived of original holiness and justice. And that is why original sin is called “sin” only in an analogical sense: it is a sin “contracted” and not “committed” - a state and not an act.
405 Although it is proper to each individual,295 original sin does not have the character of a personal fault in any of Adam’s descendants. It is a deprivation of original holiness and justice, but human nature has not been totally corrupted: it is wounded in the natural powers proper to it, subject to ignorance, suffering and the dominion of death, and inclined to sin - an inclination to evil that is called “concupiscence”. Baptism, by imparting the life of Christ’s grace, erases original sin and turns a man back towards God, but the consequences for nature, weakened and inclined to evil, persist in man and summon him to spiritual battle.
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buffalo
Guest
406 The Church’s teaching on the transmission of original sin was articulated more precisely in the fifth century, especially under the impulse of St. Augustine’s reflections against Pelagianism, and in the sixteenth century, in opposition to the Protestant Reformation. Pelagius held that man could, by the natural power of free will and without the necessary help of God’s grace, lead a morally good life; he thus reduced the influence of Adam’s fault to bad example. The first Protestant reformers, on the contrary, taught that original sin has radically perverted man and destroyed his freedom; they identified the sin inherited by each man with the tendency to evil (concupiscentia), which would be insurmountable. The Church pronounced on the meaning of the data of Revelation on original sin especially at the second Council of Orange (529)296 and at the Council of Trent (1546).297
A hard battle. . .
407 The doctrine of original sin, closely connected with that of redemption by Christ, provides lucid discernment of man’s situation and activity in the world. **By our first parents’ sin, the devil has acquired a certain domination over man, even though man remains free. Original sin entails “captivity under the power of him who thenceforth had the power of death, that is, the devil”.298 Ignorance of the fact that man has a wounded nature inclined to evil gives rise to serious errors in the areas of education, politics, social action299 and morals. **
408 The consequences of original sin and of all men’s personal sins put the world as a whole in the sinful condition aptly described in St. John’s expression, “the sin of the world”.300 This expression can also refer to the negative influence exerted on people by communal situations and social structures that are the fruit of men’s sins.301
409 This dramatic situation of "the whole world [which] is in the power of the evil one"302 makes man’s life a battle:
The whole of man’s history has been the story of dour combat with the powers of evil, stretching, so our Lord tells us, from the very dawn of history until the last day. Finding himself in the midst of the battlefield man has to struggle to do what is right, and it is at great cost to himself, and aided by God’s grace, that he succeeds in achieving his own inner integrity.303
**IV. “YOU DID NOT ABANDON HIM TO THE POWER OF DEATH” **
410 After his fall, man was not abandoned by God. On the contrary, God calls him and in a mysterious way heralds the coming victory over evil and his restoration from his fall.304 This passage in Genesis is called the *Protoevangelium *(“first gospel”): the first announcement of the Messiah and Redeemer, of a battle between the serpent and the Woman, and of the final victory of a descendant of hers.
411 The Christian tradition sees in this passage an announcement of the “New Adam” who, because he “became obedient unto death, even death on a cross”, makes amends superabundantly for the disobedience, of Adam.305 Furthermore many Fathers and Doctors of the Church have seen the woman announced in the *Protoevangelium *as Mary, the mother of Christ, the “new Eve”. Mary benefited first of all and uniquely from Christ’s victory over sin: she was preserved from all stain of original sin and by a special grace of God committed no sin of any kind during her whole earthly life.306
412 But why did God not prevent the first man from sinning? St. Leo the Great responds, "Christ’s inexpressible grace gave us blessings better than those the demon’s envy had taken away."307 And St. Thomas Aquinas wrote, "There is nothing to prevent human nature’s being raised up to something greater, even after sin; God permits evil in order to draw forth some greater good. Thus St. Paul says, ‘Where sin increased, grace abounded all the more’; and the Exsultet sings, ‘O happy fault,. . . which gained for us so great a Redeemer!’"308
A hard battle. . .
407 The doctrine of original sin, closely connected with that of redemption by Christ, provides lucid discernment of man’s situation and activity in the world. **By our first parents’ sin, the devil has acquired a certain domination over man, even though man remains free. Original sin entails “captivity under the power of him who thenceforth had the power of death, that is, the devil”.298 Ignorance of the fact that man has a wounded nature inclined to evil gives rise to serious errors in the areas of education, politics, social action299 and morals. **
408 The consequences of original sin and of all men’s personal sins put the world as a whole in the sinful condition aptly described in St. John’s expression, “the sin of the world”.300 This expression can also refer to the negative influence exerted on people by communal situations and social structures that are the fruit of men’s sins.301
409 This dramatic situation of "the whole world [which] is in the power of the evil one"302 makes man’s life a battle:
The whole of man’s history has been the story of dour combat with the powers of evil, stretching, so our Lord tells us, from the very dawn of history until the last day. Finding himself in the midst of the battlefield man has to struggle to do what is right, and it is at great cost to himself, and aided by God’s grace, that he succeeds in achieving his own inner integrity.303
**IV. “YOU DID NOT ABANDON HIM TO THE POWER OF DEATH” **
410 After his fall, man was not abandoned by God. On the contrary, God calls him and in a mysterious way heralds the coming victory over evil and his restoration from his fall.304 This passage in Genesis is called the *Protoevangelium *(“first gospel”): the first announcement of the Messiah and Redeemer, of a battle between the serpent and the Woman, and of the final victory of a descendant of hers.
411 The Christian tradition sees in this passage an announcement of the “New Adam” who, because he “became obedient unto death, even death on a cross”, makes amends superabundantly for the disobedience, of Adam.305 Furthermore many Fathers and Doctors of the Church have seen the woman announced in the *Protoevangelium *as Mary, the mother of Christ, the “new Eve”. Mary benefited first of all and uniquely from Christ’s victory over sin: she was preserved from all stain of original sin and by a special grace of God committed no sin of any kind during her whole earthly life.306
412 But why did God not prevent the first man from sinning? St. Leo the Great responds, "Christ’s inexpressible grace gave us blessings better than those the demon’s envy had taken away."307 And St. Thomas Aquinas wrote, "There is nothing to prevent human nature’s being raised up to something greater, even after sin; God permits evil in order to draw forth some greater good. Thus St. Paul says, ‘Where sin increased, grace abounded all the more’; and the Exsultet sings, ‘O happy fault,. . . which gained for us so great a Redeemer!’"308
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StAnastasia
Guest
That depends on how you interpret the Cathechism. A literal interpretation of the Catechism to read that before the “Fall” of “Adam” and “Eve” there existed no death or sickness in the universe, is quite simply false. Disease and death occurred for hundreds of millions of years before hominids appeared on the scene some 5-7 million years ago.
Of course, God being God could arrange it so that causation works retroactively – that human sin becomes the cause of events that happened hundreds of millions of years before the cause itself existed. But that would be an exception to our understanding of how causation normally works.
StAnastasia
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buffalo
Guest
Hmmmmmmm.
I interpret the Catechism as the Magisterium does. You always have to fall back on your scientism beliefs. You again are posting heresy.
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Tantum_ergo
Guest
Oh dear, it looks like St. A is skirting around the ‘evolution and atheism’ ban by trying to come on here and work through "God is really doing evil things IF you ascribe to ‘traditional’ thought and not on rational scientific belief.Hmmmmmmm.
I’m afraid he’ll shut down this thread as he has moved away from a legitimate discussion regarding the use of medical terminology (“Abortion”) to now a peripheral discussion that at least tangentially is moving toward ‘but evolution shows disease existed prior to humanity’ (not of course that it proves his point. It doesn’t.) which has nothing to do with the thread topic of rape and the pill at all.
What a pity.
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StAnastasia
Guest
Ahh – tell that to Pope Benedict!Hmmmmmmm.
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StAnastasia
Guest
I trust you mean “subscribe,” not “ascribe.” And uh-oh why did you mention the deplorable “e” word? I said nothing about that at all. I merely followed buffalo’s logic.
Back to talking about the morning after pill!
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StAnastasia
Guest
Buffalo, find me a magisterial bishop who rejects scientific knowledge and I might consider it. And I don’t mean Robert Vasa of the Diocese of Baker, who believes the earth is 6.000 years old.Hmmmmmmm.
Find me a significant number of theologians who reject science. and again – I might reconsider your claim.
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buffalo
Guest
We should always pay the highest respect to the highest science, theology as well as what Revelation has told us.
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StAnastasia
Guest
Theology is not a “science” in the same sense as geology or chemistry or biology. It has its own sphere of competence. Theology has no more to say about the antiquity of life on earth than psychology has to say about chemistry. Just as it would be “scientism” to insist that biology can dictate to theology, it would be “theologism” to say that theology can formally pronounce on the age of the earth or the life it contains.
StAnastasia
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Debora123
Guest
Good grief people, hahahaha! 
This thread has nothing to do with evolution, but since we’re on the topic, let me clear up a couple things.
This thread has nothing to do with evolution, but since we’re on the topic, let me clear up a couple things.
- The Church is NOT against the idea of evolution. Especially considering that there is A LOT of scientific proof out there that the Earth is not 6,000 years old, as the bible suggests. Besides, the number of people who exist today is WAY TOO HIGH for if the Earth had started with one man and one woman only 6,000 years ago. That’s not heresy, that’s mathematical and scientific fact.
- So, genesis is not taken completely literally, and therefore all references to the story of Adam and Eve in the CCC is not completely literal either. The idea is the same, of course - God created humanity with eternal souls, humanity had free will and a choice to do good or evil, humanity to this day still struggles with the battle between good and evil on a daily basis due to our fallen nature - original sin. THAT is to be taken literally. NOT the story of a woman who talked to a snake and ate an apple.
- The idea that diseases, natural disasters, accidents, etc etc, did not exist before humans existed is, well… for lack of a better word, wrong. Think about it. Something horrible happened on this planet that put into extinction an entire class of animals - dinosaurs. Earth was never a paradise. Not literally anyway.
- Let’s all be nice to each other, shall we? This is a Catholic site. I’ve learned that fighting really gets no one anywhere.
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StAnastasia
Guest
True.
Very nice summary – this is essentially the position of most of the theological participants in the Rome evolution conference two years ago.
Signs point to the culprit being the Chixzulub asteroid that impacted the earth 65 million years BCE.
Right!
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genevievelives
Guest
On what planet can an omniscient doctor test for pregnancy within 72 hours of intercourse and determine that conception has or has not taken place?
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Brendan
Guest
A blood test can determine if the woman has ovulated in the last 48 hours. If she has ovulated, then the ‘morning after’ pill cannot be used, as it would then act as an abortifacent.
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