W
Walking_Home
Guest
But it all must still conform to what declare before.
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But it all must still conform to what declare before.
J
JezuUfamTobie
Guest
:yup: Many folks would do well to remember that truth is not chronologically determined.
L
LilyM
Guest
You’re saying no children should die? Or that children shouldn’t die painfully? Bodily pain and death is an inevitable part of being human, so is suffering - emotional and physical. No person of any age is or has been exempt from it.
Eternal suffering, however, is NOT an inevitability for all souls.
W
Walking_Home
Guest
Not in the slightest
But IF you believe in Christ’s continuing promise to lead his Church into all truth then you must believe that each succeeding generation achieves a fuller and more refined expression of it - or at least doesn’t REgress :yup:
Then the Church has never held the complete Truth—well—that shakes the pillars of the Church. We really have no foot to stand on against the protestants or Orthodox. The way it is going—a good portion of the Church is going to refine itself into heresy.
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LilyM
Guest
You call hoping for salvation for all people heresy? :bigyikes: Can’t recall anyone ever having been burned at the stake, nor excommunicated, in your good old days for merely saying that they hoped for salvation even for the unbaptised.
T
The_Iambic_Pen
Guest
Ah, the age old question. Why does God allow suffering? I would say that because of our own sin, humanity has inherited a world in which bad things happen. Sometimes these bad things happen to innocent people. To blame God for our own mess is wrong.
But why does God not reach down and prevent all the innocent from suffering? One would then have to go on and ask, “Why did God allow Christ to suffer? Why did God allow the martyrs of the Church to suffer? Why does God allow anyone to suffer?” And I think, without being able to know all things, one is forced to acknowledge that God has a purpose for suffering, a purpose that goes beyond our understanding. However, in the cases of Christ and the martyrs specifically, one can see that this suffering produced a greater good.
Could this principle be applied to your example? I think so. The deaths of these innocent children were horrible, yes, but what if, having passed through this trial, the children found themselves safe and secure in the presence of God? Would not the painful trial have brought about a greater good? And who knows the mind of God? He knows all that will be and all that is in a person’s heart. Perhaps, by allowing these children to go through this painful and (by our understanding) early death, perhaps God saved them from something worse down the road?
By contrast, the suffering of Hell is of absolutely no benefit to the individual. There is no passing on to something better, there is no growing in strength through adversity. If an innocent person were to go through, or rather live, as “go through” implies an end, this suffering forever, there is no justice and there is no mercy.
God bless!
T
TNT
Guest
I was pointing out the horrific suffering death sentence upon the unqualified Innocents and how that fact does not conform to the “imaginary merciful God where every infant goes to heaven”, theory.
IOW, what we see God doing does not conform to what we believe God WOULD do.
Scripture examples:
*“*And I will pass through the land of Egypt that night, and will kill every firstborn in the land of Egypt both man and beast: and against all the gods of Egypt I will execute judgments: I am the Lord.” (Exodus 12:12)
*“*And the Lord spoke to Moses, saying: Revenge first the children of Israel on the Madianites… Kill all that are of the male sex, even of the children.” (Num. 31:1-2, 17)
"So all the people making a shout, and the trumpets sounding, when the voice and the sound thundered in the ears of the multitude, the walls forthwith fell down: and every man went up by the place that was over against him: and they took the city, And killed all that were in it, man and woman, young and old. The oxen also, and the sheep, and the asses, they slew with the edge of the sword.” (Josue 6:16, 20-21)
“And Samuel said to Saul: …hearken thou unto the voice of the Lord: Thus saith the Lord of hosts: I have reckoned up all that Amalec hath done to Israel: how he opposed them in the way when they came up out of Egypt. Now therefore go, and smite Amalec, and utterly destroy all that he hath: spare him not, nor covet any thing that is his: but slay both man and woman, child and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ***.” (1 Kings 15:1-3)
*“*O daughter of Babylon, miserable: blessed shall he be who shall repay thee thy payment which thou hast paid us. Blessed be he that shall take and dash thy little ones against the rock.” (Ps. 136: 8-9)
“Let Samaria perish, because she hath stirred up her God to bitterness: let them perish by the sword, let their little ones be dashed, and let the women with child be ripped up.” (Osee 14:1)The point here is:
- God does NOT see children as INNOCENT.
- He does not idolize them the way modern humanism has come to do, ie Immaculately born or too close to it, and deserving of all Mercy.
- Realize that Original Sin is of such proportion on the scale of horrid, that he sees none born into it as INNOCENT.
T
The_Iambic_Pen
Guest
The Orthodox, whom you mention, would say that this has already happened (papal infallibility, purgatory, the immaculate conception, etc…). Is there some way of knowing the Orthodox are wrong? I’m not going to turn this into a Catholic-Orthodox debate, I’m must saying that the Catholic Church must have some way of knowing the doctrines it has defined are correct. I used to think Catholic teaching was that Christ would never allow the Church to formally teach error, the Church in this case being those in union with the pope. Perhaps I was mistaken…?
TNT: In regard to your last post, all of those instances refer to earthly death, not eternal torment. I believe one can reconcile these passages with the idea of a merciful and just God. How do you view God? Do you believe Him to be cruel?
T
TNT
Guest
With respect to your concerns: That has been addressed a great length in the Eastern Forum.
Briefly, yes, and incidentally from this very dogma on Original sin. Because it can be traced far earlier than the E-O schism, and can be followed all the way well beyond it. In other words, the Tradition of continuity from the beginning and well beyond the EO schism, is this Original Sin & consequences Dogma. The EO departed from it.
W
Walking_Home
Guest
You know full well what I meant. If this fuller more refined expression—contradicts what was taught before—then we are on our way to heresy. Or are we becoming–a make it as you go Church. By what you say----we will never know what the Truth is—so how can we tell the protestants or Orthodox that we have the Truth.
T
TNT
Guest
Of course not!
On the other hand He is not a cotton candy God that only has human ideas of Mercy.
The passion tells the Just side, as well as the acts I quoted in Scripture.
You keep avoiding the point that God Positively does what the modern humanist says He would NEVER do…inflict pain & suffering & death on the most Innocent. Innocent in the Humanist’s eyes that is.
C
cor
Guest
I couldn’t find the “Council of Carthage” in the list of Ecumenical Councils. I don’t think it was an Ecumenical Council and thus it couldn’t have been ex cathedra.
newadvent.org/cathen/04423f.htm
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synods_of_Carthage
They can be mystically added to the Church by their bond of charity, by their love for God which unites the saints.
That seems clear, but just because it is associated with Trent doesn’t make it infallible.
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TNT
Guest
The point was: Others were pointing to the CCC to defend the hope that all infants in death go to heaven.
I just used a universal Catechism to point out that there are other Catechisms of the same level of authority & what they say on the same subject.
BTW:
If the Trent Catechism is not infallible where it reflects the mind of an infallible Council, then what does that make the CCC?
C
cor
Guest
I’m not sure if past magisterial acts ought be given the same weight as present magisterial acts. The Church’s understanding of the deposit of revelation and the logical conclusions one can make from it or with its help grows with time – this fact alone would seem to indicate that later Church pronouncements should have more weight than earlier ones (I’m speaking of the non-infallible ones). However, if the Church’s teaching for all this time had been against unbaptized infants being graced with the beatific vision and the teaching that one could hope they be in heaven a new development, then the weight of past magisterial teaching could have greater weight I suppose.
Both the Catechism of Trent and the CCC contain infallible teachings of course; they just aren’t a vehicle of infallibility.
Regardless of what one believes about unbaptized infants in the hiearchy of truths or hiearchy of doctrines, it is low on the hiearchy. Truths such as the fact that God is love, especially in his inner trinitarian life are highest on the hiearchy.
Why would God make it harder to be saved in the New dispensation than in the Old (where baptism wasn’t required and one could be saved as a Gentile)?
T
TNT
Guest
CANONS OF THE COUNCIL OF CARTHAGE MAY 1, 418
**To Investigate Pelagianism (For all our sakes let’s hope it was)
Promulgated by **Pope St. Zosimus
Can. 2 “If any man says that new-born children need not be baptized, or that they should indeed be baptized for the remission of sins, but that they have in them no original sin inherited from Adam which must be washed away in the
bath of regeneration, so that in their ease the formula of baptism ‘for the remission of sins’ must not be taken literally,
but figuratively, let him be anathema; because, according to Romans 5:12, the sin of Adam (in quo omnes
peccaverunt) has passed upon all.”
Can. 3.1 “If any man says that in the kingdom of heaven or elsewhere there is a certain middle place, where children who die unbaptized live in bliss (beate vivant), whereas without baptism they cannot enter into the kingdom of heaven, that is, into eternal life, let him be anathema.”
DZ 102.
It was reinforced by:
Pope Pius VI, Auctorem fidei, 1794: “26. The doctrine which rejects as a Pelagian fable, that place of the lower regions (which the faithful generally designate by the name of the limbo of the children) in which the souls of those departing with the sole guilt of original sin are punished with the punishment of the condemned, exclusive of the punishment of fire, just as if, by this very fact, that these who remove the punishment of fire introduced that middle place and state free of guilt and of punishment between the kingdom of God and eternal damnation, such as that about which the Pelagians idly talk – Condemned as false, rash, injurious to Catholic schools.” (DZ. 1526)
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LilyM
Guest
So it sounds like even the idea of limbo was dismissed at Carthage - unbaptised babies, if they’re damned, are to be believed to go straight the same heck as hardened sinners - do not pass go or collect $200 … interesting
M
MTD
Guest
You are correct in that they don’t exclusively mean Baptism of Water; it has always been taught by the Church that Baptism of Blood and Baptism of Desire, though not sacraments properly speaking, bring about the same sacramental effect as Baptism of Water.
About Baptism of Desire: The chief element here is desire, which means the person makes an act of faith and love, and if any actual sins have been committed, perfect contrition for those sins. However, no one can make such an act if he does not have the use of reason. Thus Baptism of Desire is impossible for one lacking the use of reason.
Maria
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MTD
Guest
Baptism of Desire and Baptism of Blood are to Baptism what perfect contrition is to Penance/confession. In other words, Baptism of Desire, Baptism of Blood, and perfect contrition already are the extrasacramental means of grace. There aren’t any others.
Maria
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MTD
Guest
The horror of damning someone to hell for eternity for no fault of their own is just a little worse
Okay, LilyM and The Iambic Pen. I think you got your ideas a little mixed up here.
First. If God had so desired, He could have, with perfect justice and mercy, created man for eternal natural happiness only; i.e., minus the Beatific Vision. But He chose not to. He created man in His own image and likeness and destined him to eternal life with Him face to face. This was a total gift; a supernatural gift.
Second. God put man to the test, for the gift would still come at the price of fidelity to God. If Adam and Eve passed the test, all men would be born with the right to this supernatural gift; if they failed, all men would be born without the right to this supernatural gift. But Adam and Eve failed. So what happened? Every child born to Adam and Eve no longer has the right to supernatural life with God forever, but only eternal natural happiness without the Beatific Vision. Do you call that unfair?!
Third. In addition to losing this supernatural gift and retaining only the right to natural happiness, Adam and Eve also incurred for themselves and for their offspring the additional punishment of inclination to sin. Thus, those who reached the use of reason would find it very hard to actually make it to that natural happiness; most would end up in some eternal torment because of actual sins committed.
Fourth. God took compassion on this situation and sent His Son into the world in order that we might regain that right to supernatural life. But He does not owe that to us. Any person in Original Sin who did not commit actual sin would have come to eternal natural happiness. That is NOT a punishment, for neither is there pain for sins not committed nor is there reward for deeds not accomplished. It is perfectly just. On the other hand, any person who committed an actual sin would end up in some level of eternal torment in hell. Now because of the inclination to sin, it would be very hard for anyone above the use of reason to end up at eternal natural happiness.
Fifth. “For God so loved the world, as to give his only begotten Son; that whosoever believeth in him, may not perish, but may have life everlasting.” (John 3:16) This was a total gift. We did not deserve it. God could have left us in Original Sin. And that with perfect justice and mercy.
As I think you can see, your position on this issue really means in essence that God owes the Redemption to us and that it would be unjust or unmerciful for Him to not have sent His Son into the world. But nothing could be further from the truth; God could have chosen, and would have been perfectly justified in doing so, to leave us in the state into which Adam and Eve plunged humanity. And remember that God’s justice is never in conflict with His mercy, for He is merciful precisely because He is just.
To sum up, to say that it is not in accordance with God’s infinite mercy to send babies to Limbo because they have not been cleansed of Original Sin and have committed no actual sin is wrong. The supernatural life is a gift, a gift that was lost. All men are now born with only a right to natural happiness as long as they don’t commit actual sin. However, God has sent His Son that whoever believes in Him can regain that supernatural gift. To say that He owes the opportunity to everyone to regain that gift is wrong, for that would mean that He owed the Redemption to us.
I cannot for the life of me figure out why this is all so repulsive or seemingly unjust or unmerciful to you.
Maria
M
MTD
Guest
Actually, it only means that there is not a third place; i.e., another place in addition to heaven and hell. Remember that the essential characteristic of heaven is the eternal Vision of God and that the essential characteristic of hell is eternal deprivation of that Vision. Thus Limbo, being an eternal deprivation of the Vision of God, is in hell. But that does not mean that the torments of the wicked are suffered in Limbo; it merely means that those confined to Limbo will never have the Beatific Vision.
Maria
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