Serious questions requiring sophisticated answers

[Gorgias]

The Doctrine of indulgences (and yes, it is a doctrine). And yes, I know what an indulgence (plenary or partial) IS and I understand its point of origin (early Church for those awaiting execution or imprisonment for being Christian).

OK. Fair example! However, (again with all due respect), I think you’re confusing the doctrine of indulgences with the discipline associated with them! Have you ever read Paul VI’s Indulgentiarum Doctrina? In it, he discusses both the doctrine and the discipline. Now, relative to our discussion, it would be important to discuss the disctinction between the two. Your problem, it seems, is with the discipline (“we must do A, B, C in a specified manner in order to obtain X”) rather than with the doctrine. The doctrine, as outlined in the Apostolic Constitution on Indulgences, can be summarized as follows: sins bring punishments (ID #2), these punishments are imposed for the purification of souls (Ibid., 2), and Christians everywhere help each other with “prayer, the exchange of spiritual goods and penitential expiation” (Ibid., 3). The application of the merits of Christ and of the saints can set individuals free from the vestiges of (already-forgiven) sins (Ibid., 7). This isn’t the exclusive or even primary way of doing this – the sacraments, especially Mass and Penance have this primacy (Ibid., 11).

This is the doctrine. Are you saying that you think this is in error?

If not, then it’s appropriate to look at the discipline associated with indulgences. (Remember, of course, that discipline doesn’t rise to the level of infallibility – in fact, in ID, Paul VI admits that “the practice of indulgences has at times been improperly used either through ‘untimely or superfluous indulgences’ … or through the ‘illicit profits’. … But the Church, in deploring and correcting these improper uses 'teaches … that the use of indulgences … is supremely salutary for the Christian people and authoritatively approved by the sacred councils.” (Ibid., 8)). So, there’s a definite distinction between doctrine (which infallibly defined, stands through time) and discipline (which doesn’t rise to the level of infallibility).

Discipline can validly change, to meet the situations of time and place; Paul IV notes that the norms of ID “introduce appropriate variations in the discipline of indulgences”. Among them are “new measurements for partial indulgences” and the reduction of “the number of plenary indulgences.”

So… what is it? Do you take issue with the doctrine, or with the discipline? Given your statement about the “A, B, C” of indulgences, it seems that you’re talking only about discipline. That’s ok, of course – they’re not infallible, but they are an exercise of the authority of the Church. You’re not wrong for discussing their merits; but you are mistaken, it seems, in attributing your doubts to doctrine.

This is not an “infallible” teaching yet it is certainly represented as an absolute truth. I have never heard any priest or nun say that it’s church “opinion” or church “guess” - I have heard it and seen it taught as actual truth, absolute and guaranteed. By what authority?

Doctrine is truth; discipline is rule. Rule proceeds from authority; doctrine proceeds from Christ. Are you saying that the Church doesn’t have the authority to proclaim discipline? If so, that’s an interesting discussion – but a completely different point from the one you’ve been making here.

This doesn’t intend to imply that I do not love the Lord, that I do not serve Him

Absolutely. And I don’t want to make it seem that I’m maligning your love of the Lord or your willingness to serve Him – even in serving Him through the Church. However, I believe that you’re mistaken in this issue, conflating the notions of ‘doctrine’ and ‘discipline’ and complaining about the latter but calling it by the name of the former…

 

[ellzeena]

YOU said: *Why to you ask a question when you know the answer. The authority is Jesus given to His Church.

I am not bothered by honest questions which you ask. I am bothered when you are given an answer and you ignore it. I am bothered when you are asked question that you ignore.*

I’m sorry to seem argumentative, it is not my intention. (And, by the way, I do NOT “sin deliberately”, this would imply that I consider what I’m about to do a sin, I do it anyway without worrying about its effects on myself or others, and with impunity. I don’t behave in that way.)

I’m trying not to ignore questions but it’s difficult in this venue because this multi-quoting thing is a huge mystery to me and there is more than one person responding to me.

YOU said: * I have the feeling the problem is you don’t want an answer. No matter what well reasoned explanation is given to you, you will ignore and ask why? as if no reasonable explanation is given. The best you can do is veiled unproven remarks.

“He would have found anathema?” Now you speak for God? By what authority? *

Yes I would like an answer very, very much because I would like a very clearcut instruction on how to live my life in such a manner that it is always serving God and pleasing to Him so I can say “I have run the race, I have finished the course.” I follow the rules and regulations and laws and doctrines and dogmas and everything else of the Roman Catholic Church because I believe, as part of it, I must embrace the entirety or I’m in the wrong religion. But that doesn’t mean I don’t have questions. And as for anathema, you know as well as I do that the Church has conducted itself in ways that Jesus would have found appalling, come on! Let’s not go there, bad enough the media does it every day.

 

[ellzeena]

The only way you can commit sin is to be deliberate, sin is not accidental. We are all deliberate sinners.

I consider it sinful to be rude to someone because I’m having a very bad day; I don’t intend to be rude, it just happens. The other person is injured, that is sinful to me.

Where is it stated by Jesus that we are to follow the written word only? Jesus word actually said nothing about writting anything down. What it did say was to go out into the world and* preach**. The Words of Jesus as you already know state that He gave His Church the Keys to bind and loosen which you seem to dispute*

EXACTLY thank you! The Jewish people memorized the Tenach (Torah being the first five books) and then transcribed it into language. And so where in Jesus’ teachings (word of mouth) is there anything about original sin, mortal sin, earning indulgences, et al? What did Jesus mean by “bind” and “loose”? I think it has been taken to an extreme but I still abide by the rules and regulations because I am a Roman Catholic, by choice.

What does Jesus say about hell

This is a manner of instruction.

“Gehenna (Greek γέεννα), Gehinnom (Rabbinical Hebrew: גהנום/גהנם) and Yiddish Gehinnam, are terms derived from a place outside ancient Jerusalem known in the Hebrew Bible as the Valley of the Son of Hinnom (Hebrew: גֵיא בֶן־הִנֹּם or גיא בן-הינום); one of the two principal valleys surrounding the Old City.
In the Hebrew Bible, the site was initially where apostate Israelites and followers of various Ba’als and Caananite gods, including Moloch, sacrificed their children by fire (2 Chr. 28:3, 33:6). Thereafter it was deemed to be cursed (Jer. 7:31, 19:2-6).[1]
In Jewish, Christian and Islamic scripture, Gehenna is a destination of the wicked.[2] This is different from the more neutral Sheol/Hades, the abode of the dead, though the King James version of the Bible translates both with the Anglo-Saxon word Hell.”

He was using a well known location and practice to illustrate His point. Do you think He actually intended to teach these people to cut off their hands, put out their eyes, etc.? It a manner of teaching, Rabbis still do it (some of them, anyway).

You realize there’s something very contradictory about God’s ultimate great love and mercy and the teaching that offending God is so dangerous that one would be better off dead than to do it?

 

[ellzeena]

Gorgas said:

*I think you’re confusing the doctrine of indulgences with the discipline associated with them! Have you ever read Paul VI’s Indulgentiarum Doctrina? In it, he discusses both the doctrine and the discipline. Now, relative to our discussion, it would be important to discuss the disctinction between the two. Your problem, it seems, is with the discipline (“we must do A, B, C in a specified manner in order to obtain X”) rather than with the doctrine. The doctrine, as outlined in the Apostolic Constitution on Indulgences, can be summarized as follows: sins bring punishments (ID #2), these punishments are imposed for the purification of souls (Ibid., 2), and Christians everywhere help each other with “prayer, the exchange of spiritual goods and penitential expiation” (Ibid., 3). The application of the merits of Christ and of the saints can set individuals free from the vestiges of (already-forgiven) sins (Ibid., 7). This isn’t the exclusive or even primary way of doing this – the sacraments, especially Mass and Penance have this primacy (Ibid., 11).

This is the doctrine. Are you saying that you think this is in error?

If not, then it’s appropriate to look at the discipline associated with indulgences. (Remember, of course, that discipline doesn’t rise to the level of infallibility – in fact, in ID, Paul VI admits that “the practice of indulgences has at times been improperly used either through ‘untimely or superfluous indulgences’ … or through the ‘illicit profits’. … But the Church, in deploring and correcting these improper uses 'teaches … that the use of indulgences … is supremely salutary for the Christian people and authoritatively approved by the sacred councils.” (Ibid., 8)). So, there’s a definite distinction between doctrine (which infallibly defined, stands through time) and discipline (which doesn’t rise to the level of infallibility).

Discipline can validly change, to meet the situations of time and place; Paul IV notes that the norms of ID “introduce appropriate variations in the discipline of indulgences”. Among them are “new measurements for partial indulgences” and the reduction of “the number of plenary indulgences.”*

Is the doctrine in error? MAYBE. This is yet another instance where “go out and Preach the Good News to all men” has been taken to an extreme BY men. Is the doctrine of indulgences in agreement with God’s will? I have no idea, but I abide by it anyway. Is the discipline in agreement with God’s will? Now here is where I have a very serious problem. If the Church stipulates that it’s all but impossible to actually earn a plenary indulgence, then why bother? Here is how I live my faith: I give to God every deliberate act to obtain a plenary indulgence and I offer it for the sake of my daughter and, should she not require it, any other soul that does, now and forever. Therefor, it’s up to Him to agree or not, to accept or not, to use or not, and I don’t have to worry about it, I just do it. Every single week. So: I abide by the traditions, the doctrines, the dogmas, the teachings, the beliefs, on and on, because I choose to be a Roman Catholic. I think God honors that choice whether He is in agreement with each of those things or not.

 

[adrift]

The only way you can commit sin is to be deliberate, sin is not accidental. We are all deliberate sinners.

I consider it sinful to be rude to someone because I’m having a very bad day; I don’t intend to be rude, it just happens. The other person is injured, that is sinful to me.

It doesn’t just happen. Sin is a choice not an accident. If you don’t intend it than it can’t be a sin.
Definition of Sin

Sin is a deliberate transgression of a law of God, which identifies the four essentials of every sin. A law is involved, implying that there are physical laws that operate with necessity, and moral laws that can be disregarded by human beings. God is offended, so that the divine dimension is never absent from any sin. Sin is a transgression, since Catholicism holds that grace is resistible and the divine will can be disobeyed. And the transgression is deliberate, which means that a sin is committed whenever a person knows that something is contrary to the law of God and then freely does the action anyway.

.

 

[adrift]

He was using a well known location and practice to illustrate His point. Do you think He actually intended to teach these people to cut off their hands, put out their eyes, etc.? It a manner of teaching, Rabbis still do it (some of them, anyway).

I am sorry you missed my point. You stated that we don’t know what hell is.
Jesus did say that it was
" unquenchable fire."

‘their worm does not die, and the fire is not quenched.’

This means to me that hell is unending torment.

Matthew 13:41–42
The Son of Man will send his angels, and they will remove from his Kingdom everything that causes sin and all who do evil. And the angels will throw them into the fiery furnace, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.
Revelation 20:15
And anyone whose name was not found recorded in the Book of Life was thrown into the lake of fire.

You are right in that we cannot know exactly what hell will be like (I don’t want to either) nor do we know exactly what heaven will be like. But it doesn’t mean that we know nothing about either place. We do know that hell is eternal punishment. What is that punishment is unknown.

 

[ellzeena]

I am sorry you missed my point. You stated that we don’t know what hell is.
Jesus did say that it was
" unquenchable fire."

‘their worm does not die, and the fire is not quenched.’

This means to me that hell is unending torment.

Matthew 13:41–42
The Son of Man will send his angels, and they will remove from his Kingdom everything that causes sin and all who do evil. And the angels will throw them into the fiery furnace, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.
Revelation 20:15
And anyone whose name was not found recorded in the Book of Life was thrown into the lake of fire.

You are right in that we cannot know exactly what hell will be like (I don’t want to either) nor do we know exactly what heaven will be like. But it doesn’t mean that we know nothing about either place. We do know that hell is eternal punishment. What is that punishment is unknown.

I have a niggling idea about hell (and I think it’s shared by other religions, not just sure which ones). It can’t be “fire” in the sense of fire as we know it here since we are not in temporal bodies. It must be the “fire” of intense remorse, agony, anxiety and regret; some people may choose hell (I guess there are those arrogant enough to do that), so in that case the “fire” may mean something else. But, I suspect that, after the general judgment, those souls “in hell” are extinguished (along with Satan and its legions), simply sent to “the second death” which is non-existence. Just a nagging idea for many years.

I want to tell you something: your commitment to answering my questions (along with one or two others) is an enormous blessing to me, as are you, yourself. Having spent a great deal of time in Eucharistic adoration both yesterday and today, I arrived at the following conclusion: my questions might be leading someone else to doubt, and that makes them sinful in my opinion, even though there is zero intention to sin. Just as you say if I’m irritated with someone because I’m having a particularly difficult day emotionally and that person is hurt, it is not sin because it is not intention, I don’t agree: I think that I may inadvertently be sinning by bringing this topic to general population view. Not everyone is as astute, well educated and well equipped to deal with my questions. I therefor ask your forgiveness and that you pray for me, as I will for you. I have determined that I will follow the dogmas, doctrines, traditions, et al of the Roman Catholic faith in the fullest manner of which I am capable and, should it be ultimately unnecessary to God, well that’s not my problem nor my jurisdiction. He knows my heart. So I will give full obedience to the Roman Catholic Church even with intellectual diversions (btw, my intellect has always gotten me into trouble lol). This is my attempt to be humble, to allow God to do what He wills without questioning Him (something that is very hard when you’ve lost an only child to mental illness) and might very well be an enormous LEARNING POINT for me, spiritually. Today I discovered that someone I have been “preaching” to (using scripture) regarding a persistent sin he didn’t think was sin, told me he has done a full three hour confession, acknowledged his sin, promised with full conviction to avoid future occasion of that sin, because of my emails and pleadings. So God is using me, even though I feel unworthy, unlovable, abandoned, rejected, and all the negative things possible when something happens as has happened to me. I thank you with all my heart for your patience and your persistence. You are saving many souls. May God richly bless you.

 

[adrift]

Thank you and God Bless you

 

[StrawberryJam]

Has everyone been satisfyed by the sophisticated answers that the Church has provided?

Has everyone felt that it is optional to believe that Adam and Eve are our literal parents?

 

[ericc]

Well, perhaps God is so distant and huge and unapproachable to you that you dare not share a sense of humor with Him. I do not experience Him in this way. I have a running conversation with God throughout the day. That is called a personal relationship. And yes, sometimes I can and do see His sense of humor. I guess that makes me a heretic or a lunatic, to you. Well, so be it, I am neither.

Good on you. No that doesn’t make you a heretic or a lunatic to me. I was just talking about myself how I feel so unworthy to kid around him. Perhaps it was my upbringing where there is a certain distance of respect/fear of the fatherly figure. Probably my generation.

I don’t know what you mean by “certain types of people”, I take objection to that categorization. I am not a deliberate sinner; you know nothing about me. I am not covetous, I am not materialistic, I am chaste, I pray for others and care about them, I try to see Jesus in other people (very, very, very hard) and I go to confession once a week! I’m not “certain types of people” trying to circumvent “rules” to suit my purpose. YOU threw that stone, not me.

I apologize if my posting appears to be offensive to you personally. That wasn’t my intent. By “Certain types of people” , I mean throughout the ages, there were people who try to work around the rules or throw stones at the Catholic Christian faith. Anti-catholics and atheists come to mind. For example, Christ frown on divorce but Protestants have voted on it and approved it.

I’m not second guessing God in anything, I’m questioning the right of anyone to make absolute statements that aren’t found in the WORDS OF JESUS HIMSELF. Not Peter, not Paul, JESUS.

I am confused. These were all spoken by Jesus:

Matthew 16:18 (On appointing Peter)
Matthew 16:19 ( Conferring authority on Peter to bind whatever he loosed on earth will be done in heaven)
Matthew 18:15-17 ( On disagreement to take it to the Church)
John 21:15-17( Commanding Peter to feed/tend sheep/lamb)

It is so clear that Jesus has given authority to earthly men to carry on his work. Why is there a need to question whether these authorized men( Peter and his successors) has the authority to do their job? Peter and his successors will answer to Jesus if they messed things up. Do you think Peter and Paul is not authorized to speak on behalf of Jesus and his Church after his ascension to Heaven?

 

[Usagi]

Has everyone felt that it is optional to believe that Adam and Eve are our literal parents?

“Optional” goes too far, I think, but I don’t believe that particular assertion has been dogmatically imposed in those terms.

Pius XII in Humani Generis did state that the liberty of Catholics to embrace evolution does not extend to polygenism. However, I don’t think he was making a dogma of monogenism so much as safeguarding the existing dogmatic truths about original sin and its transmission, as he states immediately thereafter. It seems to me that if a Catholic theologian can put forward a reconciliation between polygenism and the Catholic understanding of original sin, that would be acceptable under Pius’ conditions. (He himself could think of no such reconciliation and so stated that the Catholics of his time could not simply take polygenism at face value since it would contradict revealed truth about original sin. But I don’t think he was forbidding any attempt to make the two fit together, especially given that polygenism seems increasingly to be the only way things could have happened given the facts on the ground.)

I’m fond of Michael Flynn’s attempt to reconcile the two here:

tofspot.blogspot.com/2011/09/adam-and-eve-and-ted-and-alice.html

What do you think of that one, SJ?

Usagi