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Orionthehunter
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I’m sorry I used the analogy of the death penalty to make a point in this thread. I’d rather hear your comments to the thrust of my post rather than commenting on the tangential.
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vern_humphrey
Guest
What we want is the largest possible Catholic Church – one where every living soul is a faithful member.
But to achieve that, those who are unable to accept the Church’s teachings must pray for the grace to understand and assent.
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HappyCatholic01
Guest
Very true, very well said.
I just don’t understand why it is so hard to grasp certain rules which are clearly laid out.
It would seem arrogant to know more than 2000 years worth of Holy Men and the Pope himself in what they have so beautifully and masterfully laid out for us. Who am I to challenge them?
I just don’t understand why it is so hard to grasp certain rules which are clearly laid out.
It would seem arrogant to know more than 2000 years worth of Holy Men and the Pope himself in what they have so beautifully and masterfully laid out for us. Who am I to challenge them?
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vern_humphrey
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Sadly there are those – including some in these forums – who claim to be Catholics and who reject the Magisterium. They fail to see the logical consequence of their rejection – if the Magisterium is not, the Church is not.
We must pray they be given the grace to return to the Church which they have left.
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jonfan
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Ahh…The boston Catholics.
Well Abortion is legal. I don’t practice this law. If gay marriage becomes legal I will not recognize this. Liberal Catholics will. I don’t think liberal Catholics hearts are in the wrong place. But the road to hell is paved with good intentions.
On the same token though we should not ever be cruel to anybody who is gay, or has had an abortion. Especially abortion. One day these people are going to be tormented over that situation. We must reach out with a warm heart rather then a cold handshake.
Well Abortion is legal. I don’t practice this law. If gay marriage becomes legal I will not recognize this. Liberal Catholics will. I don’t think liberal Catholics hearts are in the wrong place. But the road to hell is paved with good intentions.
On the same token though we should not ever be cruel to anybody who is gay, or has had an abortion. Especially abortion. One day these people are going to be tormented over that situation. We must reach out with a warm heart rather then a cold handshake.
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vern_humphrey
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Of course we should.
But we should also remember what Edmund Burke said, “All that is necessary for evil to prevail is for good men to do nothing.”
We cannot simply sit by and hope abortion goes away by itself – we must oppose it and work to end it. And that means changing the political paradigm.
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jonfan
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Pray the rosary. 
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Gottle_of_Geer
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Weeds are not human beings, with minds - humans are far more complicated than weeds. Besides, weeds are simply plants in an inconvenient place - they might be very beautiful in a different part of the field.
So how do the rebukers of “liberals” know they are not tares themselves ? We are not wise to sit in judgement on our brethren, for we are ourselves under judgement.
True - and this relativises your standing, and that of everyone else 
That’s why the denunciations (I think that’s a fair choice of word) of “liberals” (and what is meant by the word anyway ? No one ever says - which is not very helpful) are so pointless: they treat “liberals” as members of a fixed and changeless group which is unconnected with “non-liberals”; as though “non-liberals” (and it is they alone who decide who is or is not “one of them”) had nothing to do with “liberals”. But this amounts to rejection by one group of Christians of another - and who gives the rejecters the authority to reject their fellows ? The rejecters. And it is not clear that those who want to kick out “liberals” are any better than those they reject. Compared to Christ, the Model for us all, none of us is anything.
I can’t see any difference worth noting - Catholics are Catholics, whether they accept each or not. It doesn’t matter that some people deplore the presence of “liberals” in the Church, because the Church is not the property of its members - it is not a club or party, with rules, but a Body, with limbs and other parts; each of which is uniquely important. Uniquely, it exists for the non-members. ##Weeds don’t have brethren, however - comparisons of people with weeds, though useful up to a point, can’t be pressed far, because people differ from weeds in significant ways. Weeds can’t change their minds, for example - they are not endowed with minds: unlike human beings.
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Gottle_of_Geer
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Since it could do so - it is merely confusing to use the word without defining it. For some people, JP2 was a “liberal”, therefore, not really a Catholic. For some, a liberal is anyone who accepts the validity of the critical approach to the Bible - even though the Vatican has said this approach is “indispensable”. This second “liberalism” is not judged by Rome to be unCatholic; but it is so judged by some other Catholics: so approval by Rome is not enough to stop a thing being attacked as “liberal”.
Examples of the vagueness of the word could be multiplied - and what is the good of so vague a word ? It needs defining, and this is a moral necessity, because it’s being used as a slur against Catholics who have not been accused by the competent authorities of any sin at all; and it is a great injustice to make distinctions between Catholics, so as to imply that an entire group is not Catholic. Catholics are not entitled to do this, morally, canonically, theologically, doctrinally, Biblically. Not unless they think that the Church is Congregationalist - as it is episcopal, and as it is the bishops and no other persons who are the judges of the Faith, it is completely illegitimate for Catholic laity to try booting out other laity who have been convicted of no crimes against the Church.Otherwise, something like lynch law is in effect - and how does that reflect the mission or nature of the Church ? ##
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vern_humphrey
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I suppose in retrospect, the original poster should probably have defined “liberals” more closely.
However there has been a lot of self-definition here. There have been posters who identify with the liberal label. They seem to think they know what it means.
Reading over the posts, “liberal” in this discussion seems to mean something like, “those who pick and choose what they believe.”
However there has been a lot of self-definition here. There have been posters who identify with the liberal label. They seem to think they know what it means.
Reading over the posts, “liberal” in this discussion seems to mean something like, “those who pick and choose what they believe.”
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Gottle_of_Geer
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Penny Plain:
That depends on what we are talking about
For example, someone might say, “Penny is a friend of mine”. And might say to you, “You’re a true friend”.
Both sentences are making assertions - and both are making claims which might be said to be true, or untrue, as the case may be. But, though both statements are true under certain circumstances, they are not true in quite the same way. The first sentence is saying something that is either true, or not: your friends could say it truthfully, but those people who are not your friends, could not.
The second sentence also asserts something which is true or false - with an important addition. In the first sentence, the truth or falsity lay in the claim which the sentence expressed. In the second, not only is the claim true or false, but the person addressed is being called “true” as well.
So assertions about the contents of the Bible may be true or false - “Jonathan was the father of David” is false, “Jesus ascended into Heaven” is true; and so can people be true.
Truth in the Biblical texts is often truth as reliability - not truth as correspondence of an assertion with the realities it sets out to describe. It does not follow that the Bible is false. For example, the text of Genesis 5 says Methuselah died aged 969. Does it follow that the text is asserting this as a fact, in the same way as the text asserts that David ruled over all Israel ? No - because assertions, even when true, can be true without being statements about the “real world”.
For instance, assertions about the Cat in the Hat, however true within the poem about him, are not true in the “real world”, because the CitH, is, in relation to the real world, a fictional being. Cats do not wear hats, and Dr.Seuss was not claiming to know of one that did. His fiction is not a lie, because the assertions in it held true within the fiction - he would have been lying only if he had been claiming to describe the “real world”.
And this helps us understand much of the Bible. Revelation 12 can talk about a red dragon, not because the author’s biology was in error, so that he did not realise that seven-handed dragons spewing a flood were biologically impossible - he is not trying to describe an animal of the “real world”; he is writing a type of text in which animals of that kind are familiar “props”, and making theological piints within the contraints of that particular type of writing.
So literality is like a lasagne - it has many layers; and a piece of writing which is senseless nonsense if taken as a type of writing it is not, makes sense once we see what the author is trying to say and how. Genesis 5 is not the same type of writing as the “court history” of 2 Samuel; and neither is the same type of writing as Revelation. The CitH would be weird if it appeared in the “real world”; it would be as out of place as a walking tree. But within its own world & story, it makes sense.
And the truth of Revelation, is not of the same sort as the truth of parables, or history, say. All convey truth - but they do so in different ways, just as sentences and people are true, & convey truth in different ways. In reality, only God is Really True - all truth is from God, and is an echo of God. And because created things are varied, so are the ways in which they echo the truth of their Creator.
Hope that helps ##
That depends on what we are talking about
For example, someone might say, “Penny is a friend of mine”. And might say to you, “You’re a true friend”.Both sentences are making assertions - and both are making claims which might be said to be true, or untrue, as the case may be. But, though both statements are true under certain circumstances, they are not true in quite the same way. The first sentence is saying something that is either true, or not: your friends could say it truthfully, but those people who are not your friends, could not.
The second sentence also asserts something which is true or false - with an important addition. In the first sentence, the truth or falsity lay in the claim which the sentence expressed. In the second, not only is the claim true or false, but the person addressed is being called “true” as well.
So assertions about the contents of the Bible may be true or false - “Jonathan was the father of David” is false, “Jesus ascended into Heaven” is true; and so can people be true.
Truth in the Biblical texts is often truth as reliability - not truth as correspondence of an assertion with the realities it sets out to describe. It does not follow that the Bible is false. For example, the text of Genesis 5 says Methuselah died aged 969. Does it follow that the text is asserting this as a fact, in the same way as the text asserts that David ruled over all Israel ? No - because assertions, even when true, can be true without being statements about the “real world”.
For instance, assertions about the Cat in the Hat, however true within the poem about him, are not true in the “real world”, because the CitH, is, in relation to the real world, a fictional being. Cats do not wear hats, and Dr.Seuss was not claiming to know of one that did. His fiction is not a lie, because the assertions in it held true within the fiction - he would have been lying only if he had been claiming to describe the “real world”.
And this helps us understand much of the Bible. Revelation 12 can talk about a red dragon, not because the author’s biology was in error, so that he did not realise that seven-handed dragons spewing a flood were biologically impossible - he is not trying to describe an animal of the “real world”; he is writing a type of text in which animals of that kind are familiar “props”, and making theological piints within the contraints of that particular type of writing.
So literality is like a lasagne - it has many layers; and a piece of writing which is senseless nonsense if taken as a type of writing it is not, makes sense once we see what the author is trying to say and how. Genesis 5 is not the same type of writing as the “court history” of 2 Samuel; and neither is the same type of writing as Revelation. The CitH would be weird if it appeared in the “real world”; it would be as out of place as a walking tree. But within its own world & story, it makes sense.
And the truth of Revelation, is not of the same sort as the truth of parables, or history, say. All convey truth - but they do so in different ways, just as sentences and people are true, & convey truth in different ways. In reality, only God is Really True - all truth is from God, and is an echo of God. And because created things are varied, so are the ways in which they echo the truth of their Creator.
Hope that helps ##
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Gottle_of_Geer
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vern humphrey:
And this discussion of “liberals” is being played out with rules which do not explain what “liberalism” is, nor whether all that goes by that label is objectionable, nor to whom, nor why it is.
“Picking and choosing what they believe” is not as clear a definition as it might be, simply because it could be said that, in one way or another, we all do that, in all sorts of ways. So it can’t be much of a complaint against others, as one condemns oneself. This is not a matter of avoiding hypocrisy, still less a matter of “scoring points” - the point is that as all of us are “unprofitable servants” compared with Christ, we are all “in the same boat” before God.
That’s why we can’t point the finger at others from a position of superiority to them - we aren’t superior to them. We are unprofitable as they are - they are as unprofitable as we are. We could complain of others’ failings if a human being was the Model for all human beings - & only someone who is intimately acquainted with the most hidden depths of all human hearts, whose knowledge of us is infinite, can fill that role. We are ignorant of our own hearts, never mind our neighbours’ - but Christ is not. Until He condemns us, ISTM that we should try to help build one another up. ##
It would still be useful to know what is meant, because one poster’s liberal might not be so regarded by another, equally “anti-liberal”, poster. A very “traditionalist” Catholic might regard some of the “anti-liberals” posting on the thread as disgracefully “liberal” - yet both criticiser and criticised would still be Catholics. My enemy’s enemy is not always my friend.
When no clarity exists, “liberal” is too imprecise a term to be helpful in a debate. People in the States, the UK, and Australia, all play something they call “football” - but there would be chaos if no one were aware that the one term denotes games with very different rules.And this discussion of “liberals” is being played out with rules which do not explain what “liberalism” is, nor whether all that goes by that label is objectionable, nor to whom, nor why it is.
“Picking and choosing what they believe” is not as clear a definition as it might be, simply because it could be said that, in one way or another, we all do that, in all sorts of ways. So it can’t be much of a complaint against others, as one condemns oneself. This is not a matter of avoiding hypocrisy, still less a matter of “scoring points” - the point is that as all of us are “unprofitable servants” compared with Christ, we are all “in the same boat” before God.
That’s why we can’t point the finger at others from a position of superiority to them - we aren’t superior to them. We are unprofitable as they are - they are as unprofitable as we are. We could complain of others’ failings if a human being was the Model for all human beings - & only someone who is intimately acquainted with the most hidden depths of all human hearts, whose knowledge of us is infinite, can fill that role. We are ignorant of our own hearts, never mind our neighbours’ - but Christ is not. Until He condemns us, ISTM that we should try to help build one another up. ##
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urban-hermit
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Gottle_of_Geer
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Adam S:
Just one thing
It is conceivable as an hypothesis that we might owe the assembling of the NT canon to Arius, and that Athanasius might have been in the position actually occupied by Arius - that events are what in fact they are, is not a necessary fact: it is how things are, but things could have been otherwise. And because they could have been otherwise, the Church’s actual part in the compilation of the canon is not as absolutely necessary as sometimes claimed - not unless we are to adopt determinism of some kind, and say that there was an iron-clad necessity that the historical facts of the history of the canon should be as they are.
It is not self-evident that there had to be a canon of either Testament. And it is at least possible that there might have been just the Hebrew Bible, and not a written NT as well.
The one argument I can see against this, is that someone might say that the Church would not be the Church without a Bible such as in fact it has; that for the Church to have a Bible, entails having the canon just as it is. I’m not sure that is a decisive objection to the suggestion that the existence & history of the canon could have been different, and that the Church could have been different.
ISTM that the Church is necessary, not absolutely, but in a relative sense; and that the Bible is necessary in the same sense. ##
Just one thing - it’s one thing to trace the past of something we have in the present (in the present case, the collection of texts we acknowledge as “The Bible”); and something else, to say that if such and such an event or series of them had not occurred then, we would not have it now.
It is conceivable as an hypothesis that we might owe the assembling of the NT canon to Arius, and that Athanasius might have been in the position actually occupied by Arius - that events are what in fact they are, is not a necessary fact: it is how things are, but things could have been otherwise. And because they could have been otherwise, the Church’s actual part in the compilation of the canon is not as absolutely necessary as sometimes claimed - not unless we are to adopt determinism of some kind, and say that there was an iron-clad necessity that the historical facts of the history of the canon should be as they are.It is not self-evident that there had to be a canon of either Testament. And it is at least possible that there might have been just the Hebrew Bible, and not a written NT as well.
The one argument I can see against this, is that someone might say that the Church would not be the Church without a Bible such as in fact it has; that for the Church to have a Bible, entails having the canon just as it is. I’m not sure that is a decisive objection to the suggestion that the existence & history of the canon could have been different, and that the Church could have been different.
ISTM that the Church is necessary, not absolutely, but in a relative sense; and that the Bible is necessary in the same sense. ##
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Gottle_of_Geer
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For more on the quadruped in question, see 1 Kings 1.33-35 and Psalm 118. 19-26, with the whole psalm in general.
That’s why he chose that animal: He was making a statement (or the evangelist is doing so; either way, Jesus is being revealed as Messianic King, but with a difference - for this is not a mere political Messiah.Acaranga = Acaraña ? = “endless time” ?
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koda
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vern humphrey:
Vern, what a wonderful thing to say.
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Gottle_of_Geer
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Very thought provoking
Perhaps this too can be said - if one sees Catholicism as founded upon obedience most of all (& pre-Conciliar Catholicism stressed it strongly) obeying what is actually said is presumably more important than bothering with hypothetical possibilities relating to what might have been said but has in fact not been. So ingenious ideas about how women might be ordained are on this view a waste of time at best, and a refusal to obey Divine authority at worst. Either way, there is no place for them. This notion of the Church goes quite nicely with the ideas of it as an army.OTOH, this could be seen as a notion of the Church which is valid up to a point, but no further - so it would have an absolute validity for those who thought of the Church in this way, but not for those who are aware of other models of the Church: as a family, for example; and find them more convincing and attractive.
The friction comes only if for some reason the different visions of the Church collide, and if one or other is equated with the only really Catholic understanding of the Church. And the Internet makes this collision possible.
Yet both sets of Catholics would be seeking to live out the Faith in obedience to Christ.
By this analysis, there are two different visions of what it means to be a Catholic Christian. The dots which make up the outline of the Church are the same in both instances, but the order in which they are joined up is different, so one person’s joined up outline of the Church is another person’s caricature of it. And because the Church can be seen only indistinctly, what one person sees as a blemish or disfigurement, is seen as something beautiful and attractive by another.
The difference looks as if it may be about words, and not things, because people in different camps appeal to the same texts, yet see different meanings in them, different implications. For example:does a Papal text:
- spell out all and only what one is allowed to do and believe - or
- is what it spells out to be followed, without being taken as necessarily valid for the future in all respects - or
- is it to be regarded as superceded by more recent developments, whether among Catholics or not, whether Magisterial or not ?
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Gottle_of_Geer
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Very thought provoking
Perhaps this too can be said - if one sees Catholicism as founded upon obedience most of all (& pre-Conciliar Catholicism stressed it strongly) obeying what is actually said is presumably more important than bothering with hypothetical possibilities relating to what might have been said but has in fact not been. So ingenious ideas about how women might be ordained are on this view a waste of time at best, and a refusal to obey Divine authority at worst. Either way, there is no place for them. This notion of the Church goes quite nicely with the ideas of it as an army.OTOH, this could be seen as a notion of the Church which is valid up to a point, but no further - so it would have an absolute validity for those who thought of the Church in this way, but not for those who are aware of other models of the Church: as a family, for example; and find them more convincing and attractive.
The friction comes only if for some reason the different visions of the Church collide, and if one or other is equated with the only really Catholic understanding of the Church. And the Internet makes this collision possible.
Yet both sets of Catholics would be seeking to live out the Faith in obedience to Christ.
By this analysis, there are two different visions of what it means to be a Catholic Christian. The dots which make up the outline of the Church are the same in both instances, but the order in which they are joined up is different, so one person’s joined up outline of the Church is another person’s caricature of it. And because the Church can be seen only indistinctly, what one person sees as a blemish or disfigurement, is seen as something beautiful and attractive by another.
The difference looks as if it may be about words, and not things, because people in different camps appeal to the same texts, yet see different meanings in them, different implications. For example: does a Papal text (Providentissimus Deus, for instance):
- spell out all and only what one is allowed to do and believe - or
- is what it spells out to be followed, without being taken as necessarily valid for the future in all respects - or
- is it to be regarded as superceded by more recent developments, whether among Catholics or not, whether Magisterial or not ?
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Holly3278
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YES!!! If they can’t obey the teachings of the Church then they should leave if you ask me!
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vern_humphrey
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Gottle of Geer said:## Very thought provoking
Perhaps this too can be said - if one sees Catholicism as founded upon obedience most of all (& pre-Conciliar Catholicism stressed it strongly) obeying what is actually said is presumably more important than bothering with hypothetical possibilities relating to what might have been said but has in fact not been. So ingenious ideas about how women might be ordained are on this view a waste of time at best, and a refusal to obey Divine authority at worst. Either way, there is no place for them. This notion of the Church goes quite nicely with the ideas of it as an army.
No one has ever said the Church is founded upon obedience. The Church was founded upon Peter by Christ.
Christ taught the Apostles and commissioned them to teach us all. Who rejects the teaching of the Apostles and their successors rejects the teaching of Christ.
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