Some lingering theological questions

  • Thread starter Thread starter minion
  • Start date Start date
Status
Not open for further replies.
M

minion

Guest
So, I came back from RCIA today, and some topics kind of struck out at me…forgive me if I’m being disrespectful in some way, I didn’t really feel it was my place to question the teacher, but here goes.
  1. Discussed was that thing on the news about that scrap of paper saying Jesus was married. My teacher said it didn’t matter if Jesus was married or not. To me, it did matter, because it meant the Catholic Church had incorrect doctrine, was fallible, and the institution crumbles from teaching error for 2000 years. Am I wrong?
  2. Whether or not the Virgin Mary remained virgin after she gave birth didn’t matter. I suppose whether Mary remained a virgin after she gave birth is none of my business, but I was under the impression that that was Catholic doctrine, and not optional to believe in. Am I wrong?
I’m not sure what I’m asking for exactly, but if someone could…“clarify” for me the Catholic view, please do.

tyia
 
oh…and one more thing…
  1. I noticed the Apostles Creed was changed from what I remember. It’s now Jesus “descended into the dead” instead of “descended into hell.” :confused:
Isn’t that a big theological change?
 
  1. Paragraph 1618 of the Catechism of the Catholic Church implies that Jesus Christ was a virgin and never married, describing Him as the model for all men and women who voluntarily renounce the great good of marriage for the sake of the Kingdom.
  2. The Church teaches the perpetual virginity of the Blessed Virgin Mary. See paragraph 499 of the Catechism of the Catholic Church.
 
minion said:
oh…and one more thing…
  1. I noticed the Apostles Creed was changed from what I remember. It’s now Jesus “descended into the dead” instead of “descended into hell.” :confused:
Isn’t that a big theological change?
Click to expand...
Hades is sometimes translated as hell. Hades is the abode of the dead. So it is the same thing.
 
Todd_Easton said:
  1. Paragraph 1618 of the Catechism of the Catholic Church implies that Jesus Christ was a virgin and never married, describing Him as the model for all men and women who voluntarily renounce the great good of marriage for the sake of the Kingdom.
  2. The Church teaches the perpetual virginity of the Blessed Virgin Mary. See paragraph 499 of the Catechism of the Catholic Church.
Click to expand...
I apologize for my noob-ishness for asking this, but, just to clarify:

Is everything in the Catechism dogma? Required as a Catholic to believe? Should I be reading the Catechism before attending RCIA?
ConstantineTG said:
Hades is sometimes translated as hell. Hades is the abode of the dead. So it is the same thing.
Click to expand...
I vaguely remember something about Jesus bringing the souls of everyone before his time from Limbo into heaven. Was that incorrect? In Dante’s Inferno, it was referred to as the 1st circle of hell. Was I just hearing tradition instead of dogma?

Sorry, I’m a little cris-crossed right now. I wasn’t expecting to hear conflicting teachings from what I remember in RCIA.
 
minion said:
oh…and one more thing…
  1. I noticed the Apostles Creed was changed from what I remember. It’s now Jesus “descended into the dead” instead of “descended into hell.” :confused:
Isn’t that a big theological change?
Click to expand...
The English language is a living language. Not only are new words added to it but old words acquire new meanings. When the Creed was first translated into English hundreds of years ago the English word *hell *meant the abode of the dead. Since then, the English word *hell *has evolve to mean the abode of the damned. In order to maintain the same theology it has become necessary to re-translate the Creed using different English words.
 
The “Jesus is married” thing is so bogus. First of all, there isn’t even conclusive evidence it isn’t a forgery, but even if it isn’t it’s basically a scrap of paper with the words, “Jesus”, “my wife”, “Mary”, and “can be a disciple”.

You want to know what that actually tells us? Absolutely nothing at all. It’s scattered words on a context free sheet of old paper. Once again, it’s a case of newspaper sensationalists making a really big deal out of nothing.
 
The Catechism is “a sure norm for teaching the faith”. It is a mix of dogma, doctrine, theological guidance, and Church discipline. It was written for bishops so that they could prepare local Catechisms suited for teaching the faith to diverse peoples. So, in essence, we have a master document. Some local Catechisms have already been written using this for the blueprint, such as the YouCat and the Ukrainian Catholic Catechism. In turn, the Catechism is based on other master documents, which themselves form the Tradition of the Church which you will hear about. Church Tradition includes documents from the Early Church Fathers, Ecumenical Councils, and various Papal documents of different types. Tradition also includes the Holy Scriptures compiled in the Bible, and the list of books which we consider the canon. When you read the Catechism, you will always find footnotes. If you want to learn the source of a teaching, you can follow it back to multiple documents in Tradition. Such as the Immaculate Conception, which is both Biblically based (Hail! Full of Grace!) and culminated in 1854 with the papal bull Ineffabilis Deus.

RCIA is designed to provide an overview of the faith, to whet your appetite for more, and primarily so that you can participate in the official rituals of Welcoming, Election, and the Sacraments. It is not designed to be comprehensive or exhaustive. That part is covered by ongoing events such as Bible study, homilies at Mass, and your own personal studies.

Actually, the new wording of the Creed is “he descended into Hell”. It is more specific. This change is not because English has changed, it is because the Church mandated a “formal equivalence” method of translation, and this matches the Latin verse more closely. It could also be referred to as Hades. This refers to the Harrowing of Hell. There is a distinction between Hades/Hell and Sheol, Sheol is a different concept particular to Judaism.

And, yes it matters whether Jesus was married, and yes it matters whether Mary is ever-virgin. Protestants deny Mary’s virginity. This separates us from the Protestants in that we refer to her as “ever-virgin” and St. Joseph as “her most chaste spouse”. That is why Josephite marriages have their name, and why they are condoned, yet rare.

I am glad that you seek the Truth. You will find it in the Church. Sometimes RCIA is not the best place to find orthodoxy, because the instructor has ulterior motives such as keeping as many people as possible in the class. Also, clergy sometimes does not keep tabs on the class as they should. You might have a chat with your priest about what is being learned. It would be an eye-opener for him.
 
Here’s Jimmy Akin’s (Catholic Answers Apologist) response to the recent news about the “document” that should help put you at ease.

Link
 
minion said:
  1. Discussed was that thing on the news about that scrap of paper saying Jesus was married.
Click to expand...
As noted by the historian working on it, but freely overlooked by many journalists, “It does not, however, provide evidence that the historical Jesus was married”.
  1. Whether or not the Virgin Mary remained virgin after she gave birth didn’t matter.
Click to expand...
The closest historical source that we have to the period in question says that she remained a virgin, and ancient sources thereafter repeat the statement.

Catholic beliefs about history are actually founded in centuries of expert historical research.
 
minion said:
Is everything in the Catechism dogma? Required as a Catholic to believe?
Click to expand...
No, not all the doctrines proposed by the Magisterium in the Catechism of the Catholic Church are infallibly defined dogmas that require “the ascent of faith,” such as you must be willing to suffer martyrdom for if need be, but I’m pretty sure that all the doctrines proposed in the Catechism do require “religious ascent.” (See paragraph 892 of the Catechism)
Should I be reading the Catechism before attending RCIA?
Click to expand...
Nothing wrong with reading the Catechism. However, as you can probably tell, it was written for a different audience, for the Catholic bishops of the Church, not really for people attending RCIA classes. The Catechism was intended to be used by local bishops as a guide for developing their own RCIA class materials. So, your RCIA class will probably go over most of the same information but in a more user friendly manner. You might consider reading the Compendium of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, as it was written in a much more concise manner with a more general audience in mind.
 
Thank you for the (name removed by moderator)ut everyone!

I’m beginning to see Catholicism is a bit more complicated than I realized…different versions of Bibles, defined dogma/religious assent in Catechism, RCIA incongruities, different types of mass, thousands of saints, different rosary prayers…well, at least I’ll never run out of material 😛
 
minion said:
“To me, it did matter, because it meant the Catholic Church had incorrect doctrine, was fallible, and the institution crumbles from teaching error for 2000 years. Am I wrong?”
Click to expand...
A little over-dramatic, aren’t we?

The Church has not definitively taught that Jesus was unmarried. We simply assume that any such marriage (and children) would have been recorded for us, and thus, did not happen.

The Church has always taught the perpetual virginity of Mary. Your instructor is in error to suggest otherwise.

The change in the Creed is for clarity’s sake. Jesus did not descend into the hell of the damned, he went to Limbo, or ‘Abraham’s bosom’, where the righteous dead were waiting for him to open the gates of Heaven.

One does not need to memorize the Bible or the Catechism to be Catholic. We only need to know and believe the basics of the faith to be saved. That does not mean that ignorance is bliss.
 
PaulfromIowa said:
The change in the Creed is for clarity’s sake. Jesus did not descend into the hell of the damned, he went to Limbo, or ‘Abraham’s bosom’, where the righteous dead were waiting for him to open the gates of Heaven.
Click to expand...
He descended into Hell. The new wording says he went to Hell. The old wording said he went to the dead. The meaning has not changed. The Latin text says “descendit ad inferos”. In fact, theologians speculate that Hell is divided into four different places: Hell of the damned, Purgatory, the Limbo of the Fathers (Abraham’s Bosom) and the Limbo of the Infants. Some theologians have suggested that he only went to Limbo of the Fathers; others have suggested that his descent involved true suffering. The Church has not definitively spoken on which of these propositions is true. You are free to believe either way. Read about the Harrowing of Hell and draw your own conclusions; but there is clarity where the creed translates “inferos” as Hell.
 
PaulfromIowa said:
A little over-dramatic, aren’t we?

The Church has not definitively taught that Jesus was unmarried. We simply assume that any such marriage (and children) would have been recorded for us, and thus, did not happen.
Click to expand...
Over-dramatic…well, to me it means certain things (not that I believed that papyrus scrap):
  1. The Catholic Church was wrong, and taught error.
  2. Protestants were right about the Catholic Church being fallible.
  3. It means any guidance the Catholic Church gave can be questioned, ignored, and broke down. This includes the selected books in the Bible, approved by various Church councils throughout history.
  4. This also means Protestants teachings fall apart as well - the Bible they use are a abridged version of the Catholic Bible.
and…

5a) In Christ singling out a woman/women to marry, in the sexual sense, shows a Zeus-like behavior to mate with his own children. Ewww. On some basic, primal level, that just strikes me as wrong, and utterly evil…and I’d be seeing Satan’s rebellion in a new light.

Or…

5b) Christ wasn’t divine at all, and a liar.

In my opinion, Christianity falls apart. That’s why anti-Catholics are so eager to prove that at least one dogma is wrong. Take one brick away, and the entire house eventually falls. In my mind, we’re left with the remnants of Judaism after the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 AD. Even Islam is invalidated by making Mary’s virginity come into question.

This is partly why it boggles my mind that some non-Catholic Christians attack the Catholic Church so vehemently. Don’t they know their own institutions hinge on the Catholic Church?

So over-dramatic? For me, it’s about avoiding self-denial. Catholic Church teaches truth, or it doesn’t, pure and simple.

I never realized this until now, but actually walking through this step by step is starting to makes sense to me why the Virgin Mary’s perpetual virginity is important on so many different levels…God chose Mary as a Mother, not as an equal partner in a physically consummated sexual union…this means something…need to think about it :hmmm:
 
minion said:
  1. Protestants were right about the Catholic Church being fallible.
5b) Christ wasn’t divine at all, and a liar.

:
Click to expand...
On #2: even if we Protestants are right, it still doesn’t mean that the Catholic church ins’t a great place to receive the salvation granting love of Christ.

On #2: You will always find thing to doubt, hence the need for faith. Remember, doubt is a gift to be explored with faith - Christianity is a religion of Love, not a religion of brutal knowledge to be imposed.
 
minion said:
Is everything in the Catechism dogma? Required as a Catholic to believe? Should I be reading the Catechism before attending RCIA?
Click to expand...
Grab a copy of Catholicism for Dummies and read through it. It is far less dense than the catechism, but may be used as a form of catechism, since it carries bothe the Nihil Obstat and the Imprimatur. It is a great reference that you can use for years to come. Many RCIA programs already use it. I learn something each time I open my copy. Which reminds me…
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top