Trent is very clear. They say Catholics are not allowed to believe it is possible to avoid each and every sin.
Poor Pumpkin. It seems that your method of reasoning must be such a terrible burden. Sometimes reading your texts is so painful! I wonder how anyone with such thought processes can experience any peace of mind.
Code:
If the sins are impossible to avoid, they are logically required. If they are required, they're not voluntary.
Although this seems on the surface perfectly logical, it is not accurate. People miss the mark, every day, all day, without willing to do so. Jesus even taught that those who sin willingly have the greater responsibility. You seem to be conflating mortal sins with venial. Falling short is most often NOT a case of mortal sin.
If they aren’t voluntary, they can’t be sins since guilt requires responsibility which requires volition.
This also seems logical on the surface, but quickly breaks down as well. Of course there are ways to fall short without volition. In addition, we bear responsibility for a great many things that we did not create ourselves. A good example might be how parents are held responsible for the crimes of their children. Sometimes parents are included in charges of truancy and delinquency along with their teenaged offspring. These teens are old enough to know right from wrong, and sometimes misbehave on purpose to spite their parents.
If a person cannot avoid sin without grace, then it means God requires sin, unless you are saying that every has enough grace to avoid sin,
This is precisely what I am saying. God provides us sufficient grace to avoid sin. We cannot do this on our own.
but there is no way to verify this and then concept of grace serves no purpose.
There is no way to verify it using scientific method. But for those of us that receive what God has revealed about HImself, it is quite clear.
It’s an unnecessary layer in the explanation. Aquinas goes around in circles on this very point in the Summa, look it up. I just don’t care anymore so I’d rather not do it for you.
I am with you, Pumpkin. It makes me crazy going around in circles trying to make sense of certain theologcial precepts. It is much easier for me to accept them and leave the part to mystery that defies my logic.
In Eastern Catholicism, ,by which I have been heavily influenced, there was not the struggle with logic, scholasticism, and Thomism, so tthere are what seem to me much less confusing way of conceptualizing the theology.
The council doesn’t say anything about choice. It is very explicit. Those who die in mortal sin alone (aka embryos, fetuses, miscarriages, abortions, new borns, children under the age of reason, and anyone else who is perfectly innocent) go directly and immediately to hell where they are
punished relentlessly and endlessly. One sliver of good (maybe?) news: with different punishments from the mortal sinners!
No, Pumpkin. None of these examples you have listed here “die in mortal sin”. You seem to have a deficient understanding of the meaning of mortal sin, and you are conflating it somehow with original sin.
You literally bow before men every time you go to mass. You kneel before an object held up by a man and say “Amen” as he tells you it is God.
You sound very angry and cynical, Pumpkin.
Catholics do not kneel before the 'men" but before the Living Christ, who is present in the Mass. We do not believe He is present because the priest tells us so, but because Jesus tells us so.
For us, that “object” is the Living Christ. Is there some reason you would expect us not to kneel before our Lord and Maker?
I agree with you that the truth of God is beyond us. All of us, including me, including you, and including the Pope, bishops, priests, saints, fathers, doctors, rabbis, etc…
Yes. Our inablity to reach out and grasp it, though, does not prevent Him from revealing Himself to us.We can receive what He has given.
My anger is fading over time, but the root of it is that I regret wasting so much of my life on this silliness! Even now I continue the waste, but hopefully threads like this are educational and helpful for others. I suppose it was an experience I needed. I like to fantasize about what life would have been like if I had never been exposed to this in the first place. I suppose better, but I have no proof and no good reason to think this. I know there must be millions of people who find this ideology harmful and yearn for escape.
If they do, they can perfectly well opt out, as you have.
You still have yet to explain the millions that believe, and are content in that belief. Can you really purport that we are all delusional?
Also, the anti-atheist threads popping up around here needed some push-back. I’m not an atheist obviously, but I have respect for their various positions.
I have respect for Catholicism too, but I will protest and object to those who insist they are always right about things they can’t prove or are manifestly contradicted by history, reason, common sense, or science.
I do believe your protesting is beneficial to others who read the threads. I think it is very important for Catholics to understand that the scientific method is insufficient to explore the whole of human experience. It is also important for Catholics to know the rich history of their religion, and its reason.
