Wikipedia errors on Catholicism

  • Thread starter Thread starter Ron_Conte
  • Start date Start date
Status
Not open for further replies.
Generally good stuff, Ron, but I would correct your article on Sanctifying Grace a bit. It does say in numerous places in the Catechism that Grace is a share in the Divine Life or Divine Nature.

To name a few:

P. 375
P. 1131
P. 1212
P. 2009

There are several other paragraphs that relate this, but these are the most obvious IMO. Also, and excerpt from the Old Encyclopedia article on Sanctifying Grace:
If we were asked to condense all that we have thus far been considering into a definition, we would formulate the following: Sanctifying grace is “a quality strictly supernatural, inherent in the soul as a habitus, by which we are made to participate in the divine nature”.
Click to expand...
So while it is important to make the point that we do not become the same as God through Grace, it’s also important not to go so far as to deny that Grace really is a share in the Divine Nature, by way of participation and not natural generation.

Keep up the good work!

God bless!
 
my article states: “Although grace is correctly described as a type of participation in the Divine Nature of God, the claim that grace is “God’s divine life itself” is a substantial distortion of correct doctrine.”

Grace is not the Divine Nature itself, but rather an effect in the soul caused by the Divine Nature itself.
 
Ron_Conte said:
my article states: “Although grace is correctly described as a type of participation in the Divine Nature of God, the claim that grace is “God’s divine life itself” is a substantial distortion of correct doctrine.”

Grace is not the Divine Nature itself, but rather an effect in the soul caused by the Divine Nature itself.
Click to expand...
The effect, however, is a direct participation in the Divine Life. The Old Catholic Encyclopedia, for example, rejects the position that the “participation” is anything other than a share of Divine Life itself.

A quote from an article by Fr. Garrigou-Lagrange, the leading theologian of the Vatican who taught John Paul II:
Therefore Deity as such cannot be partaken of except by some essentially supernatural gift. And, conversely, grace cannot be essentially supernatural unless it is a formal and physical participation in the divine nature as divine, that is, in the intimate life of God, or Deity as Deity, ordaining us to the knowledge of God as He Himself knows Himself immediately and to the love of God as He loves Himself.
Click to expand...
And Paragraph 1131 says:
**1131 **The sacraments are efficacious signs of grace, instituted by Christ and entrusted to the Church, by which divine life is dispensed to us. The visible rites by which the sacraments are celebrated signify and make present the graces proper to each sacrament. They bear fruit in those who receive them with the required dispositions.
Click to expand...
It’s certainly the Tradition that the Divine Life itself is given to us in Grace, though we don’t aquire the Divine Nature in the sense of possessing it as our own. 🙂

Peace and God bless!
 
Wikipedia has this problem across the board, though I don’t think it’s as bad as you make it out to be.
Sometimes an individual editor, or a few editors, will keep watch over a Catholic article on Wikipedia, and not permit any changes with which they disagree. Wikipedia even has a feature to facilitate this process, so that whenever a particular article is changed, an editor can be automatically notified. Many editors use this feature to prevent any changes without their own agreement, so that they exalt themselves over other well-meaning editors, making themselves the judges over which changes to permit. The result is that well-meaning and well-informed editors are prevented from correcting problems.
Click to expand...
This, for example, is exactly the fix for a lot of the other problems you mentioned. It means that dedicated people can protect articles easily against vandals and passer-bys that don’t know what they’re talking about. Of course, if there are dedicated people who don’t know what they’re talking about, then there are talk pages for you to engage in discussion.

If people aren’t willing to discuss the issue, there are routes to handle that, but I don’t think that’s the problem you are running into. It sounds more like you’re just running into disagreements, and are frustrated that you can’t get your way immediately.

Wikipedia isn’t perfect, nothing is. It has advantages and disadvantages over traditional media. People can be biased, but so can book publishers, and Wikipedia can hold and maintain a much vaster amount of information, and the people who are most dedicated are more often those who know the most about the issue.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top