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The Beauty of Catholicism

S

Sniffles

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I would never say they were hindrances either.

I am merely approaching this from a minimalist POV, as someone who lived for so long in a culture where people tacitly (or even openly) insisted that certain things had to be done and believed for someone to "really be saved."

What is the basic foundation of salvation?
Not higher level discourse, even if it is useful to some.

That's all.

Ahhh I guess this is a reflection of the different traditions we've come from. Since in Catholicism minimalism is usually frowned upon: one should try to understand the faith as much as they can, and do as much for Christ as one's able to do.

This attitude is also found within the Orthodox. Here's a good introductionary commentary on that if you're interested:
the Orthodox Mind: Maximalism / Full Worldview.

As the author begins: "Rather than the minimalism of Protestantism, which asks questions like "What are the essentials? What is the minimum requirements to be a Christian?" The Orthodox ask what is the most I can do as a Christian?"
 

Totenkindly

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Ahhh I guess this is a reflection of the different traditions we've come from. Since in Catholicism minimalism is usually frowned upon: one should try to understand the faith as much as they can, and do as much for Christ as one's able to do.

This sounds very interesting to me, since honestly I have little experience with Catholicism or the Orthodox traditions overseas.

Usually knowledge in the evangelical circles is a form of control in the sense it can be used to justify your position or cement your faith or control behavior. I usually did not feel like people searched as individuals to understand more just for their own spiritual faith, it very easily gets abused as part of groupthink.

I remember church hopping ten years ago. I went to one evangelical church and immediately knew I would not go there. I sat through a Sunday School circle for adults. Everyone dressed the same, and all the answers to all the questions raised by the teacher were predictable and fit right into the standard lines and I knew that if I answered the questions honestly or with imagination or allowed ambiguity in my answers, I would not be accepted there.
 

substitute

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Peguy, I'd never say intellectual discussion was a hinderance to anything, hell no. It can be, but then just about anything can be destructive when abused or over-emphasized.

I was just trying to say that intellectual discussion isn't necessary for faith. Certainly not at the kinds of levels you'd need to fully read, digest and understand most of the content of the average theological discussion.

But within Catholicism there is a very strong history and precedent of people preferring to leave out the intellectual stuff. St Francis of Assis for example...
 

substitute

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ooops, I meant 'Assisi', obviously. Thinking in French. At least I remembered to say 'Francis' instead of 'Francois' :laugh:
 
S

Sniffles

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Well Catholicism is different in the manner in which we try to understand the faith. There isn't one perfect Catholic way. GK Chesterton once compared Catholic Dogma to a wall around a playground: you can play numerous games, just stay within the wall.

Numerous figures have represented style styles and mindsets within the faith.

We see this with the classic dispute between St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas intellectually. Also on a more simple spiritual manner with St. Francis vs. St. Dominic. Of course they're not mutually exclusive, just representing different styles. And of course Blaise Pascal.

One commentator even remarked that with such variety, how the hell is it even possible to claim anybody as a Catholic thinker. ;)

But it's not just intellectually. Even the various different orders(lay, monastic, etc.) reflect the different spiritual teachings of its founders. And even outside of that.

I find that Church dogma and doctrine acts like a guide to thought; and as long as you don't contradict it - you're free to put your own spin to it. Believe it or not, we even have self-professed "Evangelical Catholics".

Anyways, not trying to boast of the superiority of my tradition - just sharing it. ;)

Well if you're still into church hopping, I would recommend trying to find a decent Catholic or Orthodox church and attend one of their services at least. It'll be an enriching experience I assure you.
 

Totenkindly

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I was just trying to say that intellectual discussion isn't necessary for faith. Certainly not at the kinds of levels you'd need to fully read, digest and understand most of the content of the average theological discussion.

I don't mind the intellectual abstractions or even the higher concepts that might help expand one's mind in understand who God could be and why.

I hate the Te-style control freakishness that pervades some parts of the church, where they scour the scriptures and try to build an air-tight case for why someone's stance on something is wrong and theirs is not and why you need to believe the way they do, and if you don't, you're not really as spiritual as them or perhaps not really even saved and not worthy of being listened to or emulated.

And really, that's often how it plays out when people disagree on points. One's intellectual stance should be insignificant compared to how one actually lives his or her life, in terms of being a reflection of Christ and a model for other people... but I often just felt that it was not that way.

Even one's stance on the Iraq war could cause a horrible rift if you dared to bring it up or pray a certain way -- "A real Christian wouldn't hold <that stance>". UGGH. I can see devout believers being on EITHER side of that debate and neither is less a Christian than the other.

So it leads me focus on the "bottom line."

I just did not realize there were other ways to approach the whole topic, so i appreciate you peguy for your comments here.
 

substitute

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Yeah I know about the huge variety, I'm a Catholic, remember? Though you probably wouldn't acknowledge me as such, maybe the word has different meanings, slightly, to us... anyway I do question dogma and i think it's important to do so on a regular basis because the way i see it, it only becomes dogma because humans decide it is, and humans, being fallible, can be wrong. EVERYTHING should be regularly questioned and accountable. If it's Truth, then it'll hold its own under any amount of questioning, so there's nothing to lose but an awful lot standing to be gained.

And if I catch the person who tagged this thread 'sub is a cutie pie' I shall tan their behind!!
 
S

Sniffles

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Peguy, I'd never say intellectual discussion was a hinderance to anything, hell no. It can be, but then just about anything can be destructive when abused or over-emphasized.

I agree, I was just adding my own two cents to the discussion.

But within Catholicism there is a very strong history and precedent of people preferring to leave out the intellectual stuff. St Francis of Assis for example...

Catholicism is universal, so it has holy people of all types. That's one of the great things about it.
 
S

Sniffles

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Yeah I know about the huge variety, I'm a Catholic, remember?

I was addressing Jennifer, who admitted to having little experience of Catholicism or Orthodoxy for that matter.

EVERYTHING should be regularly questioned and accountable. If it's Truth, then it'll hold its own under any amount of questioning, so there's nothing to lose but an awful lot standing to be gained.

That's a very Catholic position you presented. Even my namesakes Charles Peguy even noted that everybody should question their beliefs at least once in life. But that shouldn't lead one to endless skepticism, which gets you nowhere.

However, one also should be aware of what they're actually able to question. Otherwise one should place trust in authority to judge on those matters. I find this especially true with myself in regards to issues like angels, miracles, the eucharist, etc. for example.
 

substitute

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Jennifer, what you say calls to mind something a certain Te-primary friend of mine said a while ago: "sometimes I can get so absorbed into reading theological literature and spend days and days thinking I'm so holy and spiritual because I devote all this time to understanding an obscure Hebrew passage... and then I realize that I've done all this at the expense of living the life, of walking the walk, and have missed the point entirely."

Gotta give him credit for admitting it.

But that's the other problem I have with it - not just what you describe as the control freakery, but that it's an easy thing for some people to hide behind rather than face actually changing their lives and the way they interact with other people... often the best theologians I've known in the past have been the most stubborn, belligerent, insensitive and arrogant people, sadly. It doesn't have to be the case and isn't always, but it's sad that it sometimes is...
 

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I don't see how my argument is refuted. Cain worked the land, while Abel hunted. I don't get the impression God looks more favorably upon the latter per se rather than the former.

Also many Jewish commentaries have noted that Cain didn't offer up the best fruits of his labour as the reason why God rejected it.

If I may...

At the end of Gen 3, God clothes Adam and Eve in coats of skin, replacing the garments of leaves they'd sewn for themselves in order to cover their shame. Day in and day out, as they wore the coats of skin, what did they think prompted God to clothe them so? Did they miss the fact that skinning an animal results in the death of the animal? Did they fail to realize that the covering God provided required the death of another?

Gen 4 begins with the account of Cain, Abel, and their sacrifices. As Substitute mentioned, ritual is symbolic representation of theology. What is the theological significance behind killing an animal, and how does it differ from killing a plant? Is it fair to say that Abel's sacrifice is a symbol of the death of another, but Cain's sacrifice isn't? I think so. As Jennifer suggested, the spilling of blood is essential, for it's a clear symbol of the terrible nature of death. Abel's sacrifice shows that he understood that justification is made possible by the death of another, and Cain's sacrifice shows that he didn't understand this.

thoughts?
 

substitute

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my instant thought is that the blood redemption idea has infliltrated christianity via its first converts having been Jewish, but I don't think it necessarily had to...

I find it sorta offensive to think of the God I know as Christ, creating beings with perfect foreknowledge and power to create them any way he pleased, and then punishing them so bad for simply behaving as the nature he gave them allowed them to, punishing generations and generations of these beings for the sins of others of their kind and requiring arbitrary killing of other, entirely innocent beings in order to be appeased.

To me, if you're gonna follow that kind of theology you might as well be, I dunno, a cannibal burning maidens to appease the gods and bring a good harvest...
 

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Jennifer, what you say calls to mind something a certain Te-primary friend of mine said a while ago: "sometimes I can get so absorbed into reading theological literature and spend days and days thinking I'm so holy and spiritual because I devote all this time to understanding an obscure Hebrew passage... and then I realize that I've done all this at the expense of living the life, of walking the walk, and have missed the point entirely."

That was insightful -- I think that's one of those positive turns on the spiritual path. I remember standing there myself and realizing it at one point... and still being scared to change and not sure how.

But that's the other problem I have with it - not just what you describe as the control freakery, but that it's an easy thing for some people to hide behind rather than face actually changing their lives and the way they interact with other people... often the best theologians I've known in the past have been the most stubborn, belligerent, insensitive and arrogant people, sadly. It doesn't have to be the case and isn't always, but it's sad that it sometimes is...

I agree that lots of times the religious zeal each of us all might feel could be the result of avoiding making more difficult changes in our lives. It's easy to build and argue an opinion on something, it's harder to commit to shaping your life in a sacrificial way, when you don't feel like it sometimes, in order to mold yourself. That is why growth often occurs involuntarily -- we are not really looking for the life lessons and would be happy not to find them, if we looked deep inside ourselves. But events in life force us to grow (or shatter).

I know I've been that way. It was easier to understand, explain, and argue an idea than to deprive myself of something I wanted for the sake of another.
 

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my instant thought is that the blood redemption idea has infiltrated christianity via its first converts having been Jewish, but I don't think it necessarily had to...

I find it sorta offensive to think of the God I know as Christ, creating beings with perfect foreknowledge and power to create them any way he pleased, and then punishing them so bad for simply behaving as the nature he gave them allowed them to, punishing generations and generations of these beings for the sins of others of their kind and requiring arbitrary killing of other, entirely innocent beings in order to be appeased.

I don't know.

All I know (and I know you know too) is that life is messy and doesn't follow logically.

I incorporate other views of Jesus besides pure Atonement theory into my understanding of him, from a philosophical view I have a similar feeling, but you can't really ignore it either. The pattern and verses are there in the text.

I guess it also comes down to considering Paul and his observations, as someone steeped in Jewish tradition and yet aware of Jesus, and the connections he made that have now persisted for 2000 years.

I do think that people associate different value to animals rather than plants. Plants could be slashed, burned, removed, mowed down, whatever, and it's not really thought about as "killing." Animals at least in the human mind are much more firmly related to people, and when they're killed, we recognize it as a death. The meat market industry currently divorces most of society from the necessity of death for their culinary satisfaction, so I think we have forgotten that; but one hundred years ago or more, when people had to hunt for their own food, it was quite clear that for people to live, animals had to die, and people saw themselves as part of the natural cycle.

It might seem harsher for us, divorced as we are from that process, than it was for the Israelites.

To me, if you're gonna follow that kind of theology you might as well be, I dunno, a cannibal burning maidens to appease the gods and bring a good harvest...

charyou tree!
 

Owl

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my instant thought is that the blood redemption idea has infliltrated christianity via its first converts having been Jewish, but I don't think it necessarily had to...

I find it sorta offensive to think of the God I know as Christ, creating beings with perfect foreknowledge and power to create them any way he pleased, and then punishing them so bad for simply behaving as the nature he gave them allowed them to, punishing generations and generations of these beings for the sins of others of their kind and requiring arbitrary killing of other, entirely innocent beings in order to be appeased.

To me, if you're gonna follow that kind of theology you might as well be, I dunno, a cannibal burning maidens to appease the gods and bring a good harvest...

I'm not sure if you're using "blood redemption" in a technical way I'm not familiar with, but if that view entails the whole middle part of your post, I assure you I don't subscribe to it.

It's not the blood per se that makes justification possible. The blood is a sign, and a sign is not the reality, and the sign needn't be accompanied by the reality. However, signs are necessary for communication; e.g., words are signs, and if I weren't typing any words, then you wouldn't know what's on my mind, and thus you'd have no knowledge of me as a person. (I suppose I could hit the "Quote" button, followed by the "Submit Reply" button, without typing anything, and that would allow you to know something about me as a person, namely, that I like to press buttons, but actions are also signs that reveal the underlying, invisible substance that gives rise to the action; indeed, my typing words is a proper subclass of actions that are signs that serve to make known the type of thing that I am).

Your post addresses many fundamental concepts of Christian doctrine such as: what is the nature of God; what is the nature of man; what is the nature of sin; and what are the consequences for sin? The way one answers these questions will have widespread implications for the rest of his faith--the faith you outline above would be, I contend, inconsistent upon examination and therefore ought not to be believed. (probably why you find it offensive).

What I'm driving at is that it is possible to affirm this view of creation as revelation and consistently reject the nasty form of Christianity you outline.
 

substitute

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having read your posts Jennifer I'm still partly distracted from the substance of them by admiration at your gift for lucid expression lol

But yeah, I'm with you on most of what you say, main difference for me being that being 'in the text' just doesn't mean as much to me, I don't ascribe the same significance to the text - any text - that most do. I just quite simply don't see it as anything particularly authoritative...

Owl - depends what you define as a sign, and I suspect people have hugely varying criteria for judging what is and isn't a sign and what the sign means. Being of a 'divinity within' sorta school of thought I tend to feel that it's in meditative and prayerful communion with my own inner self that I receive revelation and communication from what I think of in my head as God, as revealed in Christ (as far as I can tell). But I've found Buddhist sutras and Hindi Upanishads of more use to me in my journey than the Bible...
 

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It's not the blood per se that makes justification possible. The blood is a sign, and a sign is not the reality, and the sign needn't be accompanied by the reality. However, signs are necessary for communication; e.g., words are signs, and if I weren't typing any words, then you wouldn't know what's on my mind, and thus you'd have no knowledge of me as a person. (I suppose I could hit the "Quote" button, followed by the "Submit Reply" button, without typing anything, and that would allow you to know something about me as a person, namely, that I like to press buttons, but actions are also signs that reveal the underlying, invisible substance that gives rise to the action; indeed, my typing words is a proper subclass of actions that are signs that serve to make known the type of thing that I am).

That's a good description of the "sign" and realistically how they function. Like it or not, without the sign or indicator, communication is impossible; ideas, feelings, and beliefs don't just travel through osmosis, they are embodied in the packet or sign although the sign is NOT the idea, feeling, or belief itself but merely a representation of it.

I remember growing up in the Lutheran tradition that pushed transsubstantiation, though, and insisted that something mystical but unexplainable happened during communion, where the bread and wine literally became the body of Christ. For a long time, I thought about that and tried to understand the ramifications of what that means; I mostly do not believe that now, I just see blood as a sign -- albeit a very powerful one -- and not as a literal magical substance. It just represents something far bigger. But some traditions still believe there is something mystical that occurs and the blood is more than a signifier or sign.
 
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Sniffles

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If I may...

At the end of Gen 3, God clothes Adam and Eve in coats of skin, replacing the garments of leaves they'd sewn for themselves in order to cover their shame. Day in and day out, as they wore the coats of skin, what did they think prompted God to clothe them so? Did they miss the fact that skinning an animal results in the death of the animal? Did they fail to realize that the covering God provided required the death of another?

Gen 4 begins with the account of Cain, Abel, and their sacrifices. As Substitute mentioned, ritual is symbolic representation of theology. What is the theological significance behind killing an animal, and how does it differ from killing a plant? Is it fair to say that Abel's sacrifice is a symbol of the death of another, but Cain's sacrifice isn't? I think so. As Jennifer suggested, the spilling of blood is essential, for it's a clear symbol of the terrible nature of death. Abel's sacrifice shows that he understood that justification is made possible by the death of another, and Cain's sacrifice shows that he didn't understand this.

thoughts?

I just got reminded of why I often hate discussing the Bible. This and the Church vs State discussion has really tired me out mentally.
 
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