This is an abridged version of a conference given yesterday by a Benedictine Father, Dom Andrew Berry O.S.B.(a Monk of Belmont Abbey), in preparation for the Feast of the Assumption of Our Blessed Lady into Heaven.
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Almighty and eternal God, who has taken up into the glory of Heaven, with body and soul, the Immaculate Virgin Mary, Mother of thy son: grant us, we pray, that we may always strive after heavenly things and thus merit to share in her glory.
Today we come together to give thanks and praise to God and to honour Mary, the Mother of our Redeemer and Mother of the Church, we remember and give thanks to God for the wonderful things he did in her life and ours. How could we not fail to love our Blessed Mother whom our Lord and Saviour loved so much? Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen said this: ‘It is impossible to love Christ adequately without also loving the Mother who gave him to us’. He went further: ‘Those who begin by ignoring Mary soon end up ignoring Him, for the two are inseperable in the great drama of salvation’.
It is the faith of the Church;l it is our faith, that from all eternity God planned that Mary would be the Mother of his Son, because of this God did not allow Mary to be affected by sin. She was born free from original sin – this we celebrate in the Immaculate Conception. Throughout her life on earth she remained entirely faithful to the will of God, never deviating from it through selfish tendencies or giving in to temptation. Bodily death and corruption came into this world because of sin and today we profess our faith in the fact that Mary, because she was in no way tainted by sin, did not suffer its consequences and so did not suffer normal human death. Saint John Damascene says: ‘It was fitting that she, who kept her virginity intact in childbirth, should keep her own body free from all corruption even after death. It was fitting that she, who had carried the Creator as a child at her breast, should dwell in divine tabernacles. It was fitting that the spouse, whom the Father had taken to Himself, should live in the divine mansions. It was fitting that she, who had seen her Son upon the cross and had thereby received into her heart the sword of sorrow which she had escaped when giving birth to him, should look upon him as He sits with the Father. It was fitting that God’s Mother should possess what belongs to her Son, and that she should be honoured by every creature as the Mother and the handmaid of God’.
At the end of her earthly life the most beautiful Virgin was assumed straight into heaven, body and soul, to be with her Son. Through this we see for ourselves a sign of the glory that is offered to each one of us, fellow members of the Church with her, who are promised that if we too remain faithful, we will ourselves enjoy the glory of heaven in our resurrected bodies. Each one of us is called to know God, to love God, to serve God in this world and to be happy with Him forever in the next. Mary is the best example we have of perfect following of God.
The Assumption shows us that humanity has dignity and worth, that we are not spiritual beings trapped in a physical body but are whole and entire; a holistic entity. For us eternal life isn’t merely the survival of a disembodied spirit – the body discarded as so much rubbish. Rather we believe in the resurrection of the body in the salvation of the whole being. The human person is a unity and by declaring that Mary was assumed ‘body and soul’ into heaven the Church is declaring that the whole person will be saved, and affirms the goodness of all creation. The bodily glorification of Mary anticipates what we will become. The glory she shares is the same glory that we will one day enjoy.
The Assumption celebrates the special place that Mary has in the life of the Church. This place is forst of all defined by her being chosen to be the Mother of Jesus, His only human parent. This alone gives her a uniqueness shared by no other. On November 1st 1950, the Feast of All Saints, Pope Pius XII declared as dogma revealed by God that ‘Mary, the immaculate perpetually Virgin Mother of God, after the completion of her earthly life, was assumed body and soul into the glory of Heaven’ By using the image ‘assumed body and soul into the glory of Heaven’ what is really being said is that Mary. because of the dignity of her motherhood, and her own personal submission to God’s will, at every stage of her life, a submission borne out of pure selfless love, takes precedence over everyone in the sharing of God’s glory which is the destiny of all of us who die united with Christ her Son.
We give due honour to God’s most perfect creature. She who is the Mother of the Church is a sign of promise to each one of us of what God has in store for us. Mary is blessed because she is the mother of our Saviour Jesus Christ – but she is more blessed still because she heard the word of God and obeyed it. She is the Mother of the Church; a sign and promise to each one of us of what God has in store for us. She is also our Mother, who will hear our prayers and will intercede on our behalf. And so, we turn to her in confidence asking her help in our needs. So let us always with great confidence as loving children to our Mother with great affection and present her with all our needs that she may aid us along our journey as disciples of her Son. In the words of Blessed John Paul II: ‘Mary is glorified in heaven, but she does not cease to be ‘Star of the Sea’ for all those who are still on their journey of faith’.
Go to Mary in joy and in sorrow. Look on the face of the mother who loves you and holds you in her arms. Tell her your deepest hopes and desires, your fears and your aspirations and she will hear you. Stay close to her and she will stay close to you. Never abandon her for she will never abandon you. Love her and she will lead you to her Son the Saviour of the World. Amen.
Catholicism Pure & Simple 
A splendid post.
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“Bodily death and corruption came into this world because of sin…” it says here.
..and yet, innocent animals are subject to both those inconveniences.
How can that be?
Are Toad’s beloved dogs sinful?
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“We give due honour to God’s most perfect creature.”
Most perfect?
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These are significant issues, thinks Toad, doing GBH to the mother tongue as well.
. Not even involving here the question of what ‘physical’ state the fortunate ones, ultimately reunited with their earthly bodies in Paradise will present to others.
All these things present immense intellectual problems to Toad, and he is very anxious to be put right by the experts on here.
E:G: Will Quasimdo still have has his hump in Heaven? Whether he wants it or not?
A perfectly reasonable question, surely?
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Shocking lack of interest or response on this topic.
Thinks Toad.
He gives up.
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In the last section of his Introduction to Christianity, Ratzinger covers the issues Toad has asked about
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Toad, I’m preparing a post on the topic. Please give me a little time though; I also have a living to earn.
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Toad, Dom Peter is anxious to answer your comments personally, but as he is not used to ‘blogging’ he has to get around the idiosyncrasies of WordPress.. If this proves to much I will ask our ‘techie’ BB, to help!
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Thankyou Gertrude. Toad feels heartened and privileged. And can wait.
However, WordPress is capable of making a bishop kick in a stained-glass window.
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Allow Canon Dr John Polkinghorne ruminate aloud on your question in the meantime, Toad.
A Destiny Beyond Death
[audio src="http://flashstream.pointloma.edu/SharedMultiMedia/Theology/WileyLectures/2010/Fall/07_PLNU_Wiley_Lectures_11172010.mp3" /]
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Good article.
For me, dealing with the struggles of mid-life, struggling to know Mary more not so much as a young lady saying “yes” to become the Mother of God, but rather a woman at mid-life, just like me were I am at.
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But that’s exactly where Our Blessed Lady is – at all times of our lives. I recall being told some years ago, ‘that Our Lady’s arms are long’, and, whatever our circumstances Our Lady, our mother, is there beside us. She who stood at the foot of the cross watching her son being crucified shares all our dark moments too,and do you know (I’m sure you do) that is a very comforting thought. So in mid-life, just stay close. Mothers never let us down and Our Blessed Lady cannot.
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Well, Godlen, Toad, The Contradictory One, gave Polkinghone ( a name to conjure with) a decent shot, but when the canon suggested the solution to the life to come was, “some new form of matter,” Toad hopped off.
One might just as well say God can do what He likes and leave it at that. Toad did note that Polkinghorne started off by quoting some stuff about the Saducees and Jesus, and a question involving Heaven, but neither Polk nor Jesus provided anywhere near an answer. Simply changed the subject. Maybe Polk came back to it later. (Toad may have another go, when he has more time.)
However, Toad thinks being called contradictory by a Catholic is a bit like being called hairy by an gorilla.
Bit of a compliment, really.
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Thank-you Gertrude, I needed to read what you have posted. Dealing with a mid-life that now includes arthritis in my knees, I can take confort knowing that the Blessed Mother’s are long enough to hold me in her arms. :)=^..^=
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Toad:
but when the canon suggested the solution to the life to come was, “some new form of matter,” Toad hopped off.
Toad, I think the Reverend Canon Professor Doctor Sir John Polkinghorne, (yes, in the old Chersonnese they use all your titles) has been saying this sort of thing for a good while now. He’s obviously fairly serious about it. I suppose he’d know what he’s on about as he was professor of Physics at Cambridge and is an FRS.
What, dear Toad, you don’t think you need a ‘make-over’ before going to the eternal Marriage Feast? Great if you can get it, Toad.
http://polkinghorne.net/tablet.htm
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Toad. Let me apologise for not answering sooner I am still trying to tackle the vagaries of blogging. Please be assured I will answer some of your points which, incidentaly, are not new but where examined by such luminaries as Aquinas and Augustine. Please bear with me.
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Petdom, we have eternity, do we not?
Toad is aware that his points are far from new. He re-read them a day or so ago in Unamuno’s “The Tragic Sense of Life,” for example.
But a coherent answer will be worth the wait. He is sure.
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Petdom:
I will answer some of your points which, incidentaly, are not new but where examined by such luminaries as Aquinas and Augustine>/i>
I think I can imagine Toad’s reaction to that bit of news.
But, my splendid Toad, how did you take the recent news from Canon Polkinghorne that, physically, you have nothing in common at all with the Tadpole Toad. You and Tadpole Toad are completely disparate, molecularly speaking.
Not too much of a stretch from that to the ‘recreated matter’ post-general-Resurrection Toad, is it?
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Annemo, I couldn’t help but think of St Bernadette when you mentioned your arthritis.
Of course, you will know that she suffered terribly from tuberculosis of the bone and other ailments when later she entered the convent at Nevers.
Her closeness to the Mother of the Lord and her trust in Her meant that she was rather cheerful and composed throughout.
I think you should pray every day to the Lord’s Mother and give Her a good talking to. I’ve never found her to fail in the cheering up and strengthening department, Annemo.
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If Annemo has arthritis, and I’m sorry to hear that, is this because she has sinned? Or has someone else sinned and she got the fallout? Those who subscribe to the handing out of illness really should tell us.
If she has sinned and been given arthritis, then what effect will prayer have? Surely it would be wrong to pray against what we have been given. And how does it work, this parcelling out of ailments? I mean who gets a headache, and who gets something more severe? And for what actions?
I don’t get it, myself. Perhaps I have been given a dose of stupidity – for my sins. Tho’ I’d be getting off lightly if that were so.
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Whippy: Good to have you back. I do not believe for one moment, and I hope you don’t either, that sickness is handed out on a scale according to sinfulness. If this were so, then God help us all. We get sick for a variety of reasons, some of them even self-inflicted.
Even Job when beset with troubles – and particularly nasty boils – did not blame God – but that didn’t stop him admonishing God for his sorry state. There is the story, I believe true, of the Jews in Auschwitz, who, feeling the absence of God in what was happening, decided they would put God on trial.. They found God guilty – then proceeded with their prayers.
We reach out in our pain or helplessness simply because we are human. As Sister St. Faustina said, we should be just saying ‘God, in You I trust’ – and then proceed with our prayers!
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Yesterday, I made a trip to the riverfront park which is next to my hometown. The most peaceful place which had given me the opportunity of doing both the Rosary and Divine Mercy Chaplet. It was wonderful.
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Thank you G,
Yes I agree , we get sick for a variety of reasons, including the self inflicted, which I know to my sorrow.
I was in a sense protesting at what seemed like Buddhist ‘karma’ above, and which I cannot accept, in my awkward, irritating way. The idea that sickness is doled out from on high is appalling. That’s not the endless love promised to us.
Job was very intellectually Jewish in his way, always arguing with his God, as did the Jews of Auschwitz. I visited that awful place, but it was too much to comprehend, tho’ from a lifetime’s reading, everything was strangely familiar. It numbed me a bit. Oddly enough, Stalin in the gulags killed three times more people than the Nazis, but somehow that has less prominence in our culture/consciousness. Another form of numbness.
And of course, the Palestinians are paying a heavy price for the Holocaust.
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Please accept my apologise I just can’t work out how to
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Don’t worry, Petdom. These things are as nothing. And will pass.
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“…how did you take the recent news from Canon Polkinghorne that, physically, you have nothing in common at all with the Tadpole Toad?”
Toad thought it was the only thing Pokinghorne said that made the slightest bit of sense.
The rest was all conjecture.
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Let me apologise for taking so long to answer some of the question that have been raised by my reflection on the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary. I’m not used to blogging and so have had problems getting my head into it.
A quick thank you to Toad whose questions are relevant and to the point. Let me try and answer some of them. First of all my use of the term “God’s most perfect creature” is taken from the Novena in Honour of the Immaculate Conception by St. Maximilian Kolbe in which he describes the honour paid to Mary as being in direct proportion to the honour paid to God. Just as when we see a great work of art we give praise to the artist so when we meditate on Mary we give praise to him who did wonderful things in her life. Mary was an ordinary woman with whom God did extraordinary things and it is in this that her greatness lies. She is God’s most perfect creature because her life was most perfectly conformed to his will. She is what we shall be at the end of time. She also shows us what we were before the fall when man (and woman) walked hand in hand with God in a divine/ human unity. I could go on but that will do for now.
I will write about sin and its effects on creation at a later date when I have looked again at the various references. It wouldn’t do to give Toad the wrong information would it?
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Above, Petdom (unfortunate nomenclature, if one is fond of animals) has begun his explanation of The Life Hereafter for which we wait in keen anticipation.
However, we are off to a somewhat shaky start thinks Toad, as we so far fail to agree on: “most perfect” A thing is either ‘perfect’ or not. It cannot, by its nature, be qualified. One might as well say, ‘a little bit pregnant’, or ‘almost alive,’ or ‘nearly visible.’ To name a few off the top of my head.
This will be considered pedantry by some. It is not. Says Toad.
Who, or what, then is, “God’s second most perfect creature?” An absurd question. But no more so than the first one.
But Toad is more interested in whether Quasimodo will have his hump for eternity, or in what shape will a baptised baby that lived 20 minutes appear in heaven?
P:S: To the CP&S rulers: This ‘thread’ is now buried full fathom five. Others, as well as Toad may be interested in this discussion. Can it be ‘brought forward’ or something?
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“Bodily death and corruption came into this world because of sin…” it says here.
..and yet, innocent animals are subject to both those inconveniences.
How can that be?
Are Toad’s beloved dogs sinful?
You’re confusing individual sin with the “cosmic sin” (for want of a better nomenclature) that’s inherent to reality, or the origin of evil. Pope JP2 spoke authoritatively of the “matrix of sin” that we are all born into, and live in, causing us all to partake in sinful behaviour, and in the corruptions of sin, whether we choose to, or not.
Ultimately though, you’re still confusing Catholic moral teaching with Catholic cosmology. The existence of evil and bodily corruption is not caused by individual sins, but by other reasons described in a far more abstract and complicated manner, both from the Catholic sources and from scientific sources describing the natural origins of such things.
Those who might suggest any sort of link between individual human or canine morality (or whatever) and the fact that people’s dogs can get sick and die are misrepresenting both Church teaching and scientific knowledge.
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As for “most perfect”, you’re confused from using a wrong definition of “perfect”. Perfect in the classical sense, and the theological/doctrinal sense, has two meanings – the meaning that you’re thinking of though, can only be attributed to God. The second meaning is something like “fully-formed and complete, with nothing lacking”. So, a racehorse can be “perfect” if it is in tip-top physical health and fully trained towards the winning of races.
So you see, there can then be degrees of perfection, where one being or person can have a greater number of personal qualities having reached perfection than others may have.
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“So, a racehorse can be “perfect” if it is in tip-top physical health and fully trained towards the winning of races.”
Toad will ignore several other dubious points, regarding ‘sin’ and ‘sickness’ raised above, and concentrate on the horse. If any horse was ‘perfect,’ there would be no need to race it, as it would never lose.
Toad supposes from Jabba’s somewhat obscure thinking, though – ‘the most perfect horse’ would win, and ‘the second most perfect horse’ would come second. All the horses in the race, however, would be ‘perfect.’ This is silly, and misuse of language. Toad suggests. He also suggests Jabba ask a trainer how ‘perfect’ his horses are. Then block his ears from the reply.
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Toad supposes from Jabba’s somewhat obscure thinking, though – ‘the most perfect horse’ would win, and ‘the second most perfect horse’ would come second. All the horses in the race, however, would be ‘perfect.’ This is silly, and misuse of language. Toad suggests. He also suggests Jabba ask a trainer how ‘perfect’ his horses are. Then block his ears from the reply.
See, that’s what I mean about your running about with the wrong definition to make sense of the OP.
Perfect in this sense simply means “fully-formed and complete, with nothing lacking”, rather than meaning “utterly flawless and with no defects whatsoever and having all possible qualities”.
A “perfect education” in such a sense simply means that you have learned everything expected of you from it ; not that you have become a flawlessly knowledgeable polymath in every imaginable field of human endeavour (unless you’re Buckaroo Banzai, of course). A “perfect pint” is one that fully satisfies your needs for such beverage ; not one that every other pint is inherently and absolutely incomparable and inferior to.
This is btw most certainly not a “misuse of language”, it’s simply a use of language that you seem to be unaware of, leading you to a misunderstanding of the text in question.
I mean, this isn’t a matter for an argument – I’m simply informing you of some facts relative to your question.
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As for “Toad will ignore several other dubious points, regarding ‘sin’ and ‘sickness’ raised above“, I can’t see the point of your asking questions and then ignoring answers as they are provided. I can’t really see that as being good methodology for the accrual of knowledge.
Whether you believe in that sort of thing or not is none of my business, but I have nevertheless provided a (necessarily too brief) description of the issue as I understand that it is considered in Catholic cosmology.
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Toad has come back to see if there is any traffic still on here. Seems not. But, just for the hell of it, re Jabba’s point here below:
As for “Toad will ignore several other dubious points, regarding ‘sin’ and ‘sickness’ raised above“, I can’t see the point of your asking questions and then ignoring answers as they are provided. I can’t really see that as being good methodology for the accrual of knowledge.
Toad only ‘ignored’ these questions because he didn’t want his comment to be too long and unwieldy. He’s still listening.
“The existence of evil and bodily corruption is not caused by individual sins, but by other reasons described in a far more abstract and complicated manner, both from the Catholic sources and from scientific sources describing the natural origins of such things.”
Well, we can take the fact that things die as a scientific “given”, to be sure.
As to the religious implications, Toad supposes “the other reasons” are too “abstract and complicated” to be tackled on CP&S, let alone comprehended by a Toad. A little dismissive, perhaps?.
(One sometimes gets the idea that the real fun of CP&S is not Catholicism per se, but the dissection of Vatican “Office Politics” like SSPX, etc. And why not? Someon has to do it.)
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In a cry from the heart, many requests have been made here for help and understanding in liturgy and language. To little avail. The plaintiff remains understandibly unsatisfied.
Gorillas, dogs, horses, tuberculosis and Quasimodo’s hump have all been invoked. A Canon’s words have been dismissed, and Toad has been told his dogs are sinful.
I can only sigh.
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Whippy,
Having just read the 33 responses to this thread, I can find no request whatsoever for help with respect to liturgy or language. ThoughI did find this: If Annemo has arthritis, and I’m sorry to hear that, is this because she has sinned?.
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Thank you Mr B
I refer of course to Toad’s anguished pleas for guidance on ;( and I refer to)
animals and sin
perfection
GBH to the Mother Tongue
immense intellectual problems
railing against a bishop
unease with the canon’s “stuff”
musings on eternity
a plea for “a coherent answer”
perfection again
There is more, but this is enough. Toad is clearly hoping for guidance here, and he has been denied it. Fobbed off with allegations of internet problems, he has been left to lick his emotional wounds about his dogs being sinners. He is bereft of advice, abandoned.
Now do you see?
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toad, the questions concerning the origin of Evil, and the origin of corruption, really are far too complicated for this blog, I mean I personally would not have the energy and determination to provide even a basic presentation – because it would be very time-consuming, require research, and would inevitably be extremely lengthy.
I myself could spot the holes in any bite-sized presentation of the problem that I can think of off-hand, and I’m not very keen on presenting one, given that you’d simply be likely to spot those very same holes yourself, which might either lead to some pointless to-and-fro, or alternatively to me giving up the discussion as a bad job.
The notion that dogs might commit sins is OTOH incompatible with and irrelevant to Catholic teaching, but your continued allusion to it leads one to suspect that it’s mostly a straw man argument anyway.
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Well, that’s that, then.
Bow Wow.
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Will Quasimdo still have has his hump in Heaven? Whether he wants it or not?
Toad knows of course that Badger doesn’t know anything really, and is almost as sceptical as Toad. But Badger will have a crack at a Christian answer.
The resurrection of Jesus does not represent an isolated (lucky Jesus) event. The resurrection pre-figures the ultimate destiny of all men (people, in the NRSV). — So, what can we say about Jesus ‘post-resurrection’? If Toad closes his eyes and thinks back to North London in the fifties, he will remember the story of the “road to Emmaus”. Jesus is clearly tangible when he meets the two disciples on the road – they happily converse with him. On the other hand, he is a stranger a mere 3 days after his death, they do not recognise the man they must have known. And how does the story end? — He “vanishes from their sight”. Most of the resurrection stories have these characteristics. a) he has a body (eats fish, touch the wound) b) he is not subject to ordinary limitations (ascension, enters through a locked door). c) He the same yet transformed (recognised by Mary Magdalene, not on the road to Emmaus).
So what to make of them? Essentially they are narrative descriptions f the idea to be found in the image of the seed that falls to the ground and des and comes to new life as a plant. Utterly different from, yet organically connected to, the original seed.
The Christian resurrection hope centres on the idea that both body and spirit (the whole person) will continue, but be transformed. — That is the entirety of the claim, the exampl of Jesus would serve to show that the transformation will be so profound as to render questions about the retention of physical flaws too simplistic. Did Jesus have the same hair colour after the resurrection? — The non-recognition on the roa to Emmaus confounds such expectations.
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“Bodily death and corruption came into this world because of sin…” it says here.
..and yet, innocent animals are subject to both those inconveniences.
How can that be?
Once again, without knowing anything, and expecting to be corrected, and rather sceptical, Badger thinks a Christian answer might look like this:
In the Christian view Toads dog is not guilty of any particular sin. Toads dog is however living in a creation that has fallen through the agency of sin. This view essentially centres on the relationship between God — the ground of all being and creative mind who bought it forth– and man, the finite creature with the capacity to respond to God. The relationship between God whose nature is love and humanity, who is capable of responding to this love is the raison d’être for the world as a whole. Creation itself (groaning as if in birth pangs as Paul puts it) is bound up in this relationship. A relationship that has been impaired catastrophically through mans turning away from God.
Toads dogs experience the consequences of a fallen world, but are not themselves guilty of culpable wrong doing. — Indeed original sin itself refers (as Ratzinger pointsout in his intro to Christianity), not to individual culpability, but to human solidarity, as a communal being, our experience of the fall cannot be divorced from it historical fact.
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Toad supposes from Jabba’s somewhat obscure thinking, though – ‘the most perfect horse’ would win, and ‘the second most perfect horse’ would come second. All the horses in the race, however, would be ‘perfect.’ This is silly, and misuse of language. Toad suggests. He also suggests Jabba ask a trainer how ‘perfect’ his horses are. Then block his ears from the reply.
Mary has been referred to as Gods most perfect creation. This could collapse into meaningless nonsense, but it doesn’t need to. Simply re-state it as “the creation of God which is closest to perfection” and posit an ideal to which the human person points, and Toads poblem goes away.
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Badger, you are a badger among badgers.
Toad has passed your reassuring message on to the dogs, who were considerably mollified.
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Mr whippy, I answered Toads questions badly, but you can’t say I didn’t bother trying 🙂
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In the Christian view Toads dog is not guilty of any particular sin. Toads dog is however living in a creation that has fallen through the agency of sin. This view essentially centres on the relationship between God — the ground of all being and creative mind who bought it forth– and man, the finite creature with the capacity to respond to God. The relationship between God whose nature is love and humanity, who is capable of responding to this love is the raison d’être for the world as a whole. Creation itself (groaning as if in birth pangs as Paul puts it) is bound up in this relationship. A relationship that has been impaired catastrophically through mans turning away from God.
See, even that is a good enough bite-sized presentation of this problem, I could still spend all day picking holes in it … not your fault Badge, and that was a valiant stab at it.
The trouble with presenting a really comprehensive view of this is really that there is no universally accepted doctrine of Evil — and instead, there are various different theories of Evil that have been under discussion for Millennia — I mean, since well before the birth of Christ.
Roughly speaking, the problem has three aspects :
1) Moral evil, which is mankind’s burden alone
2) Cosmic evil, which is the objective existence of evils in the universe that are beyond our control
3) Original sin, which is the knowledge of good and evil, which causes us to see some things as evils which may not be evil at all in the eyes of God ; similarly, to see some things as good which may not be good at all in the eyes of God
Our understanding of good and evil is itself inherently fallacious and sinful, there are evils over which we have no control because they are a part of the cosmos, and we are ourselves sinful and therefore partially evil.
The Catholic doctrines concerning this are multiple and occasionally contradictory to one another, they tend to be theoretic in nature rather than magisterial, most of them are fallible, and a proper presentation of them would be a massive undertaking — particularly because none of them are informed by moral relativism, so that even definitions of the terminology would be lengthy in themselves before even discussing anything.
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**Badger reads JabbaPapa, and, having realised his belief that he had definitively “brought theology to an utterly satisfying conclusion” is false, sits despondently**
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To Badger et al,I have to say I am most impressed and not a little intimidated by the high quality of responses here.
You are competent and capable heavy hitters when you choose to be. I will return to skating on thin ice.
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Catholicism has certainly come a long way in 2,000 years. It was once 13 homeless, poor and unemployed young men wandering about and telling people they should love one another as themselves, and turn the other cheek when struck.
Now, it seems “…doctrines concerning this are multiple and occasionally contradictory to one another, they tend to be theoretic in nature rather than magisterial, most of them are fallible, and a proper presentation of them would be a massive undertaking.”
And bishops in palaces polishing said doctrines. Ain’t progress grand?!!!
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So true. It was indeed better in the past.
You could get into the pictures for a penny, fish ‘n’ chips or pie ‘n’ mash cost tuppence, whelks extra, so you always had change out of sixpence to take the omnibus home. And people were nice to each other.
And a bishop in them days would have a char in to polish the doctrines.
Oh we were poor but happy.
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🙂
I’m not a bishop, I’m next door to homeless, I’m poor, I’m unemployed, and I’m wandering about the internet and telling people they should love one God and one another as themselves, except that I’m occasionally a bit rubbish at the turning the other cheek business.
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Yes. jabba, turning the cheek is not easy. Nobody’s perfect. (well, hardly anybody.)
Wally, we were so poor, we only had one clog.
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One clog! You had it easy, we only had one foot between 8 of us. We took turns to go out for a walk.
Could it be, I wonder, with all their talk of cheeks, that J & T are two cheeks of the same backside?
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Or probably it’s me.
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“Could it be, I wonder… … that J & T are two cheeks of the same backside?”
That being so, Whippy, your role is, as ever central.
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Wonderful!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!Top hole old chap!!!!!!!!
Smiley thingys all round!!!!!!!!!
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Toad, brilliant, best insult I’ve seen in a while 🙂
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I always thought Wallly was a breath of fresh air, myself.
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Manus, don’t be cheeky.
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