Belief Letter

[Basilisa Marie]

For example, when I try to explain the intercession of the Saints,

"The nuns said to ask your mom for stuff your dad won't give you, and that's just not like God."

I say, "Mary wouldn't give you, or ask for, stuff God didn't want to give you. She is 'the handmaid of the Lord' and unites her will with God's."

"Well that's not what the nuns said..."

 

Sounds like the nun used a bad metaphor or your friend doesn't remember right. Sometimes people will try to explain Marian devotion by talking about how apparently all fathers are ruling disciplinarians and all mothers are warm and comforting and that apparently if you really want something but you don't think your father will give it to you, you should ask your mother instead.  What they actually mean is more like an apple pie metaphor. You pick up a bunch of bruised apples from the ground, but instead of giving all of the bruised apples to your dad, you give them to your mom, and she bakes them into a pie and gives that to your dad.  It's how people explain how "powerful" Mary's prayers are. But all of this only describes part of how intercession of saints works, and you're right - Mary's will is perfectly united to God's will. 

 

 

When I try to explain the necessity of Purgatory,

"The nuns said I would be tortured with fire for days and years. With FIRE."

"Purgatory isn't a physical location, so it wouldn't literally have time and fire. It's called fire because it purifies, and nothing impure enters heaven. We have to become holy to see the face of God."

"That totally makes sense. But that's not what the nuns said, and they went to school for that so they should've known."

 

(She DOES believe in an eternal  and everlasting super-forever flaming Hell...but not in a temporary flaming Purgatory, even if it makes sense that purification is necessary.   :think: I was the opposite before I converted.)

 

People used to and some still do describe Purgatory as burning fire. This probably comes from the "refiner's fire" quote from this past Sunday's readings (among other places, but this one stuck out for me).  Fire was considered not just a punishing element of destruction but something used to purify something, usually metals, to burn away the stuff you don't want and keep the good, valuable stuff. People used to also measure Purgatory in length of time, because that's what made sense. So that's why you'd sometimes hear that a prayer was "worth" fifteen days off purgatory or something.  It was just a human way of describing something supernatural. 

[SilentJoy]

Sounds like the nun used a bad metaphor or your friend doesn't remember right. Sometimes people will try to explain Marian devotion by talking about how apparently all fathers are ruling disciplinarians and all mothers are warm and comforting and that apparently if you really want something but you don't think your father will give it to you, you should ask your mother instead.  What they actually mean is more like an apple pie metaphor. You pick up a bunch of bruised apples from the ground, but instead of giving all of the bruised apples to your dad, you give them to your mom, and she bakes them into a pie and gives that to your dad.  It's how people explain how "powerful" Mary's prayers are. But all of this only describes part of how intercession of saints works, and you're right - Mary's will is perfectly united to God's will. 

 

 

People used to and some still do describe Purgatory as burning fire. This probably comes from the "refiner's fire" quote from this past Sunday's readings (among other places, but this one stuck out for me).  Fire was considered not just a punishing element of destruction but something used to purify something, usually metals, to burn away the stuff you don't want and keep the good, valuable stuff. People used to also measure Purgatory in length of time, because that's what made sense. So that's why you'd sometimes hear that a prayer was "worth" fifteen days off purgatory or something.  It was just a human way of describing something supernatural. 

 

But that's not what the nuns said.  :harhar:
 

[SilentJoy]

Last night I went to a pub with about thirty other men from our parish, and our priest talked about manliness and the authority of the man as head of the family, during Superbowl halftime. No girls allowed.

 

 

 

:smile2:

Edited February 3, 2014 by SilentJoy

[SilentJoy]

It will be impossible to explain anything if she only cares about what the Nuns said.

No, probably not, but she keeps wanting to talk about it.

[SilentJoy]

 

 

I think they are told they can't interpret the bible for themselves or something along those lines and they extrapolate it to this.
 

 

I think this is likely; but even if they weren't told they COULDN'T of SHOULDN'T read the bible, it might be very natural to come to that conclusion. Not correct, but natural.

 

An example comes to mind from the Catholic Answers forums; people routinely start threads about how "Luther removed books from the bible!" and of course a Lutheran contributes a "False! He just moved some books to an addendum [might not be the right word], but they were still published with the rest of the bible!" But it seems natural to come to the conclusion that this was effectively a removal, even if they were still kind of there.

 

Sorry, maybe that wasn't a good comparison (and I probably just hijacked my own thread...), but I can see why people believe Luther removed books even if he *technically* didn't, and I can see why people might believe that Catholicism frowned on or even forbid bible-reading even if that wasn't precisely what was taught.

[SilentJoy]

I don't think this is what the nuns taught.  I think it's what people want to remember or are told they were told.  The b-more catechism was the standard back then, it doesn't have any of this craziness in it, in fact, it cites bible verses more than any of the newer catechisms I've been given to teach with.

 

My whole family went to parochial school, many pre-vatican II.  None of these stories seem to jibe with their experiences, although they do say many of the Nuns were strangely mean. 

Thanks!

 

The only "mean nun" anecdotes I've been told personally involved Dominicans in the US. :smile2:  A friend from Scotland said that she had Franciscan Sisters, and they were very sweet; the only slightly-less-sweet story she could remember was the time a nun guilted her into taking home a kitten.

[SilentJoy]

There were a couple of reasons why they wanted to discourage private reading of the Bible. First, in some times and places, the only local copy of the Bible was in a church (because books were crazy expensive). So they really didn't have access.  Second, in places that did have access, bishops wanted to make sure that people were reading it correctly, with the right kind of guidance. The idea that the Bible can be easily completely understood by anyone who picks it up (the meaning is obvious, so to speak) is a Protestant invention. The Jews were really big on reading scripture with the right scholarly guidance, and that carried over to Catholics. It's not about restricting the gospel. It's about helping people understand the gospel. It's not like everyone got sent to university to study theology. 

 

I don't know what local council, but it was certainly a common practice all over the place for a long time. 

 

So that's where the modern myth that Catholics don't read the Bible comes from. 

I can't give any more props today, but I did enjoy your post.