Dubia Round Two -- Formal Correction on Horizon?

[Guest]

17 minutes ago, Era Might said:

Yes! And you remind me of one of my favorite passage, which stopped me in my tracks when I first read it, in the Psalms: I have run the way of your commandments, for you have enlarged my heart. We are all so petty in everything we do, all of us. Love is always humbling because it introduces us to a person who did not exist until loved into existence. Ultimately, we all cease to exist, for in loving perfectly we give birth to Christ, the New Man, and there is none but Christ, all becomes Christ and returns to the Father, for even Christ only exists to love another, to return everything to his father.

Oh yeahhh.........."petty" sure is the word!  My SD and confessor is calling on me Friday (I am a bit incapacitated at the moment) and "petty" is a word on which I will be focusing.  I have a continual feeling and awareness indeed knowlege I am continually falling well short, reminding me of another sentence by St Augustine "our hearts are restless, Lord, until they rest in Thee".  That sounds wonderful and consoling, until one experiences it - that restlessness (a deep longing for what one does not know really) - and I think without complete trust in the Loving Mercy of Jesus one just could not bear that kind of restlessness.   I fall well short of Christ, well short indeed and therefore am a sinner - but it is Jesus Himself who fills the lack in His Loving Mercy.  He draws all things to Himself returning all to His Father.

A Benedictine prioress gave an address to her community about sinners and saints.  She commented that that very nun who annoyed all because she just could not keep silence, was the very nun always eager to help others and first to see another of her sisters in need.  We are all sinners somewhere - we are all saints somewhere.

What gets at me is why is my sin less serious than another's - only God knows if full knowledge and full consent was actually truly present.  Certainly, The Church provides a guide to serious and less serious sin and the whys and wherefores.  However, that guide does not allow me to sit in any sort of judgement on others for sure.  I think I even have to sit uneasily where myself is concerned - and I think we all must.  Final type of judgement that is.  We certainly need to assess in various ways as we journey through life, but that can never ever be infallible.  Nothing about our poor, weak and fallen natures is infallible i.e. beyond making any sort of mistake.

Edited June 27, 2017 by BarbaraTherese

[Nihil Obstat]

Christus vincit, Christus regnat, Christus imperat.

[Guest]

24 minutes ago, Nihil Obstat said:

Christus vincit, Christus regnat, Christus imperat.

 

Ego sum Alpha et Omega ........... ( thank you, Mr Google, for the English to Latin.  Latin always was, is and will be a miserable failure of mine.)

Translates: "I am The Beginning and The End"

 

(Revelations Chapter 1 ""I am the Alpha and the Omega," ⁶ says the Lord God, "the one who is and who was and who is to come, the almighty."

Edited June 27, 2017 by BarbaraTherese

[Guest]

3 hours ago, Era Might said:

Yes! And you remind me of one of my favorite passage, which stopped me in my tracks when I first read it, in the Psalms: I have run the way of your commandments, for you have enlarged my heart. We are all so petty in everything we do, all of us. Love is always humbling because it introduces us to a person who did not exist until loved into existence. Ultimately, we all cease to exist, for in loving perfectly we give birth to Christ, the New Man, and there is none but Christ, all becomes Christ and returns to the Father, for even Christ only exists to love another, to return everything to his father.

That is really profound, Era. 

[Ice_nine]

I think part of the issue is that we don't really know what love is. We often mistake other things for love, indifference, cowardice; and I mean this in the sense that we seem to often sit by and do nothing while the people we say we love skip happily to perdition. Christ talked about love fulfilling the law, He talked about those who would be thrown into the unquenchable fire, He told us not to be afraid. He told us to regard ourselves as servants and slaves on one hand but to regard ourselves as sons of God the Father.

It can all seem conflicting. I don't claim to understand the Gospel fully. There's a lot going on in my mind and life that is disturbing me and shaking the foundations of my faith. I've been in situations too many times where I thought I was doing things out of love, when in reality I was just allowing people to commit evil and participating in evil myself. I 've been really deluded.

Especially in this current epoch where love is equated with feelings, and individual autonomy is given the highest reverence. I think the cardinals are just trying to avoid this. We are fallen, and broken. We need rules. Christ said "if you love me, you will follow my commandments." But love is such a mysterious and confounding thing. And the word has been co-opted in a post-Christian society to mean something a lot different than what Christ spoke about.

I'm sure when St. Peter told Christ that he would not let his master die he thought he was acting in love, and Christ responded by saying "Get behind me Satan!" How many times have I been wrong and not even known it?

I think the "peace and love" folk could have something to learn from the more "rigid" traditionalists and vice versa.

But I don't know.

[truthfinder]

Seriously, we would all benefit if we go and re-read what the Catechism says (and no, I'm not linking the Catechism of Trent, or the Baltimore Catechisms). When we're talking about love, we should really be using 'charity' - so http://www.scborromeo.org/ccc/p3s1c1a7.htm#1822 the paragraph on charity.

Charity is the 'fullness of the Law', 'charity demands...fraternal correction': 'Charity is the theological virtue by which we love God above all things for his own sake, and our neighbor as ourselves for the love of God.'

[Nihil Obstat]

8 minutes ago, truthfinder said:

 (and no, I'm not linking the Catechism of Trent, or the Baltimore Catechisms).

Trad card revoked!

[truthfinder]

7 minutes ago, Nihil Obstat said:

Trad card revoked!

No! I'll put on my scholar hat, and start quoting from hand-copied versions of Bellarmine's Christine Doctrine.

[Ice_nine]

What does it mean when the catechism says love is "disinterested"?

[truthfinder]

34 minutes ago, Ice_nine said:

What does it mean when the catechism says love is "disinterested"?

from whatever dictionary google is displaying: 'not influenced by considerations of personal advantage.'

Am I doing good for another out of my own pride, so that others will think well of me, or because there is some other benefit to me?

[Era Might]

I think charity and love are different in this sense: charity, as quoted in the Catechism above, is a philosophical virtue. It's sort of the mirror of wisdom, where wisdom is understanding of how things fit together for a Whole, a Good, and charity is sort of wisdom in action, being able to order things so that they fit together into a Whole, a Good.

But, I don't think that's what love is. Charity can involve "fraternal correction" but not love, because love is something that is irrational, passionate, despairing. "God so loved the world that he sent his only begotten Son..." This was not an act of correction, but a foolish and passionate act on God's part, to send his own son. We can see the same thing in the story of Cain and Abel. Cain was angry that God loved Abel's sacrifice, for no apparent reason, just because. But what happened after Cain slew Abel? God said, any man who touches Cain will be avenged sevenfold. God's favor for Cain was even more irrational and extravagant than his favor for Abel.

On the Cross, Christ could not be charitable, he could only love. It would be absurd for Christ to look down from the Cross and fraternally correct his brothers, as Socrates did when he was executed. Love is a negative virtue, not positive. Charity is a bond between people, but love is destructive, it breaks bonds to give way to someone new. Love is going two miles when a man asks you to go one, because in asking you to go one mile, he is setting up a competition, an eye for an eye, and in going two miles you don't meet him, you go absurdly the opposite way, not one but two, not your cloak but your shoes as well. Who can answer that? Nobody, it's an act of renunciation, of death. I think that's what Peter didn't understand, he didn't want Christ to go to Jerusalem, but what could Christ do here on earth? You can't love anything except by leaving it. If Christ had stayed on earth, he could have set up a fine religion. I have a lot of regard for Catholicism as a philosophical system for practical living. I think it's pretty good, a nice philosophy, things like charity and temperance and fortitude. But I think the Gospel has nothing to do with any of that, the Gospel is something that is beyond that, can only be found in silence and death. And, ultimately, that is an essential point about marriage. The goal of marriage is love, which is not to be together, but to leave each other, to leave kids and spouse and ultimately to leave yourself and find only God. But, marriage as an institution has other ends. The goal is to set people up to stay here on earth, through property, inheritance, family names, wealth. Family and marriage is the secular equivalent of religion, and the Gospel confounds both of them, I think.

Edited June 27, 2017 by Era Might

[Ice_nine]

3 hours ago, truthfinder said:

from whatever dictionary google is displaying: 'not influenced by considerations of personal advantage.'

Am I doing good for another out of my own pride, so that others will think well of me, or because there is some other benefit to me?

But how can you really know? Maybe I'm cynical, or too influenced by Freudian ideas, but deep down, do we know our hidden motivations? Don't we choose friends and lovers because they do offer something to us? Don't we help people because sometimes it just feels good to do so?

It almost makes it seem like, if you want to receive love, you are not capable of truly loving someone else.

But the human heart is designed to receive love. Even the heart of Christ, when he took on human form, was and is meant to receive love yes?

 

[Nihil Obstat]

5 hours ago, truthfinder said:

No! I'll put on my scholar hat, and start quoting from hand-copied versions of Bellarmine's Christine Doctrine.

This pleases me.

[KnightofChrist]

1 hour ago, Ice_nine said:

But how can you really know? Maybe I'm cynical, or too influenced by Freudian ideas, but deep down, do we know our hidden motivations? Don't we choose friends and lovers because they do offer something to us? Don't we help people because sometimes it just feels good to do so?

It almost makes it seem like, if you want to receive love, you are not capable of truly loving someone else.

But the human heart is designed to receive love. Even the heart of Christ, when he took on human form, was and is meant to receive love yes?

 

I would say we can know true love without personal advantage when we love our enemies. Many martyrs have died forgiving their persecutors. Using the last moments of life to pray for the souls of their killers. There is little personal advantage in such cases.  

[Ice_nine]

I was talking about in our everyday experience, like when we're not being murdered or anything. And the human heart's need to receive love in this context hasn't been addressed.

It seems lately I have more questions than answers. Sometimes it feels like God is silent, and my faith is weak. I feel a bit defeated. I know I'm veering off topic but maybe you can all pray for me to find answers, as many things are troubling me.