Monday, September 20, 2004
Catholicism, explained
Now this is pretty much the last thing I thought I'd ever write about. But I seem to be getting deeper and deeper embroiled in religion. Me... ordinary joe, with the irreverent and very often blasphemous mouth. :|
Sasky wrote this comment recently : "There is a difference between the Catholic Church and the Roman Catholic church. And the difference. Techinically, the Catholic church is the grouping of christianity. Roman catholicism, is actually where they believe that pp have to pray through the saints, and the virgin mary. Christians (all other protestant denominations) do not share the same beliefs, because it has to do with the signifiance of the Huge curtain at the Holy of Holies, being rent into two when Jesus died on the cross, symbolising that with Jesus's death, we no longer have to go through someone else, to bring our prayers. (Previously, the holy of holies was only admissable by sanctified priests.)
Therefore, the crucifying of Jesus on the cross, bridged the gap between God and man. hence why in Christianity, you will notice that there are no cruxifixes. Cos it is believved that Jesus died and rose again. Why should he still be on a cross, when he is alive and risen. The cross in itself, is a reminder of him being cruxified. Which is enough."
And I can respect what she's saying, because I used to think the same things about Roman Catholics. (I was Anglican once...)
I too once believed that Catholics (lay use, catholic = roman catholic) prayed to the saints, and to Mary, and not to God. It all seemed very much like idolatry to me. I thought God was some distant figure to Catholics that you had to cross countless tiers of sub-administrators before being granted an audience with. Sorta like opening a bank account in the UK as a foreigner, only proabably just a bit easier.
But after attending a few Anglican high-church sessions, and then a few Catholic masses, I was puzzled. Almost all the prayers during mass are addressed to God, and to Jesus. The illusion of compulsory intervention by a Saint or by Mother Mary wasn't present at all.
I read around the topic a little to try to understand more - since I hate not understanding stuff (whether or not I remember is a whole different kettle of fish) and I found stuff very much like this and this which made things fall into context.
A short excerpt from one of the above websites : "Having others praying for us thus is a good thing, not something to be despised or set aside. Of course, we should pray directly to Christ with every pressing need we have (cf. John 14:13–14). That’s something the Catholic Church strongly encourages. In fact, the prayers of the Mass, the central act of Catholic worship, are directed to God and Jesus, not the saints. But this does not mean that we should not also ask our fellow Christians, including those in heaven, to pray with us."
It also explains why a slightly crumbly Catholic prayer-guide once owned by my father recommends simple prayers like this one to Jesus : "Oh my Lord, I give thee my heart, grant me the Grace to pass this day in Thy holy love, and without offending Thee" - no saint there either.
There is no decree in Roman Catholicism against praying directly to God, or to Jesus Christ. There is instead an option of praying "to" a saint, to ask him to intercede on your behalf to God, ie to pray with and for you, to God. This sort of makes sense to me...
"Therefore confess your sins to one another, and pray for one another, that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous man has great power in its effects." (James 5:16)
...but I'm not the type of person who would even ask another living person to pray for me, or with me. (It's just me...) And so I don't really visit the shrines to various Patron Saints after mass, like many other Catholics do. It's probably part of my Anglican heritage.
I think the fundamental difference today between the Catholic and protestant churches is that the former believe in a church of the living - and the dead, whereas the protestants believe in a church on this world, only.
Many of the misconceptions we harbour today about the Catholic church stem from ignorance, and also I suspect, partly from deliberate misinformation amongst certain protestants. Many of the "justifications" for the differences between the churches stem from attempts to rationalise a divide more political and social than theological. (although justifications at the time were very much theological)
Regarding the word "Catholic" - from www.transporter.com :
Christ left the adoption of a name for His Church to those whom he commissioned to teach all nations. Christ called the spiritual society He established, "My Church" (Mt. xvi, 18), "the Church" (Mt. xviii, 17). In order to have a distinction between the Church and the Synagogue and to have a distinguishing name from those embracing Judaic and Gnostic errors we find St. Ignatius (50-107 A.D.) using the Greek word "Katholicos" (universal) to describe the universality of the Church established by Christ. St. Ignatius was appointed Bishop of Antioch by St. Peter, the Bishop of Rome. It is in his writtings that we find the word Catholic used for the first time. St. Augustine, when speaking about the Church of Christ, calls it the Catholic Church 240 times in his writings.
The thing is, while Catholics repeat the Apostle's creed ("I believe in the Holy Spirit, the holy catholic Church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting.") in faith, and encompass the Universal church of Christians as well - Christians, when they employ the term Universal church, or "catholic" in it's universal guise -- more often than not don't include the Roman Catholic church in this group.
(I've been there... I do sort of know what I'm talking about.)
I was moved once or twice at St Andrews Christmas services when they actually took the trouble to include churches of all denominations including Roman Catholicism in their prayers. And it seems almost taken for granted now when I attend mass that prayers for the Catholic church - and quite often they use the term "Christians" - include all Christians.
From my understanding of things, the beginnings of the protestant church stemmed not so much from differences in the Word - because it was still the same bible at the time, previous to the removal of select books from the bible by the Reformers, because they did not fit with their opinions about what Christianity should be - but from the perceived (and quite probably, real) corruption which had permeated the church, as detailed in the following :
catholic encyclopaedia. rather biased against protestants
relatively neutral site, which details Martin Luther's original 95 theses of reformation)
historical account, predating the reformation
I find it... interesting that Martin Luther believed so strongly in the fallibility of his own church (he was an Augustine monk and professor of philosophy) that he was excommunicated from his own church for refusing to recant his beliefs in "the doctrine of justification by divine grace through faith" (alone).
Apparently where an entire church was fallible, a single man was infallible.
I just can't help but wonder if surely there was... a better way of doing things than to fracture the church, for the sake of unconventional beliefs?
One of the theses refuse to acknowledge the pope's role in absolution (and by extension all priests. I suspect he was being dramatic when he named the pope in that thesis) - "6. The pope himself cannot remit guilt, but only declare and confirm that it has been remitted by God; or, at most, he can remit it in cases reserved to his discretion. Except for these cases, the guilt remains untouched."
Yet : "He breathed upon His disciples saying, 'Receive ye the Holy Ghost. Whose sins you shall forgive, they are forgiven them, and whose sins you shall retain, they are retained" (John 20:21-23)
Jesus bestowed upon his disciples the power to absolve sin (via the Holy Ghost) according to the scripture common to all churches, and then set them loose on the world.
"Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you..." Matthew 28:19-20
Unless we are to believe that the Holy Spirit expired with the death of the apostles (which is a pretty bleak message) apostolic succession should surely enable the succesors of the original disciples to absolve sin as well? (amongst the protestant churches, I'm uncertain if any other denomination aside from the Anglicans believe in apostolic succession. Apparently to some churches Christ's choosing of his twelve apostles defined them as apostles, therefore there were no successors, only men taught by the apostles; or, in another interpretation, we are all apostles in a sense.
from http://www.fact-index.com/a/ap/apostolic_succession.html -
"They (Protestants) generally hold that one important qualification of the apostles was that they were chosen directly by Jesus Christ, and the work of these twelve, together with the prophets of the twelve tribes of Israel, provide a foundation for the whole church of subsequent history through the Scriptures which we have from them. To share with the apostles the same faith, to believe their word in the Scriptures, to receive the same Holy Spirit, is the only meaningful sense of apostolic succession"
I suppose then that the appointment of a twelth apostle (detailed in scripture references here) by the laying on of hands... was merely a formality then. A sort of sub-apostle who wasn't infused with the same holy spirit, or the same powers given unto his other disciples by Jesus Christ. I guess it's possible. Which raises the question of why Christ "charged" his disciples with the holy spirit in the first place? Why not just name them his teachers and administrators - his technicians to perpetuate his memory.
Here I'm wading into waters that are far too deep for myself.
Lastly, regarding the cross, and crucifix.
The cross actually predates the crucifix, and was the symbol when Christianity became the official religion of the Roman empire in the fourth century AD. The crucifix made its appearance in the fifth.
This person has written a rather rabid article about.. Christians crosses and Catholic crucifixes, which does have some small merit in parts.
This email exchange adds poignancy to the argument for the crucifix rather than the cross.
The thing is, there are catholic crosses too.
Catholics aren't bound to the crucifix. They prefer to depict Jesus on the cross, as an act of remembrance.
Protestants however exclude Christ from the cross. (And in fact, today in All Soul's I realised they've taken down their cross altogether. There used to be one, a long time ago on an altar up against the wall, prior to the Renovation.)
Symbolism is well and fine I suppose, but the thing about people is we're incredibly superficial, and the more we exclude, the more we forget. Will there come a day when we forget why we take communion? Will it just be our spiritual drink, "just because", after everything gets too dumbed down? It does take considerable effort and time to track down references and the history of the churches. I've just taken well over two hours to compile this rather measely skeleton of events. I can't imagine why, but without that motivation I'd have been happy to flounder on in my ignorance.
Oh yes, and about that veil...
That piece scripture predates the formal Catholic church. There are so many interpretations of it around it's mind boggling.
Other popular theories include a marker of a severence (rending) with the old covenant, and a beginning of the new. Or perhaps with the old (judaic) church, and a new church founded in Christ.
"this rending of the veil has been interpreted to signal that the crime of the priests is so grievous that God abandons the holy of holies--tearing through the temple veil as he exits"
"The traditional interpretation of this -- one found all the way back to the Fathers of the Church -- was as a sign that the sacrifices of the Old Testament and its particular form of worship had come to an end with the perfect Sacrifice of Christ. The rending of the sacred veil becomes, then, the first step in a process that will lead to the destruction of the Temple itself by the future emperor Titus in AD 70 (or as late as 73, by some reckonings). Et antiquum documentum novo cedat ritui."
I think the reality is that God works in mysterious ways. What does it mean? Who knows? We can interpret the event howsoever we may wish, to support whatever stances we want to argue. But then that beggars the question - is turning God's Word to our own ends right?
Something that puzzles me about the Lutherian / Presbytarian / Protestant interpretation is this - if the rending of the veil symoblised communication with God - in what way does this detract from the Catholic church? Because Catholics do not pray to God via their priest - the priest leads the prayers; sometimes a member of the congregation leads them. In the same way, when a protestant preacher leads prayers - he is not, surely, being the conduit to God for his congregation. In the sanctity of our own homes - we all pray alone, to God.
Sasky wrote this comment recently : "There is a difference between the Catholic Church and the Roman Catholic church. And the difference. Techinically, the Catholic church is the grouping of christianity. Roman catholicism, is actually where they believe that pp have to pray through the saints, and the virgin mary. Christians (all other protestant denominations) do not share the same beliefs, because it has to do with the signifiance of the Huge curtain at the Holy of Holies, being rent into two when Jesus died on the cross, symbolising that with Jesus's death, we no longer have to go through someone else, to bring our prayers. (Previously, the holy of holies was only admissable by sanctified priests.)
Therefore, the crucifying of Jesus on the cross, bridged the gap between God and man. hence why in Christianity, you will notice that there are no cruxifixes. Cos it is believved that Jesus died and rose again. Why should he still be on a cross, when he is alive and risen. The cross in itself, is a reminder of him being cruxified. Which is enough."
And I can respect what she's saying, because I used to think the same things about Roman Catholics. (I was Anglican once...)
I too once believed that Catholics (lay use, catholic = roman catholic) prayed to the saints, and to Mary, and not to God. It all seemed very much like idolatry to me. I thought God was some distant figure to Catholics that you had to cross countless tiers of sub-administrators before being granted an audience with. Sorta like opening a bank account in the UK as a foreigner, only proabably just a bit easier.
But after attending a few Anglican high-church sessions, and then a few Catholic masses, I was puzzled. Almost all the prayers during mass are addressed to God, and to Jesus. The illusion of compulsory intervention by a Saint or by Mother Mary wasn't present at all.
I read around the topic a little to try to understand more - since I hate not understanding stuff (whether or not I remember is a whole different kettle of fish) and I found stuff very much like this and this which made things fall into context.
A short excerpt from one of the above websites : "Having others praying for us thus is a good thing, not something to be despised or set aside. Of course, we should pray directly to Christ with every pressing need we have (cf. John 14:13–14). That’s something the Catholic Church strongly encourages. In fact, the prayers of the Mass, the central act of Catholic worship, are directed to God and Jesus, not the saints. But this does not mean that we should not also ask our fellow Christians, including those in heaven, to pray with us."
It also explains why a slightly crumbly Catholic prayer-guide once owned by my father recommends simple prayers like this one to Jesus : "Oh my Lord, I give thee my heart, grant me the Grace to pass this day in Thy holy love, and without offending Thee" - no saint there either.
There is no decree in Roman Catholicism against praying directly to God, or to Jesus Christ. There is instead an option of praying "to" a saint, to ask him to intercede on your behalf to God, ie to pray with and for you, to God. This sort of makes sense to me...
"Therefore confess your sins to one another, and pray for one another, that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous man has great power in its effects." (James 5:16)
...but I'm not the type of person who would even ask another living person to pray for me, or with me. (It's just me...) And so I don't really visit the shrines to various Patron Saints after mass, like many other Catholics do. It's probably part of my Anglican heritage.
I think the fundamental difference today between the Catholic and protestant churches is that the former believe in a church of the living - and the dead, whereas the protestants believe in a church on this world, only.
Many of the misconceptions we harbour today about the Catholic church stem from ignorance, and also I suspect, partly from deliberate misinformation amongst certain protestants. Many of the "justifications" for the differences between the churches stem from attempts to rationalise a divide more political and social than theological. (although justifications at the time were very much theological)
Regarding the word "Catholic" - from www.transporter.com :
Christ left the adoption of a name for His Church to those whom he commissioned to teach all nations. Christ called the spiritual society He established, "My Church" (Mt. xvi, 18), "the Church" (Mt. xviii, 17). In order to have a distinction between the Church and the Synagogue and to have a distinguishing name from those embracing Judaic and Gnostic errors we find St. Ignatius (50-107 A.D.) using the Greek word "Katholicos" (universal) to describe the universality of the Church established by Christ. St. Ignatius was appointed Bishop of Antioch by St. Peter, the Bishop of Rome. It is in his writtings that we find the word Catholic used for the first time. St. Augustine, when speaking about the Church of Christ, calls it the Catholic Church 240 times in his writings.
The thing is, while Catholics repeat the Apostle's creed ("I believe in the Holy Spirit, the holy catholic Church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting.") in faith, and encompass the Universal church of Christians as well - Christians, when they employ the term Universal church, or "catholic" in it's universal guise -- more often than not don't include the Roman Catholic church in this group.
(I've been there... I do sort of know what I'm talking about.)
I was moved once or twice at St Andrews Christmas services when they actually took the trouble to include churches of all denominations including Roman Catholicism in their prayers. And it seems almost taken for granted now when I attend mass that prayers for the Catholic church - and quite often they use the term "Christians" - include all Christians.
From my understanding of things, the beginnings of the protestant church stemmed not so much from differences in the Word - because it was still the same bible at the time, previous to the removal of select books from the bible by the Reformers, because they did not fit with their opinions about what Christianity should be - but from the perceived (and quite probably, real) corruption which had permeated the church, as detailed in the following :
catholic encyclopaedia. rather biased against protestants
relatively neutral site, which details Martin Luther's original 95 theses of reformation)
historical account, predating the reformation
I find it... interesting that Martin Luther believed so strongly in the fallibility of his own church (he was an Augustine monk and professor of philosophy) that he was excommunicated from his own church for refusing to recant his beliefs in "the doctrine of justification by divine grace through faith" (alone).
Apparently where an entire church was fallible, a single man was infallible.
I just can't help but wonder if surely there was... a better way of doing things than to fracture the church, for the sake of unconventional beliefs?
One of the theses refuse to acknowledge the pope's role in absolution (and by extension all priests. I suspect he was being dramatic when he named the pope in that thesis) - "6. The pope himself cannot remit guilt, but only declare and confirm that it has been remitted by God; or, at most, he can remit it in cases reserved to his discretion. Except for these cases, the guilt remains untouched."
Yet : "He breathed upon His disciples saying, 'Receive ye the Holy Ghost. Whose sins you shall forgive, they are forgiven them, and whose sins you shall retain, they are retained" (John 20:21-23)
Jesus bestowed upon his disciples the power to absolve sin (via the Holy Ghost) according to the scripture common to all churches, and then set them loose on the world.
"Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you..." Matthew 28:19-20
Unless we are to believe that the Holy Spirit expired with the death of the apostles (which is a pretty bleak message) apostolic succession should surely enable the succesors of the original disciples to absolve sin as well? (amongst the protestant churches, I'm uncertain if any other denomination aside from the Anglicans believe in apostolic succession. Apparently to some churches Christ's choosing of his twelve apostles defined them as apostles, therefore there were no successors, only men taught by the apostles; or, in another interpretation, we are all apostles in a sense.
from http://www.fact-index.com/a/ap/apostolic_succession.html -
"They (Protestants) generally hold that one important qualification of the apostles was that they were chosen directly by Jesus Christ, and the work of these twelve, together with the prophets of the twelve tribes of Israel, provide a foundation for the whole church of subsequent history through the Scriptures which we have from them. To share with the apostles the same faith, to believe their word in the Scriptures, to receive the same Holy Spirit, is the only meaningful sense of apostolic succession"
I suppose then that the appointment of a twelth apostle (detailed in scripture references here) by the laying on of hands... was merely a formality then. A sort of sub-apostle who wasn't infused with the same holy spirit, or the same powers given unto his other disciples by Jesus Christ. I guess it's possible. Which raises the question of why Christ "charged" his disciples with the holy spirit in the first place? Why not just name them his teachers and administrators - his technicians to perpetuate his memory.
Here I'm wading into waters that are far too deep for myself.
Lastly, regarding the cross, and crucifix.
The cross actually predates the crucifix, and was the symbol when Christianity became the official religion of the Roman empire in the fourth century AD. The crucifix made its appearance in the fifth.
This person has written a rather rabid article about.. Christians crosses and Catholic crucifixes, which does have some small merit in parts.
This email exchange adds poignancy to the argument for the crucifix rather than the cross.
The thing is, there are catholic crosses too.
Catholics aren't bound to the crucifix. They prefer to depict Jesus on the cross, as an act of remembrance.
Protestants however exclude Christ from the cross. (And in fact, today in All Soul's I realised they've taken down their cross altogether. There used to be one, a long time ago on an altar up against the wall, prior to the Renovation.)
Symbolism is well and fine I suppose, but the thing about people is we're incredibly superficial, and the more we exclude, the more we forget. Will there come a day when we forget why we take communion? Will it just be our spiritual drink, "just because", after everything gets too dumbed down? It does take considerable effort and time to track down references and the history of the churches. I've just taken well over two hours to compile this rather measely skeleton of events. I can't imagine why, but without that motivation I'd have been happy to flounder on in my ignorance.
Oh yes, and about that veil...
That piece scripture predates the formal Catholic church. There are so many interpretations of it around it's mind boggling.
Other popular theories include a marker of a severence (rending) with the old covenant, and a beginning of the new. Or perhaps with the old (judaic) church, and a new church founded in Christ.
"this rending of the veil has been interpreted to signal that the crime of the priests is so grievous that God abandons the holy of holies--tearing through the temple veil as he exits"
"The traditional interpretation of this -- one found all the way back to the Fathers of the Church -- was as a sign that the sacrifices of the Old Testament and its particular form of worship had come to an end with the perfect Sacrifice of Christ. The rending of the sacred veil becomes, then, the first step in a process that will lead to the destruction of the Temple itself by the future emperor Titus in AD 70 (or as late as 73, by some reckonings). Et antiquum documentum novo cedat ritui."
I think the reality is that God works in mysterious ways. What does it mean? Who knows? We can interpret the event howsoever we may wish, to support whatever stances we want to argue. But then that beggars the question - is turning God's Word to our own ends right?
Something that puzzles me about the Lutherian / Presbytarian / Protestant interpretation is this - if the rending of the veil symoblised communication with God - in what way does this detract from the Catholic church? Because Catholics do not pray to God via their priest - the priest leads the prayers; sometimes a member of the congregation leads them. In the same way, when a protestant preacher leads prayers - he is not, surely, being the conduit to God for his congregation. In the sanctity of our own homes - we all pray alone, to God.
