"For I reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory that shall be revealed in us.... the earnest expectation of the creature waits for the manifestation of the sons of God... because the creature shall also be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God.
Likewise the Spirit also helps our infirmities; for we know not what we should pray for as we ought -- but the Spirit itself makes intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered. Indeed the whole creation groans until now.....
And he that searches the hearts... knows what is the mind of the Spirit because he makes intercession for the saints according to the will of God.
And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them that are called according to his purpose." Romans 8, selections.
Thanks for your response Joyce. ( please see my most recent post and Joyce's very stimulating observation.) You are certainly correct that I know only certain fragments of Catholic theology. I suspect that my daughter-in-law Grace will now more than I do about it soon since she is reading the Summa Theologica.
What I do know about it is what I can glean from First Things. Do you ever read this? I understand that the founding father, John Neuhaus, held the belief that hell contains no human persons/souls and never will. Is this the "butterfly effect," of which you were speaking?
I quite agree that all suffering is somehow redemptive but I am unclear as to the mechanism. It is frankly way beyond me...having an eclectic approach to theology probably doesn't help; but it is my view that each organ of the Body has its own function and one of the functions of the rest of the organs is to try not to alter the particular gift/duty of any particular other organ. When this happens, disease is the result. The body fights against itself as is the case in lupus rheumatoid arthritis, and many others including cancer. But I do quite expect that the Whole Body and The Bride will be quite impressive!!! And the problems of discord and suffering will be sorted out.
Suffering and sin is a Gordian knot which no man can untangle. (or dissect) Certainly the "friends" of Job tried hard enough. My recent sufferings are more to be reckoned as trivial compared to the sufferings of other people, but I do believe they were instructive once again to help me re-sort my priorities. Otherwise there would be no point in mentioning them. "Therefore brothers, we are debtors, not to the flesh, to live after the flesh -- if you mortify the deeds of the body, you shall live."
How this actually works out in practice seems to be a moment by moment experiential and, as it seems only to us, experimental and perhaps existential (in the Kierkegaardian sense) process beyond our control; I can know about such matters but faintly and not intellectually. How it really looks to The Father and The Son is more the province of the Spirit as it moves and interprets the word of God/Logos. Perhaps this is why theology in itself has some very natural and supernatural limitations. Certainly God uses theology in the lives of almost all people but it has to be merely a stepping stone to the real thing, as Paul asserts when he affirms that we see through a glass darkly. I personally am quite looking forward to being "swept away" in the very near future and I'm quite sure I will be leaving most of my theology and my thought patterns behind. Even the stuff I'm reading now is mostly(all?) dust in the wind compared to the Persons of the Godhead. At my age it is getting a little bit tiresome to be arguing, and I certainly would not be dogmatic about any of the above even the particular application of the above Scriptures to anything and anyone.
"There is is, then. Too many notes...." (I trust no one is taking notes on any of this)
Not so sure about John Neuhaus... but Catholics believe you pretty much have to reject God totally to go to Hell - so only truly evil, self-serving people and total atheists are there (not the people who missed Mass last Sunday!) Everything else is "cleaned up" in Purgatory. OK, this is a huge over-simplification!
ReplyDeleteSimple explanation of Vatican II theology: God loves us unconditionally, and is constantly reaching out to each person. The extent of our openness to God's outreach and our ability to cooperate with this gift of God's outpouring of God's self (grace) is what determines how well we live the life God has in mind for us and how well we progress in faith during our life on earth. The writings of Karl Rahner, Teillard de Chardin and others are key to this understanding.
The "Economy of Grace" is the name for the system of which I spoke in the other post. Everything we do by way of cooperating with God's plan for us affects the "economy"... and it affects others. The Cursillo has a simple visual analogy for explaining this. If I pray for you, it is like there is rock with a board on it (a teeter-totter-like thing) and you are standing on one end. My prayer presses down on the board and you rise.
This is why Catholics pray for one another, pray for the dead (so that their "time" in Purgatory may be shorter)and believe that whenever we offer ourselves and all of our joys and sorrows, along with the sacrifice of the Mass, it has the power to transform the world. (Catechism of the Catholic Church paragraph 901).
As to theology - yes. We believe that every generation needs theologians to interpret the faith. We also believe, however, that each person has the ability to theologize (sometimes called "theology from below"). There is no sense that one is more "real" than the other. There is just a difference in expertise and audience. Each person's individual relationship with God, mediated by the Holy Spirit, is sacrosanct and unique. Therefore, each person's individual theology is also unique. Corporate, communal theology supports the structure of the community - and is necessary to keep us all on the same page about the truth as we walk our individual journeys of faith, but within our relationship with God, we are free to formulate our own sense of how it all works.
There - that's my nutshell popularization of Catholic faith... and I hope you can see why I stick with it despite the vagiaries of the Church as institution.