3DOP

I had pretty much decided to discontinue the discussion on marriage in heaven, even though I had been asked to start a new thread. If you haven't followed, there have been discussions that took place on at least two threads. I had been hoping to kind of pull everything together. But it seemed too hard and time consuming. 1) I want to be on record for commending the LDS teaching on eternal marriage and families. If I correctly understand the teaching of my church (Roman Catholic), we concur that the citizens in heaven will experience the greatest joys of family unity while retaining their genders. 2) I also hold that the Scriptures teach that after the resurrection of the body, that it is revealed in Matthew, Mark, and Luke, that marriage and procreation are for this age only. 3) I reconcile points 1 and 2 by affirming the teaching of Pope John Paul II called the Theology of the Body. In that work he repeatedly refers to the nuptial meaning of our bodies. I can't write a book. But I had even made myself comfortable with abandoning the idea of starting a little thread here. That was until I came across the subject in a most unexpected place. A Soviet prison camp. Popularly known as the Gulag Archipelago, a history and literary work of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn that recalls the prison camp system which was populated by political prisoners who had often been guilty of nothing more than being captured by Germans in World War II. Not everyone fit this category of prisoner. Solzhenitsyn himself was "guilty" of corresponding with a friend and expressing doubt about Comrade Stalin's leadership. After the fall of Germany, and the liberation of Russian prisoners from German camps, instead of having a heroes welcome, they were usually treated as traitors. It is over-simplification, but there was fear that while in the camps of the west they had imbibed anti-Soviet ideas. In at least one case it was true that anti-Soviet ideas had been conceived by a prisoner in a German camp. In his Gulag Archipelago, Solzhenitsyn recalls his friendship with Anatoly Vasilyevich Silin. Born around 1910, Silin had been an orphan, raised as an atheist in a children's home, and was fighting against the Nazis, like all good Soviet citizens. But after being captured by the Germans, while imprisoned he had come across some religious literature for the first time, and was reportedly carried away, and converted to Christianity. When Solzhenitsyn knew him, it appears that he had never even had the freedom to visit a church. I am afraid we do not know if he ever survived the prison system. Here is what we read about him and marriage in a biography of Solzhenitsyn by Joseph Pearce: Since he had spent the entire period since his conversion in prisons of one sort or another he had never had the benefit of further spiritual reading. Instead he gleaned the truth through his own perceptions, expressed in verse. According to Solzhenitsyn, Silin knew some twenty thousand lines of verse by heart at the time they met, reciting many of them to his younger fellow poet. Like Solzhenitsyn, Silin looked upon his verse as a 'way of remembering and of transmitting thoughts'. For the Gulag Archipelago, Solzhenitsyn gleaned a few precious memories of their time together in the camp. He recalled Silin bending over one of the rare blades of grass growing in the barren camp. 'How beautiful are the grasses of the earth,' he exclaimed. 'But even these the Creator has given to man for a carpet under his feet. How much more beautiful, then, must we be than they!' I wanted to share that, and this: Silin's theological mysticism was distinctly unpuritanical, and he asserted to Solzhenitsyn that 'even earthly, carnal love is a manifestation of a lofty aspiration to Union'. ---Solzhenitsyn, A Soul in Exile, by Joseph Pearce, Baker Books (2001), p. 121, (bold mine) I will try to explain how I understand Silin if there is any interest. If not, I hope you find the little look inside the prisons inspiring.

Its okay ZealouslyStriving. Next time I will try to remember to wait until my wrath subsides, hopefully before nightfall.🤪

On the contrary, if this is a question that is unsettled for Catholics, I have nothing to say except that I apologize for my haste, and retract my comments on the subject. I didn't want to start a new thread anyway. On the other hand, I was quoting authentic teaching from a canonized Pope St. John Paul II. What level of ecclesiastical authority was being cited by those Catholics at New Oxford Review who disagree with the pope? Did they quote papal bulls or encyclicals, doctors of the Church, church fathers, ecumenical councils, bishop's conferences, etc.? How do they explain the question the Sadducees asked of Jesus about people who are married multiple times? To which will they be married in heaven? Catholics are free to marry again after the death of a spouse. The question must be answered. I am not sure, but I think LDS can only marry one spouse "for time and eternity"? How would a Catholic deal with that? Articles in a respected periodical like New Oxford Review are only slightly more weighty than letters to the editor. I have a feeling that this "Hold on let's explore this" crowd are well-meaning people, perhaps widows and widowers happily married once for many years. Maybe they are kids remembering their good parents? Perhaps the Church can be blamed for failing to teach them about how marriage is a sacramental symbol of the marriage that will be perfected in Heaven between Christ and His Church, where all will be family as sons and daughters of the Father? I suspect that these are fine people whose understandable sentimentalism about the subject is misplaced. But my main point is still valid even if I have to retract what I mistakenly wrote. Either way my main point was that we are in much more agreement with LDS than a lot of people seem to think.

Hey marineland. Thanks for the upvote! I hope you can follow me as I continue my thoughts on comparisons to the LDS point of view. I have to be sure that LDS thinkers have pondered over the same passages that led Pope John Paul II to say "Marriage and procreation, do not constitute...the eschatological future of man." I would be disappointed if the LDS haven't arrived at some kind of biblical solution to the pope's interpretation which appears to contradict the LDS teaching on family life after the resurrection. I deliberately added the first word "appears to contradict". This is because while I must conclude that the LDS position can't be entirely right from a Catholic perspective, there is a very important sense that can be easily missed in which we agree wholeheartedly with the LDS. Family life continues. It is an admirable and good instinct to be repulsed at the idea that our most intimate earthly family ties will have no correspondence in heaven. It is plain to me from our discussions lately, that there are highly distorted ideas among LDS about those who accept John Paul's point of view, which is the same as most Protestants. Some LDS seem think that there must of necessity be a dehumanizing of the current nature of man in non-LDS thought. I have seen words like transhuman to describe what they think John Paul's position implies. Some even seem surprised that we believe that we retain our genders eternally. They also seem to think that we doubt the full humanity of the Lord Jesus. There was a long thread recently dedicated to discovering if non-LDS believed that Christ could have been fertile! There is so much ignorance about each others faiths and it gets perpetuated wherever we find a desire to understand the belief of the other in the least attractive and sensible light. It can be reassuring to know that only our own beliefs make any sense. There is no point in discussion if we cannot see the areas in which we agree. Again, I agree with the LDS about the necessary human need for family forever. I will not suggest that LDS can easily start teaching against a century or more of belief in eternal families, sealings for time and eternity, etc. But I want our LDS friends to see that what we believe is not so different and alien as perhaps they have thought. This post is already too long. If there is interest when I have some more time, I would be happy to make a followup post which might help Latter-day Saints to disagree with the pope's conclusions, while on the other hand, finding his concept of "eternal family" to be not unattractive. It seems like we should be able to reach that point. In the meantime, maybe some of our LDS friends might like to explain their problems with John Paul's exegesis of the Gospel passages that led him to his conclusion. (Does anybody think I should start another thread? This doesn't exactly fit with "The Oddity of Protestant Apologetics", but now this thread has the preliminary information needed to be able to easily discuss our agreements and disagreements on the subject) 3DOP

calm, Hi. The guy is apparently only an immature, over zealous Catholic convert. No priest, bishop, or pope could ever endorse such a strategy in favor of his faith, which it seems he abandoned (the stupid strategy). He was truly ignorant of basic Catholic principles of love and truth telling. I am sorry for the LDS mockery. But I am glad to see the instinctively loving reaction of most of you to that. One could argue about which side is the most poisonous. I couldn't watch more than a minute. I thought the guy who has been identified as Catholic, with his weird beard and glasses was more excusable. All that said, in 40 or 50 years, we can hope that all parties will reflect on their current follies in a different and repentant light.

Pope John Paul II, adhering to the ancient teaching of the Church, appeals to Holy Scripture for his authority in affirming that with the Resurrection of the Body, each of us retains the same gender that they had on earth, with the meaning we can learn from the differences and compatibility of the sexes: "When they rise from the dead, they neither marry nor are given in marriage." (Mk 12:25) Those of course are Christ's words to the Sadducees who denied the Resurrection and knew it would be absurd for a woman's seven legitimate husbands to be wife to all of them in any Resurrection. Which is to be the husband? Clearly, none of them. The pope goes on to explain: These words have a key meaning for the theology of the body...All three synoptic Gospels report the same statement, except that Luke's version is different in some details from Matthew and Mark. Essential for them all is the fact that, in the future resurrection human beings, after having reacquired their bodies in the fullness of the perfection characteristic of the image and likeness of God - after having reacquired them in their masculinity and femininity - neither marry nor are given in marriage. In the next paragraph he succinctly states the teaching of the Gospels: As can be seen from these words, marriage, that union in which, according to Genesis, "A man cleaves to his wife, and they become one flesh" (2:24) - the union characteristic right from the beginning - belongs exclusively to this age. Marriage and procreation, do not constitute on the other hand, the eschatological future of man. ---The Theology of the Body, Human Love in the Divine Plan, Pope John Paul II, Daughters of St. Paul, Boston MA, 1997, p. 238 (bold mine)

I hope I did not give the impression that you were being thought of as one who had entertained such an ignorant idea. It came to my attention as a desperate attempt to show that Catholicism is anti-sexual. I was referencing another recent thread that you might have missed.

A friend of mine sent me a pdf file of a book that perhaps others of you would find interesting. It is called Tetragrammaton: Western Christians and the Hebrew Name of God, From the Beginnings to the Seventeenth Century, by Robert J. Wilkinson. If anyone is interested, here is a link to a site where the book may be purchased that provides helpful information about the book. https://books.google.com/books/about/Tetragrammaton_Western_Christians_and_th.html?id=1xyoBgAAQBAJ

I see your point about the name and ineffability. Perhaps I was straining to defend the exact wording of the catechism, which could be tweaked more satisfactorily.

Okay. I don't have a problem with that, if you will allow that IWillBeWhatIWillBe is subject to a lot more speculation than a mere surname like Baker, or Fletcher, or Smith. The Catholic Church says that unlike a lot of surnames, the name YWHW is beyond description (ineffable, however one translates it). The name is spoken, but the meaning of the name suggests many qualities. "I am Who I Am" has been understood by Jews and Christians alike as God claiming to be the source of all existence. He is the Source without a source. God is not a creation. He is not a contingent being, depending on existence from anything else. I am aware that there is a lot of LDS philosophy invested in materialism. But you are a young church and have made many seachange moves regarding teachings that were previously non-negotiable. I doubt it will happen in our lifetimes, but I cannot see why a transcendent God, who is also very near to us should be so repugnant as it seems many of today's LDS seem to believe. Is this not what Paul is testifying to (a transcendent God) while in Athens where he proclaims to the pagan philosophers the Unknown God? I do not mean pagan pejoratively. They only had natural revelation and some were groping towards the truth as Paul could recognize. (Now all the Athenians, and strangers that were there, employed themselves in nothing else, but either in telling or in hearing some new thing.) But Paul standing in the midst of the Areopagus, said: Ye men of Athens, I perceive that in all things you are too superstitious. For passing by, and seeing your idols, I found an altar also, on which was written: To the unknown God. What therefore you worship, without knowing it, that I preach to you: God, who made the world, and all things therein; he, being Lord of heaven and earth, dwelleth not in temples made with hands; Neither is he served with men's hands, as though he needed any thing; seeing it is he who giveth to all life, and breath, and all things: And hath made of one, all mankind, to dwell upon the whole face of the earth, determining appointed times, and the limits of their habitation. That they should seek God, if happily they may feel after him or find him, although he be not far from every one of us: For in him we live, and move, and are; as some also of your own poets said: For we are also his offspring. ---Acts 17:21-28 Most commentators assert that Paul is quoting favorably from well-known Greek poets and philosophers using their own words to show the Athenians that their own scholars have implied that they discard their idols and seek this unknown God, who reveals his existence to all. It seems to me that they come very close to saying the same things about God as may be plausibly claimed by YWHW. There is nothing that does not come from God. He is seen as the source of all existence. The Source without a source, whose existence transcends matter. What could be so bad about that? Nothing, if it is in Him that we live, and move, and have our very being. We are His offspring! GodWillDoWhatHeWill! Clearly, He wills to be with us, and to teach us that adoration of Him Who Is, is all fulfillment to all creatures (especially us).

marineland, hi. We used to have long discussions here about apostasy theory years ago now. I always found them unsatisfying. Maybe they did too? I wonder if this is why some apparently spend time concocting ignorantly ludicrous theories about why Catholics believe in a neuter, genderless eternity? It makes one wonder if some of these ideas are more common among LDS "in the pew" than they are here on the better informed internet. (calm, and others from ZLMB days, I refrained from using the expression coined by Dr. Shades so long ago now. Do you think there is no validity to Dr. Shades categorization)? In any case, I don't like offense, and it has been mostly unnecessary in my case. I always grant all the LDS defensive apologetics without studying them much. I don't trust the anti-apologists, and the answers given by LDS seem fine. My only time for argument these days are those rare times when somebody says something ignorant about my faith. Most of the time now, I am pointing out areas of agreement between Catholics and LDS, which I believe are becoming more and more frequent. We are even closer with Protestants, but in different key ways. Regards, 3DOP

Hi CV, i found an online Jewish resource that explains a little about this. It seems to me to coincide with the Catechism. I seldom use the words/names Yahweh, Jehovah, or YHWH. I thought the former words/names provided additional letters to make the "tetragrammaton" (YHWH) more easy to pronounce. Do you think there is a reason to be against this YHWH? Here is the link to that Jewish page. Let me know what you think: https://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/the-tetragrammaton/ I hope to get to ineffability later. Thanks for your patience.

CV75, hi. I kind of didn't want to study much about it. I was just the reporter. I believe it of course. Anyway, thanks for the homework! I am sure it will be a good exercise 💪 😉 hi

To your first paragraph...I understand. If I had your background and believed what you seem to believe about the history of the Catholic Church in relation to the world and world governments, I would have a harder time being proud of my Church's history. I see a lot of continuous tension down through the centuries between the temporal authorities and the Church that you might have missed. Besides that disagreement, I also look at continuing miracles, missionaries, and martyrs as a sign that the precepts of the Church are good and holy. We also have the example of Old Testament Israel which the prophets pronounced expressly as adulterous, as bad or worse I suppose than what I think is an unhistorical claim of adultery: "The Catholic Church being in bed with world government for so many centuries", etc. In israel's case, you would have made a mistake to believe that spiritual adultery in Israel meant that it no longer retained the authority which God gave it. After centuries of unfaithfulness followed by periods of repentance God was merciful to Israel, preserved the priesthood, and even while using a Temple built by King Herod (a worldly government) Jesus could call it His Father's House! He proclaimed that the high priest who was trying to have the Son of God murdered nevertheless "sat in Moses' chair." As for the lesser sons of Aaron, when Jesus healed the lepers, He told them to go and show themselves to the priests as commanded by Moses, "for a testimony unto them". This is why I need more than what you offer, even if I believed it, before I would say that Catholic priests who consecrate the Eucharist today and have modern miracles to prove their validity, are not really true priests. To your second paragraph, 2 Thess. is in my opinion, best understood as happening immediately before Christ comes. I see no promise of "restoration", however Paul's apostasy should be understood. I do not believe that the protestant reformation was that "falling away", spoken of. Nor the Orthodox. They still have priestly orders and seven valid sacraments as we do. I think apostasy defines a descent into wickedness that is deeply immoral and unholy. I could not describe those who I consider to be separated brethren as being that. There are unholy forces in the world, and be assured that if they loved us for centuries, they hate us now. Catholic churches are being vandalized and destroyed all over the world because of her continuing moral stances which are contrary to the immoral license which is sometimes promoted by media news and our educational systems. All Christians are disturbed by those who hate us for our unworldly beliefs. I do not say that the Catholic Church is alone in being despised. But in Asia and Africa it is thought that there have been more martyrdoms of Catholics and other Christians for their faith than in any century since the time of Christ. This seems to me to be seriously under reported. Anyway, JVW, I thank you for your interest in my thoughts! Wow. Believe that you have all my best wishes, and return your benediction saying "cheers". May we all heartily rejoice in the light that we have and the faith that we love. Your new friend in Jesus, Rory

Hey Calm... See the Catechism, #'s 205-209. YHWH, the Tetragrammaton is the answer God gives to Moses inquiry as to God's name, after He commissions Moses to go to His people in Egypt for deliverance. This divine name is mysterious just as God is mystery, It is at once a name revealed and not a name, and hence it better expresses God as what he is - infinitely above everything we can understand or say: he is the "hidden God", his name is ineffable, and he is the God who makes himself close to men. ---CCC #206, with footnotes referencing Isa. 45:15; Judg. 13:18

This was in response to what I had previously written saying, "The invisible church doesn't provide answers to practical problems." Hi Navidad...What you describe is commendable. But I would propose that it makes my point. It takes a visible authority to provide answers to practical problems. In your case, there was need for a visible council of non-hierarchical leaders. The point which I was making in reply to the original post had to do with those who deny that there is one true visible church. Unlike us, they have to figure out a way to address questions of orthopraxy with souls who do not have a habit of obedience to visible authority. It is my observation that those who deny one true visible church tend towards division and/or grumbling rather than peaceful unity. Again, I think what you participated in was a commendable and successful attempt to some significant degree to address the tendency to division. I was co-pastor of a church when I began to believe that we should all be one in the 80's and early 90's. We made contact with other churches in our area about doing things together and actively sought believers of various theological persuasions to participate in our church. But eventually, you have to choose music. By committee or by king, someone had to decide whether Mr and Mrs. ________, who were divorced and remarried could participate in the Lord's Supper service as we called it. These kinds of practical issues were ultimately irresolvable the way we were organized, or perhaps I should say, disorganized, heh. Anyway, I still see it as a noble experiment, with a vision which I now see as Catholic, that can't be satisfied with visible disunity among believers in Jesus. It seems to me as though you have a share in that vision which I have still, over 30 years later too. Navidad, while we are visibly separated, we are brothers in an important sense that I want to emphasize. God bless. I sincerely hope your wife and son and you will all be doing much better as Christmas approaches, and that you will enjoy the best of Feliz Navidads at home and well. Prayers for your family. Rory

Hey marineland! That narrows things down considerably...even with the etc. if you already believe that there needs to be one true visible church...as I did over thirty years ago. I had come to believe in God. Next I believed in Jesus. Next I believed in Jesus' Church. Which one? "Invisible." says the Protestant. That isn't practicable. I had lived that that as a Protestant minister. We need visible authority to decide if divorced and remarried people can receive whatever we want to call the Lord's Supper. The invisible church doesn't provide answers to practical problems. We need a true visible church to practice ordinances/sacraments as they were instituted. We might even need to discern a valid priestly order. I finally came to believe in one visible true church. I eventually eliminated the little groups. Is it plausible I need to be saved by admitting the authority over all believers in Christ of some 20th Century American named Garner Ted? I am still here after all of these years because Salt Lake Mormons and Mohammedans and successful offshoots, seemed to be possible Restorationists from Christian Apostasy. But finally, I stopped taking apostasy seriously. It allows for too much human error and sin if I take the Old Testament seriously. I was left with Rome or Orthodoxy.

Good work Pyreaux. It reminds me that the Protestant is missing the natural love for their faith that comes from embracing one true visible church. They cannot love one true visible church, and so they do not point to one. Where can I go to church? Anywhere you want except...

Maybe this will help, (maybe not): "...the original and fundamental significance of being a body, as well as being, by reason of the body, male and female--that is precisely that nuptial significance--is united with the fact that man is created as a person and called to a life in communione personarum. Marriage and procreation in itself do not determine definitively the original and fundamental meaning of being a body or of being, as a body, male and female. Marriage and procreation merely give a concrete reality to that meaning in the dimensions of history. The resurrection indicates the end of the historical dimension. The words, "When they rise from the dead, they neither marry nor are given in marriage" (Mk. 12:25), express univocally not only the meaning which the human body will have in the future world. But they enable us to deduce that the nuptial meaning of the body in the resurrection will correspond perfectly both to the fact that man, as a male-female, is a person created in the "image and likeness of God", and to the fact that this image is realized in the communion of persons. That nuptial meaning of being a body will be realized, therefore, as a meaning that is perfectly personal and communitarian at the same time. ---The Theology of the Body, Human Love in the Divine Plan, John Paul II, Daughters of St. Paul, (1997), pp. 247, 248, General Audience of Jan. 13, 1982 If it is difficult to immediately plumb the depths of the pope's thought, we can at least show that the Catholic Church resolutely believes in the eternality of the body and its gender. The nuptial meaning of the body requires an appreciation of the profundity of marriage and procreation in this life. But wonderful as it may have been, matrimony will always be remembered as a temporal foreshadowing of an even greater eternal gift and meaning.

Okay. I was mistaken. The comments about knowledge from a 1975 revelation was about something else, probably involving the Temple ordinance.I have no opinion about that. Thanks for the link calm.

So Adam and Eve were babies? Where is this revealed? What weight of authority should some ceremony of yours in 1975 carry with anybody else? You were given this insight that nobody else today possesses, excluding apparently, even current and recent LDS church leaders? You go on critically, asking how your fellow members can be so blind? They just want to follow apostolic authority. Show them where this an apostolic teaching and they will cease being "blind". It is too obscure if it is only some idea you picked up fifty years ago that they have never heard of from any church authority. I do not want to alienate you further, but allow me to suggest you need to consider that your expectations that your fellow LDS should have your belief is based on a personal experience that neither they, nor the authorities they have accepted shares? PS: I was sure that I saw Teddy, that you learned of this teaching from some 1975 ceremony you experienced. I cannot find it now. Please accept this as a retraction of my comments above if I am mistaken.

Hi bluebell, Thanks to you and others who have tried to understand and defend as best you can, the actual teachings of the Catholic faith. I had hoped to show in my previous contributions to this thread that LDS and Catholic teaching on the humanity of the Son of God was more similar than perhaps many LDS think. I am thankful for the majority of LDS here who seem open-minded enough to see that what Catholics believe is close to what LDS believe in some important ways. To be sure, I am not advocating indifference to what separates us. There needs to be a balance. We need to acknowledge what separates us while appreciating what tends towards unity. One of the ways that we can discern if we have a correct and Christian balance is when it gives us pleasure when we are confronted with new information that shows that others with whom we are not in full unity are closer to our beliefs than we thought. Sure, let us rejoice partially in where we agree! Let us see partial brotherhood where it truly exists! But this thread illustrates the tension that occurs in the hearts of minority parties in our churches when evidence is presented to show that these other churches are not necessarily wrong about everything. There are some souls whose faith requires not only positive articles of faith to believe in, but in negative articles of faith to disparage and condemn as wicked or stupid. This is where they sometimes go off into error, and ironically crazy, esoteric error that separates them ideologically from their own communities. They experience no joy in discovering shades of gray in other religions that shed some little light in the darkness. In charity, I suggest that all who identify as Christians should lean towards trying to understand their religious neighbors in a way that was described by St. Peter Faber S.J., who was the last of St. Ignatius' original five (or six?) companions when conceiving the Society of Jesus (Jesuits). He wrote this letter to a correspondent without the subheading provided for better understanding: Letter 138, May 7, 1546 He Advises Loving Them in Truth The first is, that whoever wants to benefit the heretics of this time, must aim to have much charity towards them and love them in truth (in veritate), discarding from their spirit (our spirit) all the considerations that tend to cool their (our) esteem for them. Make an Effort So That We Are Loved by Them It is necessary to win them over so that they love us and hold us in good esteem within their spirits; this is done by communicating with them familiarly on things that are common to both of us (nobis et ipsis), avoiding all disputes (disceptationes), where the other side (altera pars) seems to suppress the other; for it is first necessary to communicate on those things that unite, rather than on those that seem to show a diversity of opinions. Faber was a Frenchman, canonized by Pope Francis in this century, and he is better known to the world as Pierre Favre. Apparently he was writing in Latin instead of French. I could not find the entire letter in my messy files and am providing what I could quickly find on the internet with this less than ideal English translation. It still does the trick I think. I only needed to add the parenthetical parts in black from the first lines regarding "our spirit". We might need to change ourselves to reach others. If the devil cannot get us to believe what is positively wrong, we can still be deluded into believing that others are worse than the reality. Basically, without good will towards those outside our communities we can easily tend to believe that they are more wicked or culpably blind than they truly are in God's eyes. Rory

Heh, apology accepted!

All interested parties and especially InCognitus because of our discussions of "the present distress", hi. I have been discussing a book consisting of weekly Wednesday audiences by Pope John Paul II. He is methodically detailed, analyzing and revisiting important passages from Genesis, the Gospels, and Paul's first epistle to the Corinthians to explain what he calls "the theology of the body". I am only on p.252 of 423 pages of these audiences which begin on September 5, 1979, and finish on November 28, 1984. A recurring theme which permeates everything I have read so far is "the nuptial meaning of the body". While he discusses the original nakedness of our first parents and the shame experienced after their fall, there is no graphic discussion of individual differences between man and woman. Rather, it is an emphasis on our need for each other and the beauty of our mutual compatibility. There is discussion about the difficulties that followed the fall which caused the shame, which eventually leads to Christ warning us that whoever lusts in his heart has already committed adultery. Following that is an examination about the disorder in our souls and bodies in the present age. Still, we have hope that when our bodies are resurrected in the next age, this disorder will be removed and our bodies will be perfectly subservient to our spirits. Unhappy marriages, divorce, adultery, pornography, and disrespectful sexual innuendos are only some of many other difficulties that plague us so long as we "see in my members another law at war with the law of my mind" (Rom. 7:23). Very briefly, this is why I propose that when St. Paul discusses celibacy and marriage in "the present distress", he means the age where we have the frustration of finding it difficult to do what we ought because of the conflict between the flesh and the spirit. While Christians can experience victories through faith and grace during this age, it is a battle for those who, like St. Paul, lament that they don't always do what they should do. We look forward to that age of perfect peace when the battle is over. I need to clean up the leaves, before trying to give a treatment of the "nuptial meaning of the body". The pope's teaching means that Mormons and all other Christians do very well to disdain a genderless eternity. I understand why the cessation of marriage in eternity might seem to imply this. One aim in any further attempt to explain my position will be to show that the nuptial meaning of our bodies, male and female, will be more perfectly expressed in eternity than in this age, if the pope is correct. I also want to assure my LDS friends that a Catholic idea of heaven would necessarily be more satisfying to the nuptial meaning of the body than that which we can enjoy in the present age. Thanks for your consideration now and hopefully in a future post, 3DOP

CALM Apparently there are some early Church fathers that believed Jesus was not subject to aging unless he willed it, so Teddy is not alone.p in this. ME Yes! That is what I believe too. Jesus willed, and the Father willed, that He should be subject to aging and death so He could be like us. He could do whatever He wanted as God while He was also a man. But to save us He wanted to be a man like us.