3DOP

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.

But Incog, I used the expression "slightly frustrating" and then credited you for helping me to read a particular document with a keener eye. Your apology is neither needed nor accepted! The writer needs to write in a way that is intelligible to the reader. The slight frustration I experienced was due to the knowledge that I had failed to explain my position properly to the kind of reader I hoped to reach. Regards, 3DOP

Christ died, I would say, because of uninterrupted natural human processes. He could have come down from the Cross, transfigured if He wanted to exercise His divine power as God. As God He could have healed His own body, if He had chosen. As God, He could have called on legions of angels to save Him, or performed some other miracle. But He could not have saved Himself except by interrupting natural human processes. Jesus certainly had power over life and death...as God. His miracles prove that Jesus Christ was God. His hunger, weariness, suffering, and death prove that He was man. He died as an ordinary man would die, voluntarily refraining from using divine prerogatives. In saying that He "gave up the spirit", does it mean that He used a natural human capacity of making Himself die? Or did He refrain from using a superhuman capacity to make Himself live? I think the latter, but regardless of how everybody else views the humanity of Jesus, it has been enlightening to ponder the question raised in the opening post. This has made me do some study and some thinking that has been truly edifying. I hope some of you have had the same experience. If there is a next time, I should probably expand on the subject we barely touched on about celibacy and matrimony now and the "present distress", and gender without procreation later. I wouldn't have noticed the "present distress" from the same chapter of Theology of the Body which is mostly about gender in the next age without my earlier slightly frustrating interaction with InCog. In my opinion, the two ideas are tied together beautifully by JPII. The discussion here has made the book seem very important and even ground breaking as it discusses the purpose of gender and why it continues forever. At this time, I would call it speculative, meaning that Catholics would be allowed to have misgivings about some details. But I think it answers a lot of questions that I might never have asked without my LDS counterparts. If we don't say anymore, it has been great. Thanks to all, including and maybe even especially to those with whom I have disagreed the most! Rory

I just saw this. Christ's "humanity" consists of "inhabiting a body that lives forever"? Was He superhuman or was He human like us? This is important. It is why I mentioned a week or two ago that when Jesus skinned his knee, His blood would undergo the same clotting process that leaves a scar. He had anti-bodies like us to ward off illness and disease. Why? Because He was like us. His humanity was subject to the same infirmities and defects that afflict those for whom He died. Are you saying that Christ wouldn't have suffered from the ordinary aging processes leading to a certain death that we all eventually experience? There have been many historical attacks on the idea that the Son of God was truly human in all things except sin. Catholics have always denied all attempts to make the humanity of Christ in to something like a superhuman. We need to identify with One who bears our pains and knows our sorrows. Our humanity is His humanity. St. Thomas Aquinas addresses objections to the idea that Christ's humanity was ordinary. He has four articles devoted to objections to the Catholic teaching followed by reasons for the Catholic teaching. Here is part of one article. I answer that, It was fitting for the body assumed by the Son of God to be subject to human infirmities and defects; and especially for three reasons. First, because it was in order to satisfy for the sin of the human race that the Son of God, having taken flesh, came into the world. Now one satisfies for another's sin by taking on himself the punishment due to the sin of the other. But these bodily defects, to wit, death, hunger, thirst, and the like, are the punishment of sin, which was brought into the world by Adam, according to Romans 5:12: "By one man sin entered into this world, and by sin death." Hence it was useful for the end of Incarnation that He should assume these penalties in our flesh and in our stead, according to Isaiah 53:4, "Surely He hath borne our infirmities." Secondly, in order to cause belief in Incarnation. For since human nature is known to men only as it is subject to these defects, if the Son of God had assumed human nature without these defects, He would not have seemed to be true man, nor to have true, but imaginary, flesh, as the Manicheans held. And so, as is said, Philippians 2:7: "He . . . emptied Himself, taking the form of a servant, being made in the likeness of men, and in habit found as a man." Hence, Thomas, by the sight of His wounds, was recalled to the faith, as related John 20:26. Thirdly, in order to show us an example of patience by valiantly bearing up against human passibility and defects. Hence it is said (Hebrews 12:3) that He "endured such opposition from sinners against Himself, that you be not wearied. fainting in your minds." ---Summa Theologica, Third Part, Q. 14, art. 1, Whether the Son of God in Human Nature ought to have assumed defects of body? https://www.newadvent.org/summa/4014.htm Is this belief in a superhuman, as I call it, the common or even necessary belief among the Latter-day Saints? Obviously, Catholic teaching has no weight of authority with LDS. But we also agree on some important matters. I have been here for 21 years this month and cannot recall anyone ever suggesting this.

Hi Teddy. Hi calm, and thanks for checking with the Catechism. Pope St. John Paul II did a long series of public conferences which touch on the subject under discussion. The teachings he made during his weekly Wednesday audiences later came to called The Theology of the Body. They have been transcribed and made in to book form. In his General Audience for December 2, 1981 he begins with a quotation from the Gospel of St. Mark, which has been titled The Resurrection and Theological Anthropology: "When they rise from the dead, they neither marry, nor are given in marriage" (Mk 12:25). These words have a key meaning for the theology of the body. Christ uttered them after having affirmed, in the conversation with the Sadducees, that the resurrection is in conformity with the power of the living God. All three Synoptic Gospels report the same statement...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". ---Pope John Paul II, The Theology of the Body, (1997), Daughters of St. Paul, Boston, MA, p. 238 Teddy, you wrote of the belief of Catholics: "...that there is no continuance of heterosexual sexual marriage and family life after the resurrection due to the fact that heaven is a unisex neuter world where gender is rendered obsolete and meaningless — it can only mean that the anti-traditional family LGBTQ advocates are going to win in the end and that they’re correct in their belief that the concept of gender is nothing more than a human construct. In other words, the LGBTQ activists are simply ahead of their time." This is not true as can be seen from what I bolded in the quote given above. A unisex and neuter world is not the reason why there is no continuance of "heterosexual sexual marriage". God created man male and female from the beginning and that distinction will last forever. One reason why Catholics and lots of Protestants would deny a continuance of the marriage state in eternity would be our interpretation of the Scriptures on the subject. The Saduccees thought they had a clever way of disproving the Resurrection from Scripture, and going back to the Mosaic law, noted the obligation of brothers marrying the wives of deceased brothers. The hypothetical illustration they gave is a little extreme, but it still illustrates a difficulty, if indeed there was marriage and procreation for eternity. Our Lord told them that they were ignorant of the Scriptures and the power of God, if they deny the Resurrection because of this apparent difficulty. Most Christians think that Christ neatly side stepped the entire "problem" by teaching them and us that there is nobody married in the next age. That is how we see it. Presumably, you explain these passages in a way that satisfy your beliefs as well.

Heh, InCog. to your question Well that's great. Neither of us make sense to each other! Heh. I appreciate your patience in answering! I believe "the present distress" refers to our times, a time of trial and travail, not intermingled hopefully with some joys and consolations, but never without sorrows and anxieties. It is not normal. We aren't made for death, and are surrounded by it here, including the knowledge that we ourselves have to go that way. Anyway, if my belief doesn't work for you, it doesn't change my esteem for you. No worries there. Words are great. I love them. But alas, it seems like this world is the Tower of Babel. I have to get some things done and have already spent 40 minutes replying. It is so hard not to give wrong impressions. God bless, Rory

Hi InCognitus. What if St. Paul's advice IS for a short-term and special circumstance? One might reasonably infer that he is referring to this mortal life. If so, the "present distress" in the context of eternity is truly short, and it lasts until the Second Coming of Christ.

Thanks Orthodox Christian. No offense taken. I thought of deleting the post, and should have. Too late now. I don't think it would be worth the time to explain how your reading of my poorly conceived post is understandable, but off the mark. Please accept my apologies.

OC, Rome will leave you alone. Filioque? The Eastern churches in union don't have to say it. It is still true without acknowledging the Son. The Father as the Fount, I am okay with you guys empasizing that. So apparently has been Rome. The Assumption vs. Dormition? Not much difference. I am Roman and think that story about the Apostles at Mary's grave is unlikely. But look east for that story. St. John of anywhere in the West? NO. Damascus. But you don't care that we can't have an ecumenical council, according to people on both sides? More on yours. When I say we need you? It is for the wide world. For a clear visible Oneness. These LDS see us as different, separate. Maybe you agree? LDS like you better. What comfort is there in that? They think we disbelieve in deification and you do. That's no victory for the kingdom. We both have valid Sacraments. Right? How can a church with valid Sacraments be apostate? You don't deny we are part of the One Church. Do you? Are our Sacraments invalid? So what brings you here? We can't for long be hashing all this out on this site that most of our hosts cannot understand very well. Salt Lake Mormonism forced me away from Reformed Evangelicalism in the early 90's. Salt Lake LDS is the most formidable and consistent. What makes for your interest? But anyway...I wouldn't like you to think we are desperate for you. I guess I thought you should want to present together a One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church with diversity and unity to the wide world. No lung analogies. It's about NO APOSTASY. Not early. Not later. Not now. I am sorry but it seems to me like our Eastern brothers don't care about the rest of the world. That is how I see it through my limited vision of what you have said here and other Orthodox have said elsewhere. Please correct me. I will be very happy to be wrong, I promise you.

Yeah, I had heard. I miss him.

I made a boo-boo that you all should have caught. About perfection and defects being incompatible. But when it comes to us humans I said about human perfection needing to allow for defects. Good catch there 3DOP. Where is Bukowski? He would have seen it in a New York minute. What distinguishes an ordinary minute, from a minute that is New York? Just ask AI. It will know.

First of all, what I am about to say is not true...but it could be. What if some fertile Catholic couple had nineteen or so kids and named each one after a Council of the Church? Mom says pleadingly. "Lateran IV, finish your vegetables". Dad says threateningly, "Chalcedon, if you do that again I am going to land in the middle of your guts." (A favorite saying of my own dear father (R.I.P.)) The only kids that might not be bitter against the Councils would be Trent and Constance!

Thanks Dr. Steuss, To quote a Muslim folk singer, "Ooohh baby, baby it's a wild world". It's a journey. I hope you and yours are doing well too. But as you point out, troubles and even "defects" can be the will of God. I would certainly agree that for anyone born with physical or mental handicaps, and for those who care for them, it is the will of God. In the precise way I have been using the words using the words defect and perfect, nothing is both defective and perfect at the same time. But I would agree that congenital handicaps/defects can be a blessing. It has a purpose for that soul that someone of my faith would say is a mystery that can be revealed even here sometimes, but certainly God would show his wise providence on the Day of Judgment for allowing it. In the case of Christ, I think it would be theologically peculiar if the only soul that was ever conceived by an immaculate virgin mother and the overshadowing of the third Person of the Trinity, should appear with a random birth defect. The most perfect man who ever lived would indeed suffer every kind of affliction of body and soul. Perfectly like all of us, he was subject to defects and even death. The point is that He began as what we would call normal, as to His humanity. And I should say that this is speculation because I do not know think my church has judged that Jesus could not have had a congenital defect of the body. I think it is more fitting that he would have been humanly healthy in all ways when He was born, but subject to ordinary afflictions. I am confident that a majority of orthodox theologians would agree. But that doesn't make it dogma. If you disagree Steuss, you can still become Catholic! Good to see you Stu...I would urge you to "not be such a stranger" but I go months at a time now without participating myself. I am usually peeking in a few times a week to see if there is something of interest. I am retired now, with more time, but for me it seems less interesting than it used to in the old days. Anyway, be well, and know that you have prompted a prayer from me for a good old internet comrade. Rory

I know I am not qualified to answer that question on the basis of anything except authority. In my opinion, it is easier to identify the one true church than for a truck driver/factory hand like me to sort out the answer.to the canon. One doesn't usually decide what Church they think is true based on their belief about the canon. We believe the canon based on what we believe about the Church. I am not aware of any who make decisions about the canon independently of church affilliation.

The Nehor, hi. Do parents give their kids more cookies when they haven't eaten what they have in front of them? I am not saying that Catholics have eaten and digested all of our cookies. I am saying we have enough to keep us from running out until the Lord comes back. We aren't against continuing revelation so much as we know we haven't nearly exhausted what has been given.

So Paul the Apostle is a problem? Nobody should be celibate if they are able? You guys won't be believing that in 500 years. A few of you might even agree with the Apostle now and still have a temple recommend.

Hi Teddy. Hi The Nehor, So how do you two explain us "apostates" progressing until we get it right? You know that we now teach two ends in marriage, right? It took until 1870 for papal infallibility. 1965 or '66 gives us two ends in marriage. Will you guys have nailed everything perfectly before your first two millenia? We will have to wait to see I guess. Cut us a break, we are STILL a young church. Calling us apostates because of out first centuries? Sheesh. I'll take our early centuries over yours anytime anyway. Especially when it comes to orthopraxy but even orthodoxy too.