Saint Bonaventure

Some Evangelicals Are Leaving Protestantism for O... | Christianity Today This has definitely been a "thing" for years now, and it seems to be intensifying.

My parish has been moving even more in a traditional direction, and with the support of the diocese. My diocese has some very traditional parishes, some liberal ones, and even some Trentecostal ones. My parish has added a Vatican II Mass in the early morning on Sundays. It's Novus Ordo, with the ordinaries in Latin. Also, with our renovation we're adding a Communion rail--that's a serious marker of a traditional parish. I should add that there's definitely something happening in Protestantism that is sending people in a Catholic direction. The RCIA class at my little parish this fall will have 12 people in it, and more than a few of those are disenchanted Protestants.

Basically, you have it right. Christ's kingdom will be fully realized with his return and after Judgment (with a capital "J").

My understanding is that the textual change will be in the new missal. Commentaries have been gesturing to the "do not let us fall into temptation" for a very long time. I'm not a Greek scholar, but scholars I trust indicate that this isn't a problematic change in terms of exegesis. I've heard priests verbally indicate this meaning in homilies too.

Glad to do so. It is traditional to have a fire for Easter Vigil Mass, and to light candles for everyone from that fire. Then everyone processes into the darkened church while the priest says, "the light of Christ," or "Lumen Christi," and the congregation responds with "Thanks be to God," or "Deo Gratias." This signifies Christ's victory over death and his role as the light that dispels darkness. Dante may have been drawing on this ceremony a bit in Inferno. At baptism, a candle, a "Lumen Christi," is lit to signify that the newly baptized person has received the light of Christ and that they are called to live as children of light. There is also a tradition amongst those who pray the liturgy of the hours to light a candle when praying the Vespers prayer, as a way of representing that the Light of Christ dispels the darkness.

In the Catholic Church the Lumen Christi is bursting with meaning both at Easter Vigil and at baptism.

Not so much feeling disrespected as feeling like I'm standing in one of those old-fashioned showers with the hot water and cold water blasting at the same time. No worries, though, and I appreciate what you are saying here. I'll add that, from my perspective, the language of "apostasy" is very strong language. Justin Martyr, Origen, and Tertullian use the language of apostasy to describe the demons being cast from heaven. I don't expect you to change your theology or anything, just know that on the receiving end it can be received as an assertion of the demonic. There is plenty of scholarship around early Christianity and paganism--Clement, Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, Origen, Tertullian, and Augustine all had plenty to say at the time. The work by Pelikan that I mentioned early discusses the subject at length. Early Christians, like any faith that has been around a while, articulated the prevalence of paganism going back into the mists of time. Natural law is a main vehicle of explanation. If you want a discussion on Revelation 12, I'm very much up for it.

Thanks for your thoughtful insights and questions. I always enjoy them. It's not a perfect analogy, but it's been explored and some have found it helpful. A philosophical problem, one that Jung, Wittgenstein, Deleuze, and Whitehead (the theologian) have explored is that ultimately the distinction between noun and verb, between being and becoming, might be one of perspective. Jung even took this as far as collapsing the subject-object distinction. Some theologians are aware of a tendency to describe God's "Being" in terms of noun and God's "Persons" in terms of verb. Theology in this area approaches the limits of language, and this is one of the common invocations of mystery. Theology around the Incarnation sometimes has this flavor, wherein the Son's Divine Nature is unchanging, but His human nature is changing. This is, btw, one of the main philosophical entrances into Mariology.

The major differences, at least from my perspective, are in the definitions of key terms. I'll try to be brief, but accurate. For Catholics, love is inherent in the Trinity, is a way of describing God in unity and Being, and is a way of describing the relationships between the Persons. Love is not a quality, is not something that increases, decreases, changes, or is possessed. Love is not something that is had for something, but not for something else. It is. Love is the eternal begetting of the Son by the Father and the Holy Spirit that eternally proceeds from the Father and the Son. This love transcends time and space, and is eternal. God is love, and so a conclusion like "God loves one person or group more than another person or group," does not follow from the premises. I'm emphasizing this point because an implication for this discussion is that God does not love Catholics more than He loves Latter-day Saints. The whole idea is a non-sequitur. I'm also emphasizing this point because, for Catholics, the begetting of the Son by the Father is unique, and while humans are created in the image of God, they are God's creations and are not themselves creators, and do not have the relationship of eternal begetting that the Father has with the Son. In Catholic belief, humans are adopted as God's sons and daughters at baptism (Romans 8 is often referenced in this regard), and while through the atonement of Jesus Christ they are reconciled to God, that reconciliation does not change the fact that humans were created and needed redemption. One metaphor that has been used, that might be helpful, is that in Catholic belief humans reconciled to God are like wood added to, and forever burning in, an eternal fire. There is a sense in which this reconciliation is "The Lord's Day," and is the dawn of a new heaven and a new earth. In that sense there might be some consistency with LDS belief. Catholic theologians sometimes speculate about this, and Orthodox theologians speculate about it more, but it isn't a common subject of discussion. The Catechism does gesture to the belief, though, in paragraphs 460 and 1996, when it alludes to humans becoming "partakers of the divine nature," and references 2 Peter 1:4. Being a partaker of the divine nature is not considered to be the same thing as being the divine nature, but it is thought to be partaking of "love in the Trinity." It is being reconciled to love, and not having love for. My understanding is that for Latter-day Saints, all humans have always existed as intelligences, but have, at a point in time, been begotten in spirit by heavenly parents. Moreover, these spirit children are of the same species as their heavenly parents, are creators in embryo, although they are not as far along in a process of progression and so need to receive mortal bodies on earth. The Son is considered an elder brother, a first-born spirit child with a unique role and a shared purpose with the Father, but the Son is also considered to be in a process of progression. I believe there is some dispute in LDS belief around ideas of the Father progressing. Regardless, Latter-day Saints consider these relationships to be familial in every sense, and I do not doubt that Latter-day Saints perceive immense joy and love in the redemption and exaltation of the members of this family. I hope the differences are clear, and am very willing to be corrected if my representation of LDS belief is in error. I am striving to be accurate, but also brief, and my experience with Latter-day Saints is that there is a wide range of belief, and even regarding fundamental matters.

I intend my comments in a spirit of gentleness, and at the same time I want to emphasize that your comments are not accurately representing what I wrote. Please consider that I am telling you that we are not in agreement, and that your exaggeration of agreement is, I think, something that is hindering our discussion. Specifically, your statement that "Latter-day Saints also believe that priesthood authority continues after this life and that priesthood holders (men & women) continue in their work after this life..." inaccurately presumes Catholic belief and distorts what I wrote. It assumes a shared understanding of priesthood, ignores what I wrote about the Church's foundation in the apostles which is fundamentally irreconcilable with a restorationist notion of great apostasy, and frames what I presented as unity in love that corresponds to the unity amongst the Persons of the Trinity as "continuing in work." Why would the differences I just listed not undermine your assertion that Catholics and Latter-day Saints "agree more than they think they do" on these issues? Again, I don't intend to be harsh. I'm just not going to ignore that you began this thread entertaining a thought that creedal Christianity is apostate because it is somehow rooted in paganism from the Indian subcontinent, and now you're saying, "We agree more than we think."

Thanks for clarifying. I think we have a difference in worldview here, as I see prayer as integral to John 17's admonition to be as one even as the Son and the Father are one. You may be familiar with what I'm about to share, but I'll nonetheless share it for the benefit of everyone who is reading our interaction. Catholics believe that the apostles continue to be sent forth by the Lord, they continue to bind and loose, the Church is built on the foundation of apostles and prophets, and that the gates of hades (death/hell) have not prevailed against the church. In LDS terminology, Catholics believe that Peter still has the keys, so to speak, and hence all of the popular depictions of Peter at the gate of heaven, etc. There is a fundamental disjunction between Catholics and LDS that I'm going to emphasize because it's vital. Catholics consider the Church in three senses, and yes, Catholic theologians have done what I find to be incredibly illuminating work regarding the three senses of the Church and the Trinity (Augustine, Bonaventure, Thomas Aquinas, von Balthasar. This is one of the best, most faith-affirming subjects I've studied in my life). The three senses of the Church are 1) The Church Militant (on earth), The Church Suffering (in Purgatory), The Church Triumphant (in Heaven). All three senses are the Body of Christ, and when the Passion of the Church is concluded and the Church is atoned with the Trinity, all the Church will be the Church Triumphant (we're deep into Catholic eschatology and divinization/theosis here). Put differently, Catholics believe that Christ's admonition in John 17 that we should be one even as the Father and the Son are one is taken to mean--and this is crucial--that oneness in the Church (and among mankind, in another sense) is to correspond to the oneness amongst the Persons of the Trinity (which, for Catholics is a oneness in love, and not merely in purpose). It is that idea that is at the core of Catholic understandings of the Communion of the Saints, and it's why we think that intercessory prayer happens on both sides of the veil, and continually. This is also where an abundance of puzzlement occurs between Catholics and Latter-day Saints, as Latter-day Saints talk about Peter giving his keys to Joseph Smith, the Church not having authority during the great apostasy, etc., and Catholics talk about the Church having apostles even though they all died (and most all of them were martyred). Catholics and LDS often talk past one another on these things. The Bible has an abundance of intercessory prayer, of persons praying for someone else (Moses for the Israelites, Job for his friends, Daniel for the Israelites, Paul for the various churches, etc.). And crucial to Catholics is the passage in Revelation 5 wherein the elders hold the bowls that are filled with the prayers of God's people. At a basic level, the elders holding the bowls are interceding. The very act of holding is interceding. Moreover, Sacred Tradition affirms intercessory prayer and repeatedly explores it in these and other passages. I would not say that the prayers of the Saints are somehow better, that they are qualitatively superior in some sense. Scripture does teach that prayers are not equal in their efficacy, though. James 5:16 teaches that, "...the prayer of a righteous man has great power in its effects." If I have helped anyone reading this understand the vital points even a little, then this absurdly long post has been worthwhile.

With apologies, I can't make heads or tails of what you've written here.

This is an intriguing topic, and I appreciate why it is of frequent interest. I'm in the odd position of wanting more discussion of the topic, and at the same time discovering that many folks just don't have a foundation in place. A fantastic starting place is Yale Historian Jaroslav Pelikan's The Emergence of the Catholic Tradition (100-600), which is part of a five-volume treatment that traces the development of Christian doctrine from the 1st Century to the 20th Century. Here's an excerpt from his chapter that discusses the relationship between Christian thought and pagan thought: I can share PDFs with those who are interested.

This is moving in the right direction, in terms of how Catholics look at this. Catholics consider prayer in one sense to be communication with a Saint in heaven, and this is thought of as being done in praise (dulia) or veneration (hyperdulia, for Mary). Prayer that is done in worship (latria) is reserved only for God. If you've ever tried to communicate with departed love one, and said or thought something like, "Grandma, if you're there, please know I love you and hope you are watching out for me," then you've engaged in something comparable to dulia.

Has all the marks of flim flam and fraud. I'm not meaning to condescend; we Catholics have our share of "relics."