Father Jerome Murphy-OConnor has a common sense breakdown

La Salette Journey ^ | June 25, 2012 | Paul Melanson

[cleghornboy]

Father Jerome Murphy-OConnor, a renowned expert on the New Testament, has what some are referring to as "a bold view of what happened in the Gardner of Gethsemane." I would call it something else entirely: asinine. Demonic even. How about blasphemous?

In an article for the Catholic Herald which may be found here, Fr. OConnor is quoted as having said that Jesus suffered a "nervous breakdown" and adds, "When realizing the imminence of His own demise, Jesus was deeply distraught and troubled, out of control." A nervous breakdown, otherwise referred to as a "mental breakdown," is statically defined as "a specific acute time-limited reactive disorder." See here.

Jesus out of control? Jesus so distraught that he momentarily suffered from a reactive disorder?

Anyone even remotely familiar with the New Testament knows full well that Jesus was subject to emotions. We know that He wept when His friend Lazarus died. We know that He experienced various emotions. We read for example, "He began to grow sorrowful and be sad" (Mt 26: 37); that He "began to fear and be heavy" (Mk 14: 33); that He "looked round about on them with anger" (Mk 3: 5) and that He said, "I am glad for your sake" (Jn 11: 15). But Jesus was also free from concupiscence. As a result, His emotions could not be directed to a sinful object nor could they arise within Him without His consent. Jesus emotions were always completely under the control of His will and could never obscure or dominate His mind in any way.

[Cicero]

Why I don’t subscribe to The Catholic Herald.

[stuartcr]

Does this negate his expertise?

[Rudder]

Gardner of Gethsemane

Who is...?

[Boogieman]

Well, the gardener was a Jesus too, but they pronounced it “Hay-zeus”.

[Verginius Rufus]

When Mary Magdalene saw Jesus after the Resurrection, she thought he was the gardener (John 20.15).

[cleghornboy]

Something happened while I was posting this. You will immediately notice, if you take the time to visit the original Blog post, that the word “garden” is spelled correctly.

What a shame that you have so little love for Christ Jesus that you cannot find anything positive about this piece but instead choose to nitpick.

This might suggest something about you.

[centermass_socrates]

For God so loved the world, that he gave His only begotten Son....It seems this man has forgotten that we were created in God's image, and not the other way around. Sure Christ had emotions when He was on this earth. Love, fear, sorrow, anger, joy, these are emotions we all have, as did Christ. To deny this would be to deny His sacrifice on our behalf. This gentleman seems to have also forgotten that Christ was tempted like us in all ways...yet without sin. I wonder how the good father would act if he had the weight of all the worlds sin resting upon him before he was to die. Christ had no mental breakdown in the garden that night, nor any other time in his life. I, for one, am glad that Christ died on the cross and not myself or the good father.