Posted on 06/17/2009 9:48:34 AM PDT by NYer
.- He grew up an evangelical Protestant in Oregon, suspicious of Marian theology. Now he’s a Catholic priest and a physicist. Dominican Father Raphael Mary Salzillo was ordained last month in San Francisco and will take up an assignment at the University of Washington Newman Center and Blessed Sacrament Parish in Seattle.
Born Wesley Salzillo in 1976, he grew up in Florence, a small coastal town. The family converted to Catholicism in the early 1990s.
"My family raised me with a strong Christian faith and a very clear sense that Christ should be the most important thing in my life," Father Raphael Mary recalls, explaining that his faith after conversion remained "generic."
"I was not fully open to the truth that the Catholic faith has to offer," he says.
But when he was 16, a spiritual experience at Mass gave him the strong feeling he was being called to priesthood or religious life. He was not open to it at the time, so tried to convince himself it was just his imagination.
A top graduate from Siuslaw High, he went on to Caltech, earning a bachelor’s degree in applied physics. He attended graduate school and there he felt his vocation being clarified. At the same time, this scientist wrestled with turning over his will so completely.
"I wanted to choose my own religion rather than accepting the Catholic one as a coherent whole," he says, aware that many people today pick and choose within a body of faith. "In a way, choice had become a God for me, as it has to so many in our society."
Through study of church history and theology and deepening prayer life, he discerned that his own intellect and judgment alone could not fulfill his deepest yearnings. He decided to trust Jesus and the Church fully.
"It was through submission of my power of choice in matters of faith, that I came to know Jesus Christ in a much deeper way," he says.
The last part of his faith to fall into place was an acceptance of Mary. That spiritual movement allowed him to love Jesus more, he explains.
"It was Mary who brought me to finally accept my vocation, and it has been her who has sustained me in this life," he says.
He chose the Dominicans for their emphasis on doctrinal preaching and study, as well as their strong community life with "a streak of monasticism."
He studied philosophy and theology in Berkeley, Calif. and also served at the University of Arizona Newman Center.
FYI, if you didn't know, grace means something quite diferent to catholics. It's a measurable quantity that one keeps in sort of a "grace account". You can make deposits with good works, reciting scripted prayers over and over, or making gestures. Small sins eat away at the balance. A mortal sin wipes you out - bamkruptcy, AKA straight to hell. The "sacrament" of confession to a priest puts you back in the money.
If you have a balance in your account when you die, you pay of the rest by hard time in pugatory. I guess there is some amount that makes you fully funded, and if you are, you go straight to heaven.
I suppose "fully graced" to catholics means she got her grace account fully funded, and since catholics believed she never sinned, she never chipped away at the balance during her life. Thus, they reason, not only did she go straight to heaven, it only "makes sense" that she didn't even die but was beamed up.
Read the opening chapters of the gospel of John. Mary did not “produce” the second person of the Holy Trinity. He was with the Father always, since beofre time began, with no beginning.
Nope. He was wholly both. Mary was not.
It's known as sola Cauvin.
Your theology is as bad as your math.
Mary is not dead.
Going to lunch; back later
I don’t think I was implying that. I think I was stating that directly. Any theological system that suggests that we have contact with departed humans is in conflict with the Scriptures.
It's hard to blame someone with a redacted Bible for a misinterpretation like that.
You wrote:
“Or rather, Mary WAS, since she is dead now these several thousand years”
Wow, do you ever need a tune-up on basic theology.
1) mary is a saint, and therefore, according to her Son, alive in heaven.
2) Mary left this earth less than 2,000 years ago. Where are you getting this bizarre “several thousand years” idea?
3) Women give birth to persons, not “forms”.
So, you agree that Jesus was wholly Man and wholly God. Mary gave birth to Him, her creator, she didn’t give birth to only the “man aspect” of Jesus (as Jesus was and is wholly Man and wholly God). Hence the term Theotokos, Mother of God. That in no way signifies that Mary created Jesus or was the originator of Jesus, nor that she in any way is equal to The Godhead. It just states a fact that she was the vessel by which Christ came to the world.
Thanks for the explanation. I suppose we must simply ignore Mary’s remark in Luke 1:47 that her spirit rejoiced in God her “Savior”. Whereas a normal, mortal woman would need a Savior just like everyone else, Mary has been idolized so much by the Catholics that, rather than “favored”, she now conducts operations on the earth, works in men’s hearts, and performs spiritual duties like the Spirit of God. Sounds blasphemous.
Your understanding (or lack thereof) of Catholic theology is pitiful, i.e. deserving of pity and sympathy.
Get a Catechism, or this book, which I highly recommend:
and find out the truth for yourself.
I'm a convert, and before I was a Catholic I heard all sorts of crazy stuff that people swore was Gospel truth. Thankfully I had the sense to go and find out for myself, instead of just believing the pulpit-thumpings of somebody with an axe to grind.
I don't go around trashing Evangelicals' beliefs, especially if I don't know what I'm talking about. At least get your theology straight if you want to criticize it.
Just so that you know:
- That Christ preexisted Mary His Mother, as well as all Creation is Catholic teaching, alongside the fact the she is Mother of God. “Through him all things were made”.
- That Christ is also Mary’s Savior, to Whom she owes here blessed state is Catholic teaching.
I wish I could understand the perverse pleasure Catholic-bashers take in savagely attacking things about which they know so little. Like a schoolyard bully, deep down inside they must feel very small, and this behavior somehow ameliorates their feelings of inadequacy.
Certainly you do. I am not an “Evangelical” but the RC view publicly despises everything that Evangelicals say is the true Gospel. Ask yourself if you do not trash salvation by grace alone, through faith in Christ. Ask yourself if you do not trash the universal, invisible Church of Christ. Etc.
My theology is straight from the Book. The RCs have mixed the traditions of men (such as revering Mary and praying to her, like this guy did) and claiming all of this is somehow Christianity. Piffle (I love that word).
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