But:
Jesus, Matthew 10: 34 "Do not think that I came to bring peace on the earth; I did not come to bring peace, but a sword. 35 For I came to set a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law."
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So this one is confusing, because Christ addressed it directly - but Catherine of Siena is a Saint. So how to decide and interpret properly? What is the Catholic teaching on the declarations of Saints?
Catholic question here.
“So this one is confusing, because Christ addressed it directly”
No, He did not. Jesus was talking about setting a man against his father in His own day and metaphorically later on. He was not discussing what Catherine said. Jesus was talking about faith in Him setting a man against his father. Catherine was talking about a man being obedient to his father because of faith in Christ.
” - but Catherine of Siena is a Saint.”
She is a saint. And saints - because of their holiness - often have great insights. People who ridicule them often not only have no insight but are often too bigoted to even understand the most basic of obvious things.
“So how to decide and interpret properly?”
How about by not taking Jesus’ comments out of their historical context or forgetting about the fact that Catherine lived 1300 years later?
“What is the Catholic teaching on the declarations of Saints?”
What is the likelihood you would understand it if you can’t understand what Catherine said?
But isnt that what a dynamic catholic does.....ask a good question and wait for the church to explain, rather than nail a complaint to a door, close his mind, and scream schism.
Someone competent in church teaching will explain it....its the church of truth afterall, lead by sinners.
I don’t believe that St Catherine of Siena is necessarily contradicting Christ here. Christ is speaking of family members being against each other because one accepts and follows Christ and another does not. Having said that, a saint is not infallible.
A saint’s teaching —— even if she is a Doctor of the Church -— does not become a part of the sacred deposit of the faith. Saints do not, of themselves, exercise the authority of the Magisterium.
We have to pay a certain attention to literary and social context. So many of us, when we read religious texts especially, seem to suspend our ability to detect elements like rhetorical hyperbole.
Jesus says, for instance, that anybody who does not *hate* his father, mother, brother, sister, wife, and children, for His sake, is not worthy of Him.
Then He says to honor father and mother, says we must be perfect like our heavenly Fsther who always gives good gifts to His children, commsnds us to love brother and sister and neighbor.
Context.