Posted on 05/15/2018 7:28:18 AM PDT by Salvation
The first reading from Tuesday’s Mass is Paul’s farewell speech to the presbyters (priests) of the early Church. Here is a skilled bishop and pastor exhorting others who have pastoral roles within the Church. Let’s examine this text and apply its wisdom to bishops and priests as well as to parents and other leaders in the Church.
Paul’s Farewell Sermon – The scene is Miletus, a town in Asia Minor on the coast not far from Ephesus. Paul, who is about to depart for Jerusalem, summons the presbyters of the early Church at Ephesus. He has ministered there for three years and now summons the priests for this final exhortation. In the sermon, St. Paul cites his own example of having been a zealous teacher of the faith who did not fail to preach the “whole counsel of God.” He did not merely preach what suited him or made him popular; he preached it all. To these early priests, Paul leaves this legacy and would have them follow in his footsteps. Let’s look at some excerpts from this final exhortation.
From Miletus Paul had the presbyters of the Church at Ephesus summoned. When they came to him, he addressed them, “You know how I lived among you the whole time from the day I first came to the province of Asia. I served the Lord with all humility and with the tears and trials that came to me … and I did not at all shrink from telling you what was for your benefit, or from teaching you in public or in your homes. I earnestly bore witness for both Jews and Greeks to repentance before God and to faith in our Lord Jesus … But now, compelled by the Spirit, I am going to Jerusalem … But now I know that none of you to whom I preached the kingdom during my travels will ever see my face again. And so I solemnly declare to you this day that I am not responsible for the blood of any of you, for I did not shrink from proclaiming to you the entire plan of God … (Acts 20:17-27 selected).
Here, then, is the prescription for every bishop, priest, deacon, catechist, parent, and Catholic: we should preach the whole counsel, the entire plan of God. It is too easy for us to emphasize only that which pleases us, or makes sense to us, or fits in with our world view. There are some who love the Lord’s sermons on love but cannot abide his teachings on death, judgment, Heaven, and Hell. Some love to discuss liturgy and ceremony, but the care of the poor is far from them. Others point to His compassion but neglect His call to repentance. Some love the way He dispatches the Pharisees and other leaders of the day but suddenly become deaf when the Lord warns against fornication or insists that we love our spouse, neighbor, and enemy. Some love to focus inwardly and debate doctrine but neglect the outward focus of true evangelization to which we are commanded (cf Mat 28:19).
In the Church today, we too easily divide out rather predictably along certain lines and emphases: life issues here and social justice over there, strong moral preaching here and compassionate inclusiveness over there. When one side speaks, the other side says, “There they go again!”
We must be able to say, like St. Paul, that we did not shrink from proclaiming the whole counsel of God. While this is especially incumbent on the clergy, it is also the responsibility of parents and all who attain any leadership in the Church. All the issues above are important and must have their proper places in the preaching and witness of every Catholic, both clergy and lay. While we may have particular gifts to work in certain areas, we should learn to appreciate the whole counsel and the fact that others in the Church may be needed to balance and complete our work. While we must exclude notions that stray from revealed doctrine, within doctrine’s protective walls it is necessary that we not shrink from proclaiming and appreciating the whole counsel of God.
If we do this, we will suffer. Paul speaks above of tears and trials. In preaching the whole counsel of God (not just your favorite passages or politically correct, “safe” themes), expect to suffer. Expect to not quite fit in with people’s expectations. Jesus got into trouble with just about everyone. He didn’t offend just the elite and powerful. For example, even His own disciples puzzled over His teachings on divorce, saying, “If that is the case of man not being able to divorce his wife it is better never to marry!” (Matt 19) As a result of Jesus’ teaching on the Eucharist, many left Him and would no longer walk in His company (John 6). When Jesus spoke of His divine origins, many took up stones with which to stone Him, but He passed through their midst unharmed (Jn 8). In addition, Jesus spoke of taking up crosses, forgiving one’s enemies, and preferring nothing to Him. He forbade even lustful thoughts, let alone fornication, and insisted we learn to curb our unrighteous anger. Yes, preaching the whole counsel of God is guaranteed to earn us the wrath of many.
Sadly, over my years as a priest, I have had to bid farewell to many congregations. This farewell speech of Paul is a critical one I use to examine my ministry. Did I preach even the difficult things? Was I willing to suffer for the truth? Did my people hear from me the whole counsel of God or just what was “safe”?
What about you? Have you proclaimed the whole counsel of God? If you are a clergyman, when you move on; if you are a parent, when your child leaves for college; if you are a youth catechist, when the children are ready to be confirmed; if you teach in RCIA, when the time comes for Easter sacraments—can you say you preached it all? God warned Ezekiel that if he failed to warn the sinner, that sinner would surely die for his sins but that Ezekiel himself would be responsible for his death (Ez 3:17 ff). Paul can truthfully say that he is not responsible for the death (the blood) of any of them because he did not shrink from proclaiming the whole counsel of God. What about us?
We must proclaim the whole counsel of God, not just the safe or popular things, not just what agrees with our own politics or those of our friends. We must present the whole counsel, even the hard parts, even the things that are ridiculed. Yes, we must proclaim the whole counsel of God.
Here is an interesting article on the Jewish view of contraception.
It also differs from your posts.
Good read.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/religions/judaism/jewishethics/contraception.shtml
Paul said it best in his letter to the Corinthinians. He is 100% accurate on this.
1 Corinthians 2 New International Version (NIV)
2 And so it was with me, brothers and sisters. When I came to you, I did not come with eloquence or human wisdom as I proclaimed to you the testimony about God.[a] 2 For I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. 3 I came to you in weakness with great fear and trembling. 4 My message and my preaching were not with wise and persuasive words, but with a demonstration of the Spirit’s power, 5 so that your faith might not rest on human wisdom, but on God’s power.
God’s Wisdom Revealed by the Spirit
6 We do, however, speak a message of wisdom among the mature, but not the wisdom of this age or of the rulers of this age, who are coming to nothing. 7 No, we declare God’s wisdom, a mystery that has been hidden and that God destined for our glory before time began. 8 None of the rulers of this age understood it, for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory. 9 However, as it is written:
“What no eye has seen,
what no ear has heard,
and what no human mind has conceived”[b]—
the things God has prepared for those who love him—
10 these are the things God has revealed to us by his Spirit.
The Spirit searches all things, even the deep things of God. 11 For who knows a person’s thoughts except their own spirit within them? In the same way no one knows the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God. 12 What we have received is not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, so that we may understand what God has freely given us. 13 This is what we speak, not in words taught us by human wisdom but in words taught by the Spirit, explaining spiritual realities with Spirit-taught words.[c] 14 The person without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God but considers them foolishness, and cannot understand them because they are discerned only through the Spirit. 15 The person with the Spirit makes judgments about all things, but such a person is not subject to merely human judgments, 16 for,
“Who has known the mind of the Lord
so as to instruct him?”[d]
But we have the mind of Christ.
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Jesus shared knowledge with His disciples and asked them not to share it with others. The “knowledge” is very powerful, even more powerful than the greatest human weapons.
Our ability to comprehend and know this knowledge is based upon our level of spiritual development. This is to protect us and others from being harmed by exercising our free will if our souls are not pure.
Through being one with Christ, I am aware of the detailed contents of the souls of people around me. I know their sins as they are physical to my perceptions. Just as Jesus knew the thoughts of people around him. Remember what Jesus said, (John 14 & 15)
John 14
10 Don’t you believe that I am in the Father, and that the Father is in me? The words I say to you I do not speak on my own authority. Rather, it is the Father, living in me, who is doing his work. 11 Believe me when I say that I am in the Father and the Father is in me; or at least believe on the evidence of the works themselves. 12 Very truly I tell you, whoever believes in me will do the works I have been doing, and they will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father.
John 15
If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing. 6 If you do not remain in me, you are like a branch that is thrown away and withers; such branches are picked up, thrown into the fire and burned. 7 If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you.
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Let those who have ears hear and those who have eyes see.
The knowledge in the Bible is the very basic level important knowledge necessary in order to fill yourself with the Holy Spirit, which is where the real knowledge is from.
The Holy Spirit or Helper Spirit will then guide you to becoming “One with Jesus” which is an even higher level of knowledge. (This is what communion is all about.) Jesus will then lead you to becoming “One with God” which is an even higher level of knowledge. This is why Jesus stated, after coming from the wilderness, “My Father and I are One.”
When I see the Holy Spirit, is is a dim liquid Light that flows into and around people from above. The Light of Jesus is much brighter, more like a spot light. The Light of God is so bright and brilliant it is beyond words.(I usually am only allowed to see this when the Heaven opens up when I am with a person who dies, except when I died and went there myself)
I am not disagreeing with the words of the Bible as even Jesus warns against sharing your “pearls with the swine lest they turn on you.”
Most Christians say “Jesus is my Savior.” and they treat Him like a lifeguard who can pluck them from the water when they are drowning. In the interim they fear water. (Just as many fear death and wait until they die for Jesus to help them.)
Jesus was a rabbi, a teacher. Which would you sooner have, a lifeguard who teaches you how to swim or a lifeguard that waits until you are drowning to rescue you?
I hoped you wouldn't go further and say "This teaching was accepted by all Christians of all denominations for ages, so it must be wrong."
I was sort of hoping for actual reflection on Christian experience Christian discernment, and/or Natural Law --- Natural Law, correctly considered, applies to everyone but it does take some careful thinking through, which we could do together --- but I was disappointed.
I hoped for too much.
So by that logic, some Catholics are heretics because the Pope is saying some heretical things. As a result we should condemn all Catholics.
Get a grip, buddy.
“I was sort of hoping for actual reflection on Christian experience Christian discernment, and/or Natural Law -— Natural Law, correctly considered, applies to everyone but it does take some careful thinking through, which we could do together -— but I was disappointed.”
...and I was hopeful you might find something God said.
“Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.” This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church. (Ephesians 5:31–32)
That means it's sacred. Consider that sacred things arenot to be dis-assembled and re-assembled according to a new and different pattern according to your preference.
He never said OK to contraceptive sex, intentionally sterilized sex, queered sex, or any other basic re-invention of a different kind of sex.
In all this vast panorama of teachings, He NEVER said you can violate His design by deliberately suppressing or impairing the marital union's procreative power. He did not show you ONE procreative-suppressed act that was blessed, and He DID show you one procreative-suppressed act that was cursed.
He never said that 1900 years later He would authorize people to split off the procreative from the unitive, so that the procreative power of the act could be temporarily or permanently rejected.
So when you came along and said otherwise...
"...I was 100% sure you couldn't find something that God said."
Marriage is sacred. YOUR characterization of preventing every pregnancy is not in Scripture... or you would have posted it.
He never said OK to contraceptive sex, intentionally sterilized sex, queered sex, or any other basic re-invention of a different kind of sex.
He never forbade it, taught on it, commanded it. Jews have a view that couples are to replenish the earth and make a personal decision as to how many is enough. God gave us principles and brains.
In all this vast panorama of teachings, He NEVER said you can violate His design by deliberately suppressing or impairing the marital union's procreative power.
Nor did he forbid it. And again, it is your pejorative language "violate".
He did not show you ONE procreative-suppressed act that was blessed, and He DID show you one procreative-suppressed act that was cursed.
God condemned Onan for violating the sacred covenant with Israel. It is not normative for those not under the covenant.He never condemns couples who do not have limitless children, nor does He say to time intercourse to avoid pregnancy.
Your posts are playing fast and loose with the evidence - posting just one side.
He never said that 1900 years later He would authorize people to split off the procreative from the unitive, so that the procreative power of the act could be temporarily or permanently rejected.
He never said it 1900 years ago either. He never said 5,000 years ago. He never said it. The reason is that this is your construct to attempt an argument in the vacuum of Scripture from God. You are attempting to tell God what He missed saying.
Really weak argument that only convinces those who have already pre-decided their view.
Repeating it does nothing to enhance your argument.
Which I take it to mean you have nothing from Scripture.
I think at this point, you have provided no Scripture and lots of conjecture and assertion.
If you want to believe this personally, great.
It must rejected as a moral and universal principle for Christians and Jews.
Unless you actually consider that, and how brilliant and wholesome for humans and God-designed that is ---you're not going to "get" that it's wrong to violate it.
It's related to the whole ensemble of medical ethics, which is rooted in an reverent acknowledgement of how human structures are designed and how they operate. Once you see that, you see why acting directly and deliberately against natural function is wrong.
The prime purpose of medical ethics is work for, not against, natural function. To repair it if it's broken, to restore it if it's lost, not to attack it if it's working as it should. The essential starting point is "First, do no harm."
That's why deliberate, directly intentional maiming in contrary to medical ethics. You don't deliberately impair the hearing of the ears, the seeing of the eyes, etc.
There's a condition called "body dysmorphic disorder" where the sufferers really think their healthy bodies are wrong.
They feel they ought to be one-legged when they have two good legs. Or perhaps they feel they ought to have no visible ears, because external ear structures are not to their liking. Or again, they want to have their good eyes blinded because their ideal is sightlessness. Any doctor that deliberately destroyed their good organs or limbs, though, would be acting unethically.
This ethic gets trashed at its foundation when, for instance, a doctor will "on demand" destroy the sexual structures of persons who feel their bodily sex is wrong and they want to be transsexual.
This is still unethical, because the mandate of "healthy function" is violated by acting directly against normal sexual capacities via hormones, devices or surgery.
This is directly analogous to impairing fertility by drugs, devices or surgery. It's acting directly against normal sexual function.
The Bible doesn't explicitly say, in so many words, that transsexual alterations of the body are wrong, but Christian ethicists say it violates the integrity of the person's healthy design.
To take another example, the Bible doesn't explicitly say that a doctor should preserve, and not destroy, the sight of the eyes, but no ethical Christian doctor would blind a slighted person because he prefers to be sightless likethe blind poet Homer.
This is a Christian ethic, but it is not only a Christian ethic. Hippocrates was against impairing natural function. Any person could figure that out via Natural Law: a law of God written in the heart, as St. Paul says.
Intentionally impairing fertility is like that.
But why do people accept that? Because people have been so successfully propagandized by the Sexual Revolution that they think that women's bodies, as designed, are wrong. Or that the way sexual intercourse works, as designed, is wrong.
And now the trannies are telling us that everybody's sexuality, their bodily structure and function, is malleable at will. How can you oppose that?
Or possibly you won't. It's not in the Bible.
I still don’t see any Biblical support against preventing some pregnancies.
Are they hidden in those many words??
I don't mean to be dim, but could you explain that...truly interesting comment.
After all this volleying back and forth, how could you even say that?
I never said there was anything wrong with "preventing some pregnancies.". The Catholic Church has never said that either. Neither did all the anti-contraception Protestants and Jews throughout history. And yes, some of them are still there.
You are still mis-reading or even ignoring my words, because I clearly stated that millions of people "prevent some pregnancies," and it's OK if they have good reasons, and they don't use immoral means to do it.
Contraception and sterilization would be immoral means, because they thwart the natural design of how the healthy, normal, sexual body works.
NFP would be a moral means, because it honors and preserves the natural design of sexual intercourse.
This wouldn't make any difference if we were talking about veterinary medicine, e.g. preventing some pregnancies in our dogs or cats. Spay 'em. It doesn't matter.
It matters for us because there is something in the specifically human arrangement for fertile intercourse which is beyond the natural (although Natural Law points to it.) Namely, you can intentionally impair animals' bodily structure for your own purposes, but you can't intentionally impair human bodies (including your own) for your own purposes.
Either God put an important, intended design into human sex, in which case deviations like contraception, directly intended sterilization, FGM, castration and transsexualism are morally objectionable; or there is no God-intended design, and you can rearrange, suppress, exaggerate, or distort your parts and your drives as you like.
It's so odd that Playboy saw this before many Christians did. Because Hugh Hefner and his intellectual mentors openly acknowledged 50 or 60 years ago that the contraceptive revolution provided both the necessary philosophy and the necessary paraphernalia for the sexual revolution. Contraceptives --- they knew this, and cheered it --- would split off procreation from active sexuality and throw over the old ways of fidelity, decency, and "normalcy" which had previously kept sex in balance.
The liberation of sex from procreation has triumphed. Look. Look all around you. It has progressed, as was inevitable, from de-sanctified to de-naturalized to de-personalized to de-humanized. Each step led to the next as its necessary and sufficient cause.
Cheer if you want, but don't call it Biblical.
"Spirit-sourced development of doctrine. "
First of all, the Holy Spirit is the principal author of both the "Book of Nature" and the "Book of Scripture." By this I mean, the Holy Spirit is the Creator of both all that is natural and all that is supernatural.
Second of all, living things (both living plant/animal life and living doctrinal truths) develop from their own already-inbuilt nature. There is a difference between something being, shall we say, "manufactured", by which you add on materials and parts externally, and something "developing," by which it grows according to its innate design.
To manufacturing and developing,you could note a third kind of change, called corruption (or decaying or decomposition.) That's what happens when a thing loses its internal coherence and falls apart.
With me so far?
I'm saying that the Holy Spirit fosters "development of doctrine" by directing the kind of change which does not negate, but rather more fully expresses what is already inherent or innate in the original doctrine.
I think this organic analogy is more fully expressed by John Henry Newman in his classic work On the Development of Doctrine. In his fifth chapter, he notes seven criteria by which you can tell the difference between real development of doctrine (this would be Spirit-sourced), and its opposite, the corruption of doctrine.
If I may just briefly present these seven differences:
Worth looking into.
I trust I have made myself sufficiently obscure?
Any questions?
Thank you so much...have printed out to read again slowly.
I do have a question....have a relative who says when ‘Salumet’ speaks, she listens. Is this a form of idoaltery? Thanks.
Immoral= your characterization.
Never God’s.
Still waiting for chapter and verse...
I have no idea what Salumet means. Sorry.
Sorry about yours.
It seems to be some sort of spiritual “entity” channeled by a medium. This sort of thing is bogus.
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