Posted on 05/01/2005 11:57:54 AM PDT by Antoninus
Zing! Nice shot with that post! :-)
So? Are you saying that no one can enforce punishment on another when such authority to do so has been accepted? Nonsense!
Be sure you behave that same way with your children, otherwise you are in danger of being a hypocrite, PetroniusMaximus.
You picked one of only a couple places in the New Testament in which the Scripture is in some doubt. The earliest manuscripts of John do not have John 7:53 - 8:11 (please refer to the notes in most newer translations, including the New Living Translation, Revised Standard Version, and the New American Standard).
If that portion is legitimate, then for Jesus to say such words meant He knew those same stone throwers were adulterers, too, making them true hypocrites.
Can you please find a better defense of your position?
Yup. Very good post.
not surprising that male homosexuals went after young boys in an age in which girls were married off as young as twelve. When the population is dying off in their 30s there's got to be a lot of pressure to grow up.
"I realise that you are Orthodox, but perhaps you have come across this “cleansing/churching” in a more modern context. How about you, Tantumergo?"
I haven't come across it personally, however, I believe it was common before Vatican II. Some traditionalist communities still practice it and I have heard talk in "Adoremus-type-circles" of reviving it.
As I've only been a Catholic for 18 years, I'm still trying to catch up with some of these customs and devotions that the modernists have done their best to extinguish! ;)
"Can you tell me where they were prohibited?***
"Let him who is without sin among you be the first to throw a stone at her.""
I think that is a misinterpretation of Jesus' intent in stating those words. You must consider the trap that the Pharisees had laid for him in this case:
a) In order to uphold Mosaic law Jesus had to advocate the stoning of the woman.
b) Jews were prohibited by the law of the Roman occupiers to pass and execute death sentences - this was reserved to the occupyiing powers such as the governor - Pontius Pilate.
The consequences of Jesus condemning the woman to stoning would be that He would be charged with insurrection by the Romans, be put to death and hence the Pharisees would have achieved their aim without having to do anything about it themselves.
The way He gets out of the trap is to pass the sentence of death by stoning on the woman, but appoints the Pharisees (those without sin) to carry it out. While we may know that the Pharisees were not sinless, in their own eyes they were completely without sin before the law.
The Pharisees realise that if they are the ones who stone the woman, they will be the ones who are charged with insurrection by the Romans and put to death. They realise that they are now victims of their own trap and so one by one, oldest (wisest) first, they walk away.
St. John recounts this story to show how Jesus is wiser and more skillful than his adversaries. It is most certainly not a comment on Jesus' view of capital punishment as a penalty of the Law. How could it be when it was He Himself who had given the Torah to Moses on Sinai?
*************************
Churching of Women
A blessing given by the Church to mothers after recovery from childbirth. Only a Catholic woman who has given birth to a child in legitimate wedlock, provided she has not allowed the child to be baptized outside the Catholic Church, is entitled to it. It is not a precept, but a pious and praiseworthy custom (Rituale Romanum), dating from the early Christian ages, for a mother to present herself in the Church as soon as she is able to leave her house (St. Charles Borromeo, First Council of Milan), to render thanks to God for her happy delivery, and to obtain by means of the priestly blessing the graces necessary to bring up her child in a Christian manner. The prayers indicate that this blessing is intended solely for the benefit of the mother, and hence it is not necessary that she should bring the child with her; nevertheless, in many places the pious and edifying custom prevails of specially dedicating the child to God. For, as the Mother of Christ carried her Child to the Temple to offer Him to the Eternal Father, so a Christian mother is anxious to present her offspring to God and obtain for it the blessing of the Church. This blessing, in the ordinary form, without change or omission, is to be given to the mother, even if her child was stillborn, or has died without baptism (Cong. Sac. Rit., 19 May, 1896).
The churching of women is not a strictly parochial function, yet the Congregation of Sacred Rites (21 November, 1893) decided that a parish priest, if asked to give it, must do so, and if another priest is asked to perform the rite, he may do so in any church or public oratory, provided the superior of said church or oratory be notified. It must be imparted in a church or in a place in which Mass is celebrated, as the very name "churching" is intended to suggest a pilgrimage of thanksgiving to the church, and as the rubrics indicate in the expressions: "desires to come to the church", "he conducts her into the church", she kneels before the altar", etc. Hence the Second Plenary Council of Baltimore (No. 246) prohibits the practice of churching in places in which Mass is not celebrated.
The mother, kneeling in the vestibule, or within the church, and carrying a lighted candle, awaits the priest, who, vested in surplice and white stole, sprinkles her with holy water in the form of a cross. Having recited Psalm 23, "The earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereof", he offers her the left extremity of the stole and leads her into the church, saying: "Enter thou into the temple of God, adore the Son of the Blessed Virgin Mary who has given thee fruitfulness of offspring." She advances to one of the altars and kneels before it, whilst the priest, turned towards her, recites a prayer which expresses the object of the blessing, and then, having sprinkled her again with holy water in the form of the cross, dismisses her, saying: "The peace and blessing of God Almighty, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, descend upon thee, and remain forever. Amen."
Thanks.
So again, I ask: How do you justify punishment of children, physical or otherwise?
Even the Pilgrims practiced mutilations among those who were found to have sinned in such ways.
The New Testament does not in any way prohibit such punishments. For your argument to be true, a change would have had to have been explicitly stated to differ from Old Testament ways. Certainly Christ thought such punishments were okay and acceptable, as he submitted to what He knew was a Jewish punishment for claiming to be God's Son.
If He had died because of the Romans, His death would have had no meaning for God's people. As it was He was crucified by the very people whose Scripture He was to fulfill.
See post #68 from Pyro7480
The prayers include language for the forgiveness of sins and the washing away of bodily uncleanness -- some find these offensive in the modern era, but they should be taken in the context of the fact that it was not part of God's original intent that reproduction should be a dangerous and painful travail, and that it is so, is a reflection of the presence of sin in the world (we believe that the giving birth of Christ took place in a miraculous manner without pain and travail.) Some churches solve the "un-PC" nature of these prayers by just doing them in Greek or Slavonic.
One of the first sentences in the prayers is "Thou hast saved this thy servant (Name), by Thy will." Given that women routinely lost their lives in childbirth in former times, and still occasionally do today, this is not an insignificant prayer.
Churching is today currently linked with baptism in common parish practice. On or after the 40th day, the woman and child are churched at the door of the church, and then proceed to the baptismal font, where the godparent takes the child from that point on while the parents look on from a bit of a distance.
After the baptism, the final prayers take place with the priest taking a female child to the front of the church before the holy doors of the iconostasis, whereas a male child is taken into the altar area itself, going in one deacon's door, behind the Holy Table, and out the other deacon's door -- symbolizing the church's hope that at all boys will grow up to serve in the altar, and that some will go on to become priests.
All of it is pretty politically incorrect, so if any of this offends, the Orthodox Church isn't the place to be...
The service books also have prayers to be read by the priest over the mother and child on the 1st day after childbirth, and prayers for the child on the 8th day after birth, when the child is first given his name. The prayers make it clear that this takes place before baptism, since they ask that God grant "that he (she) may be united, in due time, to thy holy Church." I'm not sure how much these prayers are actually used in practice -- we were past 40 days with our youngest before becoming Orthodox, and they would obviously be done in private in the hospital and/or parishioners' homes.
***However, when you take "vengeance is mine" in its totality, you can do nothing to those who have done wrong.***
You mean like...
"But if anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also. And if anyone would sue you and take your tunic, let him have your cloak as well. And if anyone forces you to go one mile, go with him two miles."
or...
"be ye therefore wise as serpents, and harmless as doves."
*** Simply because Christ said that does not mean we cannot also have punishment meted out.***
What point of view are you coming at this from? Catholic, Presbyterian, other????
***Please read the words written, okay?***
That comment was in light of the thread title (and came at no extra charge!)
*** Your quotes only allow one to tell one's children about God and exhort Him, not punish in any way.***
Respectfully I must disagree.
"Nurture" (Gr:paideia):
1. the whole training and education of children (which relates to the cultivation of mind and morals, and employs for this purpose now commands and admonitions, now reproof and punishment) It also includes the training and care of the body
2. whatever in adults also cultivates the soul, esp. by correcting mistakes and curbing passions.
1. instruction which aims at increasing virtue
2. chastisement, chastening, (of the evils with which God visits men for their amendment)
...also (coincidentally???) used in Hebrews which give ample context for it's use to describe discipline....
Heb 12:5 And ye have forgotten the exhortation which speaketh unto you as unto children, My son, despise not thou the chastening of the Lord, nor faint when thou art rebuked of him:
Heb 12:7 If ye endure chastening, God dealeth with you as with sons; for what son is he whom the father chasteneth not?
Heb 12:8 But if ye be without chastisement, whereof all are partakers, then are ye bastards, and not sons.
Heb 12:11 Now no chastening for the present seemeth to be joyous, but grievous: nevertheless afterward it yieldeth the peaceable fruit of righteousness unto them which are exercised thereby.
Homosexual Agenda Ping.
A little historical perspective on homosexuals, pederasts (same thing), and what the Catholic Church used to do to sexual deviants.
No comments from me. Educational purposes only. But back in the closet would be a good start.
Let me know if you want on/off this pinglist.
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