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pamphletstoinspire · 5 years

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One, Holy, Catholic, and Neuter

The Church today suffers from a deficiency in her identity, lacking awareness of both her Marian and Petrine dimensions. I borrow these concepts from Hans Urs von Balthasar to explore the feminine and masculine aspects of the Church. In some ways we have become a neuter Church, lacking both Mary’s feminine receptivity toward Christ and Peter’s masculine boldness toward the world. (This is not to say that men are incapable of accessing the feminine dimension in their soul or that women cannot exhibit a masculine boldness vis-à-vis the world).

The Marian dimension of the Church precedes the Petrine. The Petrine dimension of the Church includes ecclesiastical structures that are necessary: the pope, bishops, and priests who are ordained to govern the Church, celebrate the sacraments, and preach the Gospel. But these activities cannot be limited to externals. The Marian, feminine dimension of the Church reminds us that receptivity precedes activity. Jesus praised another Mary for sitting at his feet and listening to him, in contrast with Martha who was preoccupied with the human activity of serving the Lord.

Pope Emeritus Benedict has written about a misplaced masculinity in our approach to the Church. He has in mind our own internal relationship with the Church and not the masculine boldness we need in preaching the Gospel in a secular culture. In Mary, the Church at the Source, he writes, “In today’s intellectual climate, only the masculine principle counts. And that means doing, achieving results, actively planning and producing the world oneself … this attitude characterizes our whole approach to the Church. We treat the Church almost like some technological device that we plan and make … this is why the Church needs the Marian mystery; this is why the Church herself is a Marian mystery.”

The Marian mystery is one of humble, feminine receptivity to the grace of God and the love of Christ. It is modeled on Mary’s fiat in the Annunciation: “Let it be done to me according to your word,” followed by the Incarnation of Christ in the womb of Mary. All of us are first called to imitate this Marian fiat before receiving the grace of Peter’s boldness in proclaiming the Gospel. As the Latin legal maxim reminds us, Nemo dat quod non habet. “No one can give what he does not have.” Applying this phrase to the spiritual life, it is clear that no one can give to others what he has not first received from God. As Saint Paul wrote to the Corinthians: “What do you have that you did not receive?”

Peter himself possessed a dimension of Marian receptivity to Christ’s love. When the risen Christ appeared to Peter and several other apostles by the Sea of Tiberias, Jesus asked Peter three times, “Simon, son of John, do you love me?” Peter replied three times, “Yes, Lord, you know that I love you.” We can assume that Jesus was looking intently at Peter and loving him. Peter received this love and reciprocated. Only then did Jesus say, “Feed my sheep.”

Later, Peter and the apostles received the Spirit at Pentecost to proclaim the Gospel with power, performing miracles and converting thousands of people. Many passages in the Acts of the Apostles are a study in parrhesia, the Greek word that is entering the English language as a technical term for boldness in preaching the Gospel. In chapter 4, we read that the Jewish leaders arrested Peter and the apostles for teaching the people and proclaiming in Jesus the Resurrection of the dead. Peter preached to the gathered assembly of the elders, scribes and the high-priestly family, who were amazed at the parrhesia of both Peter and John, noticing they were uneducated and ordinary men. The council threatened them and ordered them not to speak or teach in the name of Jesus. Once released, however, they gathered together and prayed, “Lord … grant your servants to speak your word with all parrhesia,” and they continued to fearlessly proclaim the Resurrection of Christ. In comparison with Peter and the apostles, something is definitely lacking in our boldness in sharing the Gospel with our contemporaries.

One reason for the absence of masculine boldness in the Church’s proclamation is precisely the lack of feminine receptivity to Christ’s love within the Church and in the Eucharist. (Recall that Peter first received Christ’s love by the Sea of Tiberias before he proclaimed the Gospel in Jerusalem). What happens in the sanctuary affects the strength of the Church’s witness in the world. In every Eucharist, we should be able to repeat the lovers’ dialogue from the Song of Songs, and apply it to our soul’s relationship with Christ: “My beloved belongs to me and I to him.” It is impossible to have a spiritual and emotional experience of Christ’s love in the Eucharist and to remain the same, to keep quiet. Those who fall in love always tell their friends.

In a sense, every Christian must learn to imitate Mary at the Annunciation, and Peter on Pentecost. Obviously, in the history of salvation, there is no Pentecost and no Church without the Annunciation and the Incarnation. But the same is true with every Christian. Without first accepting the gift of Christ’s love with a Marian receptivity, we will have no personal Pentecost and no Gospel to share.

How can we become more Marian? In part, through consecration to her and by praying the Rosary. Many saints such as St. Louis de Montfort, St. Maximilian Kolbe, and St. John Paul II have promoted personal consecration to Mary as a sure and certain means of sanctification. Through our consecration, and by praying the Rosary with a reverent and recollected spirit, we are asking for Our Lady’s constant intercession to give us a heart like hers to listen to the Word of God and receive the gift of Christ’s love.

How do we imitate Peter’s boldness in preaching the Gospel? Each one of us can pray for the grace of Pentecost and the Holy Spirit’s gift of boldness. The Charismatic Renewal is evidence that the same Holy Spirit that inspired Peter and the Apostles is alive, active, and powerfully present in the Church today. Those ordained to formally preach the Gospel—the pope, bishops, priests and deacons—should be on our knees begging for a spirit of boldness and courage to meet the challenge of proclaiming Christ in a secular environment that is at times indifferent or even hostile. However, the same is true for the people of God who are called to share the Gospel with their family, friends, and colleagues.

The Marian fiat and the Petrine parrhesia, the feminine and masculine, are both essential to the spiritual health and strength of the Church. Western secular culture may be hurtling further into the abyss of absurd ideologies, for instance gender theory on the sameness and interchangeability of men and women, but now is the time for the Church to be more clearly masculine and feminine rightly understood. In God’s providential plan, perhaps it is the very prevalence of gender ideology in our secular culture that can drive us deeper into our own identity, and make us more effective witnesses in the world.

I wonder if the Church may also need an element of masculine strength in imitating the men who rebuilt Jerusalem after the Exile. They built with one hand, while the other was ready to grab a sword. We need to protect the tender, vulnerable, feminine, and Marian dimension of our souls and of the Church, so that in safety and security, we can enjoy the embrace of the Beloved, without fear of being disturbed by our enemies. Subsequently, when the soul has been deeply nourished and revived by the food of love, then we have the stamina, courage and parrhesia to go out into the world to proclaim the Good News.

BY: FR. TIM MCCAULEY

From: www.pamphletstoinspire.com

#one holy catholic and neuter

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apenitentialprayer · 3 years

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I know that God the Father is typically defined in male terms in the Bible. I mean it's right there in the title of Father. And I know that Jesus Christ was incarnated as male. But I think I remember reading somewhere that the Holy Spirit isn't typically defined in terms of gender, and that whether the Spirit is refered to as male, female, or neuter is a case by case thing, dependant on the language and its use of grammatical gender. But I'm not entirely sure if that's true.

Well, it's complicated. :P You're right, the gendering of the Holy Spirit is dependant on language. But it's also dependent on time period! The Latin spiritus is masculine, and the Greek πνεῦμα is gender neutral. The word for "spirit" in Syriac languages can be feminine, though, and this feminine grammar did influence how early Christians viewed the Holy Spirit. In its more extreme forms, forms that exist outside of what is now mainstream Christianity, we even see formulations of the Trinity as one of Father, Son, and Mother. But even within orthodox Christianity, Syriac speakers were using the feminine to describe the Holy Spirit. This changed as Rome and Constantinople became more influential, though; later Syriac texts tend to be more in line with Greek and Latin texts in terms of gendering the Holy Spirit, to the point that scholars use the Spirit's gender as an indicator to determine whether a Syriac Christian text's initial composition was before or after the fifth century. I can only speak about the Catholic Church now, but its current policy is that the gender of the Holy Spirit in liturgical texts should be faithful to what has traditionally been the case for each respective language.

#Christianity #Catholicism #history #Holy Spirit #asks

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fcb4 · 3 years

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The Book of Common Prayer 2019 is the product of a new era of reform and restoration that have created the Anglican Church in North America. Like the Jerusalem Declaration of 2008, that located itself within the historic confines of what is authentically the Christian Faith and the Anglican patrimony, the Book of Common Prayer 2019 is offered to the same end.

“The Book of Common Prayer (2019) is a form of prayers and praises that is thoroughly Biblical, catholic in the manner of the early centuries, highly participatory in delivery, peculiarly Anglican and English in its roots, culturally adaptive and missional in a most remarkable way, utterly accessible to the people, and whose repetitions are intended to form the faithful catechetically and to give them doxological voice.” ~ Preface, The Book of Common Prayer 2019

“The Book of Common Prayer is the Bible arranged for worship. The 2019 edition takes what was good from the modern liturgical renewal movement and also recovers what had been lost from the tradition.” ~ Archbishop Robert Duncan, Custodian of the Book of Common Prayer

The Complete Jerusalem Statement of 2008 is a major Anglican reform declaration that reflects the global challenge of the church to face head on the growing moral and theological apostasies. In my mind it is a helpful therapeutic to the continued viral spread of a troubling declension of orthopraxy and orthodoxy into the messy and mushy, pseudo-religious, historically neutered free-for-all that evangelicalism and unfaithful mainline progressivism has spawned.

https://www.gafcon.org/resources/the-complete-jerusalem-statement-2008

The 2019 Book of Common Prayer Description:

“At the beginning of the 21st century, global reassessment of the Book of Common Prayer of 1662 as “the standard for doctrine, discipline and worship” shapes the present volume, now presented on the bedrock of its predecessors.

Among the timeless treasures offered in this Prayer Book is the Coverdale Psalter of 1535 (employed with every Prayer Book from the mid-16th to the mid-20th centuries), renewed for contemporary use through efforts that included the labors of 20th century Anglicans T.S. Eliot and C.S. Lewis, and brought to final form here.

The Book of Common Prayer (2019) is indisputably true to Cranmer’s originating vision of a form of prayers and praises that is thoroughly Biblical, catholic in the manner of the early centuries, highly participatory in delivery, peculiarly Anglican and English in its roots, culturally adaptive and missional in a most remarkable way, easily accessible to the people.

The Book of Common Prayer, from the first edition of 1549, has been the hallmark of a Christian way of worship and believing that is both catholic and reformed, continuous yet always renewing.

However, the Book of Common Prayer 1979 in the United States and Prayer Books that appeared in Anglican Provinces from Kenya to Singapore were often more revolutionary than evolutionary. Eucharistic prayers in particular often bore little resemblance to what had for centuries been the Anglican norm.

Undoubtedly Thomas Cranmer’s (the Prayer Book’s author) most dynamic achievement was his replacement of the numerous books of the Latin Liturgy with a carefully compiled Book of Common Prayer. This was a Prayer Book in the vernacular, one that brilliantly maintained the traditional patterns of worship, yet which sought to purge away from worship all that was “contrary to Holy Scripture or to the ordering of the Primitive Church.”

The Book of Common Prayer, from the first edition of 1549, became the hallmark of a Christian way of worship and believing that was both catholic and reformed, continuous yet always renewing.

During the English Civil Wars of the seventeenth century (1649-1660) Church of England and the liturgy and authority that attended it were dissolved. The Book of Common Prayer, authorized by King and Church in 1662, restored the balance of a Church that sought to be both Catholic and Reformed.

The Wesleyan movement of the 18th century, as well as adaptations necessary for the first Anglicans independent of the British Crown, re-shaped the Prayer Book tradition, foreshadowing the impact of the East African Revival and the end of the British Empire two centuries later.

The evangelical and anglo-catholic movements of the 19th century also profoundly affected Anglican self-understanding and worship in different, often seemingly contradictory, ways – yet these movements worshipped using the same Book of Common Prayer. In addition to “catholic and reformed” in its substance, some would come to describe what had emerged in practice by the 21st century as “three streams in one river.”

For nearly five centuries Cranmer’s Prayer Book idea had endured to shape what has emerged as a global Anglican Church that is missional and adaptive as in its earliest centuries, authoritatively Scriptural and creedal as in its greatest season of reform, and evangelical, catholic and pentecostal in its apology and its worship as now globally manifest.

The liturgical movement of the 20th century and ecumenical rapproachment in the second half of that century had an immense impact on the Prayer Book tradition.

The Book of Common Prayer 1979 in the United States and Prayer Books that appeared in Anglican Provinces from Kenya to Singapore were often more revolutionary than evolutionary. Eucharistic prayers in particular often bore little resemblance to what had for centuries been the Anglican norm. Baptismal theology, particularly in North America, also came perilously close to a gospel of individual affirmation rather than of personal transformation and sanctification.”

You can buy a copy here:

https://anglicanhousepublishers.org/shop/the-book-of-common-prayer-2019-deluxe-leather-edition/

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rockofeye · 4 years

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Spiritual Colonialism and the Doctrine of Discovery

On the eve of the annual US celebration of the colonial occupation and settlement of Indigenous lands and the long-term, still-unfolding process of eradication of Indigenous cultures and nations, it’s important to think about how this came about, how the concepts of the Doctrine of Discovery have harmed Indigenous spiritual systems, how these concepts are still alive and well among spiritual seekers, and how to divest ourselves and our spiritual communities of this specific flavor of spiritual violence.

The Doctrine of Discovery was primarily established by the Roman Catholic Church in the 15th century, and was utilized as a means of conversion of discovered peoples in what European nation-states saw as unclaimed territories. As government structures in that time period and for quite awhile after that were very mixed with religious structures (the pope was considered equal to or above sitting monarchs), this bled from missionary activities to government-funded explorations of previously unknown territories. Cristoforo Colombo/Christopher Columbus is a good example of this; his funding coming from the Spanish crown, which in turn had sought the approval of the papal state. The Conquistadors (literally ‘conquerors’) were missioned out in the same way: sail for new land, claim it for the monarch, and convert and enslave anyone already living there. The Crusades were similar: claim/re-claim primarily the Holy Land/Jerusalem for the Church (and other territories later) from Muslim rule (interestingly, participation in the Crusades was considered as an indulgence of sorts--the Church promised remission of sins for going to slaughter Muslims).

As most of us know, all of these ‘undiscovered lands’ were already populated with complex societies that had all the trappings of European city-states: government structures, division of labor, technological pursuits, family structures and units, and, perhaps most important in the quest for land as funded by the Church, spiritual and religious beliefs and systems. All of these European invaders showed up to Indigenous nations and, by most early accounts, were welcomed warmly. In return, these invaders brought diseases that killed wide swaths of the established societies, used interpersonal and large-scale violence to control and conquer, and did what we know as colonialism: seized land, declared it belonging to someone else, and essentially did a pop-up of European culture on the spot.

The thread that kept this alive in European culture and religion was the belief that these pre-existing cultures were inferior to European thought and belief. What was present was clearly not the same as European culture but instead of being able to use higher thinking skills and reason out that what is different is not inherently evil, colonizers under the direction of religious monarchs declared these differences as spiritually poisoned, demonic, and uncivilized. This brought forth what quickly became an overculture of white supremacy that declared all non-European influenced thought as in need of conversion and erased differences in European cultures.

At the same time, missionaries had been spreading into the Kongo basin region of Africa. Christianity had been present in northern Africa essentially since the very beginning; many early figures in Christian history were recorded as being from Africa, three early popes were recorded as being Black, and the first recorded established Christian monastic community dates to the early 1100s in modern day Algeria. But, in the 1400s, the Portuguese arrived and spread inward. Many accounts from the Kongo region talk about Catholic beliefs being folded into Indigenous beliefs without real issue (and this is reflected in a lot of Kongo art from that period) and a significant number of folks from the Kongo region were already aware of Catholicism--and in some cases willingly converted--before the Middle Passage and Age of Enslavement began.

But as the Age of Discovery waned, the Doctrine of Discovery did not. Instead, it has continued to play out in interactions between religious bodies and Indigenous communities as well as government entities and Indigenous communities. It is almost 2020 and the Roman Catholic Church has still not done with with the Doctrine of Discovery, as published and supported in many papal bulls/documents issued by a pope re: official Church policy and belief.

In the US, we see this in the continual denial of basic rights to Indigenous individuals and nations. Treaties are still not honored, the sitting government still gets to decide who is an ‘Indian’ and who is not, blood quantum has been enforced by government entities and trickled to nation governments, and individuals and groups continue to suffer at the hands of colonialist rule. To even determine if you can be called a Native American, you must consult the Dawes Rolls/Final Rolls, which was essentially a census of individuals associated with five recognized Indigenous nations in the US, to determine if an ancestor of yours was named there. Given that there are currently 573 recognized tribal groups and nations in the US, the problem with this is obvious...and that does not even take into account the number of tribes and nations who cannot receive federal recognition due to low membership, blood quantum debates, or lack of financial resources to fight the colonialist government. Indigenous government services are some of the lowest funded services in the US, and the statistics of poverty, hunger, murdered and missing Indigenous woman, and substance use among Indigenous individuals is staggering...all of which can be related to lack of funding and support.

This doesn’t even account for the historic--and present--reality of ‘Indian schools’ in the US and Canada that were essentially re-education camps aimed at stripping Indigenous children of their cultural identity and family, and indoctrinating them with Catholic beliefs. There’s a lot of blood of a lot of hands about that, and it is shameful that the Church has not taken an official stance of removing the doctrines that support these crimes against humanity.

In Haiti, the Doctrine of Discovery has taken an interesting and insidious new turn. The Catholic Church is very present, but in a lot of ways has become somewhat socially neutered..there are a lot of services provided by Catholic orgs that DEFINITELY express some of the racist ‘noble savage’ arguments and engage in a lot of voluntourism, but the real problem is the Protestants.

In the last 10-15 years, the presence Protestant missions and missionaries have exploded in Haiti. Almost to a fault, they incite social and cultural violence towards practitioners of the Indigenous religion of Haiti (Haitian Vodou), and they utilize American-derived prosperity gospel ideals twisted to really disgusting ends: convert and we will give you food. In a nation where food insecurity and malnutrition are literally life and death issues, this is an outright abuse of essential human rights. Religious gatekeeping of what people need to survive is beyond words (this also plays out in the US via orgs like the Salvation Army).

One of the most painful things I have ever watched was a Haitian megachurch pastor in Port-au-Prince promising abundance if only people would denounce their Vodou practice and be exorcised of their ‘demons’. The footage of this aired on CNN, and what CNN didn’t know was what was being said by the woman being exorcised was not speaking in tongues, but a spirit who had mounted the head of the sèvitè begging not to be sent away and for this to be stopped. This particular megachurch is backed by American missionaries, and their Haitian partner-pastors know exactly what they are doing.

Protestants can’t stop at that sort of stuff, though...they engage in outright violence as well. I have heard first hand accounts from family members of being assaulted on their way home from ceremonies because they were wearing white clothes (standard dress for most ceremonies), and Protestants show up to LOUDLY protest ceremonies often with cars that have large speakers hooked up to broadcast music and messages of damnation/redemption. I’ve seen and heard that myself, with Protestants standing outside my mother’s compound during my initiation and other ceremonies and confronting house members about their presence there. They desecrate sacred spaces and are generally awful.

This has American roots in that this style of Protestant religion and engagement directly grows from the hellfire and damnation style of Southern US conservative Protestantism. It’s a not-so-subtle insertion of white supremacy couched as religious belief.

In all of this, the Doctrine of Discovery lives and thrives and gains ground; the work of Protestants on the island--both American-influenced Haitian groups and awful American voluntourists in matching tshirts that I see EVERY SINGLE TIME I fly to or from Haiti--is to repress culture, convert people, and grow a militant power base.

But, the current iterations of the Doctrine of Discovery and how they interact with Indigenous religions is not limited to actual in-person missionary encounters. The internet has made this particularly insidious via the ease of access to some information about the religions. Many people discover that Vodou (and other Traditional or Diasporic religions) is actually a real-deal non-tourist thing on the internet, which is not in and of itself a bad thing.

It becomes bad when it starts getting scooped up out of context and re-packaged to fit other agendas. What does this look like? Sometimes it’s neo-pagans trying to cast the lwa as cartoonish, toothless figures who are only present to bring us thing and do our bidding--all of these ‘Ezili Freda amulets’ and ‘Ogou elekes’ and Legba-as-a-candy-swilling-devil things and backyard pup-tent ‘kanzos’. Sometimes it is stripping Haitian Vodou of it’s inherent Haitian-ness and repackaging it in a pan-Africanist light, where Hathor is Ezili Freda is Oshun is Mama Chola and it all descends from thoughts and feelings about what ancient Egyptian culture was. Sometimes it is trying to drag the lwa into hoodoo, rootwork, and conjure as beings who can be sent out to do work with no license to ask for that, no ceremony, and no understanding of the dynamics of the religion. Sometimes it is the ascertain that Vodou is really just about what you think or feel connected to, not a continuous line of historical, lineaged practice. Sometimes it is the idea that elders are irrelevant and someone can improve upon what they are taught or do it in a way that they feel is more authentic. Sometimes it is casting the lwa as vegetarian/vegan because animal sacrifice doesn’t feel marketable. Sometimes it is treating the religion as a treasure chest that can be mined--pay what is conceived of as an ‘entrance fee’ and then collect all the information that is thought to be important while ignoring what the religion actually is.

The internet has created this brand of self-appointed experts who use their own discovery of Indigenous practice as a means to feel or present themselves as some sort of spooky without actually bothering to speak to the people who carry the culture and religion. This isn’t dependent on skin tone or background, and it isn’t dependent on initiation or not; plenty of non-white folks do this and plenty of folks who initiate into the religion use it like a vending machine and point at their initiation as a reason why they can do that or as a way to say that what they are doing is without fault.

It all relates back to the Doctrine of Discovery as an assertion of ‘we know better’. It’s become more insidious because it can be couched in language and images that look right to folks who may not know how to look at the religion, but it’s still the same old thing.

So, what to do?

There’s no real easy solution to spiritual colonialism because there is no one prevailing Indigenous religion anywhere with one central governing body. It’s not as simple as ‘don’t provide access’ and ‘don’t document’ because that is contrary to what the lwa of Haitian Vodou have largely expressed that they want, and it’s not as direct as going toe-to-toe with folks we feel are being exploitative because, frankly, it would be an unending battle and practitioners have too much stuff to do as it is.

There are ways to engage and explore our own internal biases and colonial attitudes, though, and steps to take if we have begun a process of determining whether an Indigenous religious community might welcome us or if we are simply interested in knowing more:

Do the homework. Research and reflect. While Indigenous practices do not live in books, books can be useful for gaining historical understanding and cultural context for folks who did not grow up in the Indigenous practice they are in contact with or want to learn more about. Compare and contrast what you are reading and push at the differences--why does this author say that? What is their source material? What is the general opinion of their source material? Who are their informants? What is their personal history, if any, with the religion? Read the bibliography, and go find those sources. The Columbusing of Indigenous religions and fraudulent folks bank on the idea that people are uneducated and won’t look further. Read critically. Question influences.

Ask questions. Find elders and culture bearers of the religion and ask if they might have a little time to chat with you about their experiences and practice of their religion. Many, MANY elders and practitioners are quite happy to share what their religion means to them with a respectful party. Be prepared to compensate them for their time and energy.

Ask questions, again. If folks are presenting themselves as knowledgeable or are presenting things about the religion that seem somewhat out of touch (see Do the homework), ask them where they learned these things and who their elders or authorities are. These should not be hard questions to answer, nor should anyone tapdance around them.

Learn the language. If a religion has a written body of knowledge, it will likely be in the cultural or liturgical religion which, if you are allowed to access that body of knowledge, you will need to learn. Many Indigenous religions are passed orally, and so the language is a must as many important things are lost in translation. With Vodou, when folks claim there is no good written information about the religion this inevitably points to them only looking for information in English, as there is an IMMENSE body of solid work in Kreyòl ayisyen, French, and, surprisingly, German. If you are welcomed to participate somewhere, learning the language is a must. For instance, in Vodou, all services are conducted in Kreyòl with bits of French, and it is a mark of respect to work towards fluency and it is necessary if one wants or needs to travel to Haiti for ceremony.

Support the communities. Spend your money with Indigenous groups or orgs...make donations that support communities and buy products and services from legitimate practitioners. If there are public events and/or political movements by Indigenous religious groups, attend them and/or boost the visibility of them. Ask how you can help (and be prepared to be told you cannot without getting offended) and listen/observe what is being said and taught.

Decentralize experience. Personal experience IS central to religion and spiritual practice, but when folks are being invited to ceremony or into an Indigenous practice, it is not just about our experience...there is an entire community that is drawn together and has it’s own means. methods, and reality. We can center the community without losing our own experience, and that’s good practice towards undoing to colonial influence that places Self at center stage at the expense of the broader Us.

These are places to start, but the whole of the work will unfold as steps are taken forward. It is the labor of outsiders to do this, versus expecting the insiders of the Indigenous practice to carry the burden of unpacking bias along the lines of the Doctrine of Discovery. Rejecting colonial actions and filters means doing the heavy lifting, which everyone is capable of if we remain willing to engage in this way.

On the day of celebration of colonialism and destruction of Indigenous communities, I challenge folks to explore their own internalized colonialism towards the othered Indigenous communities of our local areas. What are our attitudes towards Indigenous communities? What do we think about and feel when we see commentary that tells the truth about what Thanksgiving is? How do we engage with the idea that our current lives are built on the colonization of lands and communities that were already established before we got here? How do we engage with the idea that we continue to benefit from colonialism as non-Indigenous individuals living in settler states? What definitive actions can we take to contribute to reparitive attitudes and actions that recognize the reality of colonialism in our current societies?

Writing from illegally occupied Massa-adchu-es-et land, and bearing benefits from illegally occupied Nipmuck lands and un-ceded Taino territory, I wish you a thoughtful and reflective Day of Mourning and research-driven National Native American Day.

#vodou #haitian vodou #vodou culture #thanksgiving #day of mourning #doctrine of discovery #Catholic

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cipzi-shoppp · 3 years

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dharc16 · 4 years

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Hello fellow witches! I just thought of dropping something historical today about us witches around the world! 😇 I hope you read it till the end and perhaps share it if you like! But please don’t feel offended! These are the words of a Christian Witch!

THE ORIGINS OF THE MODERN WITCH

A fearsome being of fairytale and myth, the witch has carved out a home in nearly every culture across the world and time. Indeed, the witch represents the dark side of the female presence: she has power that cannot be controlled.

While most people envision witches aging, ugly, hook-nosed women surrounding their cauldrons and inflicting toil and trouble on the masses, history tells us that the witch’s origins are far less sinister. In fact, those whom we consider to be witches have often been healers.

Carole Fontaine, an internationally recognized American biblical scholar, argues in an interview that the idea of the witch has been around as long as humanity has tried to deal with disease and avert disaster.

In the earliest centuries of human civilization, the women doctors, midwives, wise women, and priestesses were revered throughout their communities.

These wise women made house calls, delivered babies, dealt with infertility, and cured impotence. According to Fontaine:

"What’s interesting about them is that they are so clearly understood to be positive figures in their society. No king could be without their counsel, no army could recover from a defeat without their activity, no baby could be born without their presence."

So how did the benevolent image of a wise woman transform into the evil figure of the witch we know today?

Some scholars maintain that the answer may be linked to events long before the birth of Christ, when Indo-Europeans expanded westward, bringing with them a warrior culture that valued aggression and male gods of war, which dominated the once-revered female deities.

The Holy Spirit that we worship was changed from the Hebrew feminine to the Greek neuter to the Roman Latin male.

In the 1300s, when the plague decimated Europe and killed one in three people, it also brought with it hysteria. Amid the panic, many attributed their misfortune to the Devil himself — and his supposed worshipers. At this point the Catholic Church’s Inquisition, which had already been established for decades, expanded its efforts to seek out and punish the non-Catholic causes of the mass deaths, including Devil-doting witches. These women were believed to worship in large nocturnal assemblies, where various social ills were performed, such as promiscuous sex, naked dancing, and gluttonous feasting on the flesh of human infants. At the climax of this festival, people at the time believed that the Devil himself would appear and participate in an unbridled orgy with all attendants.

In order to save the Church and its followers from the Devil, then, these women had to be tamed. It is with that in mind that Catholic Church inquisitors Jacob Springer and Henrik Kramer wrote the Malleus Maleficarum, a book which assisted witch hunters in the gruesome task of diagnosing and punishing so-called witches, who as women were sexually vulnerable and therefore easy prey for the Devil.

“What else is a woman but a foe to friendship?” wrote the monks. “They are evil, lecherous, vein, and lustful. All witchcraft comes from carnal lust, which is, in women, insatiable.”

The manual’s vivid descriptions would serve as a platform for zealous witch hunters to act on their prejudices for over 200 years. At the time, Malleus Maleficarum was second to the Bible in terms of popularity.

Fontaine notes that while there had been witch hunting manuals prior to the publication of the Malleus Malificarum, these two monks were the first to associate a specific gender with witchcraft.

By the end of the 1600s, the witch hunting hysteria in Europe reached its peak. Witch hunts spread like wildfire across Europe, the worst of which occurred in France and Germany. Würzburg, Germany was home to the worst instance of witch hunting: the magistrates of the time determined that most of the town was possessed by the Devil, and condemned hundreds to death.

Religion professor Barbara McGraw notes in a 1996 interview that there were some towns in Germany where there were no women left.

Thousands were arrested and brought to inquisitors for examination. Under an inquisitor’s brutal scrutiny, the accused were strippped and searched. Any “suspicious” wart, mole, or birthmark could be enough to receive a death sentence.

In order to execute the accused, however, they first needed to confess. Torture seemed to be the best way of inciting confession, and the Church would use instruments such as thumb and leg screws, head clamps, and the iron maiden to generate the “truth” needed to enact death.

While torturing women under examination, the Malleus Maleficarum warned the torturer not to make eye contact with her, as her “evil powers” might cause the torturer to develop feelings of compassion.

When this period ended at approximately the beginning of the 18th century, an estimated 60,000 people in Europe had been killed as witches.

Overseas, the most anthologized witch hunt took place in Salem, Massachusetts. The 17th century settlement had a rough beginning: decades of Indian Wars, land disputes, deep religious divisions and a tendency to look to the supernatural to explain the unknown helped set the grounds for this particularly “New World” brand of hysteria.

The witch hysteria in Salem began in 1692, in the home of a Puritan minister named Samuel Parris. Parris was deeply concerned about a game his daughter Elizabeth and niece Abigail had played, in which the two girls looked into a primitive crystal ball and saw a coffin. This vision sent them into convulsions, and within a few days nine other girls throughout the community were stricken with the same ailment.

Under the pressure of Parris, the girls then named three witches who may have cursed them: Tituba, their household slave, Sarah Good, a beggar woman, and Sarah Osborne, a widow rumored to have had an illicit affair with one of her servants. All three women were social outcasts, and thus easy targets for suspicion.

The 1692 Salem witch trials spread witch hunting hysteria to 24 outlying villages. That year, jails were crowded with more than 200 accused witches, 27 of whom were found guilty. 19 were killed.

The trials met a swift end, however, in part because supposed victims began pointing their fingers at high-ranking figures within the community. When the wife of the governor of Massachusetts was accused of witchcraft, leaders saw to it that the trials ceased immediately.

As to what spurred the girls’ confessions, Fontaine attributes them to a form of social release. The girls had been so tightly controlled in Salem, Fontaine argues, that this confession allowed the girls to receive some kind of attention.

Hundreds of years later, the fearsome image of the witch faded, and was absorbed by a popular culture who used the witch’s violent history as costume inspiration. Others, however, used it as a means to found a new spiritual movement.

In 1921, British archaeologist Margaret Murray penned a book called The Witch Cult in Western Europe, in which she argued that witchcraft had not been an obscure occult, but a dominant religious force. Though Murray’s theories have been widely discredited (proven to be untrue) since the book’s publishing, her work sparked a fascination with witches that had been dormant for three hundred years, eventually helping spawn the pagan Wicca religion.

The religion, which is named after an Anglo Saxon term for “craft of the wise,” circles back to ancient practices that use herbs and other natural elements to promote healing, harmony, love, and wisdom, all following the tenet of “harm none," while rejecting the more violent aspects of the same ancient practices.

However, just like hundreds of thousands of people who have come before us, these same practices of healing and working with nature can also be practiced with the worship of the one true Creator God, who gave us these gifts to begin with.

#christian magic #witches #magic #christian witch #male witch #wichcraft

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madewithonerib · 3 years

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Is ‘Faith’ the ‘Gift of GOD’?

Ephesians 2:8-10 | ⁸ For it is by grace you have been saved through faith, & this not from yourselves; it is the gift of GOD, ⁹ not by works, so that no one can boast. ¹⁰ For we are GOD’s workmanship, created in CHRIST JESUS to do good works, which GOD prepared in advance as our way of life.

Introduction

Ephesians 2:8-10 is well-known as Paul’s doctrine of salvation in miniature.

Reformed Evangelicals love this passage, using it to explain what sits at the heart of the GOSPEL —the relationship between grace, faith, & works in salvation.

J C Ryle was converted simply by hearing it read in Church.

It’s a key passage in the popular Just For Starters: Seven Basic BIBLE Studies.

Many of us have put together the puzzle of ‘grace’, ‘faith’ & ‘works’ from Ephesians 2:8-10.

The paradigm ‘Not Saved By Works But For Works’ is a vital component of the excellent ‘Christianity Explained’ course, & rests on this passage.

Indeed, the current de-emphasis on this in some circles blunts the cutting edge of the GOSPEL.

Background

I grew up Roman Catholic, wondering how I could be good enough for GOD.

Then at university an MTS worker did Just For Starters with me.

We opened the BIBLE, & in that hut at Kensington, I got GOD’s grace. I realized that my acceptance before GOD at the judgement is not based on my goodness or moral effort, but on GOD’s goodness & JESUS’ moral effort.

I discovered that I’m saved, not by good works, but for good works.

GOD even gave me the faith that joins me up to JESUS.

GOD predestined the good works that HE has now given me to do.

This little passage became the reason to find a Protestant Church, go to beach mission, & arrogantly share the GOSPEL of free grace.

Even now, I continually return to this beautiful simplicity, because I’ve never graduated beyond my debt to grace, no matter what I think I’ve achieved.

As Theodoret said, ‘I own myself wretched—aye, thrice wretched.

I am guilty of many errors.

Through faith alone I look for finding some mercy in the day of the LORD's appearing.’[1]

A Disconcerting Surprise

However, I came to discover with surprise & disappointment that many didn’t understand these verses ‘my’ way. Reading commentaries & learning Greek revealed that—in technical language—the demonstrative translated ‘this’ [v8] is neuter, but the noun for ‘faith’ is ‘feminine’.

For my naive view to stand, they should agree—but they don’t. My Greek textbook declared, ‘On a grammatical level, then, it is doubtful that either “faith” or “grace” is the antecedent of [touto].’[2] Was this the death knell to my beloved understanding of Ephesians 2:8-10?

Other Questions

Further reflection yielded other questions. For example, v.9 doesn’t say ‘good works’ but ‘works’—the adjective ‘good’ is only found in v.10. So are ‘works’ [v9] the same as ‘good works’ [v10]? Are the works we are saved for different from those we are not saved by? Many say ‘yes’. Some limit the non-saving ‘works’ to ‘pre-baptismal’ ones, but then say that ‘post-baptismal’ works actually do save us. Or does v.9 merely exclude from saving efficacy ‘ceremonial works’ or ‘Jewish boundary markers’? So are we saved by ‘good works’ after all?

Furthermore, in Ephesians, Paul doesn’t use the ‘justify’ words at all—although Protestants often assume it does. Is it a sound assumption? And what about the relationship between ‘not from yourselves’ [v8] & ‘not from works’ [v9]? What could it mean to say that ‘faith’ is ‘not from works’? And is it true to say that GOD has predestined our specific & individual ‘good works’? After all, the divine pre-preparation may simply have been GOD commanding them.

I don’t want to imply that I experienced some terrible existential crisis. I knew that other passages taught that our believing response to GOD is enabled by GOD if this one didn’t [see e.g. Acts 5:31, 11:18, 13:48, 16:14]. But that didn’t mean I was eager to surrender a reading that had been so important to my early faith. And now I believe that there are good reasons to think that my naive understanding was right after all.

First, Classical Greek literature, the Septuagint, & the NT, provide evidence that ‘this’ can indeed refer to ‘faith’. There are 15[3] certain or highly probable examples of this rule—ten in the classical literaturę[4], four in the Septuagint[5], & one in the Greek NT[6].

Second, many ancient exegetes take it that way. As Abraham Kuyper observes:

I can confirm Kuyper’s assertion. Only a minority of ancient commentators associate ‘this’ exclusively with salvation[8], eight ancient exegetes specifically assert that ‘this’ refers back to a feminine noun in Ephesians 2:8-9, seven taking touto to refer to ‘faith’ [Chrysostom[9], Jerome[10], Augustine[11], Theodoret[12], Fulgentius[13], Œcumenius[14], Theophylact[1][15]], & one taking it to refer to ‘grace’ [John of Damascus[16]]. These interpreters were either native Greek speakers or, in the case of Jerome & Fulgentius, Latin speakers of undoubted Greek ability, or, in the case of Augustine, the greatest extant theologian of the first Millennium.This is doubly important because the ancient Greek-speaking exegetes themselves were inclined to see faith as a human work. They thought human free-will had a controlling place in salvation, & that predestination was simply GOD foreseeing human virtue. Their exegetical decisions thus were generally in spite of, rather than because of, their theological commitments.In contrast with the ancients, most modern interpreters believe the ‘gift of GOD’ is the concept ‘salvation by grace through faith’. This is quite acceptable in terms of grammar. Calvin[17] adopted it, & is followed by ‘the great majority of modern commentators’[18]. Only three ‘modern’ commentators agree with the incumbent ancient understanding, & they all died last century![19] However, 19th century Greek grammars, steeped in the Classical literature from which Koinē Greek developed, articulate the rule that a neuter demonstrative can refer back to a masculine or feminine word[20]. Modern commentators sometimes acknowledge this.

Expository Considerations [Ephesians 2:1-10] The trajectory of verses 1-7 is not that humans under sin are sick & impaired but dead & enslaved. We were ‘dead’ in our ‘transgressions & sins’ [v1], & Paul includes himself with us in that plight [v5]. Every human at one time has walked according to the world, the flesh, & the devil [vv2-3], & this requires that GOD must make us alive in CHRIST [v5] if we are to exercise faith [v8]. The clause ‘by grace you are saved’ explains ‘he made us alive with CHRIST JESUS’ [v5]. So ‘making alive’ is part of GOD’s salvation by grace. ‘By grace you are saved’ appears again [v8], but a new, human element is introduced—‘through faith.’ This makes it more likely that the new element, ‘faith’, is the subject of v.9. That is, Paul has already explained that clause [vv5-7]. But the new element, ‘through faith’ [v8] most needed the explanation of verses 8-9. Lest his readers think faith is some independent action on the part of the subject, the Apostle puts it more starkly—‘faith’ is in one sense ‘not from ourselves’, though from another perspective, ‘faith’ is obviously from ourselves. And if ‘faith’ is the gift of GOD, so too is ‘grace’ & ‘salvation’. It cannot be otherwise. As Œcumenius said, ‘for us to believe [is the] gift of GOD, & to be saved through faith [is the] gift of GOD’.[21] It is not ‘either/or’ but ‘both/and’.

The Eastern theological tradition considers that the divine cause of faith is adequately explained by GOD’s initiative-taking in the incarnation & GOSPEL-preaching [Romans 10:14; Chrysostom; Œcumenius]. This leaves room for free-will in the scheme of salvation, where grace is ‘fellow-worker’ [synergos] with free-will. It is synergistic.

By contrast, mature Augustinianism holds that the impulse by which we seek GOD is itself given to us by GOD.[22] ‘[W]e receive, without any merit of our own, that from which everything … has its beginning— that is, faith itself.’[23] Likewise, Fulgentiussays ‘and, since this faith is divinely enabled, it is without doubt bestowed by his free generosity’.[24] It is not only the divine invitation to, but the divine enablement of, faith, that more accurately accords with faith being ‘the gift of GOD’.

Meanwhile, the Eastern tradition tends to take ‘not from works’ to refer to salvation—even though it takes ‘the gift of GOD’ to be ‘faith’.[25] However, we might consider that ‘faith’ is ‘not from works’ in that no works merit the divine granting of faith. Works are not a condition of the gift of faith. This is how Augustine reads it: ‘And again, lest they should say they deserved so great a gift by their works, he immediately added, “Not of works, lest any man should boast”.’[26]

What Works? What ‘works’ is Paul talking about? Barclay rightly says that the ‘works’ of v.9 are ‘moral achievements’, & should not be limited to Jewish practices & cultural markers. [27] Even if we did see ‘works’ [v9] as essentially equivalent to the expression ‘works of the law’ in Romans & Galatians, the ‘works of the law’ would still be ‘good works’, as the stipulations of the law of Moses are ‘holy, righteous, & good’ [Romans 7:12]. And what the law brings is not a ‘knowledge of Jewishness’ but a ‘knowledge of sin’ [Romans 3:20]. ‘Works of the law’ requires human achievement, because ‘doing’ is the basis of justification by law [Romans 2:12-13, 7:10, 10:5; Leviticus 18:5]. The ‘works’ promised to be rewarded at the judgement with eternal life for those who have not sinned but have done the law are ‘good works’ [Romans 2:6-7, 12-13]. So ‘works’ [v9] should not be distinguished from ‘good works’ [v10], or limited to pre-conversion works, ethnic boundary markers, or ceremonial Jewish works. ‘Works’ are ‘human achievements’, ‘human effort’, ‘good works’, plain & simple. These ‘good works’ are the purpose of our creation in CHRIST JESUS—not its basis. Photius of Constantinople, taking ‘works’ [v9] & ‘good works’ [v10] as effectively the same, observes:

‘Standing us apart from good deeds’ can only be a reference to ‘not from works’ [v9]. Photius thus equates ‘good deeds’ with ‘works’. Though we have been created for good works, we have done nothing good.[29] Thus, Ephesians 2:8-10 teaches that we are not given saving faith by good works, but with the purpose that we do good works. The works that we are not saved by, these very same works we are saved for. ‘Good works are never the cause of salvation but ought to be its fruit’.[30]

v. 10 also teaches that GOD has prepared beforehand these ‘good works’. The prefix pro— is used in Ephesians 1:4, 5, 9, 11 to connote a divine decree before the foundation of the world. Giving pro— the same meaning in Ephesians 2:10, means that GOD predestined & prepared the specific good works to those to whom he gives faith. The good works do not derive from the believer as they are planned & purposed by GOD, & therefore they cannot be said to merit salvation or faith. Unsurprisingly, the word translated ‘prepared beforehand’ also appears in Romans 9:23, in a context which suggests divine predestination.

Interestingly, Paul doesn’t use ‘justification’ terminology at all in these verses. The closest we get to it is ‘seated with CHRIST’ in the heavenlies—clearly a positional category [v6]. This is important, reminding us that ‘salvation’ is a broader idea that can encompass other teachings such as predestination, regeneration, sanctification, & rescue from punishment, whereas ‘to justify’ is a more limited forensic category meaning ‘to declare righteous’.

Conclusion The elderly Bishop Augustine effectively united the majority Eastern exegesis of Ephesians 2:8-10 with a theological underpinning that gave this exegesis its natural home. Augustine’s rejection of the near universal view of predestination according to foreseen virtue & embracing of absolute predestination made him the first thorough-going monergist. His soteriology was more consonant with the interpretation of Ephesians 2:8-9 found in the East.

Regarding ‘faith’ as the ‘gift of GOD’ in Ephesians 2:8-9 has ample support to merit the label ‘catholic’, even if the mature Augustinian doctrine of predestination does not.[31]

Learning these things from both the Eastern & Western exegetical traditions concerning Ephesians 2:8-10 enables us to be ‘more Calvinistic than Calvin’, who thought it an error to say that ‘faith’ was the gift here. But it is quite acceptable according to the rules of Greek syntax. Our modern grammars & commentaries should be revised to reflect that reality.

au.thegospelcoalition.org/article/is-faith-the-gift-of-god-reading-ephesians-28-10-with-the-ancients/

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septembersung · 6 years

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It’s been a long time since I’ve talked about how I came to the Traditional mass, so since the topic is on anyway: The long and short of it is the TLM was instrumental in my conversion and I wouldn’t be Catholic without it. All my words fall short, but I would dearly love to be able to tell the world with any kind of accuracy why it is so incredible, and why the world needs it.

I was baptized as a toddler and attended a typical tiny backwoods Novus Ordo parish for most of my childhood. There were maybe six kids, lots of elderly, a couple parents, and two or three high schoolers. There I learned such insightful theology as, there’s not really any good reason for women not to be priests. I did, however, have the benefit of reading the Bible a lot more thoroughly than was typical - even if I didn’t have anyone to explain it to me. On the verge of my teenage years we moved and our new parish was bigger, though with still (proportionally) tiny youth engagement. Our religious ed teachers were well-meaning but had no idea what they were talking about. Their idea of a retreat was to sit in total darkness and listen to sappy music. I quit going to mass, got confirmed, and continued not going to mass. But, praise God, I went to an orthodox Catholic college. There was a lot of Catholic Lite culture in the air, which I avoided studiously, correctly identifying it as a quasi-Protestant emotion-fest - the sugar-high version of what my high school parish was trying to instill in us. But my theology professors were the real deal. For the first time there were people who could tell me what the content of the faith was, show me its history, actually answer questions, and identify and shoot down wrongheaded lines of inquiry. It was a revelation. I promptly spent a solid year and a half studying interreligious dialogue - entering the study of truth by the back door, as it were. At the end of that, having run up against the un-negotiable “stumbling block” of Christ, whose claim to be Truth and have given it in fullness to his Church cannot be watered down or explained away, I gave up, signed on as a theology major, and got down to the business of figuring just what this “arrogant” Church had to say for herself. I was still not going to mass. My saving graces - and I mean grace literally - were a fear and awe of the Eucharist, and an emotional devotion to Our Lady.

By my senior year, I was, personally, six kinds of a wreck (which is a whole other story) but also convinced that if Catholicism wasn’t true, nothing was - whether or not I could learn to live it. Into that latent conviction, a total unwillingness to deal with its looming consequences for me, and my generally wrecky life entered a new boyfriend, stage right: he was very smart, very handsome, very stubborn, and a convert. I knew within weeks that we were destined for each other. (Spoiler alert: we got married a year and a half later.) Our arguments about politics, culture, and religion shook walls. We were both wrong, in different ways, and helped make each other more right. That Holy Week, he asked me go to the Traditional Latin Triduum and Easter Vigil. I reluctantly agreed. It could no longer be put off: I had finally come to a reckoning with the Person behind all the theology. I got my sorry butt to confession, the start of a long and painful ongoing process, and we went.

I didn’t like it.

But I was also not happy - and never had been - with the NO.

Fast forward: We were engaged and in grad school - in different states, but within driving distance. I was the only one with a working vehicle, so I was the one who traveled. It was very important to us that we prioritize seeing each other face to face during our engagement, so we sacrificed a lot of time and money to make it happen regularly. Being apart was very hard on our relationship. One Saturday night when I wasn’t visiting, he told me he’d found a new church to check out tomorrow, he’s excited to visit it, and can’t wait to tell me about it.

I waited. all. day. All day. It was late, after dinner time, when I finally heard back from him. Turns out it’s way in the middle of nowhere service is spotty, and he stayed from the morning mass all the way through dinner. He was excited about the great group of people, the hospitable priest who hosted regular come-as-you-are, quasi-potluck Sunday dinners at the rectory - and the priest offered the Latin Mass.

Thus began my love affair with the usus antiquor. He went every Sunday, and I went as often as I visited. I started going to the monthly low mass at my own local church. He bought me a missal, and I learned how to use it. I started comparing the old and the new rite, both reflectively and analytically. I started reading about the changes and went down all the rabbit holes regarding Vatican II. (I’d studied Vatican II in college, but it was strictly the texts. Looking back, I see that the professor very carefully walked a fine line of subject matter that allowed him to neuter the “spirit of Vatican II!” version of history without actually getting into what happened before and after the Council. But I digress.) I had to engage, body and soul and mind, with the mass, and my own faith - not just an intellectual study anymore, or something to be endured because that’s just what Catholics on Sunday, I was confronted with the foundational questions: What’s the point of the mass? Why, why any of it? It was a humbling process, a spiritual crucible. All at once I wasn’t just a disembodied intellect asking probing questions, but a soul face-to-face with her Creator, Judge, and Redeemer, applying theology to my own life: what do I owe to God? how do I fulfill that obligation? Where do I encounter Him? What is being asked of me? And miracle of miracles, I had this wonderful community to help me as I went through this process.

Fast forward a number of years: that little church is where we got married, in the old rite, and where our first child was baptized, also in the old rite. Since then we’ve moved twice and had more children, but wherever we go, travel, or plan to move, we go to the TLM. It’s the solid foundation of our family life. Our kids are growing up inundated with beauty, reverence, and a sense of the sacred. We’re very lucky; in our current city, the TLM community has the use of a beautiful church and a rotation of pastors, one of whom also runs the most successful and reverent parish in the city, who offer mass for us every Sunday, some weekdays (at various locations), and most holy days. (And for Holy Week, as a church can have only one holy week and not two in different rites, we are able to make a pilgrimage, as it were, to an FSSP church.)

The ancient rite opened up the presence and person of Christ for me in a way that nothing else, certainly not the NO mass, ever had. I finally understood the point and purpose of the liturgy, and therefore of the whole Christian life. I had to check my pride and my assumptions and my self-satisfaction at the door and be broken open in a brand new way. I had to take Christ on His terms, or not at all. The old rite embodies the truth of the Catholic faith - it lives them, and for the person who embraces them, makes that person to live them. It’s not an add-on to our lives, it doesn’t fit in neatly with the rest of our modern existence. It makes itself the foundation and center of everything, because it is the dwelling place of Christ, and we are meant and made to dwell with Him.

The old mass and everything that goes with it, all the things that were cut out of the new order when it was invented, the prayers and the obligations and the seasonal markers and the theology, the way of seeing God and ourselves and the Church and the world, is the living tradition of the Catholic faith, our unbroken link to all and everyone that has come before us. In the old calendar, we celebrate feasts on the same days that the great saints of the past did; we sing the same chants and say the same prayers; it’s bigger than we are, and because it’s focused on God, exclusively, and not on ourselves, it heals us and helps us and transforms us in a way that anthropocentric styles of prayer never can. The old life of the Church doesn’t bring God down to our level, but transforms us, raises us up to Him.

So much of what we take for granted today about the mass, about the faith, so many of the attitudes and assumptions that we have absorbed or been taught, are wrong. Point blank, they are wrong, they are in conflict with what the Church taught for millennia, they are not “of the mind of the Church,” and they have been wreaking havoc on Catholic life for going on a century now. I have made a special study of this history of ideas and their effects over the years, and it is ongoing. The more I learn, the harder I find it to summarize to others just what’s wrong with the way contemporary Catholicism is practiced, and the more profoundly grateful I am that I was brought - by human love - into the fulness of Catholic tradition. Now that I have the benefit of nearly five years of almost exclusive TLM attendance, I wonder how I ever lived without it. I have very strong feelings about it; it’s the driving force behind my desire to evangelize because now I understand what I’m inviting people to share. Not a set of intellectual propositions, not a feeling, but a way of life that boldly and unapologetically has Christ enthroned at its center - a tangible way to see and worship that involves the whole person, body and soul, that makes demands on us. I wish I could bring all of my friends, Catholic and non-Catholic, to a glorious high mass at a beautiful church with all the smells and bells. Because the glory of Christ is there, and His glory is ours.

I went through some tags to find some things I’ve written before: Latin in mass, “NO vs TLM feels”, why I came and stayed for the TLM, book recs, Latin and the vernacular.

If you want to understand more about the TLM, the new books I’m recommending to everyone are Kwasniewski’s Noble Beauty, Transcendent Holiness and Fr. Jackson’s Nothing Superfluous.

#my catholic thoughts #my life #TLM

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vanteism · 7 years

Text

kerchoo | bts & lq

pairing: ot7 x reader x lightning mcqueen genre: s i n, car sex (literally) word count: 13k description: some people frowned upon your lifestyle, but many don’t know how a bottle of oil and willpower will get you what you need.

The Bible (from Koine Greek τὰ βιβλία, tà biblía, "the books")[1] is a collection of sacred texts or scriptures that Jews and Christians consider to be a product of divine inspiration and a record of the relationship between God and humans.

Many different authors contributed to the Bible. What is regarded as canonical text differs depending on traditions and groups; a number of Bible canons have evolved, with overlapping and diverging contents.[2] The Christian Old Testament overlaps with the Hebrew Bible and the Greek Septuagint; the Hebrew Bible is known in Judaism as the Tanakh. The New Testament is a collection of writings by early Christians, believed to be mostly Jewish disciples of Christ, written in first-century Koine Greek. These early Christian Greek writings consist of narratives, letters, and apocalyptic writings. Among Christian denominations there is some disagreement about the contents of the canon, primarily the Apocrypha, a list of works that are regarded with varying levels of respect.

Attitudes towards the Bible also differ amongst Christian groups. Roman Catholics, Anglicans and Eastern Orthodox Christians stress the harmony and importance of the Bible and sacred tradition, while Protestant churches focus on the idea of sola scriptura, or scripture alone. This concept arose during the Protestant Reformation, and many denominations today support the use of the Bible as the only source of Christian teaching.

With estimated total sales of over 5 billion copies, the Bible is widely considered to be the best-selling book of all time.[3][4] It has estimated annual sales of 100 million copies,[5][6] and has been a major influence on literature and history, especially in the West, where the Gutenberg Bible was the first book printed using movable type.

Contents

1Etymology

2Development

3Hebrew Bible

4Septuagint

5Christian Bibles

6Divine inspiration

7Versions and translations

8Views

9Archaeological and historical research

10Image gallery

11Illustrations

12See also

13Notes

14References

15Further reading

1.1Textual history

3.1Torah

3.2Nevi'im

3.3Ketuvim

3.4Original languages

4.1Incorporations from Theodotion

4.2Final form

5.1Old Testament

5.2New Testament

5.3Development of the Christian canons

8.1Other religions

8.2Biblical studies

8.3Higher criticism

14.1Works cited

Etymology

The English word Bible is from the Latin biblia, from the same word in Medieval Latin and Late Latin and ultimately from Koine Greek τὰ βιβλία ta biblia "the books" (singular βιβλίον biblion).[7]

Medieval Latin biblia is short for biblia sacra "holy book", while biblia in Greek and Late Latin is neuter plural (gen. bibliorum). It gradually came to be regarded as a feminine singular noun (biblia, gen. bibliae) in medieval Latin, and so the word was loaned as a singular into the vernaculars of Western Europe.[8] Latin biblia sacra "holy books" translates Greek τὰ βιβλία τὰ ἅγια ta biblia ta hagia, "the holy books".[9]

The word βιβλίον itself had the literal meaning of "paper" or "scroll" and came to be used as the ordinary word for "book". It is the diminutive of βύβλος byblos, "Egyptian papyrus", possibly so called from the name of the Phoenician sea port Byblos (also known as Gebal) from whence Egyptian papyrus was exported to Greece. The Greek ta biblia (lit. "little papyrus books")[10] was "an expression Hellenistic Jews used to describe their sacred books (the Septuagint).[11][12] Christian use of the term can be traced to c. 223 CE.[7]The biblical scholar F.F. Bruce notes that Chrysostom appears to be the first writer (in his Homilies on Matthew, delivered between 386 and 388) to use the Greek phrase ta biblia ("the books") to describe both the Old and New Testaments together.[13]

Textual history

By the 2nd century BCE, Jewish groups began calling the books of the Bible the "scriptures" and they referred to them as "holy", or in Hebrew כִּתְבֵי הַקֹּדֶשׁ (Kitvei hakkodesh), and Christians now commonly call the Old and New Testaments of the Christian Bible "The Holy Bible" (in Greek τὰ βιβλία τὰ ἅγια, tà biblía tà ágia) or "the Holy Scriptures" (η Αγία Γραφή, e Agía Graphḗ).[14] The Bible was divided into chapters in the 13th century by Stephen Langton and it was divided into verses in the 16th century by French printer Robert Estienne[15] and is now usually cited by book, chapter, and verse. The division of the Hebrew Bible into verses is based on the sof passuk cantillation mark used by the 10th-century Masoretes to record the verse divisions used in earlier oral traditions.

The oldest extant copy of a complete Bible is an early 4th-century parchment book preserved in the Vatican Library, and it is known as the Codex Vaticanus. The oldest copy of the Tanakh in Hebrew and Aramaic dates from the 10th century CE. The oldest copy of a complete Latin (Vulgate) Bible is the Codex Amiatinus, dating from the 8th century.[16]

Development