Albert Cipriani

Dear Kvalhion,
Your question drips with sarcasm:


After mopping up, one can see that the question you ask is profound. A belief in God, an afterlife, and morality hinge upon the belief in a free will. What we mean by "free" and what we mean by "will" are ultimately the means whereby we maintain our theism.

By free, the Catholic Church does not mean what the modern world means: an ability to choose anything. The Church teaches that freedom consists in the ability to choose RIGHTLY. Choosing wrongly is synonymous with choosing to be enslaved. It is the choice to end choice. It is moral suicide.

Choosing rightly is synonymous with choosing to be free and is ultimately expressed in choosing God. (As Jesus said, "The Truth will set you free.") It is the choice that increases our ability to choose. It exercises our moral muscle.

By will, the Catholic Church does not mean what Hitler ("Triumph of the Will") and the modern world means: a Darwinian power struggle whereby the most stubborn prevail. The Church teaches that God freely wills the extension of His being via creation.

The will to extend Himself (God the Father) precedes the means to extend Himself (God the Son), which precedes the act of extending Himself (God the Holy Ghost). Ergo the (filoque doctrine which caused the Great Schism in the 11th century) Triune formulation: the Holy Ghost proceeds from the Father AND the Son.

As we are created in the image of God, our will, like His, is primary. First we will for extension (choosing rightly) or retention (choosing wrongly). Next we intellectualize how to express this will for extension or retention. Finally, we actualize this will by extending or retaining ourselves.

Unlike God's will, our will is malleable. As if through a biofeedback loop, the intellectual and actual expression of our will molds our will. Thus the habit of virtue or the habit of vice take hold. This formation of our will is, properly speaking, our only creation. It is who we are. It renders our reaction to God in the afterlife heaven or hell.

Creatures with free will act as demigods in exercising that free will to create themselves more and more in God's image or more and more in the image of their own fancy. Free will, whether human, angelic, animal, or vegetative, wherever it may be found, is the only thing that is not ultimately God. It is the only thing that is capable of reflecting God’s image on its own volition. Sincerely, Albert the Traditional Catholic

emotional

</strong>

Kissing God's behind is your idea of freedom? Sounds very 1984: Freedom is Slavery (more <a href="http://www.geocities.com/stmetanat/worldliness.html" target="_blank">here</a>).

</strong>

No it doesn't. You may think you've chosen to follow God, Albert, but you haven't. No-one chooses God except for those few who allegedly talked to him, in the far past. What you have chosen is to follow a scripture and a church. In that, you're qualitatively no different from a Qur'an-believing, Masjid-praying Muslim.

I have never seen a theist who worships God. They all worship scripture and church.

Born Free

Suppose I am starving for some form of communication from my husband. When we got married he told me that he loved me and made his vows. What then if he stops telling me he loves me and fails to communicate that he does in any other way. Would he be justified in saying that he said it on our wedding day and this was enough and I am just not agreeing with what he originally said?? Or more to the point just selfish and unyielding to have the need to be reminded once in a while??? If my love is not reciprocated then surely my love for him will die??

Communication is important, you communicate every day in one way or another by talking, your body language, facial expressions. Without communication which even animals do, society would cease to function properly.

Actually am I wrong in remembering that to a catholic confession is communicating with god through the priest?? The catholic confessing his sins and god absolving them through a priest, is that not communication???


Albert, why exactly has god chosen not to communicate with us mere mortals for the last 2,000 years??? Yet he once did?? Are we any more sinful than we were then, when you take our sins in context with the society we live in and the society that was back then??

How do you know why he hasn't communicated anything to the general public for the last 2,000 years if he hasn't done it??

Could it be that quite simply he just doesn't exist??

Albert Cipriani

Dear Devnet,
You say


You must have your own personal definition of "qualitative" to think such a thing. All religions except for traditional Catholicism are merely based upon ancient texts and/or subjectivism. Catholicism distinguishes itself from all other religions in that it alone is based upon reason and an unbroken 2000 year history of non-contradictory infallible teaching.

You say:


Nice rhetoric. Problem is, no one can see worship. If it's taking place, God sees it. We're only privy to seeing outward and usually bogus manifestations of worship.

But for the record, worshiping even the Catholic Church or her cannon of sacred scripture is a mortal sin of idolatry. This is a de fide teaching, meaning it's infallible and irreformable. Sincerely, Albert the Traditional Catholic

sandlewood

Does that include the teaching that the Earth is the center of the universe? That witch-burning is a good thing?

Albert Cipriani

Dear Alli,
You ask:


Of course, anything is possible. But only what is probable should concern us.

You ask:


Of course such a husband would not be justified. But you misuse the word communication in this context.

Revelation is the communication of information that we could not obtain through reason. Expressing one's love for one's spouse is not this species of communication at all. It is recapitulating through words or actions a state of being, not an intellectual or rationally reducible formulation.

You ask:


Because God successfully communicated to us exactly what He knows we need to know, He cannot redundantly repeat Himself like I just did. Like any good poet, it's not God's style to be superfluous. God leaves repetition to rhetoricians, propagandists, and marketing executives.

You ask,


Yes, you are wrong, for you're using the word "communication" sloppily again. We cannot provide God with any information, so we have nothing at all to communicate to God.

What happens in the sacrament of confession is the exercise of the virtue of humility. To confess one's sin through another human being is humbling. God uses this psychological reality to help motivate us to "go and sin no more." Sincerely, Albert the Traditional Catholic

emotional

</strong>

No, not personal at all. You just differ in the details from a Muslim: which book, which scripture, which house to pray in, which founder, which prophets and so forth. But you and the Muslim both presuppose the primacy of a revealed system, and are subservient to the decrees of that revelation.

</strong>

Ha! "All religions except" is a thread that is present in all religions. All religions except Judaism have a revelation to few people, whereas Judaism has (allegedly) a revelation to the ancestry of an entire nation! All religions except Islam are named after a nation or founder (Juda-ism, Christ-ianity, Buddh-ism), whereas Islam is unique in that it is plainly the word for "submission". There's no single religion that doesn't have some unique point to it. Uniqueness doesn't prove a thing.

</strong>

Ha again! They all say that! And "non-contradictory infallible teaching"?! Oh, you crack me up! Starting from the Bible itself (ya know, the book where God says "thou shalt not murder" in one place, and then rewards Phineas for murder), up until the various papal councils and encyclicals where one pope annulled a decree of a previous pope. Give me a break...

</strong>

It'd be convenient to have a talk with God and ask him what is true worship to him, but he doesn't speak today, and I suspect he didn't speak in the past either. Anyway, my point is: you have never seen God, never talked to God, never felt God, never been taught from him about his character; you only "know" so much about God as is written to you in the ancient tomes. And I, for my part, distrust those books completely, and <a href="http://www.geocities.com/stmetanat/presuppositional.html" target="_blank">presuppose the primacy of natural fact</a>. As I said: men can write books, so all scriptures are suspect of having been written by men, out of their mere imaginations; but Nature is universally agreed not to be man-made, so everything must be evaluated according to natural fact. The Bible contradicts natural fact and is therefore disqualified from being the Word of God.

</strong>

Of course, no-one would say he is worshipping a church or a scripture. The Sikhs bow before their book, Sri Guru Granth Sahib, but they would never say they were worshipping it. But I return to my previous point: you're only worshipping an idea of God as imparted to you by church and scripture; as for what God really is (if he exists), neither you and I have any idea.

HRGruemm

Assuming for the purpose of argument that your God exists.

The existence of a single atheist (or even of a single non-Christian) refutes your claim. Apparently he has not made clear that what some people claim to be his word is actually what they claim it is, or how his alleged word should be interpreted. IOW, he has not communicated anything successfully- and if he is omniscient, he knows this. Whether a communication was successful is evaluated from the PoV of the intended recipients, not of the sender.

Assumption withdrawn.

Regards,
HRG.

Albert Cipriani

Dear Sandlewood,
You ask if the 2000-year-long record of non-contradictory infallible Catholic teaching includes witch burning and geocentrism.

No. You have us confused with Protestants. For example, Protestant Puritans are the ones who burnt the witches of Salem.

The geocentric theory was not and could not be taught by the Church (only by members of the Church) since the Church can only teach infallibly in matters of faith or morals. Rather, the Church furthered the science in this area via her Catholic priest Copernicus, who fathered the heliocentric theory. Sincerely, Albert the Traditional Catholic

Albert Cipriani

Dear HRG,
Your not so hidden assumption is that if God successfully communicated to us we would all respond appropriately by all being theists. That kind of "successful" communication describes the role of machine language in the automation industry, not communication between sentient beings with free will.

Springboarding off this assumption, you land in the mud hole of a preposterous conclusion:


Tell that one to the judge when you get your next speeding ticket. "I wasn't going 55 because the speed limit was not successfully communicated to me, your honor." Bailiff?! -- Cheers, Albert the Traditional Catholic

[ January 10, 2002: Message edited by: Albert Cipriani ]</p>