What Has Christ To Do With Lycurgus?
Posted on 24 January 2012
Yesterday was a national day of penance and prayer for our nation for the sin of abortion. Just as an reminder of what we are facing, allow me to quote from Plutarch:
Offspring was not reared at the will of the father, but was taken and carried by him to a place called Lesche, where the elders of the tribes officially examined the infant, and if it was well-built and sturdy, they ordered the father to rear it, and assigned it one of the nine thousand lots of land; but if it was ill-born and deformed, they sent it to the so‑called Apothetae, a chasm-like place at the foot of Mount Taÿgetus, in the conviction that the life of that which nature had not well equipped at the very beginning for health and strength, was of no advantage either to itself or the state.
You see, the Spartans were a logical and unsentimental people, and regarded humans beings, including themselves, as livestock, to be bred or slaughters according to sound breeding principles.
Now, if there is a difference between the morality of killing a fully formed and healthy child one half second before his head clears the cervix, and one half second after, it is invisible to me. I do see the biological difference between a child who is breathing air and a child taking his nutriment and oxygen through an umbilicus, but I do not see how this difference in regime alters the duties which the mother has to protect her child and the laws have to protect the innocent.
I suppose an argument can be made that the less developed a child is, the less human he looks, and therefore he is a monkey or a fish or a worm or some other lower form of life not a member of the species as his parents. The argument founders on biological reality, and on the nature of cause and effect. Human young don’t grow up into monkeys and fish and worms, but into humans, and this trait is true even when the young is very young, blastocyst, or zygote. Other uniquely human characteristics, such as the number and type of genes, are present at conception. Logically, uniquely human traits cannot be present in an organism not human.
The differences between the modern culture of death and the ancient laws of Lycurgus are these: First, the Spartans only slew members of the ruling warrior-aristocrat class. The Helots and Perioeci were left to breed as they wished. Among us, it is disproportionately minorities and the poor who abort their children.
Second, the Spartans had a logical, if coldhearted, reason for their child-murder, that is, that any crippled child was of no value to itself or the state. Among us, the reason urged for the child murder is sentimental and foolish, that is, that healthy children if unwanted are better off dead. This is urged as a necessity for the liberty of the mother and the wellbeing of the child. The father’s interests, of course, are not consulted at all. The ghastly levity involved in urging the wellbeing of the child is served by killing him is not something the stern Lacedaemonians would have countenanced.
Third, the Spartan practice was of a piece with their other spartan practices, a matter of military discipline. Among us, abortion is an extension of contraception, a method of indulging in the pleasures of sex without embracing the reality of sex: the morningafter murder.
I was this day nauseated with a forceful reminder that there are Christians who do not follow the Church teaching forbidding abortion. They follow Lycurgus rather than Christ.
In all other respects, they speak as Christians: but the incense of sanctimony with which these Christians cloak their dark crimes cannot cover the stench from the tiny and rotting corpses in the Apothetae.
Unlike the institution of slavery, or the doctrine of the Trinity, there is no argument in support of Christian abortion. The earliest surviving written record of this teaching is from the Didache, also called The Doctrine of the Twelve Apostles, written between AD 65 and 80. This is a thousand years before the split between Catholic and Orthodox, and cannot, even by the most strict Protestant, be considered a spurious teaching or later accretion.
The passage reads:
Thou shalt not kill; thou shalt not commit adultery; thou shalt not corrupt youth; thou shalt not commit fornication; thou shalt not steal; thou shalt not use soothsaying; thou shalt not practise sorcery; thou shalt not kill a child by abortion, neither shalt thou slay it when born; thou shalt not covet the goods of thy neighbour.
[Ch 2, Hoole's translation.]
The practice of abortion was known among the ancients. The only difference is that the operation was more dangerous for women. Being pragmatic, the pagans merely waited until the unwanted offspring was born, and performed the same operation, postnatally, by exposing the infant to the elements, or dashing out his brains.
How can anyone call himself Christian who is willing to consign a tiny soul to death without the hope or possibility of Baptism? I can see others making the case, say, an atheist or perhaps a Morman. The former not believing in Baptism and the latter having an out due to their belief in baptism of the dead. But a so-called Christian? How can this be?
p.s. I have been reading your most excellent blog for some time. This is the first time I have been moved to post. But I could not let this question go unasked even if no one has an answer.
Actually, for the case of abortion and LDS it would not be baptism for the dead but that we believe that man will be punished for their own sins and not for Adam’s transgression and that to commit sin one must be able to choose between right and wrong. We do not believe that infants or little children need baptism as they can not sin.
That said while we do admit that for certain medical reasons and extraordinary circumstances an abortion may, possibly, be called for we are against abortion generally. If the reasons we admit as possibly valid for abortion were the only legal abortions then over 97% of all abortions would never happen. I consider the LDS position to be pro-life, if you notice while there were multiple Latter Day Saints disagreeing with parts of Mr. Wright’s position on contraception there haven’t been such comments by us on abortion.
Also, we consider ourselves to be Christian.
Then it is rather odd that all the evidence points to those who fell into apostasy about 200 being those who delayed baptism. Tertullian, having fallen into the heresy that only baptism could remit certain sins, was anxious to delay baptism until after the temptations of adolesence, but even he did not claim that the children could not sin, and conceded that children could be baptized in cases of necessity. Presumably, death, since he also urges the unmarried to put off baptism until they married or had managed several years of total continence.
Why do you want to affiliate yourselves with apostates?
Ain’t us. Take it up with God.
But I think that you’re conflating Particular Sin and Original Sin. Original Sin is our deprivation of Adam’s Original Holiness. I’m not sure — someone correct me — but I think our Particular Judgment relies on our Particular Sin, and remission of Original Sin is what helps us commit fewer Particular Sins.
“We do not believe that infants or little children need baptism as they can not sin.”
This is in general a blanket tenant of all Protestant denominations.
As they forget what is meant by Original Sin. It is better for a child to live his life with the sin remitted — i.e., the original graces of Adam replaced with different graces — than to live for a period without these graces. It is better to have never known a period of your life without the graces of baptism. That is the best argument I can think of for infant baptism which does not rely on the historical case that it happened and has happened throughout history.
“For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive.” 1 Corinthians 15:22
“The soul that sinneth, it shall die. The son shall not bear the iniquity of the father, neither shall the father bear the iniquity of the son: the righteousness of the righteous shall be upon him, and the wickedness of the wicked shall be upon him.” Ezekiel 18:20
Children are automatically freed from the sin of Adam by the Atonement of Christ and are pure from sin until they are themselves able to choose between right and wrong and be accountable for that choice. They have all the graces of one that is baptized by virtue of being dead to sin and alive in Christ.
Also, you missed the point of my 1 Corinthians reference in the other thread, look at it again in reference to the scripture you keep trying to say means that the Catholics could never have fallen into apostasy.
Christ promised the Church would never die. (The Body of Christ died once. He allowed it then.) Christ, being God, does not break his promises. He arose from the dead and founded the Church. A successor to the apostles, knowing this, called the Church the Body of Christ. From these principles, QED.
We don’t need to leap into a fog to justify that our faith is right, and if God doesn’t want us to test Him, why would He want us to?
To all apostasists: Stop mistaking bleeding for dying. We have scandal, and then we have Benedict. We have scandal, and then we have the Dominicans. We have scandal, and then we have the Franciscans. We have scandal, suffer the Reformation, and then we have the Jesuits. Now that the Jesuits have gone bad, we have the FSSP. Everything in Church history points to decline and renewal throughout. If this is not God working, the Demiurge must be mighty clever.
The first part is something that I disagree with you on (obviously), and I doubt we will ever reach an agreement on the subject barring Christ’s return, death, or something miraculous occurring.
“Everything in Church history points to decline and renewal throughout. If this is not God working, the Demiurge must be mighty clever.”
It is obviously God working: first in preserving for Himself those that believe and follow Christ, and second in pruning the Olive Trees in His vineyard so that they can again bring forth good fruit (Book of Mormon:Jacob 5). The Jews likewise have been preserved, pruned, and chastised by God, and by God’s power they are being gathered.
Though the Demiurge, the god of this world, prince of the air, is quite real and quite clever.
Demiurge as distinct from the Devil, in that the lord of this world is purported to be the creator of the prisons called bodies, that all which exists is evil and a distraction from the real. It’s a dualistic approach to the Cosmos from Gnosticism, completely irreconcilable with Christianity. Christians believe God did not ascend by apotheosis, but that he always was and always is; they do not believe Jesus and the Devil ever were the same order of being.
If you do believe the Devil — or the Demiurge — is in charge of the Catholic Church, then I can respect you for your consistency, though I of course reject the charge. Not many people actually listen to what the Church says about Herself and how she says it. So many Protestants approach the Church with a “we all have our idiosyncrasies” point of view, but balderdash on that. If the Catholic claim is not true, it is the worst kind of arrogant blasphemy.
re your first paragraph: I was not separating the demiurge from the devil and was referencing quotes from the Bible. LDS metaphysics (yes there is such a thing and it is defined clearly in the D&C) is non-reductive materialism (everything is matter of some type but there is special finer matter that has different properties).
This related to the first section and one of your posts on the Shout Out: D&C 84:54 says that the LDS Church at that time was under condemnation for treating lightly the scriptures and revelations we have. Maybe the Church as a whole has gotten a little better since that time at reading all of the scriptures we have, but not that much. In my experience members read more scriptures then most other groups, mostly in the BOM and the four gospels, but most are still very unfamiliar with the D&C and most of the Bible. This is getting a little better, particularly among the youth, and we did just spend the last two years of having everyone study the basics in sunday school.
Second section: I could answer this in a variety of ways, I will try to play nice with others as my wife tells me to do but will still answer truthfully.
First, if the LDS claim is not true then it is the worst kind of arrogant blasphemy, worse in fact then the Catholics who do not claim that all Catholics should know for themselves that the Catholic Church is true by way of some form of revelation from God (though this point should be debatable based on 1 Corinthians 12:3, but scriptures are “teaching tools and critical elements of Divine Liturgy” for the Catholics rather then what man should live by besides bread alone). By having the backing of traditions from many generations then Catholics of today are not making claims of arrogant blasphemy; If the Catholics are wrong then someone at sometime did make claims that were the worst kind of arrogant blasphemy, but that could be 1700-1900 years ago.
Second, “by your works ye shall know them”, those Catholics that actually practice their faith have works that are good and there are examples of good works through out the centuries. As there are Catholics with faith in Christ and pure religion then the hand of God has never ceased to preserve the faithful. I will leave the However of this part alone; all parts of it are well enough known to not need to be repeated in my opinion.
Third, The devil is given power over the kingdoms of the world and the relatively recent separation of the Catholic Church from the ruling of kingdoms of the world has done wonders in bringing the Catholic Church closer to Christ. I mean, one does occasionally run into those that think it would be a good thing if the Bible were taken from my possession and it and the other scriptures I believe in were used as kindling at my pyre (not that they think of it in those terms when they are advocating that), following in the tradition of Augustine and other post-Nicene fathers and doctors. However, generally Catholics seem to have rediscovered the fundamental human right and privilege of nature that everyone should worship according to their own convictions which is found in the pre-Nicene fathers.
In which case there was no apostasy, as pruning leaves the plant behind.
Please understand that I do not mean to argue with you; I’m not really a Protestant any more than I am a Catholic. (What am I protesting?) Merely trying to clarify the issue.
“As they forget what is meant by Original Sin”
They forget nothing, they abjectly reject the interpretation of the verses quoted as a deeply flawed invention of later scholars.
“It is better for a child to live his life with the sin remitted — i.e., the original graces of Adam replaced with different graces — than to live for a period without these graces.”
This statement means nothing coherent to Non-Catholic who sees baptism as a return to the innocence possessed by all children.(Mark 18:1-3 is often cited.) If one does not believe in the graces of Adam then there is no point in “replacing” them, anymore than there is point in splinting a healthy leg.
From no authority are such things said. There is no Void deadlier than an indifferent or hostile crowd.
No, Protestants vary enormously on it.
Protestants vary on everything, I suppose one shouldn’t generalize about a sect with roughly 57 billion factions in it.
One notes, incidentally, that we do not baptize children because we believe in Original Sin. In the spirit of faith seeking understanding, we deduced Original Sin from the fact we baptize children.
Huh. Good to know.
Source for further reading?
An Englishing of Ovid’s “Amores: Book II”, Elegy XIV, by Christopher Marlowe:
Elegy XIV: To his Mistress, who endeavoured to make herself miscarry.
What boots it that the fair are free from war,
And what that they’re forbid the shield to bear,
Against themselves if they new arms employ
And madly with new wounds their lives destroy?
The cruel mother who did first contrive
Her babe to butcher ere ’twas scarce alive,
Who thus from nature’s tender dictates swerv’d,
To perish by her proper hands deserv’d.
Why do the sex forget their softness? why
Such projects for a foolish fancy try?
The belly must be smooth, no wrinkle there
To shock the lover’s wanton glance appear;
His touch as well as sight they fain would please,
And the womb early of its burden ease.
Had woman sooner known this wicked trade,
Among the race of men what havock had they made.
Mankind had been extinct, and lost the seed,
Without a wonder to restore the breed,
As when Deucalion and his Pyrrha hurl’d
The stones that sow’d with men the delug’d world,
Had Thetis, goddess of the sea, refus’d
To bear the burden, and her fruit abus’d,
Who would have Priam’s royal seat destroy’d?
Or had the vestal whom fierce Mars enjoy’d,
Stifled the twins within her pergnant womb,
What founder would have then been born to Rome?
Had Venus, when she with Aeneas teem’d,
To death, ere born, Anchises’ son condemn’d,
The world had of the Caesars been depriv’d;
Augustus ne’er had reign’d, nor Julius liv’d.
And thou, whose beauty is the boast of fame,
Hadst perish’d, had thy mother done the same;
Nor had I liv’d love’s faithful slave to be,
Had my own mother dealt as ill by me.
Ah, vile invention, ah, accurs’d design,
To rob of rip’ning fruit the loaded vine
Ah, let it grow for nature’s use mature,
Ah, let it its full length of time endure;
‘Twill of itself, alas! too soon decay,
And quickly fall, like autumn leaves, away
Why barb’rously dost thou thy bowels tear
To kill the human load that quickens there?
On venom’d drugs why venture, to destroy
The pledge of pleasure past, the promis’d boy?
Medea, guilty of her childrens’ blood,
The mark of ev’ry age’s curse has stood;
And Atys, murder’d by his mothers rage,
Been pitied since by each succeeding age;
Thy cruel parents by false lords abus’d,
Had yet some plea, tho’ none their crime excus’d.
What, Jason, did your dire revenge provoke?
What, Tereus, urge you to the fatal stroke?
What rage your reason led so far away,
As furious hands upon yourself to lay?
The tigresses that haunt th’ Armenian wood,
Will spare their proper young, though pinch’d for food;
Nor will the Libyan lionesses slay
Their whelps, — but woman are more fierce than they;
More barb’rous to the tender fruit they bear,
Nor nature’s call, tho’ loud she cries, will hear.
But righteous vengeance oft their crimes pursues,
And they are lost themselves, who would their
children lose;
The pois’nous drugs with mortal juices fill
Their veins, and, undesign’d, themselves they kill
Themselves upon the bier are breathless borne,
With hair tied up that was in ringlets worn,
Thro’ weeping crowds that on their course attend;
Well may they weep for their unhappy end.
Forbid it, heaven, that what I say may prove
Presaging to the fair I blame and love;
Thus let me ne’er, ye pow’rs, her death deplore,
‘Twas her first fault, and she’ll offend no more;
No pardon she’ll deserve a second time,
But, without mercy, punish then her crime.
Bravo Ovid, and Huzzah Marlowe.
Bravo Ovid, indeed, but now I look more closely at the page I got the English translation, I think this is some 18th century poet and not Marlowe’s version.
However, this and Elegy XIII are a paired set; in XIII he invokes Isis and Lucina to spare his mistress, Corinna, who is suffering from the attempted abortion (various translations seem to differ as to whether she succeeded in aborting the child or not); there are hints that she did this because the child was conceived by another lover, not Ovid (he makes a reference to ‘I think it’s mine, but I’m often mistaken’) and so really although he’s more motivated by fear of her death, it’s to his credit that he does decry the practice of abortion, instead of acting the spurned lover and saying “Serve her right for trying to pawn a bastard off on me”. He does seem to be more open, if you take the poems as a pair, to saying “Okay, so maybe the baby’s not mine, who cares? Why kill your child and nearly kill yourself over that?”
Elegy XIII: To Isis. A prayer that the goddess would assist Corinna, and prevent her miscarrying.
With cruel art Corinna would destroy
The ripening fruit of our repeated joy.
While on herself she practises her skill,
She’s like the mother, not the child, to kill.
Me she would not acquaint with what she did,
From me a thing, which I abhorr’d, she hid;
Well might I now be angry, but I fear,
Ill as she is, I might endanger her.
By me, I must confess, she did conceive,
The fact is so, or else I so believe;
We’ve cause to think, what may so likely be,
So is, and then the babe belongs to me
Oh Isis, who delight’st to haunt the fields,
Where fruitful Nile his golden harvest yields,
Where with seven mouths into the sea it falls,
And hast thy walks around Canope’s walls,
Who Memphis visit’st, and the Pharian tower,
Assist Corinna with thy friendly powers.
Thee by thy silver Sistra I conjure,
A life so precious by thy aid secure;
So mayst thou with Osiris still find grace:
By Anubis’s venerable face,
I pray thee, so may still thy rights divine
Flourish, and serpents round thy offerings twine
May Apis with his horns the pomp attend,
And be to thee, as thou’rt to her, a friend.
Look down, oh Isis! on the teeming fair,
And make at once her life and mine thy care:
Have pity on her pains; the help you give
To her, her lover saves, in her I live.
From thee this favour she deserves; she pays
Her vows to thee on all thy solemn days;
And when the Galli at thy altars wait,
She’s present at the feast they celebrate.
And thou, Lucina, who the labouring womb
Dost with compassion view, to her assistance come:
Nor dost thou, when to thee thy votaries pray
For speedy help, thy wanted help delay.
Lucina, listen to Corinna’s pray’r;
Thy votary she, and worthy of thy care.
I’ll with my off’rings to thy altar come,
With votive myrrh thy sacred fane perfume;
The vows I make that thou my fair mayst bless,
In words inscrib’d, I’ll on thy shrine express:-
“Ovid, the servant of Corinna, pray’d
The goddess here, the teeming dame to aid.”
Ah, goddess! of my humble suit allow;
Give place to my inscription and my vow.
If frighted as I am, I may presume
Your conduct to direct in time to come,
Corinna, since you’ve suffer’d thus before,
Ah, try the bold experiment no more!
Note also that good Mormons, while recognizing a RARE medical or psychological need for abortion, view it always as an evil. And in fact any Mormon woman undergoing an abortion or Mormon doctor performing an abortion is subject to church review and potential discipline. In fact the penalty for undergoing or performing a non-therapeutic abortion is excommunication (a step which modern Catholics no longer take, as I understand it).
And yes Mormons are Christians. Remember that the same evangelicals who try to claim that we are not, are the guys who also think that Catholics aren’t Christian, which is totally insane.
Official Mormon doctrine on abortion: “Human life is a sacred gift from God. Elective abortion for personal or social convenience is contrary to the will and the commandments of God. Church members who submit to, perform, encourage, pay for, or arrange for such abortions may lose their membership in the Church.”
Thank you John Hutchins and Sandy Petersen for the favor of a reply from the Mormon perspective. I apologize for posting my question badly. I did know, A. that Mormons consider themselves as Christians and B. That they are against abortion. I had meant to say that at least any Mormons who had a different view from the official position of their Church had an out due to the baptism of the dead. I was unaware they had other reasons, such as a disagreement about the implications/existance of Original Sin. I appreciate that you took the time to enlighten me.
It sounds to me, from what has been stated here that the official Mormon position is very close to the official Roman Catholic postion. Which states that willful abortion carries the penalty of excommunication.
From the Catechism
“2272 Formal co-operation in an abortion constitutes a grave offence. The Church attaches the canonical penalty of excommunication to this crime against human life. ‘A person who procures a completed abortion incurs excommunication latae sententiae’ ‘by the very commission of the offence’, and subject to the conditions provided by Canon Law . The Church does not thereby intend to restrict the scope of mercy. Rather, she makes clear the gravity of the crime committed, the irreparable harm done to the innocent who is put to death, as well as to the parents and the whole of society.”
So basically, only such medical procedures which are not meant to cause death of the child but may do so as an after effect, such as removal of a fallopian tube containing an embryo during surgery to save at least the mother during an ectopic pregnancy, are allowed. This is because the fallopian tube must be removed or the mother and child with both die, but the child cannot be saved under any circumstance but it is not specifically willed. Perhaps some day medicine will advance to the point where both can be saved but we are not there yet.
If Mormons, as you have pointed out, do not believe that Original Sin needs to be removed from a newborn’s soul, then my question I suppose is not directed at Mormons at all and should never have even mentioned them.
But I guess then my question stands, thus, how can a Christian, particularly a Christian of the Roman Catholic variety who believes in the doctrine of Original Sin, consign a tiny soul to death without the hope of Baptism?
In general, all the rationalizations used to justify abortion (for those who haven’t already written off religious teaching in general, or those who aren’t in medical danger of their life or psychological torment from rape and/or incest) fall into the same categories any other rationalization does: either “It’s not really a sin in this very special (i.e. my) case,” or, “It’s still an evil, but it’s the least of several evils; better this harsh but necessary action than the misery I know would result.”
Neither can be logically justified given explicit Christian teaching, but they can be made very plausible by the right sets of emotional appeals and impressive statistics, especially when exploiting the fact that we are much better at imagining the suffering of those we see and know (especially ourselves!) than at imagining the wasted life of something not yet much perceptible at all. (It’s no accident that the single biggest reducer of abortion rates in practice has been the introduction of the sonogram; once people can see what they’re talking about it becomes much harder to treat it as only a potential, not-really-real-not-yet being.)
Despite attitudes like the one expressed here, more than half of all women who conceive after rape let the babies live. A good thing too — having been a rape victim is a risk factor in suffering psychological damage from the abortion.
Indeed, a survey of rape victims who conceived found that every one of them who had let the child live would recommend the same course of action to another woman in her position. And of the women who had abortions, all but one would recommend to other woman in her position that she not take the same course of action as her.
Could you provide a source for that? I would love to have that reference on hand.
Victims and Victors by David C. Reardon.
He also did a peer-reviewed paper on the topic.
One paper made the claim demonstrating that mental health issues are more likely after an abortion. A perhaps fair and maybe even true claim is that he failed to compensate for prior mental health issues.
To my mind, that, if true, just means that one attribute of being mentally ill is that you’re more likely to procure abortion services. Not quite the spin pro-aborts want, I don’t think.
Of course. You are sane until you had the abortion, and retroactively crazy — otherwise we would use an abortion request as grounds to screen for mental problems.
A rather wishy-washy and dishonest form of the hope for mercy that is part of Christian and Catholic teaching can also play a part. We are allowed to hope that God, being infinitely merciful and infinitely just, has means of salvation outside the Church that can apply to souls never given the opportunity to understand what it is and seek it themselves — I believe this is part of why the concept of Limbo was abandoned, as an ultimately unnecessary theological assumption about what God can and cannot do for the souls He creates in particular exigencies.
But what we can hope for, trusting in God’s mercy when we can’t do anything about it, is very different from what we can presume to count on in situations when we most certainly can do something about it. Like the third son who buried his talents and refused the responsibility of doing something with them, pointing out that the giver of the talents is no worse off for getting back exactly what he gave out completely misses the point of why the talents were given in the first place.
“…excommunication (a step which modern Catholics no longer take, as I understand it).”
People are under the impression that the Catholic Church does not censure abortion because there are no condemnations pronounced by a court. This is because the excommunication for an abortion is incurred ipso facto (by the very commission of the fact) and latae sententiae (sentence later) (canon 1398), even if the offense is to remain secret forever and the sentence is never to be issued. In most other cases excommunication is ferendae sententiae (sentence upheld), after the case has been judged. Excommunication latae sententiae is for the gravest offenses, when it is not generally possible to put the case before the court (canon 1314). Exemptions are ignorance, age (under 16), coercion, violent threat (canons 1321-1323). Excommunication cannot be lifted by any priest, only by the bishop (canon 1356).
Actually, it’s like Confirmation. The powers of Confirmation are not given to priests as part of their ordination or their normal delegation of powers from the bishop. But the bishop can explicitly allow certain priests to Confirm the kids in their parish this year, if the bishop can’t get there. Similarly, although the normal powers of Confession don’t include the power to absolve excommunication offenses (except at the time of death, when everything goes), bishops are allowed to give the power to specific priests.
So given the prevalence of abortion and the huge size of US dioceses, most US bishops and many in other countries have empowered most priests to absolve one specific excommunication offense — namely, abortion-related ones. If a priest doesn’t have the powers, he is supposed to tell the penitent and help him or her quickly get to one of the priests who does have the power, or to the bishop.
The priest can also go to the bishop about specific cases and receive specific authority. The penitent, of course, would have to return and identify as the person who came seeking absolution on a given date, and then be absolved.
Ah. So Mormons believe an evil means can ever be justified to a good end? Even rarely?
And, no: Mormons, at the point of theology, aren’t Christians, as Christians are quite explicitly monotheistic, not monolatristic, as John Hutchins has made pains to point out. If Mormons are Christianity Restored, the results are so different from historical Christianity that I wonder why they press the point of ownership for such a damaged label. Quibble not over words, for it damages the hearer — the Mormon message can only be made less clear if you use such damaged goods as the label of Christian in your evangelization. But most Catholics in the know don’t try to press the point, because often it adds more heat than light.
—
This following illustration is meant to be taken at least as lightly as the charge that it’s “just plain crazy” to believe Mormons aren’t Christian. It is, of course, from the perspective of the Catholic Church.
Catholics are orange juice. Eastern Orthodox and other Eucharistic, apostolic communions are, too, but they’re varying degrees of “Low Pulp.” They dispute this, saying we’re higher-pulp than Jesus made, but we’re so close that if you’re at the point of deciding between the two, you’ve come very, very far from a processed beverage.
Protestants are Sunny D, with various flavors and additives branded to suit varying consumers.
Evangelicals are Hi-C.
Restorationist sect are Tang.
Mormons are orange soda. They retain color and sweetness; I distrust bubbles. Instructions: Don’t shake.
(Muslims are lime juice.)
“You cannot avail yourself of the excuse of being a woman, for you have no womanish vices. . . .You have never been ashamed of your fruitfulness as though it were a reproach to your youth: you never concealed the signs of pregnancy as though it were an unbecoming burden, nor did you ever destroy your expected child within your womb after the fashion of many other women, whose attractions are to be found in their beauty alone.”
Seneca, “Of Consolation: To Helvia”
Headline in Reuters: “Abortion safer than giving birth: study.”
First comment: “For whom?”
Funny; last I heard the numbers proved the opposite ever for just the mothers.
This so-called report is part of a pattern of increasingly deranged public statements from British medical bodies. I commented on them here: http://fpb.livejournal.com/539358.html
Africans treated twins in a similar matter, believing them to be the products of the devil.
It does not just go back to the Didache. The Jews already knew that abortion is forbidden. Tacitus found this quite disgusting of them, although he admitted that it did mean that Jews had spread all over the empire.
Sweet deal. Do you know what the earliest Jewish source opposing abortion is?
It depends on both the translation and the interpretation of the translation but possibly Exodus 21:22 would be one of the earliest existing Jewish source opposing abortion. Of course, the other side of the debate use that same scripture as a source saying that abortion is okay…
Very good point, but I did not have any Jewish sources to hand.
(Besides, in debating an apostate Christian, I did not wish to encounter some specious argument that the Jewish law against abortion was part of the Mosaic law that the economy of Christ had superseded.)
Kindly be more specific. It’s hard to refute your assertions when you don’t tell us what you are warping beyond recognition.
I am not sure what part you are wanting me to be more specific about:
That early church fathers thought that: “Religion is the one field in which freedom has pitched her tent, for religion is, first and foremost, a matter of free will, and no man can be forced under compulsion to adore what he has no will to adore”
or that later the church ruled to:
“force all captured heretics to confess and accuse their accomplices by torture which will not imperil life or injure limb, just as thieves and robbers are forced to accuse their accomplices, and to confess their crimes; for these heretics are true thieves, murderers of souls, and robbers of the sacraments of God”
and in an infallible council:
“Secular authorities, whatever office they hold, shall be admonished and induced and if necessary compelled by ecclesiastical censure, that as they wish to be esteemed and numbered among the faithful, so for the defense of the faith they ought publicly to take an oath that they should strive in good faith and to the best of their ability to exterminate in the territories subject to their jurisdiction all heretics pointed out by the church.”
or that it is in the tradition of Augustine:
“the church persecutes out of love” (like I said a little while ago: an ardent love, like unto a flame..)
“What more grievous death for souls than liberty of error!”
You will have to let me know which assertion you wish to refute, if you want the source referenced at first you might want to try google with everything after “rediscovered” until “which”, it should be the first result.