What do you have to say for yourself ?
I just read this interview. She sounds like a five-year old girl not getting her way.
Gerald,
Have you seen Ranke-Heinemann's interview about her relationship with Ratzinger at Beliefnet?
http://www.beliefnet.com/story/
1...tory_16553.html
I agree, she seems so infantile despite her putdowns of the Pope as being 'simple' minded.
I do like the fact that in her eyes that most (if not all) episcopal appointments have been traditional/orthodox in nature rather than a Sr. Chittister clone.
In Jesus, Mary, & Joseph,
Tito
Does anybody have a good source of information about Karl Rahner and why he is dismissed as a heretic? He was a big influence to a former and future theology professor with whom I had a series of run-ins because of her teachings. It would be nice to filter out her heretical teachings and be able to share with my classmates (many of whom are reading his books now because of her recommendations) about errors previously taught. Thanks.
Isn't it amazing how the liberal lefties whine and complain when things don't go their way? It doesn't surprise me that she does this. When will it be the day that our nation finally wakes up and smells the coffee? Answer: When we get a nuclear war! I think we need to be hit on the back of the head with a 2 x 4!
This is a great post. I've always admired Uta. Her book, "Putting Away Childish Things" is a must-read (and quite humorous in parts).
Thanks for sharing these excerpts.
Peace,
Michael
Mr Flapatap: You might look in "The Rhine flows into the Tiber" by Wiltgen if you're interseted in the Rahner-Ratzinger-V2 relationship & results. You'll want to dig deeper, but Fr Wiltgen covers some interesting items.
She's just a Frau Joan Chittister.
A sauerkraut if ever there was one.
"She's just a Frau Joan Chittister.
A sauerkraut if ever there was one."
ROFTL....
"Pope John Paul II only ever appointed clones and Benedict does the same. All the bishops are made in his image."
If only that were close to being true.
I can't say anything about other seminaries and schools of theology, but Rahner and people from his intellectual tradition are frequently assigned reading where I am.
I can't believe that his writings have somehow vanished from German seminaries as well.
wow, she's a nasty one.
Sounds like most typical liberals. We are church and all the other bs. She just spews b as in b and s as in s crap. Should she be considered credible? No, she is a waste of print and space. There is no room for liberalism in the church, One, holy and apostolic church. Her kind of catholicsm does not fit in, It may fit with Joan Chittister, OSB and many of the wacked American nuns, but it does not fit with true Catholicsm.
Why was she excommunicated?
What a hell of a mess Pope Benedict has inhereited! Many of us in our youth saw the Post Vatican period as a true breath of fresh air. And then? No updating but rather apostacy took over the universities. thank God we are on a better course these days. No wonder than Rome and Orthodoxy are the only real choices left for the Liturgical Christian today, and in spite of our many mutual if not somewhat different problems. Let us keep the course.
Flapatrap
If bishops dismiss Rahner as heretical, they are at odds with the number 2 at the CDF who stated in 2004 that Rahner was orthodox at a Lateran Conference in Rahner's honor (which 2004 Conference belies the alleged vanishing of Rahner influence). Go here:
http://findarticles.com/p/articl...40/
ai_114783737
I did not like Rahner's idea that hell might be empty (not surely empty as universalists heretically believe in the long run) but John Paul said the identical unfortunate thing which I feel interprets Christ's words about Judas far too liberally in both cases.
Prior to 1869, did the Church adhere to the principle of successive ensoulment and did the Church really only require excommunication for abortions only after 80 days?
T Del Rio
I don't know about the exact dates involved but Jerome, Augustine and Aquinas believed in delayed ensoulement. Jerome and Augustine did so after being aware of the Septuagint version of Exodus 21:22...21:22 “And if two men strive and smite a woman with child, and her child be born imperfectly formed, he shall be forced to pay a penalty; as the woman’s husband may lay upon him, he shall pay with a valuation.23 But if it be perfectly formed, he shall give life for life,24 eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot.”
After encountering that passage, in a later letter Jerome writes the following:
Epistle 121.4 to Algasa
“…seeds are gradually formed in the uterus, and it is not reputed homocide until the scattered elements receive their appearance and members”.
And Augustine writes on the very passage:
On Exodus 21:22…Augustine CSEL 8:147
Here the question of the soul is usually raised: whether what is not formed can be understood to have no soul, and whether for that reason it is not homocide, because one cannot be said to be deprived of a soul if one has not yet received a soul. The argument goes on to say, “But if it has been formed, he shall give soul for soul”….If the embryo is still unformed, but yet in some way ensouled while unformed…the law does not provide that the act pertains to homocide, because still there cannot be said to be a live soul in a body that lacks sensation, if it is in the flesh not yet formed and thus not yet endowed with senses.
Aquinas believed in delayed ensoulement following Aristotle which did involve 40 days for a male and 80 for a female ensoulement. His view seems to be echoed in the Trent catechism in the section on the Incarnation:
" thus in the same instant of time He was perfect God and perfect man. That this was the astonishing and admirable work of the Holy Ghost cannot be doubted; for according to the order of nature the rational soul is united to the body only after a certain lapse of time."
___________________________________
Sixtus past ten,
Do you have special insight as to Judas' eternal fate, one above the official teachings of Mother Church? Or is this just a control issue of yours?
And do you mean von Balthasar or Rahner, about the possibility of a humanly empty hell? And what is so thelogically problematic as to the latter?
Well, Hitler, Stalin, Mao & Pol Pot in heaven is harder to imagine than an empty hell, imho.
Why would God create Hell if He did not intend it to have a function and a purpose?
LCB, Ranke-Heinemann was excommunicated for denying the doctrine of the Virgin Birth.
Mark D
Special insight??? Yes. It comes from actually reading the Bible and memorizing it.
Official Teaching of Mother Church??? According to Trent, only revelation can comment on particular damnations and revelation did so in a number of places. Even Popes nowadays do not have scripture by memory nor do theologians because slowly after Aquinas, it is no longer a habitus…a habit. It would help if they did memorize. The first scripture here is Tobias which is only in the Catholic Bible.
Tobias 14:10 in the long version given now in the New Vulgate (the Church’s official Bible) on Nadab being in hell:
“Nadab autem intravit in tenebras aeternas, quia quaesivit occidere Achicarum ( Nadab however went over into eternal shadows, since he sought to kill Achicarum).”
You’ll see others like it way below.
__________________________________________________
__________________
And Mark even aside from other words of God, on the lower level of men outside revelation commenting on revelation whether of Popes speaking outside infallibility or other men, it's like poker...two jokers beat 3 kings when they comment on the word of God.
But to our two holy Jokers in this card game:
St. Augustine of Hippo
Lectures on the Gospel of John
TRACTATE 107 (JOHN 17:9-13)
7. The Son therefore goes on to say: "Those that Thou gavest me, I have kept, and none of them is lost, but the son of perdition; that the Scripture might be fulfilled." The betrayer of Christ was called the son of perdition, as foreordained to perdition, according to the Scripture, where it is specially prophesied of him in the 109th Psalm."
St. John Chrysostom
Homilies on the Gospel of Matthew
HOMILY LXXXV.
MATT. XXVI. 67, 68
“to hang himself, this again was unpardonable, and a work of an evil spirit. For the devil led him out of his repentance too soon, so that he should reap no fruit from thence; and carries him off, by a most disgraceful death, and one manifest to all, having persuaded him to destroy himself.”
__________________________________________________
__________
There is no official de fide or infallible position on Judas outside scripture but there is inside scripture where Trent said it should be on such matters. And there frequently is no such position when the Bible has already spoken. That doesn’t mean that immoderate pope allegiance solves such problems and becomes Church teaching when he speaks non infallibly and contradicts two Fathers and the Bible.
There is e.g. no official de fide position of Mother Church on honoring your parents. Because? Because the Bible has already spoken in the 4th commandment. One pope and two theologians come along and tell you to diss your parents and they don't count next to the word of God.
Von Balthasar and Rahner and John Paul held the same openness to no one being in hell….since “God desires all men to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth.” What the three forgot was what Aquinas said on that in the Summa Theologica: "the antecedent will of God does not always take place" (ST Vol.1/quest.19/6th art./reply to obj.1).
And also perhaps none of the three 20th century men mentioned read Wisdom 12 which is only in the Catholic Bible and regards God's destruction AND condemnation of the Canaanites by the Jews but God first warned them slowly prior to condemning them through the Jews:
Wisdom 12:26
"But they who took no heed of punishment which was but child's play were to experience a condemnation worthy of God.
27
For in the things through which they suffered distress, since they were tortured by the very things they deemed gods, They saw and recognized the true God whom before they had refused to know; with this, their final condemnation came upon them."
Then we come to Christ praying to His Father in John and thus a place wherein he would not use hyperbole as He prayed to His Father:
John 17:12
"When I was with them I protected them in your name that you gave me, and I guarded them, and none of them was lost except the son of destruction, in order that the scripture might be fulfilled."
Christ said that prior to Judas sinning by the way because prophecy sometimes uses the past tense as though the matter is already accomplished as when Isaiah predicted Christ in the past tense in 53:2..."there is no beauty in him nor comeliness and we have seen him and there is no sightliness in him."
_____________________________________
Prior Christ had said of Judas...
"it were better for that man had he not been born." Look up the chapter and verse if you need it.
Neither "lost" nor "son of destruction" nor the last quote are apposite when speaking about a man who will reach eternal glory since anyone who reaches eternal glory will in effect be a saint....and Judas failed at the very end to be a saint and the only way we know this is through the obvious literal sense of scriptures said by Christ. And in Acts also it says of Judas.. "who fell away to go to his own place". If that sounds like heaven to you and John Paul, well I want you to do my taxes next year because you can turn a pig's ear into a purse.
Prior to 1869, did the Church adhere to the principle of successive ensoulment and did the Church really only require excommunication for abortions only after 80 days?
A worthwhile question but ultimately a red herring as the Church always taught all abortion (no matter how early as a grave evil regardless of what canonical penalty it fell under.
She is right about only one thing in the interview-that the Church must deal with the celibacy issue. I see the Church today as I do so many single parent families, trying to function with one parent trying to be two. This was not always the case. When nuns were prevalent, the pastor had a counterpart in the Church to help, maybe not an equal, but certainly one whose opinions were honored and accepted. Today the average pastor meets few nuns. The point is this. Pope JPII's Theology of the Body points to the fact that women and men are valued for their differences and help each other in the domestic church. I believe the Church must take steps to re-infuse this feminine aspect in pastoral life. Prayer for women vocations is one thing, but the organizational body of the Church has the power to bring the Theology of the Body to the life of the local parish quickly and efficiently. I pray they do. Knowing the Church, quickly and efficiently may mean over the next 100 years (I'm not kvetching, just stating a fact).
An empty hell means we can discard it. It has no consequence. It becomes silly talking about an irrelevancy. I'm sure these theologians are great but I'd have to go with the saints and they would disagree.
All von Balthasar said was that Jesus tells us that Hell is a reality. God's mercy gives us reason to hope that it's empty.
I can see this both ways. Perhaps von Balthasar was saying that Hell is empty. More likely, he was trying to express the limitless of God's mercy by saying that, should HE so choose, God could grant pardon on every soul.
However, I think that unlikely since, if God were granting pardon, why mention Hell in the first place?
How long have you reflected upon the love revealed on the Cross and the descent into Sheol? For one, I worry about myself far more than any of the three quoted above.
Well yeah, Mark, in your case, sure 
I quoted 4. Pol Pot is not a brand of weed 
as brilliant as Augustine, Aquinas et al are/were, they didn't have the benefit of DNA sequencing, 3D ultrasound and such...to say in this day and age knowing what we know NOW, Aquinas, and Augustine would allow abortion up to day..whatever..is crazy talk.
Radio45, that was some of the most vacuous reasoning I've yet encountered from you.
Sixtus past ten,
You seem to have a deep personal investment in making sure that certain people actually get to hell.
Why is this?
Mark D
You seem to do no posts that require actual work. Why is that?
...Your mother-in-law can't be that bad .
Sixtus past ten
First off, I would not call "work" your making the dubious claim that Scripture itself reveals a populated hell or that Judas is in hell. Your citation of Trent does nothing to cover over the fact that you are offereing interpretations ("obvious literal sense" with John and other Gospels in reagards to Judas; Tobias and Wisdom citations as proof of inhabited hell as the condition of eternal Godforsaken-ness)of Scripture that are not official Church readings.
Secondly, your reference to Thomas--that God's antecedent will does not always take place--is no proof that God's antecedent will not take place, in regards to universal human salvation.
Thirdly, your citations of early Fathers and Church doctors' writings--as you have noted--are not clinching arguments, as none of these are necessarily or de facto free of error.
Mark D
Well...I got you to move off the couch beyond several sentences.... but you fell on the floor... since you still write entirely off the cuff and cite nothing outside yourself and outside your assertions of what you may have read or didn't really read.
You never have to look up a thing with your lazy man's process of writing.
The Fathers are the highest authority that ever did comment on Judas. No Council ever declared a binding thing about him nor did any pope in an infallible context.
That means the Fathers are the highest source....which is not everything...but in the terms of Church interpretation you are alluding to, it's all you have and it is not on your side.
Sixtus past ten,
With all due respect, your bundling together citations does not exactly constitute making cogent arguments. I can cut and paste as easily as you, but it does not impress me much.
Additionally, your Thomas citation accomplishes nothing. To repeat that "God's antecedent will does not always take place" does not logically preclude that he MAY accomplish universal human salvation. What else is there for me to say here? Given what is revealed to me of God's love, and particularly in John, I contend there are theological grounds to hope for all human beings. The two giants of 20th century Catholic theology and the two most recent popes concur. Your rhetorical dismissal of their ignorance of Scripture is laughable. How can I even respond to that?
And I see you backed off your tortured argument about Scripture giving us "definitive revelation" about Judas' eternal state. Give me one respectable current theologian who asserts the same. What does the Catechism say?
We are talking about grounds for hope. I'll not let Fathers authority, however great, extinguish the hope that recent popes encourage me to keep.
S to T
Let's focus on Thomas more precisely. He says,"God wills in advance (voluntate antecedente) that all men achieve salvation, but subsequently (consequenter) he wills that certain men be damned in accordance with the requirements of his justice (ST 1, 19, 6, ad 1; De veritate 23,2).
What is the basis for this assertion of differentiation in God's will? Nothing other than his ASSUMPTION that there are in fact men in hell. But this is our question, not a theological given. Of course, if there are in fact men in hell, then this differentiation would be of much use.
Origen, Gregory of Nyssa and Maximus the Confessor have been 'accused' of advancing a position similar to von Balthasar's. They have been eclipsed by the historical prevalence of Augustine et al on the issue. Revisiting history may give us a different 'reception/take of/on early Christian thinking'.
And how do you cope with the following?
"God desires all men to be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth. For there is only one God, and one Mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself as a ransom for ALL." (1 Timothy 2:4-5)
"the savior of all men, especially those who believe" ( 1 Timothy 4:10)
"Now shall the ruler of this world be cast out; and I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw ALL men to myself (John 12:31-2)
"The grace of God has appeared for the salvation of All men. (Titus 2:11).
God "does not wish that any should perish, but that ALL should reach repentance" (2 Peter 3:9)
For our sake [God) made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God" (2 Cor. 5.20)
"ALL died, but God's gift of grace, grace, thanks to the one man Jesus Christ, abounded for ALL in MUCH GREATER MEASURE" (Rom 5:15)
"Consequently, just as the result of one trespass was condemnation for ALL men, so the result of one act of righteousness was justification that brings life for ALL men". (Romans 5)
You do know that the Jesuits and Dominicans argued this kinda stuff for centuries without a result ?
I'll save you time: Free will necessitates that one has the possibility to choose hell. Killing 6 million Jews followed by a "oh yeah about that...my bad" may not be impossible but probably less likely than the usual run-of-the-mill sins.
Mark D
No...the type of cutting and pasting I do requires a memory that results from extensive reading and a memory for where those passages are exactly so that they can be cut and pasted and a memory that knows whether they exist in the first place. That is work and you do not want to do that type of work but want to come off as knowing just as much as someone who does that work.
There were 265 Popes. One comes along who says Judas may be not be in hell and you call that hope. Well that same Pope also called the death penalty "cruel" and God Himself gave multiple death penalties to the Jews thoroughout Deuteronomy and Leviticus.
It seems then that that Pope had problems with the nature of inspiration.
And you never once take Christ's words and go over them and show us how they could possibly mean that Judas is a saint which even a last minute repentant would be. You prefer two theologians and a pope to Christ whom your above post never mentions as a source...you'd rather talk of theologians.
Such a hope is the hope then that all bad guys are saved and that Pablo Escobar of the Columbian drug trade is in heaven after having blown up an entire plane of innocent people to kill one person on the plane and who died while trying to kill police who were family men? That is a hope necessary to your life?
That is not Christianity's version of hope.
Escobar could have been insane and could be spending the spiritual equivalent of millions of years in purgatory due to that partially exculpatory insanity if it existed at all.....but whether he is or is in hell with Judas right this moment has zero to do with Christian hope.
Christ chose to speak ominously of Judas for a reason that involves every one of us. That Judas is damned proves to each of us that hell is real and not a fictive mental construct which it is for many immature people.
That is why Revelation chose to address the problem at all. Christ could have been totally silent about Judas if His message to us was that Judas would might be excused for partial insanity etc.
Christ could have totally been silent and that would have implied the peaceful reality you are hoping for.
But Christ was not silent and He chose to not only talk darkly of Judas fate but do so several times so that it would be harder for people like you to circumvent His words. John Paul who was adversely influenced by modern biblical scholarship and its tendency to edit what it does not like in the bible...therefore made this absurd jump as he did on the death penalties of the Old Testament. Google Evangelium Vitae and go to section 40 where he implies that the death penalties of the old testament were not from God....and Scripture clearly says they were from God. And I'm betting that at least 263 Popes knew they were from God.
Mark D
All your passages regard the antecedent aspect of the one will of God which predates our choices. Once we choose sin, as a consequence of that choice....the consequent aspect of that one will of God then ensues due to our choice. But His simple will always happens and you left out passages about His simple will and consequent aspect of His will:
Romans 9:18 "He has mercy on whom He has mercy and whom He wills, He hardens,"
Romans 9:21 "Hath not the potter power over the clay, of the same lump to make one vessel unto honour, and another unto dishonour?"
James 2:13 "Judgement is without mercy to him who has not shown mercy..."
When you rise in the morning and go to work, God antecedently wills you to be perfect that day and if you sin at ten AM, His antecedent will for your perfection that day failed to occur and as a consequence He deals with you differently than if you had achieved His antecedent will that day.
Any priest in your parish will tell you that Christ died for all and draws all to Himself and wills that all be saved and that His grace is strong for those who respond.
That is the antecedent will of God and it exists as a possible but not as a certainty. After the Bible closes, we cannot know of anyone going to hell because Trent stated that revelation is necessary for that determination. But within the Bible we know from Christ inter alia that Judas is there and therefore hell is real and not a fiction for each of us.
That is why Christ spoke at all about Judas about whom Christ could have been silent but chose not to be.
Your Origen was heretical and also believed that John the Baptist knew Christ for centuries prior to John being born and that was why John leaped in his mother's womb when Mary approached and he got that bizarre idea from having grown up in Platonic schools.
Sixtus past ten,
You may have done the labor, but the result is not as true and unassailable as you would like to think. Put a stop to your schoolboy pride; it is more becoming to know what you do not know.
Your "antecedent will" talk accomplishes nothing here, as no one is claiming knowledge of certain outcomes. The issue is whether there are grounds for hope, not certain knowledge. So let us put aside what is nothing other than a pedantic display of your acquaintance with some Thomas. And I know Latin too, but your providing "habitus" for habit and giving Latin originals functions here as nothing but dress.
_____________________________________
"Such a hope is the hope then that all bad guys are saved and that Pablo Escobar of the Columbian drug trade is in heaven after having blown up an entire plane of innocent people to kill one person on the plane and who died while trying to kill police who were family men? That is a hope necessary to your life?'
My hope is that he MAY get to heaven, a)as I am not sure his that lack of "knowledge" and "freedom" in his actions make him even less morally culpable than me--who am in desperate need of God's merciful love every second of my life; and b) even if Escobar had knowledge and sufficient freedom, God for all eternity foresaw this man's evil and died BECAUSE of this, so who am I to say that His saving and transformative love cannot in the end yield a "yes" from Escobar. This IS Christian hope.
___________________________________
An actually populated hell is not necessary for our taking our moral lives seriously, only the real possibility of hell for each and every one of us. Grounds for the hope of all does not entail that hell is not a real threat.
_____________________________________
"That Judas is damned proves to each of us that hell is real and not a fictive mental construct which it is for many immature people."
Again, we do not have knowledge of his damnation, however much you want to assert it, or however much you want to throw a tantrum and make it so.
Peace
Mark D
And once again, you do not touch Christ's words about Judas with a ten foot pole...." but woe to him through whom the Son of Man is betrayed for it were better for that man never to have been born." Mat.26:24.
That phrase cannot logically be said of anyone destined to be with God in Heaven for all eternity because it is always better to be born if one finally reaches Heaven despite a million years in purgatory.
Ergo Christ had to be talking of damnation as Augustine and John Chrysostom affirmed.
And Christ chose to say that passage publically and insert it in the bible where it would be permanent...until the 20th century when some Catholics...including many clergy... shop the scriptures cafeteria style while themselves denouncing the laity for cafeteria Catholicism.
A few reflections are appropriate perhaps. First: Is there a hell? Yes, there is. That is a matter of divine revelation in Scripture. Second, are there souls there or going there? Yes, again a matter of divine revelation in the Scriptures. Third, do we know who specifically? No, also a matter of divine revelation from Scripture; the condemantion of actions lies in our pervue, the condemantion of persons does not. That belongs to God alone based on the decisions of the individual. We are called to hope that all will be redeemed, but that is a matter of one's collective choices. WE know that Christ came into the world not for its condemnation, but for its redemption. However, we do have the ability to put ourselves beyond that redemption. If we did not, there would be reason to be moral as there would be no consequence. We know, as matter of divine revelation, that we are made in the image and likeness of God, which means that we have the unique ability to choose to love as God does. We can and do use that choice aginst its created purpose and that choice does have a consequence. Finally, the reference to what is commonly know as the 'harrowing of hell' is a teaching stating that since no one could enter heaven without the Christ event happening, the righteous who had died had to wait, once the Christ event happened, Christ ushered them into their eternal relationship with God the Father. Nowhere does it say that all humans were ushered in; only those who by their own free choice had sought to live in accordance with God's plan and will.
It is not the plan of a loving God that he create that which is to be condemned, which makes our choice all the more important and makes the choice to reject God and His will and plan all the sadder.
"This mystery is even more profound if one thinks of his eternal fate, knowing that Judas "repented and brought back the 30 pieces of silver to the chief priests and the elders, saying 'I have sinned in betraying innocent blood'" (Matthew 27:3-4). Though he departed afterward to hang himself (cf. Matthew 27:5), it is not for us to judge his gesture, putting ourselves in God's place, who is infinitely merciful and just."
Benedict XVI
If Sartre is right and hell is other people, you'll be discussing this for all eternity
MarkD
Thanks for the Benedict quote. I'll save that as confirmation of the recent duo's leaning toward the bias that they shared on several like issues. Remember...Ratzinger like Dulles was "progressive" prior to rising to power and office.
Gerald
No, now I'm done. It's Sixtus past ten and that is late. Sartre could have taught Catholicism something about not putting makeup on some realities. Our apologetics writers put makeup on the Inquisition...on the usury matter...on the slavery matter....and we tried on the sex abuse matter by blaming psychologists but it never stuck. Sartre was sometimes about brutal honesty (we are not) as in his biography of his friend Jean Genet, thief-sodomite-writer, and Sartre's negative analysis of Genet's gay life therein and of gay life in general as an escape from being with others. I read Being and Nothingness and Nausea and Saint Genet but I skipped No Exit...and the Flies. He is good on bad faith: "In bad faith, one believes what one does not believe and
does not believe what one believes."
He was writing about the cafeteria in Being and Nothingness.
Sixtus past ten,
Words words words
Commenting by HaloScan
