-Welcome
- Prayer
- Overview
- Discussion
- Break (approx. 7:45 p.m.)
- Discussion
- Thank food volunteers. Volunteers for next week?
-Thank all for discussion
-Ways to make it better, let me know.
-Prayer
-“Please read chapters 4-5”.
OVERVIEW
of
Chapters 2 - 3
Obedience to the Church - does not stem from force or fear (fear of hell is only the beginning) but from the love for the true, good, beautiful, -love for God. Freedom is doing what is good. It should be natural.
This is the freedom Jesus speaks of when he says “you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law.”
Jesus desires that we become so led by the Spirit that we do not need the external laws. He says “if you even look at a woman with lust, you commit adultery” because the desire to do so is there. True freedom is when the man does not even desire to commit adultery.
It’s like if I ask you, do you mind if just for tonight, we make a law that you cannot kill anybody in this room. Does anybody feel restricted by this law? No, because you have no desire to do so. There’s no need to even mention that law.
Christ makes available the ability to become so holy, that we do not even need all of these rules, holy means whole, fully integrated, spiritually speaking. God 1st, others 2nd, me 3rd. FAMILY (Forget About Me ILove You) We must have them, and the fact that they must be stated by the Church reveals that these are sins we still struggle with. But eventually the goal Christ has in mind, is that we live in a freedom where we do not even desire to do anything contrary to our dignity. In Heaven there will be no need for rules.
Magisterium - the apostles preserved the faith and so passed it on to their successors and the charism to preserve it. Else Christ left us in more of a mess by coming and revealing than by not revealing. For there are now like 20,000 different denominations all interpreting the Bible differently. If he didn’t leave an authentic living community of faith then he is responsible for the chaos which is not the will of the one who said “that they may be one as you Father and I are one.”
Church’s authority comes from its marriage with God. We share everything-including authority.
Church is either extremely arrogant or right, Either the Church is true and we are given an amazing and awesome gift: God humbles himself to become one of us, to feed us with himself in the Eucharist, he gives authority through his Church to forgive sins and to lead us with certainty in this life…OR…the church leads people to worship a mere human being – this Jesus person; she arrogantly assumes both the divine power to forgive and the divine authority to teach without error; and worst of all, she turns people to worship mere bread, she reduces us to bread-worshippers!!! Either the Church is the real thing, calling for our whole life commitment or it is, demonic.
Fact is that something demonic wouldn’t produce the numbers of saints and martyrs, and it is the nature of evil to corrupt, Church has been here for 2000 years..
True theologians are to seek to explain why we believe what we believe; not to determine what we believe, this is not their charism and when they try to, they overstep their bounds and spread confusion, even if honestly attempting to help the Church.
Catechism gives the authentic teaching - not other authors.
Follow conscience is necessary/ form conscience is necessary. “just follow your conscience” – but it must be properly formed first.
20th century rejection of long-held sexual mores results in the gift to the Church of JPII’s TOB
As sexual morals go so goes the society.
JPII - “By its nature, human life is ‘co-educative.’ Its dignity and balance depend, at every moment of history and at every point of geographical longitude and latitude, on who she will be for him, and he for her.” Idea of being a gift versus using people.
Discussion Questions: (Again, only to be used as jump-starts)
P31 Christian view of Freedom? What is it? What is our society’s view?
P32 end of answer 1, Do we see Magisterium as a gift? Or how do we look at it? Most Catholics?
P37 Q8. How do we think of conscience? Most Catholics?
P38 Q10 What is your experience of Church in these matters?
Chapter 3
When people are married they are asking for the “contract - covenant” that God created in the beginning, and redeemed through Christ; thus marriage is on these terms and not new ones, else it should be called something else.
We’ll say it again and again. - Marriage reveals the Trinitarian life of Father loving the Son; Son the Father: Holy Spirit. And Christ loving his bride the Church; God marrying mankind sharing everything body and spirit. To change marriage is to distort this image and our ability to understand God’s love. We understand God’s relationship with us based on human relationships, else we have no model by which to understand it.
Marriage is the Proto-type of all the sacraments. The first marriage of Adam and Eve was a sign of God’s desire to become one with us in union.
Every sacrament is to some extent a fulfillment of that desire as God touches us in a particular way and its fullness is in the Eucharist by which are marriage with God is consummated and we receive him body and soul, and become one with him.
Annulments are not Catholic divorces, but states that there was never a marriage in the beginning. We must remember that this is for the Church to decide as part of the governing authority given by Christ. We must assume a marriage is a marriage until the Church states otherwise.
Annulments are based not on what happened after the marriage or during the marriage but at the time of consent - was the consent free and deliberate and intending those things that comprise a marriage? If somebody cheated on a spouse after the marriage it has no more bearing on the annulment process than had they always been faithful, other than to be used as minor evidence that the adulterous spouse may not have been consenting to a faithful marriage; but adultery itself doesn’t mean faithfulness was not intended.
To remember: we are body-persons, not spirits. What we do and say with our bodies expresses ourselves. Contrary to the great movie, It’s a Wonderful Life, we don’t die and become angels.
Signs and Words have great meaning - they are an expression of ourselves; what we do with our bodies are communicating either a truth or a lie.
New Age: There is no “spiritual person” “spiritual but not religious - meaning they have an idea of God, but don’t think that he has anything to say about how they live out this bodily life.” An ancient heresy of gnosticism which disconnects the spirit and body and looks at the body as “other”
Discussion Questions
P47, covenant image – Do you think our concept of marriage is more or less appealing to the general population? Why?
P50 end of answer 4: What do you see as some of the values of the culture that go against our notion of marriage?
P50 Have you heard of annulments being a scandal to the married? An unfair procedure for those in failed marriages? How do you look at them?
P51 Questions on impediments?
P53 #7 – Do you think children a part of marriage anymore in the general culture?
P58#12 Did you realize that the Church has to annul even Protestant “marriages”? What is this saying?
P61#16 Have you heard this interpretation? Does it make sense?