Did the soul exist before conception?
No. God creates each soul as each body is generated. It is difficult to fix the exact moment, but the more general opinion is as soon as the embryo begins to exist.
Soul & Immortality
54 articles from the existing collection.
Does he not say, “He returneth to earth, and in that day all his thoughts perish”? Ps. 146, 4.
When man’s soul departs from his body, that body returns to dust, and all his thoughts and schemes for this earthly life are over.
Do these doctrines of moral obligation, sanctions, and a future life imply the freedom of man’s will?
They do, for if man were not free he could not be responsible for his conduct, and could neither merit commendation by good actions nor condemnation by evil actions.
Immortality teas unknown to the Jews, and was rejected by the Sadducees because it was not in the Pentateuch.
The immortality of the soul was well known to the Jews. The Sadducees were a small minority who were remarkable among the Jews precisely because they denied it. The majority of the Jews, therefore, held it. They were well aware of the apparition of the soul of Samuel to Saul in I. Sam. (Kgs.), XXVIIL, 15. Our Lord quoted the Pen…
Is the future spiritual world an educational one?
Not in the sense you probably intend. We are now progressing towards our final destination. There we shall have attained it. The one exception is in the case of a soul that goes to Purgatory, where it undergoes a progressive purification fitting it for the Vision of God. This cannot strictly be called educational, but it is a sp…
The doctrine of the resurrection of the dead denies that the soul is still living.
It does not. It refers to the resurrection of the body. If the individual soul ceases to exist, there could be no resurrection of the same personality. The material body could be recalled, but another soul would have to be created. This would mean two successive personalities, of which the second would not be the first. Deny the…
These seven Sacraments of the Catholic Church are to assist us in the sanctification of our souls, and to prepare us for a happy eternity. But will you maintain that your Catholic dogmas concerning the future state in no way violate reason?
I am quite prepared to maintain that.
Why forbid meat on Fridays? Christ said that nothing from without defiles a man, but that it is disposition of soul that counts. Mk.VII, 15.
It follows that meat is not evil in itself, and that the Church does not forbid meat on Fridays because she thinks that meat will defile men. That should be evident from the fact that the Church permits meat on other days, as she could not do if she believed meat to be evil. Therefore it must be a question of the day, and not of…
But we Protestants believe that if a man lives a good life, no matter what Church he accepts, he will save his soul.
Some Protestants believe that. Many do not. Good Protestants can be saved, but if they are good they are Protestants in good faith who have the will to do God’s will, and are not Catholics merely because they do not realize their obligation to join the true Church.
Man has not got a soul—he is a soul Genesis II., 7, says that man became a living soul
That does not deny the distinction between body and soul in man. If God breathed a living soul into man’s body, then man’s body is a distinct thing, and man is rightly said to possess both a body and a soul. To say that a man is a living soul is but to use a figure of speech, alluding to the complete thing by the name of its pri…
Is not the soul the breath of God?
No, for God is a spirit, a purely spiritual substance, and does not breathe. The expression is only a human way of putting things. The soul is a spirit, and is called the breath of God merely because caused or created by God in its spiritual or breath-like nature.
Do the words spirit and soul mean the same thing?
The word spirit can have a very wide meaning. It is derived from the Latin word spiritus, meaning a breath. Then because the soul of man is as invisible to bodily eyes as a breath, and also because its presence is manifested by the breathing of a living body, the word spirit acquired a transferred sense, becoming a substitute fo…
How can fire affect a spiritual being such as the devil?
By the restriction of its activities according to the limitations of the created agent of torture, and by the intellectual apprehension of the suffering fire normally causes. But difficulties concerning its method of action make no difference to the fact that it exists.
After due purification in purgatory, you maintain that souls will be admitted to heaven. What is this heaven?
Heaven is the destiny in which a human soul will, if saved, be happy in the clear and immediate sight of God for all eternity. Before the resurrection of the body the soul alone enjoys this vision of God; after the resurrection, the body will be re-united with the soul and will share in its glory and joy.
What indications have you that the soul is immortal?
That the soul will, and indeed must, survive the death of the body is demonstrable from many points of view. Firstly, its essential structure forbids dissolution by death. Death is the disintegration of parts. Only composite things can die. Yet the soul is not composite. Its power of pure immaterial thought proves its independen…
I am an Anglican, and I was present in the Anglican Church of St. James in Sydney where a Requiem Mass was celebrated for the repose of the soul of one of our deceased priests. This occurred in 1930.
The Clergy of that Church wish to adopt the titles and ceremonies of the Catholic Church, but not the obligations of Catholics. No Requiem Mass was really celebrated. A service was held, and called a Requiem Mass. At the Synod held shortly after this event Bishop D’Arcy Irvine protested most strongly against the whole affair. He…
Ezechiel XVIII., 4, says, “The soul that sinneth, it shall die.”
The word soul here does not refer exclusively to the immortal part of man’s nature. Ezechiel is pointing out that not only the sins of our parents, but also each man’s own personal and individual sins deserve punishment. In verse 24 he says that, if the just man turn from his righteousness and do evil, he shall die, and all his …
God knows all. He knew the pair must fall when He made them.
God does know all. He therefore knew that they would be free, and that there was no must fall about it. There was no necessity to fall, and they could have resisted the temptation. You may say, “But they did fall, and God must have known that they would fall.” That is correct. But the fact that God knew this did not make them fa…
Does crawling up the Scala Santa at Rome on one’s knees help save one’s soul?
The Scala Santa, or Holy Staircase, consists of twenty-eight marble steps. They are said to have been brought to Rome from Jerusalem by St. Helena, the mother of Constantine, in 326 A.D. At Jerusalem they led up to the one-time court of Pilate, and the feet of Jesus had trodden them as He went down to be crucified by men. With n…
Who has the final say as to whether a soul deserves canonization?
The Pope. Before he defines that a given soul is indeed a Saint, the advocates of the cause must prove that the person in question exercised all Christian virtues in a heroic degree—supreme faith, hope, and charity; perfect prudence, justice, fortitude, and temperance. Also God’s own testimony by proven miracles wrought through …
Prove that a soul does exist in man.
A living human body is not the same thing as a corpse. Now the soul is the difference between a corpse and a living being. A dead body cannot move, eat, think, express itself, enjoy, or be miserable. It can but fall to pieces and go back to dust. There is something that stops your body from doing that now. It is your soul. For e…
Is it revealed doctrine that the soul of man is immortal?
Yes. Revelation confirms the conclusions of reason which I have explained already. The account in Genesis of man’s formation proves it. God is immortal, and cannot die. He made man in His own image and likeness. But our bodies are nothing like God in appearance, and are mortal. Therefore the real image of God is in our soul, and…
I can understand inheriting the effects of the first sin, hut why the sin itself? If my father is a thief, I share in his disgrace, but my soul is not stained by his sins.
Your father was not constituted the head of the whole human race, and is but the intermediate transmitter of an individual human nature. If we inherited original sin as something of positive personal malice, it would be unjust. But we do not. Death in a state of positive and serious personal malice merits hell. But if a child di…
Does God create every soul now in a state of sin?
No. God’s creative activity terminates in good only. But the soul cannot normally be infused into a child of Adam without its contracting the privation of the original gratuitous gifts it was destined to receive had Adam not fallen. I say normally because God did anticipate the merits of Christ in one case, preventing the soul o…