When will they see the folly of confessing to such men?
Only when they completely forget their Christian faith, for Christ Himself appointed this means of forgiveness.
Sin & Free Will
199 articles from the existing collection.
I admit that it is impossible to maintain that all the churches are really united into one Church; but I deny that lack of unity really matters. After all, go into any Christian church, and you will hear Christ preached, and the Word of God spoken.
On that score, the Seventh Day Adventists who teach that the Pope is Anti-Christ, and the Catholic Church which teaches that he is the very Vicar of Christ would both be teaching doctrines equally pleasing to God! As a matter of fact you will not hear Christ preached in any Christian church, for in all non-Catholic churches you …
Is the devil responsible for all sin?
Indirectly, yes, for he caused the fall of our first parents. Directly, no. Scripture tells us that the three great enemies of man’s soul are the world, the flesh, and the devil. Men sin for mere worldly prosperity, or induced by sensual passion. At times, however, Satan directly tempts them. But Satan can do no more than sugges…
Where is freedom in this?
That should be obvious. Such prohibitions keep Catholics free from evil reading which could corrupt their faith or morals.
God sent the flood to wipe out sin. But in vain. Sin began again. Did God make a mistake, or is it all a fable?
You are making the mistake. God sent the flood as a just punishment for previous sins and as a lesson to future generations. He did not send it to wipe out the gift of freewill, nor to prevent the possibility of future sin.
What form will that practical acknowledgment take?
It must be expressed in the duties of religion, which will imply reverence for God’s Person, and obedience to such instructions as He pleases to issue in our regard.
You are deceiving us. That is not what Catholics are taught. I have a Catholic Catechism which gives the first commandment as, “I am the Lord thy God; thou shalt not have strange gods before me.” You cut out the reference to images.
In the first place, if we wished to deceive our people, we would be very foolish to give them the full wording of the commandment in the Douay Version of the Bible, where they could detect the deliberate distortion! In the second place, in the Catechism we give the full substantial sense of the words I have quoted, but in a brie…
Does the Catholic Church make light of drunkenness. Isn’t it sin ful to cause blind misery and poverty in the home?
The Catholic Church does not make light of so grave a sin. It is an evil which leaves every one of us very miserable indeed. Man has obligations to God, to himself, and to his neighbor. Such drunkenness violates all three obligations. Few things so destroy God’s image and likeness in man as excessive drink. Other vices leave him…
What do you mean by original sin?
Actual sin is a deliberate personal transgression of God’s law. But original sin, which is inherited, does not mean that I have personally and maliciously transgressed. We must notice the difference between nature and grace. Nature is our being and all that our condition demands as rational animals. Grace means a gift or quality…
Is it not likely that the worship of the sun-gods and earth-gods was replaced by the milder form of the sacrifice of Christ-god, and that Christianity will also yield place to a more ethical system?
It is absurd and quite unhistorical to maintain the derivation of the divinely revealed worship of the true and Infinite God, given precisely to correct the errors of men, from the humanly invented worship of sun-gods and earth-gods. Also human reason will never invent a more ethical system than that prescribed for all men by th…
Read the Bible, and you will soon admit that God could not possibly be the author of such a book.
I have read it many times. But nothing in the Bible disproves the fact of its inspiration. It may be difficult to secure the right interpretation of certain passages, or to grasp the principles involved, but our difficulty in comprehending everything, a difficulty to be expected, avails nothing against the known fact that the Bi…
You suppose that He has made definite claims.
I do, and shall justify that postulate as a definite fact in due course.
Will present scientific knowledge let us admit that the sun stood still for Joshua?
Present scientific knowledge has nothing to say on the subject. With all our present knowledge we still say that the sun rises. We know that it is due to the earth’s rotation, but speak of things as they appear to our senses. Joshua would have more right to laugh at us for speaking of the sun as rising, despite our boasted knowl…
You damn people whose wills are so weak that they cannot avoid sin!
None but deliberately willed and unrepented mortal sin meets with eternal punishment. If inherent weakness is so great as to destroy real responsibility, God would not accuse the man of mortal sin. But such is not the case with the normal man. The normal man is able to refuse consent of the will to evil inclinations and suggesti…
I have heard you give the conditions which Catholic workers must observe before they go on strike. Your conditions render any strike sinful. But will you give us the conditions Catholic employers must observe before they decide on a lock-out?
It is not impossible for the strike-conditions I gave to be fulfilled and for a strike to be without sin. Every one of the conditions I gave is sensible and moral. The end cannot justify the means, and the means must be within the limits of moral law. Meantime, an employer has by no means a free hand. If it is manifestly impossi…
If religion is such a wonderful thing, even though it does not advance a man’s temporal welfare, it should make him better. But it does not. No one honestly believes that a religious man is less likely to embezzle or be brutal than a non-religious man.
Even were that true it would not justify irreligious men in their crime of ignoring the public acknowledgment of God. But it is not true. If one who professes to be religious is guilty of such things men experience a special indignation, and it is made much of precisely because the unexpected has news value. The majority of men …
Christ drove the gamblers from the Temple.
When Christ expelled the money-changers, and the buyers and sellers from the Temple, their crime was not gambling. Their crime was the conducting of secular business in such a place, and their own dishonesty in charging exorbitant prices for goods and exchange. But gambling as such was not involved in this matter.
Give me one instance where any Apostle ever forgave sin.
St. Paul certainly exercised the power of binding and loosing from sin and the effects of sin in the case of the incestuous Corinthian. In 1 Cor. V., 3, we find him saying, “I have already judged him that hath done so”; and in 2 Cor. II., 10, he justifies his forgiveness of the repentant man by saying, “If I have pardoned anythi…
Prove to me that man is endowed with freewill.
It is a necessary corollary from all that has been said already. If man be not free, he cannot be expected to keep laws, and should not be punished for breaking them. There can be no obligation to observe a law when it is not possible to keep it. This is the judgment of every normal mind. The judicial and punitive application of…
Is there any virtue in taking strong drink?
That all depends upon the intention with which one takes it. If taken in moderation for the sake of health so that one may the better fulfill his duties for the love of God, it is virtue to take it. If taken merely for the sake of taking it, such use of drink would not be virtuous.
Is it a sin for a Catholic to attend weddings in Protestant churches?
The law of the Catholic Church forbids participation in a religious service that is not Catholic because it is an implied repudiation of the faith which a Catholic professes to be the only true faith. It is good for non-Catholics to realize this so that, knowing that Catholics must refuse, they will not ask them to assist at the…
They will never again look upon their loved ones, but die and he buried!
We all have to die some day and be buried. As for never again seeing loved ones, even if that were true in the case of a Nun, a girl who voluntarily leaves America for China can quite easily die and be buried in China without seeing her loved ones again in this life. And if she goes, knowing the conditions, she does not burden e…
It is always the same. Miracles happened last week, last century; they will happen some day in the future. They never happen today.
That is a sophism of the purest ray serene. Don’t you realize that time is essentially in constant succession? Do you want today to stay fixed? Never to yield to tomorrow? If a miracle did happen today, you would only have to wait twenty-four hours and then say with a sigh, “Ah, yes! It happened yesterday– never today!” All the …
What if a doctor, a reliable doctor, says that death will result absolutely from any further conception?
In such a case the moral theology of the Catholic Church says that a wife is justified in refusing marital privileges to her husband, and that he has an obligation to practice self-restraint and continence, thinking more of his wife than of himself. He must content himself with the other benefits of married life, mutual love, co…