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The strange ways of God and computers.

Next Friday, it is hoped that the Message of the Synod will be made known. While we await the final document, Zenit and ScriptureSynod continue to publish updates on the ongoing providing us with the Inside Stuff as it were of matters relevant to the Synod on the Word of God. Here are some of the articles that I found interesting.

The first draft of the Synodal Message on the Word of God has been presented. Mons. Gianfranco Ravasi, famous italian exegete, is the president of the commission charged with producing the Message. Below is an excerpt of a report about the draft and some other first hand observations about the Synod.

Certain issues have emerged in the Synod on the Word of God currently underway in Rome. These are: (a) the relationship between the historico-critical exegesis learned in the seminaries and (b) the art of preaching. Related to this latter is the intervention of Bishop Tagle of Imus, Cavite regarding the need for listening. The idea behind the need for listening is quite obvious given the requirements of preaching. Let me discuss all three in reverse order...

Tomorrow we celebrate the Solemnity of the Assumption. Catholics have become so used to the idea that when fundamentalists confront them with a question about the feast itself and the dogma of Pius XII declared in 1950, they are led to believe that their celebration in August 15 is due to the whimsy of a Pope. Thing is, the feast of the Assumption is much much older than the dogma of the Assumption, and the belief that Mary did not die but was preserved from corruption is a belief that is connected to her Immaculate Conception which in turn is directly linked to her Divine Motherhood. This latter, a dogma defined in Ephesus, is linked to the belief that Jesus is God (Jn. 1:1-18). This "chain" which shows how the different dogmas are linked together is what Catholics refer to as analogia fidei. Thus, if one does not accept the Assumption, one also does not accept the Divinity of Christ and therefore, as Pius XII puts it, "let him know that he has fallen away completely from the divine and Catholic Faith", and for that matter, from the Christian faith.

Someone has called him "The First Modern Man." Both Catholics and Non-Catholic Mainline Churches claim him as their own. Eastern Catholics number him among their "fathers" prompting a scholar to suggest that he be named "Common Father of the East and West." Descartes was flattered when he was told that his "Cogito ergo sum" echoes this man's "Dubito ergo sum."

I am referring to Augustine of Hippo (354-430). And this is a short retelling of his life:

The following is lifted from Augustine’s Confessions as presented in a Logos Software acknowledged at the end of the page.  I have annotated it so that it would be easier to read.  The subject of this page is Monica herself, Augustine’s mom.  We know her generally as the mother who suffered on account of her son.  But that is only a part of the picture.  She also had to bear being the wife of a husband who was both unfaithful and violent.  Augustine praises her for having lived with his father Patricius without having her face bashed in like the battered wives in their neighborhood who dared question their husbands’ virtues.  But I wouldn’t expect the woman of our times to accept Monica’s strategy.  Submissiveness, specially to husbands, is not considered a virtue nowadays.  Augustine also writes about his mother’s ways towards her mother-in-law and her attitude towards the neighborhood gossips.  In the end, Monica won her husband to the Church and her own wayward son.

It is August once more, and for us Augustinians, the month reminds us of Augustine of Hippo. I visited the website of the Order yesterday hoping to find any new materials about Augustine or the Order's spirituality and found this news item about the discovery in Erfurt of six previously unheard of sermons of Augustine. The news report is syndicated from the Tablet dated 5 April 2008 and authored by a certain Christa Pongratz-Lippit. She describes how these manuscripts have come to Erfurt thus

I have just posted two articles at Res Biblica on the book of Isaiah.  The first is on Isaiah 22:15–25, which narrates how Isaiah is instrumental in the demotion of the king’s chancellor Shebnah and how Eliakim takes his place.  The second part of this section from Isaiah is the background for the “keys of the kingdom of heaven” mentioned in Matthew 16:19.

It was I think in the year 1985 when I first heard about “Humanae Vitae”.  I was in first year theology then taking up Moral Theology.  In one lesson under the section Family and Marriage, the professor, a Spanish Dominican discussing the Church’s teaching on contraception mentioned Paul VI’s “Humanae Vitae” as a controversial document of the Church.  When he discussed the contents of the document, I remember wondering to myself how it was that Humanae Vitae became controversial.  Now in its fortieth year, and after I have seen how the teachings in “Humanae Vitae” have been continuously reaffirmed by the Church here in the Philippines in the face of Congress and by Catholics directly involved in two UN Population Congresses (1994 and 1996), I no longer wonder why.  The population issue is an issue linked to the world’s natural resources, and when a group decides to have all those resources for themselves, the rest of humanity will have to stop — or be made to stop — from being “fruitful and multiply.”

p>I noticed a query here on the Johanine Comma which I find it difficult not to satisfy. I have written an article about it showing the Comma was a marginal note that made its way into the main text of the epistle largely through the work of copysts. And it found its way into the text because of a deeply entrenched conviction about the Trinity, not the other way around.

Could there have been a motive for introducing the gloss into the main text of 1 Jn. 5:7 that would make it a conscious effort to pervert the Christian faith? Was there anything in the year 800 or thereabouts that made the Catholic Church want to "change" the belief in God? I don't think there is any except the desire of the so-called "non-Trinitarians" to blame the Catholic Church for their not being a part of it. The fact is, all so-called "Christian Churches" who are Non-Trinitarian were founded AFTER the Protestant churches have emerged. This can only mean one thing: the "non-Trinitarian" belief is but an attempt to "correct" a supposed impurity in Christian doctrine introduced by the Catholic Church. In other words, the "non-Trinitarian" belief is a modern teaching that arises from the need to make one's beliefs look original in the face of opposition and antagonism to Catholic belief.