Questions for Catholics

Factual Questions
21

Thanks for the clarification, JohnM. My catechism is less solid than it used to be.

Just wanted to expound a bit on the Rosary. A full Rosary is divided into fifteen “decades,” each of which involve ten “Hail Marys” (the ten small beads), a “Glory Be” (a space between an Our Father and a Hail Mary, but a specific space), and an Our Father (the large beads). Most of the Rosaries you see are only five decades, however, as the full fifteen-decade variety is somewhat unwieldy for the average person to manage. The fifteen decades are broken up into three sets of five mysteries (I remember the first set are the Joyful Mysteries, and there are the Sorrowful Mysteries, but I’ve forgotten the last set’s title) - each mystery being an event in the life of the Virgin Mary. For instance, the Annunciation, the Crucifixion, the Assumption. To say a “full” Rosary, you actually should go around the decades of a smaller set of beads three times (The crucifix at the bottom of the Rosary represents, IIRC, the Apostle’s Creed). The idea is that, as you pray each decade, you should be focussing on the mystery that decade represents.

22

On papal infallibility and the making and unmaking of saints:

Isn’t papal infallibility limited to “matters of faith and morals”?

And whether or not a dead person is recognized by a saint is not really a matter of faith or morals.

23

Tom, from reading in the old Catholic Encyclopedia it appears there is a long tradition (back to Aquinas, at least) of considering canonisations to be infallible pronouncements. However, you are correct that the current elaboration of Lumen Gentium that raises “definitive doctrines” taught under the ordinary magisterium to the level of infallibly defined has Cardinal Ratzinger’s fingerprints all over it, as some of the other items cited as examples of this level of authority are the invalidity of Anglican orders and the reservation of the priesthood to men. See the commentary on Ad Tuendam Fidem.

24

15 mysteries a mystery-izing.

fixed coding - DrMatrix

25

Oh, I dunno. I think saints, by their very being, become matters of faith.

26

Dammit. Sorry about the repeated sig (which isn’t appropriate here, anyway). I keep forgetting to turn it off. I hate that the default is “on”.

27

Fenris, I read the last two chapters of A Case of Conscince three times and I never figured out what Blish was trying to say. Even putting myself back into a pre-Vatican II (when it was written) mindset, I couldn’t figure it out.

The Mysteries of the Rosary:

The Joyful Mysteries: the Annunciation and events surrounding the Birth of Jesus

The Sorrowful Mysteries: the Passion and Death of Jesus

The Glorious Mysteries: The Resurrection, triumph over sin, and Ascension of Jesus

28

In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth . .the and is important, becasue, in a nutshell, Manachieism is the belief that Spirit is good and the fleash irredeemably evil: it’s not a matter of whether or not the devil can create, but whether or not he did create everything. Christianity has a chronic tendency to backslide into manachieism, and has from it’s earliest days as a mystery cult (most of which were manachiestic).

This is why (to tie this into your OP) Gregory the Great encouraged the veneration of relics: in a religion where god created the earth, the earth is holy. Not as holy as the spirit, mind you, but not inherently evil. What evil is to be found on earth is the direct result of man’s original sin. This is also why Gregory the Great advocated Augustine and Dionyss the pseudo-aeropagite, who between them (mostly Augustine) put the material world in a solid neo-platonic framework whereby the material world is understood to be a (distanced) reflection of the goodness of God, not an evil realm.

As a sinde note, the best illustration of the importance of relics to the medieval mind is that in the sack of Constantanople in 1204, the crusaders were as, if not more, eager to make off with the relics of that city as with the Gold and silver.

[namedrop] Edith Stein is my mom’s sister’s husband’s great aunt. Which puts my very catholic family in hte odd position of having the closest saint brought into the fold by the jewish son-in-law.[/namedrop]

29

Keep in mind this isn’t REALLY a GQ answer, but since I was asked…

All right, at the time, when Bevilaqua came to our parish, Saint Mary of the Assumption in Glenshaw (perhaps you heard about about our rogue pastor, Father Benz, who was embezzling money from the church!), back in, oh, maybe '84 or '85-probably '85 because it was Lent. Well, at any rate, Sister Frances Ramona, God rest her soul, was our first grade teacher, and was preparing us to have an audience with the Bishop. Sister was telling us about his name, which means, “drink water” (I forget the nationality, sorry!).

Well, so, Bishop Tony comes to our school and that morning, he gives a little talk to the lower grades. And he asks us, out of curiosity, if anyone knows what his name means. He keeps calling on the boys, who say everything from bath water to river water, and finally calls on this one little spunky gal Sister Frances’s class-her darling, her pet, her favorite student. And he very patronizingly asks her, “What does my name mean?”

And this very devout little Catholic girl jumps up and says, confidently, “It means ‘drink water.’”

Well! Bishop Tony stares at the little girl in astonishment, and Sister gives him look of proud satisfaction. A mere girl, knew, what the boys did not!

Any guess as to who that clever lass was?
:wink:

30

Gaudere?

31

Heh, then I’m glad it’s not just me…I thought I was missing something profoud and obvious to Catholics.

And don’t get me wrong, I liked the ending and had no real problem with the exorcism working and the planet going poof: that’s the “rules” of the universe he set up. My only major complaint/confusion is how it resolves the Mancheanism issue. And since that issue is the “case of conscience” that the book is talking about…

Fenris

32

Fenris, I don’t think that the exorcism itself in the last chapter of A Case of Conscience disproved Manacheannism, but rather that Father Ruiz-Sanchez came to realize that there was no need to invoke that heresy to explain the findings on Lithia - as Pope Hadrian said, they could merely be (very powerful) illusion, rather than true creation. Likewise, Lithia (or at least the surface of the planet, where the illusory society was located) was destroyed by the exorcism, but through the means of an uncontrolled nuclear chain reaction - which is a valid a way for an exorcism to work as any other means.

At least, that has always been my take on Blish’s novel. If you like this sort of thing, try reading his novel Black Easter sometime!

artemis

33

Just a note, and sorry no cite anymore…

When I was taking my Medieval Latin class, we did a bit of reading on excommunication, and apparently it used to be quite common. And you could be excommunicated by pretty much any priestly person, who merely said “Excommunico te” (I excommunicate you.) followed by demonic laughter. I’ll see if I can dig up a cite. Its got to be around somewhere…

Hrm…

Tenebras

34

Minor historical note: England was placed under an interdict between 1208 and 1214, when King John had a spat with the Pope about who was to be the next Archbishop of Canterbury. It was, essentially, a political weapon, and John was forced to climb down (in fact, his concession, documented here, effectively made the whole of England a feudal dependency of the Catholic Church - a situation which was to prevail up until the Reformation).

My take on A Case of Conscience, btw, is similar to artemis’s - I always thought that you could read it in two ways (Lithia is destroyed by whatsisname’s uncontrolled fusion experiments, whether this is a result of the exorcism or not is entirely a matter of personal faith - I think Blish had a sound understanding of the theological arguments about miracles).

35

That’s where my problem is, I think. It wasn’t an illusion: if they were living on it (remember they were there for six months. If the food was an illusion, they’d have all starved to death!). It couldn’t be an illusion the way he set the story up, unless he’s using some odd meaning for the word “illusion”.

**

I have. GOOD stuff! I’ve also read The Day After Judgement which is the sequel and, IMHO, not as good. I’ve never read the first book in this four part (A Case of Conscience is part of it) “thematic series” (as Blish called it) Dr. Mirabilis. I got my hands on a copy about two months ago and haven’t been in the proper mood to try it.

Steve: While Blish allows for the possiblity of the exorcism not being the cause, to me, I think it seemed clear to me that the exorcism had some effect, even if God chose to use whatshisname’s experiment to do it.

Fenris

36

What is his function?

How does he differ from a Bishop?

and, most importantly, who outranks who?

37

Here is the 1911 Catholic Encyclopedia article for Monsignor.

I believe this is usually granted by the bishop to a priest. However, I’m not sure whether the title really means much in practice. Where I grew up, there was a building named after a (deceased) monsignor at the local parish, but there were no monsignors in any parish nearby. The bishop in that diocese apparently felt that bestowing the title fostered jealousy among priests.

So my understanding is that a monsignor is simply a priest, but perhaps the senior priest or one of the senior priests at a given church. Standby for a more knowledgeable reply…

38

I think the idea behind “Monsignor” is that it’s the Bishop’s way of saying to the priest, “We think you’re doing a hell of a job, so you’ll be Monsignor Smith instead of just Father Smith.”

39

From the authoritative sourcebook on English history, 1066 and All That:

40

The title monsignor is always granted by the pope. (Obviously, the pope is not in direct observation of all the priests in the world, so he bestows the honors based on the recommendations of the local bishops, but the honor and (limited) authority is from the pope.)

There are two varieties of monsignors and I’m too tired to look them up, right now, but one becomes a monsignor until he dies, the other becomes a monsignor until the pope dies. (I don’t recall whether they don’t use the latter honor very frequently or whether its customeary for the incoming pope to re-establish all the temporary monsignori on his elevation to the papacy.)

The CE likened it to being a military officer. I would liken it more to getting a good conduct ribbon. A tough bishop might never ask for any of his guys to be honored with the title while another bishop might ask for the honor for every priest who made pastor by a certain age.
Archbishop Deardon stopped asking for monsignori titles in the 1970s on the grounds that he felt the church should be moving away from that sort of thing. Then he noticed that his guys were getting ignored by Rome in various ways, because Rome was still paying attention to the titles. Just before he retired, Deardon handed in a huge list of guys to honor (or he left a similar list for Szoka to submit after his retirement, I forget which).

It is traditional for priests carrying out certain duties to be named monsignor–seminary rectors, college presidents, diocesan chancellors, etc. However, the power and authority comes with the job for which they are being honored, not from the title monsignor.