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Show ! I !lonatI)olic Queries, and Answers Cliereto . 1 USS .m iViiVn'ViVl'liS1rtVrtVWV1rtnftftfii r- - i ..h-K'ii-. (Sen Francisco Monitor.) ! . "Where in the Bible are Indulgences mentioned? - I " Did not the doctrine of. indulgences originate in the year 1200. By what authority does your Church grant indulgences? indulg-ences? By the divine pow er that Jesus Christ gave 'to Peter and the Apostles in union with Him to free i i he repentant sinner from everything that hindered ; his entrance into heaven, namely, sin and the cter- ' nal and temporal punishment duo to pin. i: '"Whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth, it shall ; , : he. loosed also in heaven" (Ifatt. xvi, 19) ; "What- - ' soever you shall loose on earth shall be loosed also . ) '.: in heaven" (Matt, xviii, 18); "Whose sins you shall ) ' forgive. 1 hey are forgiven them"' (John xx, 23). : St. Paul exercised this power upon the incestu- mis Corinthian, whom he first excommunicated and then pardoned in the name of Christ after he had p,ivcn proof of liea rtfelt sorrow. ''I indeed, absent 1n body, but present in spirit, have already judged . t0 deliver sucn a one to Satan for the ; . destruction of the flesh," etc. (I. Cor. v. 3-o). "So f Jhat, on the contrary, you should rather forgive him ; and comfort, him, lest perhaps such a one be swal- i ,, lowed up with overmuch sorrow. . What ; : I have pardoned, if I have pardoned anything, .for I ; your Rakes I have done it in the person of Christ" I . J ; .(II Cor; ii, 6-10). Catholics believe that many i ; members of the Church for instance, virgins, mar- v ji tyrs, confessors and countless saints have per- ; formed penances far exceeding what was due their 1 . fin", and that their merits in union with the in- 1 ; : finite merits of Jesus Christ form a spiritual treas- : , wry, which the Apostles and their successors can ; " draw from to pay the debt of temporal punishment j for all who belong to the Communion of Saints. ' i . 'Tor as the body is one, and hath, many mem- ; bers; and all the members of the body, whereas they ; ! are many, yet are one body, so also is Christ; '. and if one member suffer anything, all the ; members suffer with it; or if one member glory, all the members rejoice with it" (I. Cor. xii, 12-26). I , ; What does the Catholic church teach concerning the ! ; Incarnation? The Catholic church" teaches that Jesus Christ is both. God and man the eternal, only begotten - Son of the Eternal Father, who became flesh among us (John i, 14). In Jesus Christ there are two natures, the divine di-vine and the human, perfectly distinct from each other, and yet forming but one divine personality. The Athanasian Creed declares that Jesus is "God of the substance of the Father, born before all ages, and man of the substance of His mother, born in time. Perfect God and perfect man, subsisting of a rational soul and human body. Equal to the' Father, according to His humanity. One not by the changing of the divinity into flesh, but by the assumption of the humanity of God. One not by the confounding of substance, but by the unity of person. For as the. rational soul and ' the body is one man, so God and man is one I Christ." j 'Just as one may pomt out a man, and say of I i : him: 'This is my brother,'. or 'my friend so wo i : ; can say of Jesus Christ : tThis is the Eternal God, I ' Creator of heaven and earth, my Master, by Judge, I ; i my everlasting hope. His humanity is I : ' no fiction. His body is a real, true body, born of I ' Mary, ever virgin, pierced on the cross, sitting I ..-'; now at the right hand of God. lie I has a htunan soul, united to His flesh like our souls I . are to our flesh. " The two natures were S j each the nature of one and the' same person, and 'r ; what each nature did the Person did; what each 1 i ' ' nature was the Person was. 1 ' ' "God was made man, and was man. A man I " tras God. '"' '"" . It was not the humanity I which created all things; it was not the Godhead I which was nailed to the cross; but the Person to I whom both belonged did the one and suffered the ... other, and the Person was Jesus Christ." (Bishop ; Hcdlcy. "Our Divine Savior and Other Discourses," SermonI)., ' iWliy are not all our prayens answered, when Christ pId: "If you ak the Father anything in My name He will give it.to you?" (John xvi, 23.) ' I What did you pray for? temporal blessings? ' -A e have a right to ask God for health, success, for- I tune and the like, according to our Lord's own 1 words: "Give lis this day our daily bread (Matt, vi, 2), but he often refuses what we ask, because he I i Knows it would keep us from His love here and His I J t kingdom hereafter. If a sick bed brought us close 1 ' I o God, while health would make us forget him; if . - " i failure humiliated us and forced us to turn to :! . i . God for comfort, while success would puff us up with self -sufficiency; if poverty made us friends of : j ; : , the poor Christ, while riches would render us full of avarice, lust and irreligion, then God, forseeing all this, grants our petitions for these temporal favors fa-vors by not giving us what we ask for. We in our Ignorance may not understand the reason wiry; God knows what is best for us all. Did you pray for spiritual blessings for other?, ; : ?iz-. the conversion of a friend or relative ? Your prayers were not unheeded, for God undoubtedly ; ; oured forth His grace in superabundant measure pon the soul you loved. There may be no out--t jvard sign of the efficacy of your prayer, but who ; ; .inows the secret workings of God t Undoubtedly ' man has the power to resist God's grace unto the rind. He wants a free service and will compel no j 'fan to serve Him. But constant prayer has melted 1 fcieny a hard heart, as Christians know full well. IHave you prayed for yourself, "Forgive us our j trespasses; lead us not into temptation, but driver I t1s from cTil" ith humility, faith, love and sor- tow for sin? God never refuses such pravers. 4 Most important, too, is the manner in which you' j t prayed. If, for instance, while your lip's framed fonie oareless. meehanical prayer, vour heart was ' bent upon other things, could ;W expect God to anf?wer you? ' - Y,ou would not dare to speak thus to a friend j ; you loved dearly. "This people honoreth Mo with thcii lips, but i their heart js far from Me," (Matt, xv, 8). . Again, our Lord taught us to pray with huuiil- 5-r' realizing well our sins and unworthiuess, and J our ntwr dopendeuce upon Him. Some people do niand favors of God as a right, and blaspheme His holy name for not answering at once. "The prayer of him that humbleth himself shall pierce the lMidh" (Eeolus. xxxv, 21; cf. the parable of the Phurisw and the Publican, Luke xviii, 10-H). Oiher conditions on which He insists are faith. I i ontideuce and perseverance, by which, despite every i difficulty, one continues to ask of God every need- I ' of body and soul; consider the woman of j ' "hanaan (Matt, xv, 22-28),' the parabloof the im- ; ortant friend (Luke xi, 5-8), the unjust judge : : (Luke xviii, 2-5; si, 9-13). - Why are priests allowed to marry In Eastern Chris-tendom? Chris-tendom? r ( i Because the Easterns follow the legislation of tnc Synod of Ancyra, 3H A. D,, which gave permis-I permis-I S,10U to deaebns to marry after ordination, provided had obtaaKHl the penuission-of their bishops. I ( cl;bacy is a question of discipline, not of dogma, at the Eastern churches that are united to ' - J tome f ot instance, the Maronites are still yt- 1 nutted a married clergy. . - , ' f The evident mtelleWual and moral inferiority of tlie Eastern compared with the Western church proves conehisxvely the ; wisdom of the West in en forcing celibacy. Father Gargarin, S. J., j book "Le Clcrge Russc," gives such a picture of the degredation of the married Russian clergy, and iU utter lack of influence over the people, that no one for an instantwould desire, to introduce suci a state of affairs into the vigorous, strong clergy of western Christendom. ' Doe not St. Paul reckon forbidding to marry" as one of the doctrines of the devil? (I. Tim. iv, 3.) St. Paul is denouncing the' early Ebionite, Marcionitc 'and Maniehean heretics who condemned con-demned marriage as an evil in itself, and proceeding proceed-ing from all evil principle. The Catholic church has already considered matrimony one of the seven Sacraments of Jesus Christ, and therefore holy itself it-self in all its relations. Can a human being be-the mother of the eternal God? , Why do you call the Virgin Mary the mother or God? Because she is the mother of the divine person, Jesus Christ, who is true God and true man. "And whence is this to me, that the mother of my Lord should come to mo?" (Luke i, 43; cf. i, 35). "His son, who was made to Him of the seed of -David, according to the flesh" Rom. i, 3). "God sent His , Son, made of a woman" (Gal. iv, 4). Many Protestants, unaware of the true doctrine of the Incarnation, call the Blessed Virgin the mother of Jesus, and not the mother of God, as though our Savior existed in a twofold personality human and divine. The Catholic doctrine, however, how-ever, is that the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity, Trin-ity, in His divine nature eternally begotten of the Father, took to Himself from the womb of His Virgin Vir-gin Mother a human nature of the same substance as hers: and therefore the mother of that divine person, Jesus Christ, the God-man, is in very truth the mother of God. , As our mothers are not called the mothers of our bodies, but simply our mothers, because the soul which is directly created by God is united with , the body in one human personality, so the Blessed Virgin is not called the mother of Jesus that is, of the human nature alone but simply the mother ofGod, because the divine nature which is eternally eternal-ly begotten of the Father is united with the human nature in one divine personality. Strange indeed, too, I have met Episcopalians ' who in one breath admitted the authority of the first six General Councils, and yet in the next denied de-nied the divine maternity which was expressly declared de-clared by the Third Ecumenical Council of Ephe-sus, Ephe-sus, in 431, against the Xestorians. Strange, again, that the followers of Luther and Calvin seem unaware un-aware of the fact that both of these reformers never questioned Mary's claim to fee the Mother of God. (Luther. "Deutche Schriften," vol. xiv, p. 250; Calvin, "Com. sur. Thar. Evang., p. 20.) "Why do you" pay so much honor, to the Blessed Virgin, Vir-gin, when she was only an ordinary woman on earth? The Blessed Virgin was not an ordinary woman. wo-man. Would, the Father, having the choice of countless millions,' create an ordinary woman to be the- mother of His only begotten Son? It is preposterous to imagine it. On the contrary, she is the most extraordinary of women, before whom the greatest saints of the Old Law and the Xcw pale as do the stars at the rising of the sun. We honor her as the masterpiece ofvGod whom God honored, indeed, vabovo all creatures in her di-. vine, maternity1; An ordinary woman- Why, the prophet Isaias tells of her (Isa. vii,14) coming; the court of heaven sends an embassy to her (Matt, i. 20) ; the Angel Gabriel salutes her with the words "Hail, full of grace, the Lord is with thee; blessed art thou among women" (Luke i, 28); her' cousin St. Elizabeth greets her: "Blessed art thou among -women, and blessed is the fruit of thy ' womb. And whence is this to me that the mother of my Lord should come to me?" (ib.. 43); and Mary herself prophesies truly: "Behold from henceforth hence-forth all generations shall call me blessed" (ib. 48). Are not we, therefore, who daily fulfill this prophecy, proph-ecy, stamped as belonging to the generations of God's people ? Must we not love her, who was close to Christ from Bethlehem to Golgotha? Must we not love the Virgin Mother of God, immaculately conceived -and sinless, who shows tlx; world what human nature is capable of, through the grace of God, who teaches men the dignity of motherhood and the purity of virginity, which the pagans of those days had forgotten? I could never understand under-stand why Protestants seem so jealous of the love we have for the sweet Mother of God. I never could understand how men had hoped to extol the Christ by belittling the mother He loved so dearly. Every true child resents bitterly the slightest disrespect dis-respect to a beloved mother. Is Christ the Son of God an exception to the law, He himself planted in Ihe hearts of men? ' . God could no more be jealous of the love we have for Mary, the masterpiece of His creation, than an artist jealous of the pictures he painted, or an author jealous of the book he had written. Do not the terms applied to the Virgin in Catholic prayer books border on blasphemy? She is epmetimes called "the only hope of Christians," "the mother of grace," etc.l One prayer save: "Mary, command thy Son!" . ' We readily grant that some-expressions in Catholic Cath-olic prayer books or books of devotion are literally inexact and exaggerated; but thera is no semblance sem-blance of blasphemy, for every true Catholic knows, perfectly their true sense. We must in all honesty hon-esty carefully distinguish the language.' of devotion devo-tion from the lauguage of dogma.' To the unprejudiced, unpreju-diced, the exaggeration, if there be any. will always al-ways be manifest, and the aeeuraej- of dogma may be easily obtained by consulting a catechism or a manual of theology. Often the impassioned words characteristic of the Italian or Spaniard um be distasteful to the colder and less imaginative Englishman or American. Ameri-can. The. expressions of an ardent lover to his sweetheart may not all be literally true, for warmth of feeling often begets exaggeration in language. But'who would cavail thereat, and ask the lover always to speak in cold, matter-of-fact terms? Must there.be no warmth in the expression expres-sion of our. love of the saints of God. Speaking of these expressions of devotion, Rus-kin Rus-kin says that they "are rather poetical effusions than serious prayers, the utterances of imaginative enthusiasm rather, than reasonable conviction. And as such, they are rather to be condemned as illusory and fictitious than vs idolatrous; nor even as such condemned altogether, for strong love and faith are often the roots of them, and the errors of affection are better than the accuracies of apathv" in? he St01ieV? Venice," vol. ii, p. 300, appendix 30). Ve read in the Scripluro (Joslme r, 14) of "the 'Lord obeying the voice of a ma.i." X0w this ; does not mean a real obedience, but God's readiness to hoar thor prayer of Joshue. , T(? sAy, that Mary commands God is heretical-doctrine heretical-doctrine (decree of the Roman Inquisition, Fob. 28 lb.). If the expression is used, it. merely implicit that out of great love fr His Mother. Jesus Christ is over ready to hear her prayer, Every countrv has its peculiar idoms, -.vhich a foreigner must ma- CatholiM fehouh learn before they find fault. (Xew-uian, (Xew-uian, "Anglican Difficulties," vol. ii,'. S9-117-Ganss, "Mariolity," Are Maria Press. Ul' |