I need help again

[JesusLovesOurLady]

Yesterday, I was struggling with prayer fatigue again, apparently I prayed too much the day before, though I don't remember praying too much. Last night, and just this morning I was struck really hard with temptations and had several close calls. I'm worried, especially considering how difficult mass is at my current parish.

Please pray for me.

 

[SkyWriting]

Yesterday, I was struggling with prayer fatigue again, apparently I prayed too much the day before, though I don't remember praying too much. Last night, and just this morning I was struck really hard with temptations and had several close calls. I'm worried, especially considering how difficult mass is at my current parish.

Please pray for me.

OK
Answered Prayer - Steps 1, 2, & 3

 

[Michie]

Prayers for your strength and your ability to rest in our Lord when you need to.

Yesterday, I was struggling with prayer fatigue again, apparently I prayed too much the day before, though I don't remember praying too much. Last night, and just this morning I was struck really hard with temptations and had several close calls. I'm worried, especially considering how difficult mass is at my current parish.

Please pray for me.

 

[JesusLovesOurLady]

Today's mass was an absolute nightmare! It was said by the same priest who celebrated the Feast of Assumption and was just as bad, if not worse. I so angry, I was scared to receive Holy Communion. I need out of that parish, NOW!

 

[Meowzltov]

Today's mass was an absolute nightmare! It was said by the same priest who celebrated the Feast of Assumption and was just as bad, if not worse. I so angry, I was scared to receive Holy Communion. I need out of that parish, NOW!

Is the problem the homily? What is he preaching that you consider heresy?

 

[JesusLovesOurLady]

Is the problem the homily? What is he preaching that you consider heresy?

Yes, it was the homily, he was preaching both heresy, and ought right blasphemy! Being the scrupulous person I was, I was scared to receive Holy Communion after that, even though I knew my anger was only venially sinful. I don't think it's wise to discuss it right now though, wait until I get back, if you want to discuss it more.

I have calmed down more, I have found prayers for Our Lady's intentions very comforting, still, I was shaking a few moments ago, thinking of what would happen if my moving plans failed, and I had to spend another year there.

I need to pray more...

 

[Meowzltov]

Yes, it was the homily, he was preaching both heresy, and ought right blasphemy! Being the scrupulous person I was, I was scared to receive Holy Communion after that, even though I knew my anger was only venially sinful.

It's been many days, so I'm assuming you are back.

I don't want to push you into discussing what is clearly uncomfortable for you to discuss, even though I can't pretend that I know what's going on if I don't know what was preached. I don't know if this is a case of scrupulosity, or fundamentalism, or a priest teaching contrary to the catechism, or an irritating case of "spirit of vatican 2." How I respond really depends on what it is.

I'm going to respond intuitively, and I may very well be mistaken, so if this doesn't apply to you, just laugh and say "OH I love you but you had it ALL WRONG!" and I'll be fine with that.

I see from your faith icon that you are a traditional Catholic. These are hard times for traditional Catholics -- the Benedict years are a thing of the past. I'm sure it must seem like every time you turn around, the Pope or one of those in his camp is saying something that just collides with traditional Catholicism. On those occasions, I'm sure the word heresy comes into your mind.

If this is the case, I encourage you to be patient. There is little you or I can do as regular parishioners about the confusion. But it will eventually all get ironed out. Either it will be explained to you in a way that you will come to a fuller and richer understanding without sacrificing your orthodoxy, or the heirarchy will steer back closer to standard teaching. But it takes time. The Catholic Church moves at glacial pace.

In the meantime, this is what I do. 1) I remain faithful to my conscience, which has church teaching to form it--no one can take my own thoughts, beliefs, and actions away from me. 2) I remind myself that no matter how convinced I am that I'm right, there is always the chance that I'm wrong; therefore I'm tolerant of others who have differing views, since I know that are trying to do what is right as well (at least, most of them).

 

[JesusLovesOurLady]

It's been many days, so I'm assuming you are back.

I don't want to push you into discussing what is clearly uncomfortable for you to discuss, even though I can't pretend that I know what's going on if I don't know what was preached. I don't know if this is a case of scrupulosity, or fundamentalism, or a priest teaching contrary to the catechism, or an irritating case of "spirit of vatican 2." How I respond really depends on what it is.

I'm going to respond intuitively, and I may very well be mistaken, so if this doesn't apply to you, just laugh and say "OH I love you but you had it ALL WRONG!" and I'll be fine with that.

I see from your faith icon that you are a traditional Catholic. These are hard times for traditional Catholics -- the Benedict years are a thing of the past. I'm sure it must seem like every time you turn around, the Pope or one of those in his camp is saying something that just collides with traditional Catholicism. On those occasions, I'm sure the word heresy comes into your mind.

If this is the case, I encourage you to be patient. There is little you or I can do as regular parishioners about the confusion. But it will eventually all get ironed out. Either it will be explained to you in a way that you will come to a fuller and richer understanding without sacrificing your orthodoxy, or the heirarchy will steer back closer to standard teaching. But it takes time. The Catholic Church moves at glacial pace.

In the meantime, this is what I do. 1) I remain faithful to my conscience, which has church teaching to form it--no one can take my own thoughts, beliefs, and actions away from me. 2) I remind myself that no matter how convinced I am that I'm right, there is always the chance that I'm wrong; therefore I'm tolerant of others who have differing views, since I know that are trying to do what is right as well (at least, most of them).

He was preaching Neo-Nestorianism, something modernist/cafeteria catholics often hold, in order to hide from Jesus' hard teachings, but this one was particularly bad. The priest was commenting on the episode involving the Syro-Phoenician woman, and blasphemously claimed that because Jesus didn't know He was God and thought that He was just a Jewish prophet, His response to the Syro-Phoenician woman was simply the result of His own Jewish racism!

 

[Meowzltov]

He was preaching Neo-Nestorianism, something modernist/cafeteria catholics often hold, in order to hide from Jesus' hard teachings, but this one was particularly bad. The priest was commenting on the episode involving the Syro-Phoenician woman, and blasphemously claimed that because Jesus didn't know He was God and thought that He was just a Jewish prophet, His response to the Syro-Phoenician woman was simply the result of His own Jewish racism!

Sounds like he would have made me really angry too. It's a tricky, troubling passage of scripture. Certainly not one that should be handled in an ordinary homily. NEVER.

Read on only if you want to discuss the gospel passage with me.

We know that Jesus did not during his incarnation possess all the characteristics of God. For example, God is clearly omnipresent, but Jesus as a man was confined to one location at a time. There is some indication that Jesus was also not omniscient, since he didn't know the hemorrhagic woman had touched him. Did Jesus have a complete awareness of his deity? We know he had at least some awareness -- there are ample verses to that extent. But how clear things were to him, and how much his human limitations kicked in are unknown.

The truth is, he called her a dog. He called all gentiles dogs. He essentially called her a sub-human being.

The easiest explanation of this is that he was a Galilean. The Galileans were converts by force (the only time in Jewish history). As such, they weren't really trusted by other Jews. This gave Galileans a kind of inferiority complex -- they needed to kind of prove they were just as Jewish as other Jews. Unfortunately one of the ways they did this was by picking on other Gentiles, as if to say, "We aren't like you." This racism definitely was part of Galilean culture.

And we need to acknowledge that in those days, if you were a Gentile, you were a pagan, plain and simple, which puts the remark into the framework of religious bigotry more than racism.

There is an obvious problem with this. If Jesus was making a racist or religiously bigoted remark, then either Jesus was doing something wrong (and saying yes is a heresy), or it is NOT wrong for a Jew to make a derogatory remark against a Gentile, that compared to the Jews, pagan Gentiles really are the equivalent of dogs, which is extraordinarily disconcerting.

 

[Michie]

Lord have mercy!

He was preaching Neo-Nestorianism, something modernist/cafeteria catholics often hold, in order to hide from Jesus' hard teachings, but this one was particularly bad. The priest was commenting on the episode involving the Syro-Phoenician woman, and blasphemously claimed that because Jesus didn't know He was God and thought that He was just a Jewish prophet, His response to the Syro-Phoenician woman was simply the result of His own Jewish racism!

 

[JesusLovesOurLady]

Sounds like he would have made me really angry too. It's a tricky, troubling passage of scripture. Certainly not one that should be handled in an ordinary homily. NEVER.

Read on only if you want to discuss the gospel passage with me.

We know that Jesus did not during his incarnation possess all the characteristics of God. For example, God is clearly omnipresent, but Jesus as a man was confined to one location at a time. There is some indication that Jesus was also not omniscient, since he didn't know the hemorrhagic woman had touched him. Did Jesus have a complete awareness of his deity? We know he had at least some awareness -- there are ample verses to that extent. But how clear things were to him, and how much his human limitations kicked in are unknown.

The truth is, he called her a dog. He called all gentiles dogs. He essentially called her a sub-human being.

The easiest explanation of this is that he was a Galilean. The Galileans were converts by force (the only time in Jewish history). As such, they weren't really trusted by other Jews. This gave Galileans a kind of inferiority complex -- they needed to kind of prove they were just as Jewish as other Jews. Unfortunately one of the ways they did this was by picking on other Gentiles, as if to say, "We aren't like you." This racism definitely was part of Galilean culture.

And we need to acknowledge that in those days, if you were a Gentile, you were a pagan, plain and simple, which puts the remark into the framework of religious bigotry more than racism.

There is an obvious problem with this. If Jesus was making a racist or religiously bigoted remark, then either Jesus was doing something wrong (and saying yes is a heresy), or it is NOT wrong for a Jew to make a derogatory remark against a Gentile, that compared to the Jews, pagan Gentiles really are the equivalent of dogs, which is extraordinarily disconcerting.

Sorry, it took me so long to respond to this, I got caught-up in lot of stuff, and am still going through a lot of turmoil right now.

In regards to Jesus knowing whether or not he was divine, well, the Traditional Catholic view of humanity teaches that the human person is made up components, the mind, the will, and the body. Traditional Christology teaches that, at the incarnation, Christ's mind and will, were instantly fused with His divinity, while his body took a longer time to divinize, as God doesn't have a body. So intellectually Jesus did know that He was God. But neurologically, that's where things get murky, we're not sure how much of that knowledge, manifested in His brain. It should also be noted that, in the Old Testament, God would often feign ignorance, such as asking Cain what happened to Abel, when He, being omniscient, knew that Cain murdered Abel.

In regards to the issue of calling the gentile woman a "dog" there are a few explanations as to why He acted the way He did:

The first and most simple explanation is, that He is leaving out whole truth, and only telling part of it. Telling only part of the truth, is legitimate thing to do in certain situations, take for example, St. Athanasius fleeing a mob of Arians in a boat. St. Athanasius was once in a row boat fleeing the Arians when a group searching for him, came up to him and asked if he's seen him. St. Athanasius responds by saying, "yes, if you hurry you might catch him!" Thus he escapes the Arians without lying. In regards to Jesus' case here, Our Lord affirms the fact, that the gentile woman is a "dog" but what He's leaving out of that statement, is the truth that, we're all dogs, we're all sinful and fallen, (which in a sense, means that we're all sub-human) and need a Saviour.

A second possible explanation is, when this episode takes place, the Old Covenant is still in effect. Our Lord had to be circumcised and a Our Lady had to offer purification offerings, even though both were sinless, the reason they had to do this, was because the old law was still in effect, and it would be, up until the Crucifixion of Our Lord. The reason Our Lord called the Syro-Phoenician woman a "dog" had something to do with the Old Law, and the fact that gentiles had to be second-class citizens in the Old Covenant.

In either case, Our Lord was testing the faith of the Syro-Phoenician woman, He was seeing, how much the gentile was willing to take, in order to believe in Him.

 

[Maryslittleflower]

Sounds like he would have made me really angry too. It's a tricky, troubling passage of scripture. Certainly not one that should be handled in an ordinary homily. NEVER.

Read on only if you want to discuss the gospel passage with me.

We know that Jesus did not during his incarnation possess all the characteristics of God. For example, God is clearly omnipresent, but Jesus as a man was confined to one location at a time. There is some indication that Jesus was also not omniscient, since he didn't know the hemorrhagic woman had touched him. Did Jesus have a complete awareness of his deity? We know he had at least some awareness -- there are ample verses to that extent. But how clear things were to him, and how much his human limitations kicked in are unknown.

The truth is, he called her a dog. He called all gentiles dogs. He essentially called her a sub-human being.

The easiest explanation of this is that he was a Galilean. The Galileans were converts by force (the only time in Jewish history). As such, they weren't really trusted by other Jews. This gave Galileans a kind of inferiority complex -- they needed to kind of prove they were just as Jewish as other Jews. Unfortunately one of the ways they did this was by picking on other Gentiles, as if to say, "We aren't like you." This racism definitely was part of Galilean culture.

And we need to acknowledge that in those days, if you were a Gentile, you were a pagan, plain and simple, which puts the remark into the framework of religious bigotry more than racism.

There is an obvious problem with this. If Jesus was making a racist or religiously bigoted remark, then either Jesus was doing something wrong (and saying yes is a heresy), or it is NOT wrong for a Jew to make a derogatory remark against a Gentile, that compared to the Jews, pagan Gentiles really are the equivalent of dogs, which is extraordinarily disconcerting.

I think there are some problems with the points in this post.

Firstly Jesus always had the Beatific Vision. What theologians say is that He willingly gave up certain effects of this such as not being able to suffer or die, or a visible glory, etc. His Sacred Humanity also developed in that He had to begin to walk at some point, as a child, etc. But it pretty much stops here. He didn't lose awareness of who He is, only certain effects or "flowing over" of the Beatific Vision into the senses - that's why Jesus could suffer as a Man.

He always knew who He is. His Human Will completely submitted to the Divine Will. Jesus has two wills, one human and one Divine. But the human will is always following the Divine Will. For this reason, He never acted SIMPLY as a human. He is always BOTH FULLY God and Man.

All His statement were said in accordance with the Will of the Father, as God and Man, not simply as a Man ONLY. That is separating His two natures.

Hence any "cultural racism" and such things is not an option for us to hold.

As for Gentiles "really being like dogs".. some points:

we need to understand what this means. For instance, it could be said that when people live by their instincts and passions, and deny natural law or divine law, we act below our dignity, almost like we are trying to be animals. I don't know if that's the meaning but just a thought. It's not applicable to Gentiles today who follow God.

As for what Jesus said..

I heard in a homily that He used the word for "dog" that is translated as "little dog". Like a little pet dog. It was said affectionately. We don't see that in the English translation.

In a private revelation to a Catholic mystic (with an Imprimatur), Gabrielle Bossis, Jesus talked about why He addressed the woman in this way. I don't remember well now but it was in a very loving way and in a way that brought forth her trust. So we don't need to worry about that, and just understand it in light of who God is.

 

[Maryslittleflower]

Sorry, it took me so long to respond to this, I got caught-up in lot of stuff, and am still going through a lot of turmoil right now.

In regards to Jesus knowing whether or not he was divine, well, the Traditional Catholic view of humanity teaches that the human person is made up components, the mind, the will, and the body. Traditional Christology teaches that, at the incarnation, Christ's mind and will, were instantly fused with His divinity, while his body took a longer time to divinize, as God doesn't have a body. So intellectually Jesus did know that He was God. But neurologically, that's where things get murky, we're not sure how much of that knowledge, manifested in His brain. It should also be noted that, in the Old Testament, God would often feign ignorance, such as asking Cain what happened to Abel, when He, being omniscient, knew that Cain murdered Abel.

In regards to the issue of calling the gentile woman a "dog" there are a few explanations as to why He acted the way He did:

The first and most simple explanation is, that He is leaving out whole truth, and only telling part of it. Telling only part of the truth, is legitimate thing to do in certain situations, take for example, St. Athanasius fleeing a mob of Arians in a boat. St. Athanasius was once in a row boat fleeing the Arians when a group searching for him, came up to him and asked if he's seen him. St. Athanasius responds by saying, "yes, if you hurry you might catch him!" Thus he escapes the Arians without lying. In regards to Jesus' case here, Our Lord affirms the fact, that the gentile woman is a "dog" but what He's leaving out of that statement, is the truth that, we're all dogs, we're all sinful and fallen, (which in a sense, means that we're all sub-human) and need a Saviour.

A second possible explanation is, when this episode takes place, the Old Covenant is still in effect. Our Lord had to be circumcised and a Our Lady had to offer purification offerings, even though both were sinless, the reason they had to do this, was because the old law was still in effect, and it would be, up until the Crucifixion of Our Lord. The reason Our Lord called the Syro-Phoenician woman a "dog" had something to do with the Old Law, and the fact that gentiles had to be second-class citizens in the Old Covenant.

In either case, Our Lord was testing the faith of the Syro-Phoenician woman, He was seeing, how much the gentile was willing to take, in order to believe in Him.

According to approved Catholic mystics, Jesus had the use of reason from the first moment of His existence. I've never heard anything contrary to this. It seems to be the standard theological view. His brain would have been fully enlightened by the intellect and the will from the beginning of His existence. That's my understanding of it..

 

[Maryslittleflower]

I attend a traditional Latin Mass parish and in the past I've spoken to a priest about difficulty going to another parish, that was much more contemporary (though not heretical with homilies) when I had to travel. My priest then said to just close my eyes, pray, and concentrate on Jesus. I try to just pray to Him in the Eucharist and if something upsets me, I try to just pray for the people and remember my own sins too, which are worse. It doesn't always work, (I can get irritated to), but it's helped.

 

[Meowzltov]

I heard in a homily that He used the word for "dog" that is translated as "little dog". Like a little pet dog. It was said affectionately. We don't see that in the English translation.

This is the biggest rationalization I ever heard. It makes no sense in the context of the verse.

 

[Michie]

Please do not turn this into a derailed debate thread. The op is asking for prayer/advise/help. He can discern and ask questions on his own if he has any.

This is the biggest rationalization I ever heard. It makes no sense in the context of the verse.