[Peace-discuss] [Peace] Immaculate Conception

[John W.]

On Sat, Dec 8, 2018 at 9:34 PM Brussel, Morton K via Peace <
peace at lists.chambana.net> wrote:

I could use stronger terms, but “incredible” seems appropriate.
>
> —mkb
>
> And why do we get this sermon on this list?
>

Ummmm.....because Carl likes Herbert McCabe basically as much as he likes
Chomsky?



>
> > On Dec 8, 2018, at 9:13 PM, C G Estabrook via Peace-discuss <
> peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net> wrote:
> >
> > [In the Roman Catholic calendar, December 8 is the feast of the
> Immaculate Conception]
> >
> > I suppose for ordinary civilized and liberal people of our time, one of
> the most repulsive dogmas by which the Catholic Church oppresses her people
> is the doctrine that innocent babies are somehow born in sin. The doctrine
> of original sin is thought of as primitive, irrational and deeply
> pessimistic. Quite a number of Christinas themselves seem to have quietly
> dropped it, and many of the rest find it embarrassing. Depressing as this
> must be for traditional Catholics, we can perhaps at least take some
> comfort from the newly widespread belief in the Immaculate Conception. The
> Catholic church modestly proposes that just two people, Jesus and his
> mother, were immaculately conceived: for the modern liberal world, the
> immaculately conceived runs into millions - indeed, everybody is
> immaculately conceived. The humbler, more cautious, but perhaps more
> realistic view of the traditional Catholic is that that thrilling vision is
> not yet, but is somehow to be realized only after a great transformation in
> the future.
> >
> > The Immaculate Conception means nothing but the irrelevance of original
> sin, so let’s take a quick look at that.
> >
> > First of all, original sin does not mean that babes are born sinners; it
> means that they are born into a human race , a human world already
> distorted by sin by rejection of God’s friendship - not by their own sin,
> of course, but the sin of others before them. Through no fault of their
> own, human babies begin life in an emotionally maladjusted world and are
> handicapped in coping with the attacks that life will make on them - and,
> most importantly, lack the power of the Holy Spirit of divine love which is
> the only way of coping with the pressure of their situation.
> >
> > In all this, Catholics do not differ much from other critics of liberal
> progressive optimism - Marxists, for example, and Freudians. All three of
> us think that it is not much use trying to tackle serious human problems
> piecemeal, as they occur; we need to go back to a root cause in the past.
> Marxists trace it to our origin in an inhuman and disabling economic order,
> and Freudians, if I understand them, to our origin in an inhuman and
> disabling family structure. Catholics have the more cheerful doctrine that
> it is due to sin, the inhuman and disabling sin of the world. More cheerful
> because we can and have been liberated from this inhumanity by forgiveness
> of sin; by the forgiveness that comes to us through the cross of Christ.
> More cheerful because while Freudians see our disablement as being only
> ameliorated, and only by long and expensive therapy, and Marxists by long
> and even more expensive revolution, for traditional Catholics (though they
> may also be Marxists and/or Freudians, and so may think both their
> techniques valuable in helping with the remaining left-over effects of
> original sin) the root cause itself has already been dealt with as a gift
> and for free. What is required us is that we accept the gift of faith in
> the Healer and his saving passion and death. Then, although we may (and
> will) still suffer somewhat from these leftover effects of original sin for
> a while, in suffering and temptation and struggle in this intermediate
> life, we are destined to be totally liberated from sin in the future with
> our victory over death and sin by our sharing in Christ’s resurrection, by
> our own bodily assumption into heaven.
> >
> > And God has given us a pledge of this future in the Mother of Jesus. She
> is the sign and sacrament of the coming destiny of our virgin mother the
> church, from whose immaculate womb we were reborn in baptism (as we sing in
> the Easter Vigil). The mother of Jesus is, in scriptural terms, the sign of
> what God does in Christ for those he loves, the sign of what it will be to
> be fully redeemed. In the Mother of Jesus is the promise that when we are
> assumed bodily into our new life (a life that is to be not only at last a
> fully human life but also a sharing in the eternal life which is God
> himself), when this happens, our rebirth, begun in baptism, will come to
> fulfillment and we shall be indeed as though immaculately conceived - freed
> from sin as though it has never been. Not that our past life could be
> cancelled or forgotten, but that our past sinful deeds will come to be seen
> as God always saw them, through their forgiveness, as ‘felices culpae’ -
> happy faults as we call the sin of Adam, at the Easter Vigil, as themselves
> part of the whole mysterious story of grace by which God has brought us
> forgiven sinners to himself in Christ. It is this future glory of the human
> race that we celebrate during the season of Advent, when we look to the
> future coming of the Kingdom, as we thank God, make eucharist to God, for
> the coming Immaculate Conception and Assumption of our Virgin Mother
> Church, prefigured and promised in the Virgin Mother Mary.
> >
> > --Herbert McCabe
> >
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