Man, the language used in this catechism is kind of self-indulgent.
Through an utterly free decision, God has revealed himself and given himself to man. This he does by revealing the mystery, his plan of loving goodness, formed from all eternity in Christ, for the benefit of all men. God has fully revealed this plan by sending us his beloved Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit.
https://www.vatican.va/archive/ENG0015/__PE.HTM
I give this writing a B-. The thesis is that man can gain a higher order of knowledge through Divine Revelation, but the supporting material in the next two sentences don’t seem to have much to do with that. Just saying “he sent jesus” and “he revealed the mystery” doesn’t do it for me. It reads as very circular to me. God revealed himself by revealing himself.
It’s also weird that they clarify god’s choice to reveal himself was “utterly free” (he could have stayed hidden if he wanted to I guess) and that he plan was “formed from all eternity” (like… eternity is the substance? or the plan was formed before time? idk man, seems like a nothing statement).
I need to cool it with this nit-picking word choice. It’ll never end.
Article 1: THE REVELATION OF GOD
I. God Reveals His “Plan of Loving Goodness”
All right, fine, speed round:
- it makes god happy to involve men in his plan and make them “sharers in the divine nature”
- God, by interacting with men, gives them extra capacity that they are not born with to respond to god and to love god
- Christ is the Word made flesh (what).
- Trinity functions like so: men access the Father through Christ in the Holy Spirit. OK, sure.
- “The divine plan of Revelation is realized simultaneously ‘by deeds and words which are intrinsically bound up with each other’”
- That’s gonna warrant a little more explanation, but ok for now.
- divine plan of revelation? Whose words and deeds? Ours… right?
- God creates and conserves all things by his Word (Jesus?)
- Stage 1 was Adam and Eve through Noah. United humanity, intimate communion with god
- Stage 2 is Noah through Abraham. “divine economy toward the nations”?
- god is gonna save humanity piece by piece, where the pieces are… the nations, tongues, peoples?
- Humanity is chopped up into nations to limit the pride of humanity?
- “Fallen humanity, united only in its perverse ambition to forge its own unity…” Is it weird that this actually sounds like a good thing to me? But I guess you’re only supposed to “gather into one” under christ.
- What is the covenant with Noah? (I think it’s the rainbow thing… how silly)
- “covenant with Noah remains in force during the times of the Gentiles, until the universal proclamation of the Gospel.” By inference, the “universal proclamation” happened during Abraham’s life?
- Stage 3 is Abraham times. Nothing really new here vs Mormonism. To summarize:
- They bring up the olive branch allegory. Israel is the root, everyone else gets grafted in.
- OT patriarchs and prophets (different?) count as saints (was there any doubt?)
- Stage 3.5 is Moses times through… present? Surely not present?
- I’m not sure that I would have given this its own header, but I guess this is a new time that God came down to hang out with a human person.
- “the covenant of Mount Sinai” is called out but not described. Maybe we’ll get more later?
- mormon trigger: “God forms his people in the hope of salvation, in the expectation of a new and everlasting Covenant intended for all”
- they said the words! I thought Joseph made that shit up! They have citations, but I can only find “new covenant” in Jeremiah. Citations are: Cf. Is 2:2-4; Jer 31:31-34; Heb 10:16
- I think we can assume Stage 4 is Jesus Times
III. Christ Jesus — “Mediator and Fullness of All Revelation”
Man, Catholic jargon, am I right?
- Christ is “the Father’s perfect and unsurpassable Word.”
- I think they call Jesus the Word to indicate that he Revealed with a capital “R” everything, and now humanity knows everything it needs to know and God won’t be sharing anything new with us… publicly. Except for the “private” revelations that sometimes get publicly and officially recognized.
- “The Christian economy… will never pass away”. They keep saying economy. This is a really weird use case for that word to me.
Article 2: THE TRANSMISSION OF DIVINE REVELATION
God “desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth”: that is, of Christ Jesus.
What is crazy about that to me is that they have two separate citations for that claim. One for god wanting people to know the truth (1 Tim 2:4), and another for Jesus being important (John 14:6). Apparently, there’s not a single passage in the whole damn bible that actually says god wants everyone to know about Jesus. Seems like that would have come up.
God graciously arranged that the things he had once revealed for the salvation of all peoples should remain in their entirety, throughout the ages
Really… he did? Because if I were a perfect god, going after the same task, I would at least have some contemporary sources for Jesus’s teachings. Instead, god let Jesus’s revelation pass along through like 200 years of oral tradition before someone got around to writing it down, but yeah, I’m sure it was preserved in its entirety. No doubt. Relevant link.
“Christ… commanded the apostles to preach the Gospel… which he fulfilled in his own person and promulgated with his own lips” might be the first time I’ve ever read anything about the Lips of Jesus, and I’m kind of turned on.
So the apostles handed on the gospel (1) orally, very reliable, love to see it; (2) in writing, but which writings? They cite DEI VERBUM article 7, but DV7 itself doesn’t appear to cite any first century documents, sooooo…
Apostles were first generation, and they were succeeded by bishops. This is important church lore. The succession (“living transmission”) is called “Tradition” with a capital T. As a bonus, they say god “continues to converse with the Spouse of his beloved son” where Spouse refers to the church in general, if I have my allegories straight.
II. The Relationship Between Tradition and Sacred Scripture
Ok this is sort of crazy to me:
- “Sacred Scripture is the speech of God as it is put down in writing under the breath of the Holy Spirit”
- “and [Holy] Tradition transmits in its entirety the Word of God which has been entrusted to the apostles by Christ”
If you gave me “Sacred Scripture is the ____ of God” as a fill-in-the-blank quiz question, I would say “Word” 10 times out of 10. What is the bible in Catholicism? Mormons sort of hold it at arms length, which I always thought was goofy. Do Catholics do the same thing??? “Scripture and Tradition must be accepted…with equal sentiments of devotion and reverence.” I suspect Tradition wins 100% of the time.
III. The Interpretation of the Heritage of Faith
You know, all this talk of succession really reminds me a lot of like Vedic texts and such.
- The Magisterium of the Church – why, you ask, is it the Pope’s job to Interpret the Word of god? Well, just because! But keep in mind the Pope isn’t above the word. Anything that seems like it might be “new” is actually drawn from the single deposit of faith from when jesus gave us his Sacred Deposit (oh my)
- They cite Luke 10:16 “He who hears you, hears me” to suggest that pastors are speaking for Christ. Which I guess mormons do too. Not too uncommon, but also not unproblematic.
- Dogmas are formally established and defined. Maybe even listed…?
- There are a couple lines about “the supernatural sense of faith” but I honestly can’t make heads or tails of it
- Everyone participates in handing on truth, and the Holy Spirit helps them know the actual truth
- The whole body of faithful… is always right when it comes to faith? Is that what 92 is saying? And what do they mean when they say the people “manifest a universal consent in matters of faith and morals?”
Conclusion…?
What I learned today about Catholicism is: (1) Over the course of the whole-ass bible, god Revealed himself to man, and now he’s done. Jesus was the big Revelation, with the Sacred Deposit of faith, which is a weird way of saying Jesus explained Christianity to the people. (2) That’s why they call him the Word made flesh, because he said some important Words. (3) The Tradition of the Catholic church is regarded as basically equivalent to Scripture. They’re both part of the “Sacred Deposit.”
How do I feel about it? I feel like it maybe explains a lot. Mormonism has a lot of problems that came about because of the belief that parts of the tradition came directly from god and jesus. It puts you in a tight spot when you believe that the Tradition itself is sacred and came straight from Jesus. Things become very rigid when they aren’t allowed to be wrong.