Admitting You're a Sinner

[Catholic_Lady]

Not on the issue of original sin.  Its fundamental, as they state in catechism, nothing of scripture can be made sense of..in their intepretation of it, without that literal and very specific insistence.  The central mystery of their faith depends on it.   Catholics -can- believe in a range of things..especially on peripheral issues..this isn't one of them.  It's central not only to their theology..but it;s the whole purpose of their rites..of mass - of recieving communion, hell, even the confessional is not necessarrily meant for ones current sins, but an expression of your openess to god and your relationship with the divine by being willing to divulge them honestly, in humility and a true spirit of repentence.  This is thought to effect the deeper issue of sin.  It's thought to help us bare the sin of adam, our real first parent, whose trangression we inherit as a mark upon our souls and whose sin was so great that it condemded all mankind in that very instant.

Now ofc our protestant friends are going to tell us that's wrong or unbiblical and double plus ungood..even catholics are..apparently, willing to object - but that -is- catholicism.  It's more rigid than some faiths.  A necessity of creating that unity, that ring of the church of christ they perceive themselves (and seek, I;m sure) to be.

And according to both the catechism and my RCC school,  both you and your school are not only wrong but also heretical.

Ahh the trials and tribulations of trying to institutionalize anything so sublime as religious experience.  (James' variety, of course).  Institutionalized religious experience isn't my cup of tea but I generally am not offended if other people honor their own tastes in tea.

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Hm, didn't realize Maher had ever interviewed Father Foster.

Anyway, I wouldn't bother trying to explain to Khem about any of this. I know his AF persona well enough by now to know that he's not interested in what's actually true. He's going to keep accusing me of heresy for what I said about Original Sin, despite the fact that what I said is exactly what was taught to us in Catholic school. Moron.

I'd be interested in how you hold the seeming contradictions between the way various people who call themselves catholics understand your church's teachings.  Here you say it happens to have been the way you were taught it.  But of course it is a bit of an accident which school you may have attended, so then the question becomes why do you think the way you were taught it is the right one.  At that point the fact that it was the way you were taught it is no longer sufficient as an answer.

I think you know I don't ask in order to belittle your position.  Far from it.  It is more like wondering whether I can reasonably get my hopes up that there are more where you came from.  If you want to answer publicly, good for you.  If it doesn't feel safe to do so here and now I understand.

Oh and is there more you can tell me about this Father Foster?  I only know him from the Religulous movie.  Quite the character.

It seems what some people here fail to grasp (or perhaps they do understand and are being purposely obtuse, that would be my guess), is that it is perfectly acceptable in Catholicism to take either a literal or allegorical approach to Genesis and Original Sin. So long as you accept the underlying message.

The literal approach is that Adam and Eve lived in a paradise garden free of death and suffering, and committed the first sin by eating an apple after being tempted to do so by a snake. That sin left a biological mark that was genetically inherited by all people.

The generally accepted non literal approach, and what we were taught in school, is that at some point during human evolution, our brains became smart enough to fully understand morality, and the difference between right and wrong. Moral free will. Adam and Eve were very early humans - the first to experience this moral awakening, and with that, became responsible for the first sin (whatever it was). From there on out, we bred and made more human babies with the mental capacity and inevitable tendency to sin. It effects all of us.

Whether one takes the literal or non literal approach to Original Sin, the underlying belief about it is that as human beings, we have an inherent and inevitable tendency to sin. Every single one of us is guaranteed to do something wrong in our life if given the chance, starting with the very first humans. It is, itself, the nature of being human and having moral free will.

I believe it happened this way because I think there is sufficient evidence for evolution. We were taught evolution in science class, and I remember my textbook having illustrations of sapien bone structures at various stages of evolution. They started out as very apeish and became more and more human like. It's almost impossible to argue this, imho, and as far as I'm aware, most of us do accept evolution. If you go to a Catholic Forum, you will find that most people on there do take an allegorical approach to Genesis. I used to be quite active in one.

All I know about Father Foster is that he was one of the Vatican priests before retiring. I believe he had some sort of position there where he worked with Latin, though not sure exactly what he did. I just know him as one of the Church Latinists.