The pesky devil and the details

     I am certainly not anything close to a "Doctor of the (Catholic) Church" but I do understand a great deal of what makes the Roman church tick. I did attend Seminary and get a Master's degree from them. So much of the beliefs that have been promulgated are based on tradition and the writings or philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas. It is with St.Thomas in mind that the notion of cooperation of what God has supposedly intended us to be that most positions are held.  The eternal purpose of humans is to procreate and thus so many 'sins' are based on whether we 'cooperate' with that belief. Sex is for procreating alone. Humans are seen as strictly binary and so anything different from that is considered anathema. Being gay is considered "intrinsically disordered". Birth control does not cooperate with God's plan for us procreating (according to the Roman church). From the vantage point of the Roman church, it would seem you can even derive the position of male domination since women were created to bear children. Theoretically then, women should simply stay home and bear children. That odious old barefoot and pregnant  idea.

      I find the idea of St. Thomas' musings guiding anyone today unenlightened and frightfully ignorant. His view of man and the world is out of date, simplistic and his logic only seems to perpetuate the theories the Roman church wanted in the first place. Examples of the circular logic ideas that I rail against. The notion of what is and is not a sin ( according to that Roman church ) is clearly within reasonable doubt if not simply highly suspect.

        If the nature of sin is in question, then the nature of Satan may be as well.  Satan, according to what we are told is a fallen angel. A creation of God that chose his own way instead of God's way. This falls in line philosophically with the churches teachings and especially justified by the early church having to deal with the competing or different philosophies of cultures as Christianity spread. Romans and Greeks viewed things differently. These views had to be either 'corrected' or assimilated into what was being preached by a new Judeo-Christian church.

         Satan is yet another construct of man to convey an essence of truth about our relationship with our Creator. We have the ability or perhaps propensity to turn our back on God. We can do it in small matters or in a wholesale fashion, one which some people would call "mortal sin".  The idea of St. Thomas and the rules and rubrics create a dynamic in which man sins by dong this or that, not doing this or that and by creating scapegoats in society. That is, those that do not conform to their view of the world. It is in these man made errant views that I differ enormously in what constitutes a sin or what Satan is.

       The truth though is that no matter what your definition or source of judgment, no matter what religion or philosophy, man does err, man commits evil acts individually and in unison. That is the source of evil and that paradigm is what has been 'humanized' into Satan. Pitchforks and rubrics be damned, Satan exists in our propensity to not cooperate with God's plan of love. It s the definition of 'what is God's plan' that I have a vast disagreement.

      We are still called to love and we still pray to follow the way of love in our lives. It is really the only thing I write about. Our commission as humans is to love and be loved. 

Our Father in heaven,
   hallowed be your name. 

Your kingdom come.
   Your will be done,
     on earth as it is in heaven. 
Give us this day our daily bread. 
And forgive us our debts,
     as we also have forgiven our debtors. 
And do not bring us to the time of trial,
     but rescue us from the evil one.