Suffering

Thank you for your suffering: Locace / Lena

Suffering

Life usually involves some degree of suffering but human beings have interpreted the experience in diverse ways.

Some believe that suffering is meaningless and something to be avoided. This view is prevalent in Buddhism, where meditation is said to eradicate suffering.

For many Hindus suffering is a necessary teacher. As we work through our personal karma the unpleasant aspects of life can teach us not to do the ethically bad things that, so Hindus believe, caused the suffering in the first place.

Epicureanism attempts to minimize suffering through a life of prudence and termperance.

John Stuart Mill’s utilitarianism minimizes suffering through a cost-benefit analysis of all actions, a position which Mill felt was ethically equivalent to Kant’s categorical imperative.

Freud saw suffering as an inevitable aspect of the human condition. He wrote that “Psychoanalysis can cure neurotic suffering but not normal human unhappiness.” For Freud individuals are, in effect, the walking wounded.

Catholicism recognizes the value of suffering, i.e. unavoidable suffering permitted by God, but doesn’t condone persecution nor advocate the pathological role playing of ‘victim’ or ‘martyr.’ For Catholics suffering may be redemptive and lead to increased purity and wisdom.

This notion of redemptive suffering differs from sheer depair or destitution in that the grace of God enables one to embrace one’s particular ‘cross of suffering’ with dignity and, with some exceptional persons like St. Francis of Assisi, even gladness and joy.

Along these lines, Reinhold Niebuhr’s Serenity Prayer, a prayer accepted by Catholics, asks God for a reasonably happy life here and a supremely happy one in the afterlife.

The idea of redemptive suffering has been further institutionalized by an organization called Knights at the Foot of the Cross (KFC) based on the life of St. Maximilian Kolbe, who died by lethal injection of carbolic acid in a Nazi death camp after willingly accepting the torture of a starvation bunker in place of another prisoner. KFC is an offshoot of The Militia of the Immaculata, an international evangelical movement founded by St. Kolbe in 1917 (http://www.consecration.com/).

Last, we have those positively-minded people who may hold no particular spiritual belief other than the idea that wisdom can come from suffering.

» Alchemy, Book of Job, Buddhism, Candide, Dukkha, Eightfold Path, Eve, Evil, Four Noble Truths, Karma Transfer, Kowalska (Maria Faustina Helena, St.), Magnetizers, Mental Illness, Nirvana, Ramakrishna (Sri), Sacks (Oliver), Skandhas, Teresa of Ávila (St.), Visistadvaita, Voltaire

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Virgin Mary, The Blessed

Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary

Originally uploaded by Lawrence OP

The Blessed Virgin Mary

The Blessed Virgin Mary is the Mother of Jesus Christ, wife of St. Joseph.

According to Catholic teaching, Mary was conceived immaculately and born without the taint of original sin.

The Greek Orthodox Church accepts devotion through Mary but not the idea of her immaculate conception.

Catholics believe that Mary always was and will be a virgin. That is, Mary and her elderly husband Joseph remained perfectly chaste.

The virgin birth refers to Mary’s conceiving Jesus after she freely chose to accept God’s miraculous intervention. This took place before her marriage to Joseph and Mary most likely suffered from the misunderstandings of Joseph and others who initially saw only scandal.

From reading the New Testament and Apocrypha, many believe that Joseph and Mary had sex and four other boys and two girls after Jesus.

But the Catechism of the Catholic Church says Mary bore only Jesus.

For believing Catholics, the “other Mary” mentioned in the New Testament bore James and Joseph, the so-called “brothers” of Jesus.

Catholics say the term “brother” (Greek: adelphos) is in keeping with Old Testament usage, meaning “close relation” (i.e. kith and kin) and designates spiritual instead of physical brotherhood.

Catholics believe that Mary is a mediator between Christ and mankind, not a goddess. The idea that Mary is a mediator between mankind and God has been traced to the 3rd century CE.

When praying to Mary through the Holy Rosary, Catholics do not worship her but rather request that she intercedes for them–as the Hail Mary Prayer says, “pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death.”

Some Protestants and Fundamentalists complain that Catholics have got it all wrong because, so they say, Jesus Christ is the only mediator between God and Man. But these very same people freely ask their friends and associates to “pray for them” which to any thinking person is clearly a request for intercession.

The Catholic reply to this contradictory Protestant and Fundamentalist charge is that if you can ask souls on Earth to pray for you, why not souls in heaven?

In the New Testament Mary instructs Jesus to perform his first miracle at a wedding ceremony at Cana (John 2: 1-11).

Jesus hesitates – “it is not my time” – but performs the miracle of turning water into wine at Mary’s insistence.

Mary is depicted musically in Stabat Mater, the “standing mother” (at the foot of the cross of her crucified son). The composers Palestrina, Pergolesi, Rossini, Haydn, Verdi and Dvorak have written unique works, each called Stabat Mater. While Pergolesi’s work is the most popular, all compositions are based on the same New Testament account of Mary’s grief while witnessing Jesus’ execution at the hands of the Romans.

Since 1727 the devotional poem Stabat Mater Dolorosa (“A mother standing, grief-stricken”) has been set to a plainchant melody in the Catholic Mass.

Mary became widely venerated throughout Europe in the Middle Ages. The devotion of monks and religious during this period was enthusiastic to the point of their sometimes being taken as madpersons.

In 431 the Council of Ephesus defined Mary as Theotokos, a Greek term meaning “The Mother of God.”

The doctrine of Mary’s bodily assumption (i.e. her rising at death) into heaven was formed around the 6th century CE by orthodox theologians. It became sanctioned by the Catholic Church in 1950 by Pope Pius XII.

The idea of the Blessed Virgin Mary’s immaculate conception was hotly disputed in the Middle Ages but generally accepted by the 16th century. The doctrine was defined by Pope Pius IX in 1854, stipulating that Mary was born free from “all stain of original sin.”

Many lay and religious persons around the world claim to have witnessed apparitions of the Virgin Mary, the most publicized being those at Fatima, Lourdes and Medjugorge. For a good summary of Marian apparitions, see http://www.apparitions.org/.

Some religious scholars and lay people, alike, equate Mary with the Egyptian Isis, the Roman Demeter, the Hindu Kali or the Chinese Kwan Yin, among a host of other goddesses.

Likewise, C. G. Jung and Joseph Campbell somewhat dubiously equate Mary with various goddesses, envisioning all as archetypal images of an underlying and some say sexist “feminine principle.”

But even a casual study of these various female deities reveals striking differences. And to equate them as if they were all the same, as so many New Agers and pop psychologists do, seems facile.

» Adam, Anima, Assumption, Brahman, Fatima, Goddess vs. goddess, Great Mother, Greek Orthodox Church, Hail Mary Prayer, Heaven, Icon, Infallibility, Knight, Koran, Madonna, Nicene Creed, Sister

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Ahimsa

Mahatma Ghandi

Originally uploaded by dbking

Ahimsa Mohandas Gandhi’s life exemplified this Jain ideal of non-violence.

Himsa means “harming.” The prefix a implies the opposite, “not-harming.”

Ahimsa is based on respect for all life. It’s believed that violence to the living merely harms self and others, binding the doer to undesirable future incarnations on Earth.

The ideal is central to Buddhism and particularly Jainism. Because the early Hindu Vedas prescribe animal sacrifices and the Bhagavad Gita advocates killing without attachment, it would be difficult to say that Hinduism fits perfectly with ahimsa. But the idea is found within the Hindu Chandogya Upanisad and in Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras.

As with Catholicism from St. Augustine of Hippo onward, Hinduism advocates peace while maintaining room for allegedly necessary violence, also known as the Just War.

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Campbell, Joseph

Campbell, Joseph (1904-1987) Influential scholar and educator in world religions and mythology.

Campbell’s books and videos have enjoyed worldwide acclaim. He was well ahead of most of his peers by immediately recognizing the film Star Wars as a contemporary variant, par excellence, of the age-old hero myth.

With others like Mircea Eliade and Carl Jung, Campbell helped to open the door for the syncretic study of psychology, myth and religion, a door that previously had been locked up tight by the more pedantic or dogmatic thinkers in the field.

Campbell has an impressive knowledge of textual material from a wide variety of interconnected fields.

However, critics say that his opinions are sometimes simplistic and, contrary to his dictum of “follow your bliss,” every now and then he comes off a bit autocratic, particularly in reference to his beliefs about orthodox Catholicism.

This is a problem not just with Campbell but with many past and present Gnostic,  Fundamentalist, Protestant, New Age, Humanistic, scientific and even environmental thinkers who arguably lump “The Church” into one big personal projection of “The Big Bad Wolf.”

Campbell, himself, was a so-called “fallen away Catholic,” a fact that may have had some bearing on his negative treatment of Catholicism. He seems to highlight the Catholic Church’s past mistakes without fully appreciating its positive aspects–e.g. what the Eucharist means to present-day believers.

Another difficulty in his analyses of world religions recalls problems found in Jung’s work. At times Campbell seems to say that the various paths found in world mysticism involve identical mystical experiences and lead to the same kind of afterlife abode.

This may be a politically correct view and, for all we know, could be true. But ultimate claims about the afterlife cannot be made with any certainty (unless one believes they have pipeline to God, as so many zealots do).

These shortcomings aside, Campbell remains a significant contributor to the study of myth, religion and culture. Videotaped lectures given just months before his unfortunate death of cancer reveal that, in his own dignified way, he was just as heroic as a Heracles or Luke Skywalker. » Mythic Dissociation, Mythic Eternalization, Mythic Identification, Mythic Inflation, Mythic Subordination

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Catholicism

Catholicism A term used to denote the entire body of Catholic faithful along with their creeds, churches, institutions, clergy and hierarchy.

Contemporary Catholics believe that the Catholic faith follows the authentic teachings of Christ as given to the apostles and recorded in scripture, these teachings being preserved, present and developed through a legitimate and holy apostolic tradition. » Dogma, Infallibility

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Church Fathers

Church Fathers The title usually given to the brightest male lights of the early Christian Church.

Influential and often learned Christian thinkers contributing to the formation of Church dogma, aspects of their writings are often cited as items of truth within the contemporary Roman Catholic Catechism.

The Church Fathers are considered exemplars of holiness and are usually beatified.

The study of their writings is generally known as Patristics, although the Church Fathers fall into two periods, the Apostolic and the Patristic.

Since the 17th-century the Apostolic Fathers have been designated as those who wrote just after the New Testament period, to include Clement of Rome, Ignatius, Hermas, Polycarp and Papias. This list also includes the anonymous writers of the Epistle of Barnabas, the Epistle to Diognetus, Clement and the Didache.

The Patristics wrote up to the 8th-century, to include Isidore of Seville (7th-century) and John of Damascus (8th- century).

Origen was too far into Platonism and ideas similar to reincarnation to be seen as a Church Father but his work continues to fascinate scholars.

Feminists point out that there are no real Church Mothers, perhaps because of the sexist environment existing in the early Christian era, this particular form of discrimination persisting, so they say, through the ages and still present in many contemporary religious and secular organizations.

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Eucharist

Eucharist (Greek eucharistia = thanksgiving) A sacrament, also called Holy Communion (Catholic) and the Lord’s Supper (Protestant), in which Jesus is present under bread and wine. It is based on the New Testament account of the Last Supper, in which Jesus asks his disciples to take and eat bread and wine in order to remember him (1 Corinthians 11.23-5; Matthew 26.26-8; Mark 14.22-4; Luke 22.17-20). The bread and wine are consecrated by a priest or, in Protestantism, a minister and is given to disciples. Theological differences arise among different Christian groups as to whether the bread and wine become the real presence of Christ, coexist with the real presence of Christ or serve as mere symbols. Drawing on a distinction from Aristotelian logic, Catholic theology indicates that the essence of the bread and wine are transformed but not the observable form. Moreover, Catholicism adheres to the position known as ex opere operato (by the action performed), which indicates that the sacrament is always effective when administered by a consecrated priest, regardless of the moral condition of his soul at the time. If one believes that we’re all born with the taint of original sin and remain imperfect throughout our lives, this seems a reasonable and, indeed, necessary position. » Consubstantiation, Quiddity, Transubstantiation

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Ex opere operato

Ex opere operato » Donatism, Eucharist

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Excommunication

Excommunication In Catholicism this is a separation of an individual from the saving power of the Catholic Church due to a serious theological idea or practice deemed contrary to the Church. The excommunicated may not participate in the sacraments nor associate with the community of believers. Minor excom-munications were historically conducted by local bishops for associating with an excommunicated Catholic. Major excommunication is carried out by the Pope in an official ceremony. Excommunication is terminated upon repentance and satisfying the demands of the Church, at which point the once condemned person is received again and fully recognized as a Catholic. Excommunication is not exclusive to Catholicism; various forms are found in most world religions. » Anathema

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Four Noble Truths

Four Noble Truths These are the core of Buddhist teaching, said to have been outlined by the Buddha in his first discourse at Benares. They are: (1) All of life is suffering (dukkha) (2) The cause of suffering is wrongful desire, craving or thirst (tanha)  (3) Suffering can be overcome by eliminating these causes (4) The method for eliminating suffering is outlined in the Eightfold Path. This differs from the Christian view of suffering. Christians, particularly Catholics, tend to make room for a positive view of some forms of suffering which are regarded as a means towards purification in preparation for everlasting heaven. While neurotic suffering is redirected and unnecessary suffering avoided or minimized, the Catholic saints do not try to eradicate unavoidable “holy suffering,” which they believe should be patiently endured. In some cases extreme suffering is welcomed as a blessing by the Catholic saint. St. Faustina Kowalska, for instance, embraced holy suffering because she believed she was instructed by Christ that it would maximize her heavenly reward. The depth psychologist C. G. Jung had something similar (but not identical) to say in his treatment of alchemy. Again, this is a very different understanding of suffering from that of Buddhism. Buddhism sees all suffering as bad and something to be avoided, whereas some mystical Christians see some types of suffering as a valuable experience leading toward purification and a heavenly reward beyond all human imagination.

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