CFD Sidebar - Satan's Jealousy

This sidebar says that the Catholic belief is that angels have a will, but it is unlike human free will. We can change our minds, back and forth, again and again. Angels, apparently, once they choose, cannot change their minds.

And this makes no sense. They're using it to, apparently, explain how an angel could disobey God. Not just one angel, but thousands (millions?) of them.

I was always raised to believe that angels have no will, they have no choice but to obey God, which is why the rebellion of Satan never made any sense to me. It's always made more sense in the (and this is just my understanding of it) Jewish stance on it, which is that "Satan" is just an angel fulfilling a purpose. A guy doing his job.

After all, if there was no evil, what good would free will do us? We'd have no options? Obey God or obey God? With Satan tempting us, we can exercise the free will that God made a point of creating us with.

And even this explanation makes little sense to me. If an angel can never change his mind, then the original decision to obey God should still hold. None of the angels should have been able to make another choice.

Maybe I'm missing something, but it just doesn't make sense to me.

Advent

Today is the first day of the new Church year, year B, if I'm not mistaken. It's the year of Mark.

For advent, I've decided to stop reading fiction, and just focus on books on the faith, and/or religion in general. So we'll see how far I get with that.

Rite of Acceptance

Now here's the thing. I am not a people person. I prefer to not be noticed, to sit in the middle of the group, and listen, and learn, and absorb. I do not like to be in front of a group, with everyone staring at me, focused on me. Of course, this is impossible when you're being introduced to the Church in the middle of Mass. There will, by default, be people focussed on you. Given my social issues, knowing about this on Monday, I was just waiting for the panic to set in, for my brain to kick up and go, "I don't want to do this. Abort! Abort!" My brian never kicked in. That was nice.

We were introduced at the 10:45 Mass, which is not the Mass I usually attend. On a nice note, while we were waiting, a woman and her daughter came through, both wearing mantilla. So cute on the little girl! At the Mass I go to, I'm the only one covering, that I've seen, so it was nice seeing someone else.

The Rite went off without any trouble, and well, that's the day so far. All in all, very nice.

RCIA Day 11 & 12

Well, I've been sick and lazy.

Day 11 - Church History. How do you jam 2,000 years or history into an hour and a half? You don't. But we hit the high points, and the low points, and it was interesting. Something that I'm definately going to go into at depth as I get a chance. Interesting: There are 33 Doctors of the Church. Two of them are women. All of the Doctors of the Church are also Saints, of which there are thousands. It is much harder to become a Doctor of the Church than it is to become a Saint. Also interesting: There was a point, in the 1300's where there were 2 and then 3 popes at one time. Only one of which was valid, but it was a kerfuffle.

Day 12 - Sponsor Day. We got introduced to our sponsors and told what to expect on Sunday (today) which was the Rite of Acceptance. My sponsor is a very nice lady who I shall call Babs. She's actually been in the class the whole time, acting as assistant to the teachers.

Practical Headcovering Observation

It's been in the forties here the last few days, and my head/ears are always warm. I don't have to worry about finding a hat when it's cold. So practical.

RCIA Day 10

Who is Jesus Christ?

1. How does Jesus describe himself in the scriptures?
a. John 4:25-26 - the Messiah
b. John 6:48 - the Bread of Life
c. John 8:12 - Light of the World
d. John 10:14-15 - the Good Shepherd
e. John 11:25 - the resurrection and the life
f. John 14:6 - the way and the truth and the life
g. John 15:5 - the vine

2. Jesus Is - to me, the most important 'is' is 'Word of God'. Everything else falls under that, but the Trinity makes sense, to me, if Jesus is described as the Word of God incarnate.

3. The mission of Jesus on Earth:
a. To reveal the Father to us
b. To bring salvation for mankind:
1. redeem us from our sins
2. establish the new and everlasing covenant
c. to establish the Church on Earth for all generations

There was, clearly, more detail discussed in class, but that's the general outline.

RCIA Days Eight & Nine

Eight was the Ten Commandments. The first three comandments cover mans relationship with God, and last seven deal with mans relationship with other men. However, Jesus said that the first two comandments are the greatest, and that all the comandments are covered thusly: Love God, and love your neighbor as yourself.

Nine was more on the gospels, and how we got the gospels that we have. Nothing that I haven't read before, Q source, yadda, everybody copied from Mark. My problem is this: the Deacon mentioned the Nag Hammadi library, in the sense that he left the impression that there was nothing contrary to cannon in the finds. Which I know is not correct. The majority, if not all, of the texts found at Nag Hammadi are gnostic, which makes them heretical. I'll bring it up in review this coming week. I would have said something this past week, but I wasn't sure, so I waited to double check myself.