Theology of Satisfaction: The value of suffering and Sacrifice to Save Souls.

[Xavier]

What does sacred theology teach us about the value and power of sacrifices as a means to save souls? In another thread, we saw the theology of merit, each and every good work done in the state of grace has personal merit, and increases the degree of grace - and the degree of glory in heaven - in every faithful Christian soul. But theologians teach that beside the "meritorious value" of a work, there is also a "satisfactory value" of each and every good work, by which we can obtain graces for ourselves, for others, or for the souls in Purgatory.

Some older theologians held that good works must be especially difficult or painful in order to have satisfactory value. However, many are of the view that even very simple good works such as prayer have value as satisfaction, when offered with love, and readiness to suffer.

Thus, by offering the satisfactory value of our good works entirely for the souls in Purgatory - as we do in the Heroic Act - or entirely for the intentions of Jesus and Mary -as we do in Montfortian Total Consecration - or partially and in individual cases, we can save souls.

Writing in the Catholic Encyclopedia, Msgr. Joseph Pohle explains further in the Article on Merit, "But, since by His Passion and Death He truly merited, not only graces for us, but also external glory for His own Person (His glorious Resurrection and Ascension, His sitting at the right hand of the Father, the glorification of His name of Jesus, etc.), it follows that His personal merit extends further than His satisfaction, as He had no need of satisfying for Himself. The substantial and conceptual distinction between merit and satisfaction holds good when applied to the justified Christian, for every meritorious act has for its main object the increase of grace and of eternal glory, while satisfactory works have for their object the removal of the temporal punishment still due to sin. In practice and generally speaking, however, merit and satisfaction are found in every salutary act, so that every meritorious work is also satisfactory and vice versa. It is indeed also essential to the concept of a satisfactory work of penance that it be penal and difficult, which qualities are not connoted by the concept of merit; but since, in the present state of fallen nature, there neither is nor can be a meritorious work which in one way or another has not connected with it difficulties and hardships, theologians unanimously teach that all our meritorious works without exception bear a penal character and thereby may become automatically works of satisfaction. Against how many difficulties and distractions have we not to contend even during our prayers, which by right should be the easiest of all good works! Thus, prayer also becomes a penance, and hence confessors may in most cases content themselves with imposing prayer as a penance. (Cf. De Lugo, "De pœnitentia," disp. xxiv, sect. 3.) http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/10202b.htm http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/10202b.htm

What more can we learn about this, and how can we reflect on it better and apply it in our daily lives? In recent private revelations, Our Lady has stressed the importance both of learning and of actually living the subject here.

https://marianapostolate.com/life-offering/

LIFE OFFERING

A Call to be a quiet modern apostle!
“My children, I am calling you to apostolic privilege!” -Our Lady ...

OUR HEAVENLY MOTHER: “My children who offer your lives, make the act of contrition every day!  Make it not only for yourselves but for all men.  This will continually weaken the power of evil to tempt and will help all souls to free themselves from the slavery to sin.

“If you continually practice contrition for others, this will act as an antiseptic to arrest the spread of the “virus” of sin.  It will stop the infection, illness and death of souls.  See how great the power of sincere contrition is if it comes from the depths of the heart!  It can heal, cleanse and save the life of the soul.

“In addition to contrition for the whole of humanity, unite yourself with my Immaculate Heart to storm heaven with prayer for the forgiveness of sins.  Thus, you will become united with me and become genuine and intimate helpers of Jesus as fishers of men.”

PRAYERS OF CONTRITION

O my Jesus, I love you over and above everything!  For the love of you I am sorry for all my sins.  O merciful love, I ask pardon for the sins of the whole world.  United with the Immaculate Heart of our Heavenly Mother, I ask pardon for all my sins and for all the sins of my brothers and sisters that have been and will committed until the end of the world.  My dear Jesus, united with your Holy Wounds, I offer my life to the Eternal Father according to the intention of the Sorrowful Mother.  Virgin Mary, Queen of heaven and earth, Mediatrix of all grace and mercy, our only refuge and hope, pray for us!

OUR LADY (to those who offer their lives):  “If the Eternal Father chooses to give a soul the grace of being among the elect, He will order that soul to become similar to His only-begotten Son while on earth; but in what way should this soul be like His Son?  In love and acceptance of sufferings.  If you follow your Jesus in these two ways, then the Eternal Father will recognize His Holy Son in you.

“Souls chosen by the Eternal Father to offer their lives must strive to save as many other souls as possible.  This can be done through fervent prayer, through the practice of love, through meekness, humility and self-denial, but above all through the patient acceptance of sufferings.  I believe that my Motherly Heart will find among my children souls who love God with the love of the martyrs.

[Quaremerepulisti]

What does sacred theology teach us about the value and power of sacrifices as a means to save souls?... But theologians teach that beside the "meritorious value" of a work, there is also a "satisfactory value" of each and every good work, by which we can obtain graces for ourselves, for others, or for the souls in Purgatory.

... for every meritorious act has for its main object the increase of grace and of eternal glory, while satisfactory works have for their object the removal of the temporal punishment still due to sin. In practice and generally speaking, however, merit and satisfaction are found in every salutary act, so that every meritorious work is also satisfactory and vice versa. It is indeed also essential to the concept of a satisfactory work of penance that it be penal and difficult, which qualities are not connoted by the concept of merit...

What more can we learn about this, and how can we reflect on it better and apply it in our daily lives?

I might well ask you that question.

From where I sit, worshiping an angry, pissed-off God Who demands our misery as "satisfaction" results in angry, bitter, pissed-off people (and I might add, drains people of compassion and empathy), which is exactly what I see on this forum, one poster even having gone so far as to threaten violence against me.  Although usually such anger takes the form of peremptory, contemptuous dismissal, the source is the same.

Anger at modern science.
Anger at modern philosophy.
Anger at modern representative government.
Anger at modern historians.
Anger at the hierarchy.
(Contradictorily) anger at those who say that yes, the hierarchy really did screw up in the sex abuse scandals, maltreatment at orphanages, etc.
Anger at those who don't accept Fatima.
Anger at the media.
Anger at anyone (like me) who suggests not everything was hunky-dory before Vatican II either, and demonstrates why they were not.
Often, anger at other trad groups.
And so on, and so on.

[Kreuzritter]

And right on cue ...

Anybody need further proof of his purpose on these forums?

Nobody has threatened you, pansy-assed soy boy, but merely observed how one ought to deal, as St. Nicholas did, with a pig-headed, shit-stirring, arrogant twit who won’t go away and with whom argument or any other form of contact has no point, since his soul belongs to Satan and his intention is set on the ruin of faith.

Angry, pissed-off God who demands our misery? Your idea of a deity purposefully created a world not just of the most horrific pain, suffering and death, of horrors and ugliness in the natural world beyond the imaginings of all but the most twisted psychotic criminal and worse than anything cooked up by the most depraved clerical sodomite, but created it through them, woven into its fabric as the means of bringing about his designs, which bespeaks more than just ineptness or impotence but more so a cosmic psychosis. Your hypocrisy has no bounds and your veritably systematic stupidity no end to its depth. And what are you angry at? At those who stubbornly persist in their faith and belief in a supernatural order despite all the attempts of the modern world to destroy it through the worship of a human reason trying to pull itself up by is own bootstraps? How dare such a person be! Well, screw your overreaching science, screw your postmodern philosophastry, screw your precious media, screw yoursentimental, ochlocratic, slave-morality democracy, and screw your crypto-deistic, indifferent god-of-the-gaps. This isn’t anger, it’s laughter at your impotence despite you of the world mustering all your will and power in the never-ending effort to create a world without people like me.

Where El Elyon creates out of nothing through the Aleph and Tav of Genesis 1:1, his Son Yahweh whose light is the self-sacrificial outpouring of the Spirit of love, your demiurge merely “evolves” an existing material world, and he does so in a manner without reason given his supposed power, through
nothing other than chaos, destruction and evil. Your “God” is Satan behind mask.

Yo ho ho. Merry Christmas.

[Michael Wilson]

Quare,
 what about Our Lord's terrible passion and death? It seems that pain and suffering were part of the deal to satisfy for men's sins; the same for the suffering of victim souls, such as St. Therese, Padre Pio and others. Does all this fit in with your concept of suffering & satisfaction.
Re. Anger: There is a lot of it, and that might have more to do with personal failings than with the concept of vicarious satisfaction. I don't think the above mentioned saints were angry, yet they suffered greatly. While many people are angry, without having suffered.

Kreuzritter,
 I understand where you are coming from, but I don't think this approach is the best one.

[Quaremerepulisti]

Quare,
 what about Our Lord's terrible passion and death? It seems that pain and suffering were part of the deal to satisfy for men's sins; the same for the suffering of victim souls, such as St. Therese, Padre Pio and others. Does all this fit in with your concept of suffering & satisfaction.

Well yeah, with this "satisfaction" theory of Redemption, this is again the pissed-off God taking out His wrath on His Son.  But of course even though being able to take out wrath ON GOD should be enough to satisfy even the most bloodthirsty sadist, that isn't enough for God; He still has yet more wrath to pour out on mankind; and especially on these "specially beloved" victim souls.  And even repentant sinners still have God's wrath to appease; while they must forgive everyone else completely from the bottom of their hearts (which includes all desire for revenge) God Himself is not held to the same standard but holds back part of His remaining wrath to be unleashed in purgatory.

And theologians are shocked, shocked I tell you, the world isn't converted after all these "proofs" of God's great Love.  But this is an artifact mainly of post-Reformation theology anxious to justify Indulgences and there's more to Catholicism than post-Reformation theology.

And you know, this isn't the only way to view the Redemption, isn't historically the only way it was ever viewed even in the West, and has in fact always been viewed in quite a different manner in the East (more of a "reconciliation" theory than a "satisfaction" one).  And all (or at least most) theologians agree that all this pain and suffering are actually NOT necessary strictly speaking to "satisfy" for man's sins; just a single act of a God-man is of infinite value, not only to redeem this world, but a potentially infinite number of other worlds besides.  But it IS necessary, in a certain manner, to show us WHAT SIN DOES and how ugly it is.

And, theology actually has advanced in the over 100 years since the CE article.  Pain and suffering are the unfortunate unavoidable conditions of a fallen race.  But God doesn't deliberately "choose" souls for more suffering than others to "appease His wrath"; that would make Him the author of evil.  Yet, they can help to sanctify us, when we accept them in the right spirit, because we learn and mature spiritually as a result.  IOW, God is helping us to grow up.  Constantly asking Him to smite down enemies is the attitude of a child. 

Re. Anger: There is a lot of it, and that might have more to do with personal failings than with the concept of vicarious satisfaction. I don't think the above mentioned saints were angry, yet they suffered greatly. While many people are angry, without having suffered.

Is it though?  It's not really possible to not emulate the God you worship.  If this laundry list of grievances didn't exist, trads would be finding something else to complain and be bitter about.  It's an extremely psychologically unhealthy attitude to have.

[John Lamb]

From where I sit, worshiping an angry, pissed-off God Who demands our misery as "satisfaction" results in angry, bitter, pissed-off people (and I might add, drains people of compassion and empathy) . . .

Satisfaction isn't about making people miserable.

"And they indeed went from the presence of the council, rejoicing that they were accounted worthy to suffer reproach for the name of Jesus." (Acts 5:41)

It's not Christ's misery on the Cross that makes it a "sweet-smelling odour" in heaven, but the love involved in such a sacrificial act. Satisfaction is about,
I. Justice, and the fact that God's justice demands satisfaction,
II. Love, which can satisfy justice through imploring God's mercy, and this is the activity of the saints,
III. Punishment, which is what happens to sinners who refuse to satisfy for sin through an act of sacrificial love, and this is especially the state of the souls in hell and in purgatory.

If you think God is evil and foul for demanding retribution for evil, you simply lack a sense of justice. If you think that God prefers to punish sinners rather than to see them repent and atone through love, you need to read the scriptures more. And if you think that the saints were made miserable by satisfying for the acts of sinners, you need to read the lives of the saints more.

[John Lamb]

Well yeah, with this "satisfaction" theory of Redemption, this is again the pissed-off God taking out His wrath on His Son.

God never felt any wrath towards the Only-Begotten Son. His wrath is justly directed towards sinners, and Jesus intercedes on their behalf. The love that God has for His Son is more "eloquent" than the wrath He bears for sinners, and there's the cause of our redemption. Jesus offers Himself up willingly, knowing that the Father out of love won't deny Him anything He asks on behalf of sinners; there is no "God taking out His wrath on His Son."

But of course even though being able to take out wrath ON GOD should be enough to satisfy even the most bloodthirsty sadist, that isn't enough for God; He still has yet more wrath to pour out on mankind; and especially on these "specially beloved" victim souls. 

Victim souls are so entirely by choice. St. Thérèse herself asked God directly to make her a "holocaust", i.e. a burnt-offering, and soon afterwards she felt a burning sensation in her soul, and the rest of her life was lived in severe bodily & spiritual pain. This isn't God "pouring out his wrath" on Thérèse. It's Thérèse imitating Christ in offering herself up for sinners, and God allows Thérèse to suffer to give her the opportunity she wished for: to show her great love for God and for mankind. This made Thérèse's own sacrifice a "sweet-smelling odour", i.e. of love, which she bore in the midst of great pain. God hates human suffering and misery. He only permits it for a greater good. The greatest good God ever brought out of human suffering and misery, is that brought out of Christ's Humanity and the saints, who offered up their sufferings willingly as a sacrifice of love.

The existence of hell and purgatory is actually proof of God's hatred of human suffering and misery, because He only inflicts these punishments upon those who are the cause of human suffering and misery, e.g. murderers, adulterers, thieves, liars, etc. If there were no evil among mankind, God would grant each and every one of us everlasting bliss.

[Michael Wilson]

Quare & J.L.
thank you both for your responses.

[Quaremerepulisti]

Satisfaction isn't about making people miserable.

That people can be and often are happy in the midst of suffering, I admit; that suffering isn't itself misery, I deny.  It is the very definition of the word.

It's not Christ's misery on the Cross that makes it a "sweet-smelling odour" in heaven, but the love involved in such a sacrificial act.

And what exactly makes it "such a sacrificial act" but His misery?

Satisfaction is about,
I. Justice, and the fact that God's justice demands satisfaction,

False.  It's an arbitrary scale.  God could remit any and all "satisfaction" owed without Him being unjust.  In fact, that's exactly what the doctrine of Indulgences holds He does.

Especially noxious is the doctrine that this satisfaction can convert sinners, which entails that God can convert sinners via a simple act of His will, but refuses to do so until He gets His pound of flesh first.

II. Love, which can satisfy justice through imploring God's mercy, and this is the activity of the saints,

You are now saying, at least apparently contradictorily to I., that justice is satisfied through imploring God's mercy.  OK, fine then, each of us does that every day when we say the Our Father (and the Jesus Prayer for those of us in the East).

But I'm also going to take issue with the implied assumption that mercy is something God may or may not grant, whereas He is Mercy itself by nature.  You have a bimodal God, it seems, sometimes acting out of justice and at other times out of mercy.
 

III. Punishment, which is what happens to sinners who refuse to satisfy for sin through an act of sacrificial love, and this is especially the state of the souls in hell and in purgatory.

Except Jesus satisfied for all sin on the Cross, so theologians have to talk about merits being "applied" to say how their sins aren't really satisfied for despite the fact Jesus satisfied for them.  It's against the nature of God to want to "get back" at the very humanity He created.  Hell exists because these souls hate God and it is now metaphysically impossible for them to be otherwise.  Purgatory exists as a state of final purification, not because God is childishly and vengefully exacting some "debt" He could nevertheless choose to remit.

If you think God is evil and foul for demanding retribution for evil, you simply lack a sense of justice.

If you think that God prefers to punish sinners rather than to see them repent and atone through love, you need to read the scriptures more.

These two statements are contradictory, and show how the idea of the "vengeful God" is a human construct, and a quite childish one at that, and one which belongs in the trash bin, which is where it is everywhere except in trad circles.  True, it is a human sense of justice that wrongdoers be punished; valid in its own sphere (because society cannot function properly if they are not), but not when God is anthropomorphized in this fashion.

God can't return evil for evil; that is not His nature, as He cannot be the author of any evil.  Theology of hell has therefore moved on in recent years from the childish idea of the vengeful God to the reality that this is the natural consequence of sin - if you took a soul in hell and put it in heaven, it would be an even greater suffering, for they would be face-to-face with one they hate.

And I'm curious how this fits in with your Augustinian predestination, which you likewise justify through Scripture; God "prefers" to see sinners repent, but nevertheless refuses to cause them to do so, even though He could, since He made them "vessels of wrath".

[Heinrich]

And right on cue ...

Anybody need further proof of his purpose on these forums?

Nobody has threatened you, pansy-assed soy boy, but merely observed how one ought to deal, as St. Nicholas did, with a pig-headed, shit-stirring, arrogant twit who won’t go away and with whom argument or any other form of contact has no point, since his soul belongs to Satan and his intention is set on the ruin of faith.

Angry, pissed-off God who demands our misery? Your idea of a deity purposefully created a world not just of the most horrific pain, suffering and death, of horrors and ugliness in the natural world beyond the imaginings of all but the most twisted psychotic criminal and worse than anything cooked up by the most depraved clerical sodomite, but created it through them, woven into its fabric as the means of bringing about his designs, which bespeaks more than just ineptness or impotence but more so a cosmic psychosis. Your hypocrisy has no bounds and your veritably systematic stupidity no end to its depth. And what are you angry at? At those who stubbornly persist in their faith and belief in a supernatural order despite all the attempts of the modern world to destroy it through the worship of a human reason trying to pull itself up by is own bootstraps? How dare such a person be! Well, screw your overreaching science, screw your postmodern philosophastry, screw your precious media, screw yoursentimental, ochlocratic, slave-morality democracy, and screw your crypto-deistic, indifferent god-of-the-gaps. This isn’t anger, it’s laughter at your impotence despite you of the world mustering all your will and power in the never-ending effort to create a world without people like me.

Where El Elyon creates out of nothing through the Aleph and Tav of Genesis 1:1, his Son Yahweh whose light is the self-sacrificial outpouring of the Spirit of love, your demiurge merely “evolves” an existing material world, and he does so in a manner without reason given his supposed power, through
nothing other than chaos, destruction and evil. Your “God” is Satan behind mask.

Yo ho ho. Merry Christmas.

I take back that post castigating you. Pleace accept my apologies for that and thanks for this above.

And as for Queerem, he's the original angry elf:

Official SD strategy meet up in NYC( I came in late):

[John Lamb]

Quare, for the most part you are just pretending that the legal/judicial way of looking at things and the spiritual/mystical way are opposed, when in fact they are complimentary perspectives on the same underlying reality. And no, the idea of God as a vengeful Judge is not "childish," it is scriptural.

Look at this:

Especially noxious is the doctrine that this satisfaction can convert sinners, which entails that God can convert sinners via a simple act of His will, but refuses to do so until He gets His pound of flesh first.

Now all we need to do to make it acceptable to you is spice it up like this:
"The infinite energies of the Divine Love are communicated to sinners when the saints co-operate with these energies through their prayers and good works."

It's the exact same thing in different words!

What do I mean by "three in the morning"? When the monkey trainer was handing out acorns, he said, "You get three in the morning and four at night." This made all the monkeys furious. "Well, then," he said, "you get four in the morning and three at night." The monkeys were all delighted. There was no change in the reality behind the words, and yet the monkeys responded with joy and anger. Let them, if they want to.

[Xavier]

To me, the doctrine that each and every suffering we undergo has value and can be offered up for the salvation of souls is an immensely consoling doctrine. It motivates us to exercise charity by being willing to undertake anything rather than let souls be lost. The ordinary way a person obtains grace is by living a holy life and praying and working for daily graces. For a relative or someone dear to us who is not living a life very close to God, how is that person going to receive all the graces he needs, from first justification to final perseverance, since he is daily wasting many graces, and casting them to the ground? Here, the theology and the wonderful possibility of satisfying for others and meriting de congruo, in union with Christ, for them, comes up to us, "The just man may merit de congruo for others (e.g., parents, relatives, and friends) whatever he is able to merit for himself: the grace of conversion, final perseverance, temporal blessings, nay even the very first prevenient grace (gratia prima prœveniens), (Summa Theol., I-II, Q. cxiv, a. 6) which he can in no wise merit for himself. St. Thomas gives as reason for this the intimate bond of friendship which sanctifying grace establishes between the just man and God. These effects are immeasurably strengthened by prayer for others; as it is beyond doubt that prayer plays an important part in the present economy of salvation. For further explanation see Francisco Suárez, "De gratia", XII, 38." Thus, by prayer and works of satisfaction for a near and dear one, we can obtain their conversion; so let us resolve to bear any cross rather than that souls be lost. This is the crux of what Jesus and Mary have been teaching us in so many recent private revelations. A solid doctrine.

Pope Pius XII, Mystici Corporis Christi: "Dying on the Cross He left to His Church the immense treasury of the Redemption, towards which she contributed nothing. But when those graces come to be distributed, not only does He share this work of sanctification with His Church, but He wills that in some way it be due to her action. This is a deep mystery, and an inexhaustible subject of meditation, that the salvation of many depends on the prayers and voluntary penances which the members of the Mystical Body of Jesus Christ offer for this intention and on the cooperation of pastors of souls and of the faithful, especially of fathers and mothers of families, a cooperation which they must offer to our Divine Savior as though they were His associates."

The billions of mortal sins being committed every day have their effect on the fabric of creation and on the spiritual universe. God allows us to co-operate with Him in His wonderful work of making reparation for them and in saving souls. It is a moral imperative.

Jesus explained it as such in a private revelation of His Life:

Jesus: «Do more than that, My dear friend. It is a great thing to be resigned and bear sorrow. But you can give it greater value.»

Lazarus:«Which, my Lord?»

Jesus«Offer it for the redemption of men.»                                                                                                                                                                                                          Lazarus:«I am a poor man myself, Master. I cannot aspire to be a redeemer.»
                                                 
Jesus: «You say so, but you are wrong. God became Man to help men. But men can help God. The deeds of the just will be united to Mine in the hour of Redemption. Of the just who died ages ago, who are still alive, or will live in future. Add yours, as from now. It is so beautiful to merge with the infinite Bounty by adding to it what we can give of our limited bounty and say: “I am cooperating too, Father, to the welfare of my brothers.” There can be no greater love for the Lord and for our neighbour, than this ability to suffer and die to give glory to the Lord and eternal salvation to our brothers. To save ourselves for our own sake? It is very little. It is the “least” degree of holiness. It is beautiful to save other people, by sacrificing ourselves, to love to such an extent as to become a sacrificing fire to save our neighbour. Love is then perfect. And great will be the holiness of such generous souls.

«How beautiful that is, isn't it, sisters?» exclaims Lazarus with a dreamy smile on his thin face. Martha, deeply moved, nods assent.

[John Lamb]

To me, the doctrine that each and every suffering we undergo has value and can be offered up for the salvation of souls is an immensely consoling doctrine. It motivates us to exercise charity by being willing to undertake anything rather than let souls be lost.

That's correct, Quare just has an irrational bias against the judicial language which surrounds it. Whether you look at it as the satisfaction and remission of sin, or the intensification of the mystical bond of love operating through divine grace among mankind, it's the same reality. The reason that the Church speaks of both and not just one is to give us a fuller appreciation of the reality, in both its positive and negative aspects, and to persuade different people who have different ways of perceiving things.

[TheReturnofLive]

And right on cue ...

Anybody need further proof of his purpose on these forums?

Nobody has threatened you, pansy-assed soy boy, but merely observed how one ought to deal, as St. Nicholas did, with a pig-headed, shit-stirring, arrogant twit who won’t go away and with whom argument or any other form of contact has no point, since his soul belongs to Satan and his intention is set on the ruin of faith.

Angry, pissed-off God who demands our misery? Your idea of a deity purposefully created a world not just of the most horrific pain, suffering and death, of horrors and ugliness in the natural world beyond the imaginings of all but the most twisted psychotic criminal and worse than anything cooked up by the most depraved clerical sodomite, but created it through them, woven into its fabric as the means of bringing about his designs, which bespeaks more than just ineptness or impotence but more so a cosmic psychosis. Your hypocrisy has no bounds and your veritably systematic stupidity no end to its depth. And what are you angry at? At those who stubbornly persist in their faith and belief in a supernatural order despite all the attempts of the modern world to destroy it through the worship of a human reason trying to pull itself up by is own bootstraps? How dare such a person be! Well, screw your overreaching science, screw your postmodern philosophastry, screw your precious media, screw yoursentimental, ochlocratic, slave-morality democracy, and screw your crypto-deistic, indifferent god-of-the-gaps. This isn’t anger, it’s laughter at your impotence despite you of the world mustering all your will and power in the never-ending effort to create a world without people like me.

Where El Elyon creates out of nothing through the Aleph and Tav of Genesis 1:1, his Son Yahweh whose light is the self-sacrificial outpouring of the Spirit of love, your demiurge merely “evolves” an existing material world, and he does so in a manner without reason given his supposed power, through
nothing other than chaos, destruction and evil. Your “God” is Satan behind mask.

Yo ho ho. Merry Christmas.

I take back that post castigating you. Pleace accept my apologies for that and thanks for this above.

And as for Queerem, he's the original angry elf:

I find it absolutely shocking and reprehensible that you guys are stooping to such a level of immaturity and anger in the form of childish temper tantrums on an internet forum, and patting each other on the backs for doing so.


Just wow. Your attitude of "I'm gonna beat you up," just because you can't even debate Quare (on points that are legitimately held today by a significant amount of Byzantine and Roman Catholics), you're like a mentally slow teenage bully who has mommy and daddy issues, can't even pass Geometry, so you resort to threatening to cut the loser in school as a way to prove to yourself that you're existence isn't pitiful, but the fact of the matter is, that everyone thinks your existence is pitiful.

This kind of immaturity is only further proven by assuming characteristic traits that are not only not proven, but contradictory to him being a theologically knowledgeable Catholic (that he's a "soy boy", a "panzy-ass", that his intent is to the destroy the Catholic Faith).


Why don't you grow the hell up. You idiots are so mentally immature that you haven't realized that you have proven every one of his points; that Traditional Western Theology only leads people to stand on a platform to judge others and to abdicate their own personal responsibilities rather childishly.

If you think you are so justified, I highly recommend you print out what you guys wrote, and read it in the Confessional, to see if you aren't acting like a 6 year.

[Quaremerepulisti]

Well yeah, with this "satisfaction" theory of Redemption, this is again the pissed-off God taking out His wrath on His Son.

God never felt any wrath towards the Only-Begotten Son. His wrath is justly directed towards sinners, and Jesus intercedes on their behalf. The love that God has for His Son is more "eloquent" than the wrath He bears for sinners, and there's the cause of our redemption. Jesus offers Himself up willingly, knowing that the Father out of love won't deny Him anything He asks on behalf of sinners; there is no "God taking out His wrath on His Son."

The issue is not who God feels wrath towards, but who He takes it out on.

Question, do you therefore agree that this "satisfaction" theory of vicarious punishment isn't correct and that pain and suffering weren't "part of the deal"?  Or are you going to split hairs and argue that God is punishing Christ in our stead, but this is different than taking out His wrath.

Victim souls are so entirely by choice. St. Thérèse herself asked God directly to make her a "holocaust", i.e. a burnt-offering, and soon afterwards she felt a burning sensation in her soul, and the rest of her life was lived in severe bodily & spiritual pain. This isn't God "pouring out his wrath" on Thérèse. It's Thérèse imitating Christ in offering herself up for sinners, and God allows Thérèse to suffer to give her the opportunity she wished for: to show her great love for God and for mankind.

Lots of questions.  Then what precisely are these victim souls victims of?  Or is the term a misnomer?  And how can God be the author of such severe bodily and spiritual pain?  And what does "offering herself up for sinners" actually mean if not vicarious punishment?  And is there any concrete evidence of its efficacy?  Surely we should at least have seen mass conversions in the town of Lisieux and the surrounding countryside?  Or are you going to say that absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

God hates human suffering and misery. He only permits it for a greater good. The greatest good God ever brought out of human suffering and misery, is that brought out of Christ's Humanity and the saints, who offered up their sufferings willingly as a sacrifice of love.

So there is a logical necessity between human suffering and misery and salvation, is that what you are claiming?  This is manifestly false.

Let me ask you this: let's assume the moral and spiritual condition of humanity were much better than it is today.  Would there be more suffering and misery, or less?