Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.3 4.3bsd-beta 6/6/85; site topaz.RUTGERS.EDU Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!mhuxr!mhuxt!houxm!ihnp4!cbosgd!cbdkc1!desoto!packard!topaz!hedrick From: hedrick@topaz.RUTGERS.EDU (Charles Hedrick) Newsgroups: net.religion.christian Subject: Re: Religious question Message-ID: <3574@topaz.RUTGERS.EDU> Date: Sat, 7-Sep-85 15:13:15 EDT Article-I.D.: topaz.3574 Posted: Sat Sep 7 15:13:15 1985 Date-Received: Mon, 9-Sep-85 01:14:46 EDT References: <144@graffiti.UUCP> <57@bbncc5.UUCP> <811@aluxe.UUCP> <2112@burdvax.UUCP> Organization: Rutgers Univ., New Brunswick, N.J. Lines: 41 > .. Since the RC church relies more on tradition > than the Bible, the Pope can make up just about anything and pass it off as > church teaching. The quaint notion of the "Immaculate Conception" is an > example of just such a teaching. Nowhere in the Bible is there any > indication ... > > The RC church has used these and other heretical doctines about Mary to > justify its quasi-deification of her. I hate to defend the Pope, since I basically agree that these doctrines are ill-conceived. However I would like to reassure people that not all Protestants are quite as rabid as this response might suggest. It is true that there is no formal way to prevent a Pope from creating a crazy doctrine out of whole cloth and declaring it infallible. However none have yet done so, and the whole theory behind Papal infallability is that they will not. Let me be clear: the doctrines may have been crazy. What I am objecting to is the suggestion that the Pope creates them out of thin air and imposes them on his Church. Even a Protestant may have enough faith in the Spirit's presence in Rome to believe that they won't get a Pope who is that arrogant. In fact, varying degrees of veneration of Mary are apparent in documents going back to the earliest centuries of the Church. As I understand it, when the Pope made the Immaculate Conception an official dogma, there had been a groundswell of demand for it throughout his church. Some of us may think that ill-informed popular piety won out over carefully considered theology, but if so, that will not be the first time this has happened, nor are all occurences limited to the Roman church. I would like to reserve the word "heresy" for things that strike at the heart of Christian doctine. I don't think it is deserved in this case. There is nothing heretical about the claim that some human being was sinless. Plenty of Protestants (e.g. John Wesley) have believed that it is possible for a Christian (other than Christ himself) to be perfect. I think the idea that sin is passed on via the sexual act (and this seems to be underlying the Immaculate Conception, as well as various other modern Roman ideas) is a dangerous one. It fits in all too well with the ideas of women as second-class citizens and sex as allowable only for procreation (ideas which do border on the heretical). But it seems to be going a bit far to claim that the Immaculate Conception in itself is heretical. Christians would do well not to go around calling each other heretics without the most careful deliberation.