Life - and Protestants - are uncertain. Keep studying.

My dear people, our former apologetics discussions have proved extremely useful. I only wish we had had more of them, and longer ones, about a wider variety of topics.

This morning, I was looking forward to a light-hearted, chatty time with two of my most delightfully verbose new-found friends at the writing class aforementioned. We were given a list of essay questions and sent to a tranquil room by ourselves. The first question asked if there was anything admirable about the Dark Ages as presented by Mark Twain in his book A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court. The book is rather negative, as most of Twain's later works are, and, after sifting daintily through the events, characters, and emotions, we didn't find many redeeming qualities, and nothing truly admirable.

Now. Our purport was established, but what of the 15 sentences required? We decided to take it down to particulars. 'In the middle ages, as portrayed by Mark Twain, the commoner had little or no influence regarding the management of the country-it wasn't only a monarchy, but often a despotism.' 'The inhuman abomination of slavery was not only permitted, but encouraged and utilized heavily.' Such sentences were speedily filling the black pages in front of us, but when
Alyssa wrote: 'The Church was corrupted and the people were entirely without the Word of God,' I felt obligated to insert my opinion, as well as the concept of precision of language.

"Can we use that wording, though?" I began. "Won't we be generalizing extravagantly?"

"No, because it's absolutely true," Alyssa insisted.

"Don't we mean to say, 'members of the clergy in the Church were corrupted, and used their priestly authority to oppress the people'?" I asked, knowing Alyssa was a very logical person, and believing she would see the irrational conclusion. I was disappointed.

"But it was the Catholic Church that was corrupt. You can't separate clergy and the Church they stand for."

We soon began on the topic of Scripture in the Catholic Church, and Alyssa, not knowing I was Catholic, made several potent statements. We followed the Vulgate, from its writing, to Wycliffe, to Martin Luther, and discussed its authenticity. Alyssa kept saying, "the Catholics don't use the Bible in their services," and when I pointed out that I had "been to one," and that they did four times (not to mention large sections quoted during the Consecration), she blankly replied, "it wouldn't matter if they did, though, because it was in Latin."

I proffered a short definition of 'homily' or 'sermon', and she said, "it still doesn't make any difference, because the Catholic Bible is so contorted anyway, they still don't receive the truth. The Latin Vulgate was only used by certain people living in the mountains at that time, which is what Wycliffe translated into English, and everyone else had the Catholic Bible."

I am no great Bible scholar, but I think I'm right in saying the Bible was written in Hebrew and Greek, then translated to Latin by Saint Jerome, and thus we have the Vulgate. I may be ignorant of several intermediate steps. However, this all (even the Wycliffe element) being before Martin Luther, I don't see how there could be separate interpretations of the Bible. If there were, I would appreciate some enlightenment.

Our chat actually only lasted five minutes or so, but I think I came out on top, because after appearing increasingly uncomfortable, Alyssa changed the subject briskly. It was tempting, after the slanderous generalizations, to reveal my heretofore incognito religion, but that, I decided, was unwise, as it would only give Alyssa a reason to disbelieve my arguments, instead of spurring her to research (as I now plan to) the truth about the Truth. Hopefully, next time I am abruptly confronted by an issue regarding the contortion of the Scriptures, I will be more prepared.

Cathy also had a memorable experience this morning, reiterating the affair over the Papal corruption, and I hope she plans to blog it. *hint,hint*

...and on...and on...

Cathy, Mari, and I have been attending a writing class conducted by a very friendly Fundamentalist lady. We were enjoying it so very much that we hardly noticed when the reading assignments became gradually more anti-Catholic. It wasn't too bad, but a few weeks ago, when I read our assignment, I immediately requested an emergency discussion with Love2Learn Mom.

We had been given selections of literature from the Dark Ages. These included a section of The Inferno, by Dante. They were accompanied by a commentary by the Christian textbook, which commented on Dante's being excommunicated, and also on his supposed unbelief in the "non scriptural idea of purgatory". Now we do know that Dante disbelieved a few of the Catholic doctrines, but he did believe in purgatory.

Our discussion opened by checking to make sure we had all read the same section:) For those wishing to discuss this at home, it was The Entrance to Hell, up until Dante falls into a trance at the side of the river. (Canto III)

We talked about the punishments, and the appropriateness of said punishments. Particularly the "lukewarm" people who, through avoiding choices and through general indifference to right and wrong, have placed themselves in between Heaven and Hell in a woefully indifferent atmosphere.

We first had to figure out the exact definition of "lukewarm". More specifically, what was it those people did that classed them as lukewarm and earned them their eternal state of stagnancy? We tried to come up with real life examples of this sort of complacency. D'Maire, who is also a Catholic involved in this class, mentioned people who have a vague belief in God, but have some trivial reason (e.g. they met an errant priest) for not attending church or raising their children in a specific faith.

We came up with several other examples, but decided that in general, it boiled down to caring and acting and being passionate rather than being lazy and indifferent and too scared to move out of one's comfort zone. We talked about the quote from the bible, "I wish you were either cold or hot. So, because you are lukewarm, neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of my mouth." (Rev. 3:156-16) We decided that even if you were moving in a not-so-good direction, you would at least be moving, and if your intentions were right, then God could work with you.

Less relevantly, we talked about the extremes of the virtues, e.g. the extremes of hope - despair and presumption.

We also went off on several interesting tangents concerning the class, defending the faith and when and how to approach it appropriately, Pope Benedict's Regensburg speech, and how some people prefer to pray when they have a problem instead of praying and doing their part to reason and help God help them. (Like the joke about the shipwrecked man and the helicopters - or something like that - I don't remember how the joke goes.)

We had two other discussions on this class, and apologetics, soon after, and I will post about them presently (I think).