Friday Oct 04, 2024

0.21i Sayings of the Savior IX: What's One More?

LINKS

Intelligent Speech Conference (code POPEULAR):
www.intelligentspeechonline.com
The Holy Org Chart:

https://podcastaddict.com/the-popeular-history-podcast/episode/168461488

History in the Bible books link (they’re all out now!):
https://www.historyinthebible.com/books.html

Catchism:
https://www.vatican.va/archive/ENG0015/_INDEX.HTM

TRANSCRIPT
Hey everyone, just wanted to let you know that I will be speaking at the Intelligent Speech conference in a few months. The conference will be taking place online on February 8th, 2025 and if you act now, you’ll get the early bird price of $20, but we also do have a special offer for listeners of this podcast! When you buy your ticket, enter the promo code “POPEULAR” at checkout, that’s popular but with an“e” for the pope pun, to receive an extra 10% off the already discounted ticket price– that’s a great deal for all the content! So go to intelligentspeechonline.com to get your tickets today!

Welcome to the Popeular History Podcast: History through Pope Colored Glasses. My name is Gregg and this is episode 0.21i: Sayings of the Savior Part IX: What's One More?

All of these aught episodes are made to let us build our Pope-colored glasses so we can use the same lenses when we look at history together. If you're lost, start at the beginning!

Today, as promised, we wrap up our Sayings of the Savior series with some general takeaways and a roundup of topics I had originally planned to cover in previous episodes or as part of Sayings of the Savior but didn't get around to. You can think of this episode as a grab bag or a pit stop or whatever you like. Either way, no new Sayings of the Savior, just some new and possibly overdue takeaways from everything we've discussed so far.

First off, and this one is well overdue, there's the basic question of what an APOSTLE is. In Eastern Churches the word is often used more loosely, but in the West, which our Pope-Colored glasses tend to treat as default because frankly that's what the Popes have tended to do, the word Apostle refers to the Twelve Apostles, that early core group of followers of Jesus. The broader term for a follower of Jesus in his life is a DISCIPLE and sometimes it's still used for Christians today, like saying we're all called to be disciples, but if someone says “the disciples”, they mean a member of that first generation, folks who knew Jesus personally and who followed Him. If you want to know more than a hundred other terms for different roles and such within the Catholic Church, I came out with a Holy Org Chart episode last year that’s linked in the show notes, and I named off all the apostles and their aliases early on on 0.20, which I'm not linking because I reference other worldbuilding episodes too often to give them that treatment but if you want them all together that's one of the things you can find on the custom playlists available at popEularhistory.com.

In a nutshell, the purpose of all the Gospel teachings we've been covering has been to teach us how to live rightly, and of course to make us *want* to live rightly, because knowing and doing are two different things. The process by which we develop and carry out a desire to live rightly is called CONVERSION, and the general code that can indicate what it is to live rightly is the MORAL LAW, or you could even simply call it the GOSPEL. Of course Jesus gave us the super summary version of what we should be doing with his two great commandments-love God and your neighbor, but of course you know Catholicism is a big fan of standardizing things and making lists, so let's go through some of the lists relevant to the ECONOMY OF SALVATION, that is, to God's plan for how the universe is going to work out ok. The economy of salvation, that master plan, is also sometimes called the DIVINE ECONOMY.

First list, the three Theological Virtues, namely Faith, Hope, and Charity. With a list of only three I'll be able to get away with offering some specific definitions as well, but just know that not all of the lists are so short. When you get a definition straight from the Bible it’s worth using, so I'll use Saint Paul's definition of faith as “the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen" (Heb 11:1). Meanwhile, the Catechism of the Catholic Church, which I believe I’ve already introduced but just in case know that it's a big guide to Catholicism that I use to help build my framework, anyways the Catechism defines hope as the theological virtue by which we desire and expect from God both eternal life and the grace we need to attain it. Also when I say “the Catechism” I mean the universal one published under Pope John Paul II. Absolutely there has been more than one over the years but when folks simply say “the catechism”, that’s the one they mean. And to put my cards on the table, it is my intention to give some airtime to every term the Catechism covers in its glossary in my worldbuilding episodes. Anyways, more on grace later, for now know that in Catholic lingo, the last theological virtue of charity isn't a handout, instead it’s a form of love. Specifically, the Catechism defines “Charity” as “The theological virtue by which we love God above all things for His own sake, and our neighbor as ourselves for the love of God.” In other words, charity is the key to fulfilling the Great Commandments and by extension morality in general.

The next list I should introduce you to as we take a big look at Catholic moral teaching is the Cardinal Virtues, namely Prudence, Justice, Fortitude, and Temperance. The Cardinal Virtues are fantastic tools for living a moral life. Prudence is what helps you determine the right thing to do in any given situation, justice is the firm resolve to act rightly in the interests of those that are not yourself, no matter the obstacles, fortitude is the grit and determination to carry on with the prudentially determined just path come what may, and temperance helps in that process by helping to keep you balanced in your approach, regulating the will and your passions, passions being on our list for further discussion shortly, in fact we might as well talk about the principal passions, since they do keep coming up when talking moral theology in a Catholic context.

You won't be too far off the mark if you think of the passions as emotions, but if you think of the term passive that will be especially helpful. They are forces that influence us as we go about our business. The simplest passion is love, which draws us to what we perceive as good, in contrast to hate, which repels us from what we perceive as bad. Related to these are desire and fear respectively, which are more about the act of being compelled or repelled, that moving sort of energy between us and what we love or hate. If we receive what we love, the relevant passion is joy, while if we encounter what we hate, we may face either sadness, if we are resigned, or anger, if we actively reject it, believing we can somehow get through what we hate to some loved good beyond. Ultimately the Church sees the passions as morally neutral: it is not good to love something if the thing that is loved is bad, meanwhile it is bad to hate something that is good. But if you love what is good and hate what is bad, that's good. I probably could have summarized that more clearly but in the end what matters most is how you respond to your passions than what your initial passions are. Feelings are natural and to be expected, what you are called to control is how you respond to those feelings.

When it comes to those responses, those concrete actions, the Catholic Church draws especially from the Beatitudes we covered in the Sermon on the Mount as inspiration for labeling not one but two sets of seven works of mercy: The Corporal Works of Mercy and the Spiritual Works of Mercy. By the way, taken collectively, the lessons from the Gospels can be called the Law of the Gospel.

Now, I hope you don’t mind, but we're doing three lists of the extra special number seven today, and if I go into detail on each one we'll be dragging out what I was hoping to have be sort of a quick sort of pallet cleanser of an episode. So instead I'll simply list, the acts are fairly intuitive from their names anyways in these simple moral imperatives.

The corporal works of mercy, which we have on index cards around our home by way of reminder, are:

Feed the hungry.

Give water to the thirsty.

Clothe the naked.

Shelter the homeless.

Visit the sick.

Visit the imprisoned.

Bury the dead.

Meanwhile, the spiritual works of mercy are:

Instruct the ignorant.

Counsel the doubtful.

Admonish the sinners.

Bear patiently those who wrong us.

Forgive offenses.

Comfort the afflicted.

Pray for the living and the dead.

The third promised list of seven is the gifts of the Holy Spirit, as in, what you can expect from the action of the Spirit in your heart. The gifts of the Holy Spirit are:

Wisdom

Understanding

Counsel

Fortitude

Knowledge

Piety

and Fear of the Lord.

And ok, Fear Of the Lord isn't as straightforward a concept as the others. Basically, it's the awareness that God is much more than you, putting things into perspective.

In the end, our mission, should we choose to accept it, is to use these gifts and fruits and even passions to build these virtues and live a moral life. We cannot do that without God's help, which is where grace comes in, something we'll be circling back to more than once. That's because as discussed in Episode 0.1, we've all got the effects of Original Sin impacting us and our world, including concupiscence, which is a particular problem impacting our passions, inclining us towards sin–even after baptism wipes away original sin itself that particular effect of the fall remains, though the sacraments do lessen concupiscence in us, helping draw us to VIRTUE--moral choices--over VICE–immoral choices.

No one lives in isolation, time and again Jesus frames our salvation as a matter of how we interact with those around us, especially the less fortunate. Given this context, it’s no surprise that racism is among the glossary terms in the Catechism, being defined as “unjust discrimination on the basis of a persons's race; a violation of human dignity, and a sin against justice.”

In a similar camp, the catechism's glossary covers three two-word concepts that start with “social” and are the sort of things where you might appreciate a trigger warning if you're the type that hates trigger warnings; namely “social sin”, “social justice”, and “social teaching”.

“Social sin” is listed as “the effect of sin over time, which can affect society and its institutions to create “structures of sin,”. If rampant generational inequality doesn't fall under this, I don't know what does.

“Social justice”, meanwhile, is something the Catechism defines as “the respect for the human person and the rights which flow from human dignity and guarantee it. Society must provide the conditions that allow people to obtain what is their due, according to their nature and vocation.”

Finally, the Catechism of the Catholic Church lists “social teaching” as “the teaching (social doctrine) of the Church on the truth of revelation about human dignity, human solidarity, and the principles of justice and peace; the moral judgments about economic and social matters required by such truth and about the demands of justice and peace.”

Of course, not all communities are so sweeping, and sometimes small actions can have the biggest impact of all. To this end, keep in mind your responsibility to those around you. One particular issue to avoid, and yes, you got me, I'm shoehorning another glossary term in here, is detraction, the “disclosure of another's faults and sins, without an objectively valid reason, to persons who did not know about them, thus causing unjust injury to that person's reputation”.

If you're doing good and avoiding evil, and firing on all cylinders with everything, know that you're doing so with God's help, but of course you already know that, because you have humility, right? Humility of course being defined as “the virtue by which a Christian acknowledges that God is the author of all good.” Anyways, with God’s help, you stand a chance of reaching Beatitude, that is, the blessings of heaven. In fact, with God’s help, should you choose to accept it, it’s guaranteed.

So, there we have it. From the beatitudes to Beatitude in a nutshell, and I even got some definitional errands done along the way. Plus, even better, we've got time for Saint or Aint today!

SAINT OR AINT

At the end of the episode on Luke I gave a brief bio and your job was to determine whether they were a real early missionary saint or not, inspired by all the saints stories that sprang up over the years in connection with The Seventy disciples Jesus sent out in Luke.

Answers ready?

Garius Stephanus: AINT A SAINT, those that didn't clock the name might be feeling a little silly, but that’s alright, that one was of course a slightly embellished edition of a quick hagiography summoned by the phenomenal Garry Stevens of the History in the Bible podcast, who was kind enough to be our anniversary guest last year.

Garry's actually wrapped up his show which is bittersweet. Bitter because, well, Garry's wrapped up his show, sweet because he's begun turning h is show into a series of books! The fourth book is out now, linked in the show notes , and the first three books are promised to follow, and yeah, you heard that right, he’s doing that in that order.

For the next round, we have a bit of a seafaring saint who definitely went to Turkey, Greece, and Malta and who may have gone to Spain, but that wasn't the end because he was traditionally martyred in Rome. He's traditionally depicted carrying a sword and a book, though sometimes pansies leave off the sword. You'll get your answers in the next worldbuilding episode next month, which, unbelievably, will not be another Sayings of the Savior episode, but instead starting out a whole new mystery of the rosary: the Transfiguration. So tune in next month for 0.22 Eye Has Not Seen.

0.21i Sayings of the Savior IX: What's One More?

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