"Learning from the Great Teacher"

by Stan Conroy 6 Replies latest watchtower beliefs

  • Stan Conroy
    Stan Conroy

    My JW father felt the need to leave this new publication at my house. Lucky me! I was leafing through it, and noticed a quote on page 155 about birthday celebrations. It is a quote from the Catholic Encyclopedia (which seems a little hypocritical to me) which contains the infamous 3 dots. Does anyone have access to the Catholic encyclopedia? If so, what was left out of the quote?

    My Catholic wife looked through it too, and felt that some of the illustrations were too violent for our little boy. There is a picture of someone being stoned to death. I agree that my little boy doesn't need to have the nightmares I used to have after studying that old orange Paradise book.

    Thanks in advance for any information about this quote.

    Stan

  • blondie
    blondie

    Stan, here is an online site quote from the New Catholic Encyclopedia (http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/).

    Witnesses wrongly reason that, because these biblical occurrences depict the celebrations of the births of wicked men, celebrating anyone's birthday is in itself sinful. You can demonstrate that this does not logically follow by showing that the Bible says that the birthday of John the Baptist would be the cause of "joy and gladness, and many will rejoice at his birth for he will be great in the sight of the Lord" (Luke 1:14-15). While this passage does not explicitly mention an annual celebration of John the Baptist's birth, it certainly allows for such an interpretation and at the very least demonstrates that it is good to celebrate the birth of a holy person.

    http://www.newadvent.org/almanac/thisrock94.htm

  • Stan Conroy
    Stan Conroy

    Thanks Blondie.

    I will add your links to my favorites for future reference.

    Stan

  • Stan Conroy
    Stan Conroy

    Here is the page that they quote:

    http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/10709a.htm

    Once again, they are being less than honest with their selection of this quote.

    None the less a certain stress was often laid in Christian sermons and in mortuary inscriptions upon the idea that the day of a man's death was his birthday to a new life. Thus St. Ambrose (Serm. 57, de Depos. St. Eusebii) declares that "the day of our burial is calledour birthday (natalis), because, being set free from the prison of our crimes, we are born to the liberty of the Saviour", and he goes on "wherefore this day is observed as a great celebration, for it is in truth a festival of the highest order to be dead to our vices and to live to righteousness alone." And we find such inscriptions as the following

    PARENTE FILIO MERCURIO FECE
    RUNT QUI VIXIT ANN V ET MENSES VIII
    NATUS IN PACE ID FEBR

    Where "natus in pace" clearly refers to eternal rest. So again Origen had evidently some similar thought before him when he insists that "of all the holy people in the Scriptures, no one is recorded to have kept a feast or held a great banquet on his birthday. It is only sinners (like Pharaoh and Herod) who make great rejoicings over the day on which they were born into this world below" (Origen, in Levit., Hom. VIII, in Migne P.G., XII, 495). Naturally a certain amount of confusion resulted from this use of the same word natalis sometimes to signify natural birth, sometimes the passage to a better life. The former was consequently often distinguished as natale genuinum, natale de nativitate, the latter as natale passionis or de passione, sometimes abbreviated as N.P.

    Read this section over, and notice the highlighted section. That is the part that was quoted in that new publication.

    Stan

  • Euphemism
    Euphemism

    So they weren't even actually quoting the Catholic Encyclopedia... they were quoting Origen.

    Why the heck are they quoting academic sources in a book for kids, anyway?

  • Stan Conroy
    Stan Conroy
    Why the heck are they quoting academic sources in a book for kids, anyway?

    Why are they quoting from "Babylon the Great"? Catholics are supposed to be wrong about everything, but it's okay to quote from their literature?

    Huh?

    Stan

  • OHappyDay
    OHappyDay

    Catholic scholars have been right about many things that Catholic tradition has been wrong about. Not only in the matter of birthdays, but even in the matter of the Trinity, the Catholic Encyclopedia has been forthright concerning its being a doctrine of the developing, not the original, Church.

    But using academic sources does show that not all the opinions of Jehovah's Witnesses are merely dogmatic, sectarian opinions, devoid of the weight of scholarship.

    Unlike us, however, the scholars are free to debate and to disagree. We have to humbly accept the newest light of the moment...or else!

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