NOTE: This is in STUDENT/TEACHER format, for entertaining interplay. This is very long, but we worth it, in my humble opinion. Enjoy if you can!
SYNOPSIS
STUDENT: What have we learned?
Firstly, we saw how the Alabaster Jar scenes in the Scriptures, one with Simon the Pharisee and one with Simon the Leper, were an image the religious extremes of Jesus’ day and our day. We saw the analysis of such extremes in the Pharisee, or the right, and the Sadducee, or the left. We saw that the Pharisee is hard-headed but hard-hearted, whereas the Sadducee is soft-hearted but soft-headed. We saw that the extremes, when they became totally devoid of Christ, diverged into secular messianism, that is, fascism and communism, respectively.
Moreover, we saw the theology of the loaves and/or fishes as the seven sacraments, with five loaves and two fish symbolizing heresy—or how heretics lose five sacraments that require the Episcopate and retain only two, Baptism and Marriage. We also saw how the three loaves at midnight imaged the three sacraments of initiation.
Also, we saw how the five sacraments lost by heretics, in their full theological implications, summarize just about all doctrines that heretics confound. Too, we saw how this situation poled heretics from one side to another, namely, from presumptuous to overly fearful.
Then, we saw how the liberals take upon themselves the three sacraments of initiation, or community, and that, for them, the Church is mostly nothing but a community. We saw how the devil mocks these three sacraments into liberal counterfeits, and that, on the other hand, how he denies and mocks outright the other four sacraments that are mostly spiritual.
We finally saw how the devil takes the secular divulge of these extremes and mocks the sacraments therein into diabolical counterparts, anti-sacraments that replace God with the State, and replace any spiritual components with a promise for temporal salvation.
Moreover, we remember that the Pharisee scene had numbers 500 and 50 [two servants owe the master a debt, one the larger sum, the other the lesser sum], and the Leper scene had 300 and 30 [the alabaster jar could have been sold for 300 days wages, and, Judas betrays our Lord for 30 pieces of silver]. We saw how the numbers divulge to the 3 sacraments for the liberal, and the 5 sacraments for the Pharisee. The 100 and 10 that are common factors in both scenes could be seen in light of the fact that 10 was like the world, as in 10 horns for beast and dragon. Then, 10 by itself is purely worldly, as in the worldly kingdoms, and 10 x 10, or 100, was like a double world, or otherworldly; hence, though it had the semblance of being spiritual, yet, because it is still 10s, it is really just a worldly counterfeit of Christianity.
Finally, we saw how that the loaves and fishes manifested themselves in the parable where a good father would never give his child a serpent for a fish, and so forth. There, the good objects that the child would ask for would be sacraments or related doctrine. A good father would be a bishop or priest. Bad fathers, who would give negative objects like a serpent, a scorpion, or a stone, could be the devil or a judgmental heretical minister. This gave a profound interpretation for Apocalypse 9, where scary creatures [mean heretical ministers] would torture those without the Seal of God [fearful heretics] for five months [the five sacraments heretics lose] with scorpion tails [heresies, uncertainty.]
Well, that is it!@
Communism, Fascism, and Liberal and Conservative Christianity in the Bible, and the Alabaster Jar of Anti-Sacramental Mystery
STUDENT: Did you say Communism and Fascism in the Bible? In the alabaster jar? Are you out of your mind?
TEACHER: Well, it might seem that way, but bear with me. We gonna make some bad-ass arguments. For now, we will start out with the foundation.
STUDENT: Ok, what is the foundation?
TEACHER: Excellent question. We will need to review the previous article in my index, the article exploring the theology of the alabaster jar as regards religious extremes: The Alabaster Jar andReligious Extremes
STUDENT: That sounds good. For the record, if I recall, as that explored the religious extremes, is it not true that secular counterparts emerge from the extremes as they shed their religiosity?
TEACHER: Yes. More specifically, in the article above, the alabaster jar scenes were shown to image New Testament extremes in liberal and conservative churches. That is, one scene was a Pharisee, or conservatives, and one was the Disciples, or liberals. Now, obviously, when the ecclesial extremes divulge, they lead to secular extremes: Fascism, Communism. However, before we attempt to move into this deeper theology, it would befit us to recall some of the main points of theology of that base-founding article above. To begin, let us re-present the Scriptures themselves:
STUDENT: Good, go ahead.
TEACHER: Here they are:
The Alabaster Scriptures
The Scene of Simon, the Pharisee:
Luke 7:36-50
And one of the Pharisees desired him to eat with him. And he went into the house of the Pharisee, and sat down to meat. And behold a woman that was in the city, a sinner, when she knew that he sat at meat in the Pharisee's house, brought an alabaster box of ointment; And standing behind at his feet, she began to wash his feet, with tears, and wiped them with the hairs of her head, and kissed his feet, and anointed them with the ointment. And the Pharisee, who had invited him, seeing it, spoke within himself, saying: This man, if he were a prophet, would know surely who and what manner of woman this is that toucheth him, that she is a sinner.
A certain creditor had two debtors, the one who owed five hundred days’ wages, and the other fifty. [42] And whereas they had not wherewith to pay, he forgave them both. Which therefore of the two loveth him most? [43] Simon answering, said: I suppose that he to whom he forgave most. And he said to him: Thou hast judged rightly. [44] And turning to the woman, he said unto Simon: Dost thou see this woman? I entered into thy house, thou gavest me no water for my feet; but she with tears hath washed my feet, and with her hairs hath wiped them. [45] Thou gavest me no kiss; but she, since she came in, hath not ceased to kiss my feet.
[46] My head with oil thou didst not anoint; but she with ointment hath anointed my feet. [47] Wherefore I say to thee: Many sins are forgiven her, because she hath loved much. But to whom less is forgiven, he loveth less. [48] And he said to her: Thy sins are forgiven thee. [49] And they that sat at meat with him began to say within themselves: Who is this that forgiveth sins also? [50] And he said to the woman: Thy faith hath made thee safe, go in peace.
The Scene of Simon the Leper, Some Disciples and Judas:
Mark 14:3-7
And when he was in Bethania, in the house of Simon the leper, and was at meat, there came a woman having an alabaster box of ointment of precious spikenard: and breaking the alabaster box, she poured it out upon his head. [4] Now there were some that had indignation within themselves, and said: Why was this waste of the ointment made? [5] For this ointment might have been sold for more than three hundred days’ wages, and given to the poor. And they murmured against her. [6] But Jesus said: Let her alone, why do you molest her? She hath wrought a good work upon me. [7] For the poor you have always with you: and whensoever you will, you may do them good: but me you have not always.
Matthew 26;14-15
Then went one of the twelve, who was called Judas Iscariot, to the chief priests, And said to them: What will you give me, and I will deliver him unto you? But they appointed him thirty pieces of silver.
Now for an exegesis of the Scripture. The following summarizes some important theology from the alabaster jar discourse.
The Theology of the Religious Extremes
STUDENT: Yes, I would like to inquire in particular about the head and the feet, in that, in one scene, the woman anoints the feet, and in the other, she pours it upon Jesus’ head.
TEACHER: Yes, that is the first element of the theology, classifying the extremes according to the two dimensions of the Church: the upper and the lower, or, derivatively, the spiritual and the corporal. More specifically, we notice that in the one scene, Simon the Leper, the woman is anointing the head of the Christ, whereas in the other, Simon the Pharisee, the woman is anointing the feet. The head is upper, and the feet are lower, hence, in this rendition, the head can image the spiritual dimension of the Church, and the feet can image the corporal dimension. The traits of the associated extremes then grow out from there:
STUDENT: Good. How would we then, first classify the Pharisee, or hyper-spiritual Christian?
TEACHER: Yes, there are the following characteristics, noting first that the corporal Christians obviously emphasize the corporal works of mercy to the detriment of the spiritual, and the spiritual, or Pharisaical heretics, emphasize the opposite. Let us start with the Pharisaical heretics:
The Pharisaical, or Hyper-Spiritual Community
hard-headed but hard-hearted
emphasizes other-worldly works of mercy to the detriment of the corporal; saving souls from hell, not so much their material needs
fixated on: knowledge; doctrine; “If this Man were a prophet, He would know...”; evangelicals are obsessed with getting right doctrine, so much so that they forget to care for the needy
types of people; exclusivity; “...He would know what type of woman this is”; “Lord, I thank you that I am not like these sinners”; evangelicals, when they are really hardened, consider their sect to be the true religion, and all others are perishing. “Muslims, Catholics, Jews and Buddhists are perishing because they do not know the Gospel like we do!”
sinners; judging persons as well as sins; exaggerated culpability; “...and that she is a sinner, He would not let her toucheth Him”; evangelicals judge sins but also sinners. They mainly only see objectivity in moral situations, and little subjective conditions that can diminish culpability, e.g., a promiscuous girl is automatically a harlot (never mind she could be being abused severely at home and is acting out in pain and desperation); the gay person is damned simply for having the desires, let alone for acting upon them;
literalism; the Pharisee follows the letter of the Law but many times forgets the ultimate point; Fundamentalists are literalists, taking Scripture so literally that many times they forget what matters, e.g., snake handling, healings, creationism, apocalyptic frenzy;
lack of compassion, judgment of suffering, health and wealth, “Was it this man’s sin or his parents?”; how many countless evangelical preachers are just pop psychologists who tell you how to do well in life, and if that if you just have faith, your problems will disappear. If you are suffering and your prayers don’t work, God is punishing you; if you repent and have faith, you will get better
hyper-masculine; from our sexuality chapter, man to woman images Creator to creature: just as man comes down upon his bride and penetrates her inmost being, pouring forth the gift of life, so the Creator comes down from above upon the creature, enters its inmost essence, the soul, and there infuses truth and life; hence, with God above and the creature below—or the man above and the woman below—the spiritual dimension of the Church can be imaged by the man and the temporal, the woman; in this vein, because the Pharisee is hyper-spiritual, his religion is then hyper-masculine; evangelicals are hyper masculine, dictator preachers of hell fire and brimstone
STUDENT: Good, and now how about the liberal?
TEACHER: Yes, here are their characteristics:
The Sadducaical or Hyper-Corporal Community
soft-hearted but soft-headed
emphasizing corporal works of mercy to the detriment of the spiritual; “Why this waste? This jar could have been sold for much and given to the poor!”; liberal churches are primarily hubs for temporal charity. They are soft headed when it regards doctrine; vague and effeminate intellectually.
inclusivity; concern for the poor makes them condescend to the little ones; modern liberal churches are so bent over to help the downtrodden, that they possess a hyper-universalism, an “all are welcome” mentality, even the unrepentant deviants.
vague unknowing; because the liberal churches emphasize the corporal to the spiritual, they are disillusioned by the conservatives who claim to have “doctrinal answers”; hence, if the pharisees tend to have to objective absolute answers with no exceptions [such as the sabbath and the like], the sadducees have nothing but exceptions and subjective conditions and no objective answers, e.g., the Fundamentalists’ rigid moral and doctrinal codes that admit of few exceptions.
non-judgemental: judge neither sinner nor sin; hence, if the pharisees judge not only the sin but the sinner, accusing them of being unworthy of mercy, the liberals always exonerate the sinner and even say the sin is not a sin because of mitigating circumstances
exaggerated compassion on suffering; the pharisee judges the suffering one as being in sin; the liberal has compassion, but so much so that he is willing and able to cross serious moral boundaries to alleviate crosses, e.g., abortion, euthanasia, same-sex activity...
hyper-allegory; if it is true that the pharisees rightly believed in the resurrection but debated the marital questions in the hereafter, the sadducee denies it outright; too, as the Fundamentalist asserts legitimate doctrines, but in such manner as to get caught up in issues that don’t matter—e.g, creation, fall, flood—the liberal just throws them all away with the bath water, as they do with most of the other Scriptures: explaining away even orthodox miracles as fully allegorical in the name of refined intellectual depth.
hyper-feminine; as above with hyper-masculinity in the religion stationed above, the liberal is down-below, the place of the woman in the Creator/creature analogy, and so becomes hyper-effiminate, e.g., women priests, bishops, lesbian leadership, effeminate tendencies in religion; weak religion
STUDENT: Very good. Now, where do we go from here?
TEACHER: Here, we look at how these errors divulge into the secular extremes.
STUDENT: Good, let us proceed.
TEACHER: Good, here we go:
The Theology of the Secular Extremes
When extreme forms of Christianity lose all Christological elements, they become secular, truth becomes propaganda, and the State replaces God. When the State replaces God, the characteristics of the Christian extremes follow to their logical ends, meaning that all sense of the supernatural or spiritual is replaced by worldly counterparts.
STUDENT: That makes sense. Show me.
TEACHER: Ok, here we go; in short, Pharisaical Christianity divulges to Fascism, and Sadducaical Christianity divulges to Communism. Like Jesus’ prophetic proclamation of salvation to all who turn from sin and toward God for love and mercy, secular messianism promises peace and prosperity but without God. It is a lie. Not new. Babel, Noah, Babylon, Greece, Rome, our modern secular godless age. It is an idea that we can totally walk away from God and have lasting happiness purely with material means. But the reality is, when you leave God, things collapse; see: The ten horns.
Both Fascism and Communism are secular messianism. The difference is, Communism is universal secularism and fascism is bigoted, or nationalistic, secularism.
STUDENT: This is scary but true, even self-evident. What about Fascism?
TEACHER: Yes, here:
Fascism
other-worldly works of mercy are fulfilled in worldly and horrific senses: laws and “truths” that inspire fear and bigotry, or superiority complexes, just as the Pharisees are bigoted.
doctrine and knowledge of God becomes propaganda of the state.
types of people that the Pharisees looked down upon because of spiritual characteristics are transferred to worldly categorization of individuals, both by race and within race [the Arians are superior, we must kill the Jews, and other nations that have lower intellect and power must be enslaved to Germany].
the hard-hearted bigotry of the Pharisee translates to the racism and inherent “inequality of human persons” ideology.
the Fascist state has severely judgmental characteristics in how it treats persons that it considers inferior. Similarly, the Pharisee judges the woman at the feet of Christ as unworthy of mercy.
with its vehement bigotry and animosity, it has an exaggerated conception of culpability; the “different ones” are persecuted; obviously, fascist states are not compassionate
STUDENT: So true. What else can be said?
TEACHER: This is reflected in the two extremes above: for the liberal, to care for the poor implies a solidarity with all human beings, especially the marginalized and suffering, which eventually leads to persons or groups who do not fit the mold. Hence, a reckless inclusiveness, or unviersalism. The counterpart, the Pharisaical mode, is hyper-exclusivity: those persons are sinners and poor and suffering. They are not of us. We are superior.
Let us move to Communism.
Communism
this worldly works of mercy: communism’s main goal is to eliminate poverty by bringing necessary goods to all men; “...could have been sold and given to the poor.”
inclusivity: Communism espouses the equality of all men, unlike Nazism, which sees men as unequal.
exaggerated compassion on suffering: will do terrible things to secure the so-called utopia; will do terrible things to keep the general populace with provisions; e.g., tens of millions murdered to keep the socialist state in standard and uniform
STUDENT: This is all good. Where do we go from here? For example, the “anti-Sacramental Mystery” of which you speak?
TEACHER: Yes, here, the numbers in our scenes of the woman with the jar will provide the basis of our sacramental mysteries. If you return to the Scriptures cited above, the numbers seem to form a correlation: 300 and 30 in the Sadducaical scene and 500 and 50 in the Pharisaical. More specifically, the alabaster jar is presumably worth “300 days wages”, and then we have the far more familiar “30 pieces of silver” for which Judas betrays Jesus. In the Pharisaical scene, Jesus exhorts the hard-hearted Simon with a parable of one forgiven much, the 500 days wages, and one little, the 50 days wages. We will argue that it is no coincidence that in each scene, two numbers exist, one in the 100 amount and another in a 10 amount, with leading size factor the same (3, 5).
STUDENT: Wait, let me guess from your previous articles. The numbers 3 and 5 will come from the sacramental analogies you have given regarding the 5 loaves and 2 fish, and the 3 loaves at midnight parable. There, the five loaves imaged the five sacraments that heretics lose, and the 3 loaves at midnight imaged the 3 sacraments of Initiation received in the middle of the night at Easter Vigil.
TEACHER: You are dead on. Moreover, these sacramental mysteries will be able to provide a deeper theology of the extremes we have developed, both in a Christian sense and in the secular dimension.
STUDENT: Very good, but I need a refresher on these loaves and fishes analogies.
TEACHER: You got it.
Theology of Sacraments and Christian Division
Now, we need to realize this, which may not apparently seem relevant, but just hang loose, blood. We gonna set you up on the theology side. The sacraments don't merely convey grace. If it was merely grace, then there wouldn't need to be seven; there would only need to be one. Rather, each sacrament has a unique form, matter, and theology. Therefore, wherever there is ritual and theology present, there is mystery. And that is why the East calls the especially Sacred Mysteries.
But the sacraments are intimately tied to Christian division, which we have seen with the loaves and fishesstories [please read the article to the left carefully if you want a good backdrop, but our re-treatment might suffice here], and Christian division also deals with errors and heresies. Why should not, therefore, the sacraments also image the theology of the errors from division? For, since the loaves and fishes have been shown to be the image of the types of Christian Division and degree of error therein, the theology of the sacraments should in fact be the very embodiment of the same theology of the types of specific errors of the various divided Christians. We will in fact, discover that there is quite profound evidence for these claims.
While we are at it, we can remember that where there are errors, one is slipping towards the ultimate error which is the fall itself, so that the sacramental mysteries should also contain the mystery of the lies of the Fall themselves.
In this treatment, we will explore these dimensions. To begin, let us revisit the five loaves and two fish as heresy discourse.
STUDENT: Ok, so what are these loaves and fishes analogies?
TEACHER: They are as follows:
Spiritual Protestantism: 5 Loaves, 2 Fish
Again, the Sacraments are intimately tied to the ecclesial union of Christians. Rifts in the Body of Christ affect the sacramental nature that the separated Churches and communities retain. More specifically, from Catholic doctrine, we know that there are really only two forms of rift in the Body of Christ: schism and heresy. Furthermore, we must recall that each form of separation disputes one or more sources of truth, namely:
Apostolic Succession in general (Bishops and Oral Tradition);
The Special Apostolic Successor, Peter (the Pope).
Schism disputes the special apostolic successor in Peter but not all apostolic succession. Heresy, or Protestants, dispute all of the sources, that is, both Peter and all Bishops and Tradition.
Now, clearly, the more truth rejected, the more grace lost. This is indeed so. Consequently, schism, a minor wound to Christ’s Sacred Heart, graciously leaves all seven sacraments intact since it retains general Apostolic Succession, or bishops, who are the ultimate source of all sacraments. This is like seven loaves, seven sacraments.
The heretics, on the other hand, have a more serious wound: they lose Apostolic Succession altogether and so lose bishops; consequently, they lose the five sacraments that absolutely require the bishops. We will discuss these momentarily. This is like five loaves and two fish.
STUDENT: Ok, but is there deeper theology here for the loaves and fishes? I mean, so far we simply have numbers. Is there something peculiar to the different kinds of food and perhaps more?
TEACHER: Yes, excellent question. Let me offer the greater depth now.
Now, loaves need barely, which is made in the earth, and fish come from the sea. The earth is stable, but the sea is a chaos of roaring waves. Per St Paul’s address to St Timothy, 1 Tim. 3:15, “the Church of the Living God is the pillar and ground of truth.” The Church here clearly means the Magisterium, or at least the bishops and Tradition, which forms the foundation of all truth through the infallible guidance of the Spirit and the stable Tradition to give the backdrop meaning to Scripture. Hence, the earth can symbolize the stability of bishops and priests with Tradition, and the fact that loaves require the earth to give it the grain of barely, loaves can symbolize sacraments that require or can come from the Tradition and Bishops, or Episcopate. The sea, on the other hand, is chaotic. It is written that we should be not be “tossed to and fro” by every wave of doctrine. The sea, therefore, can image the place where the stability of bishops and Tradition do not exist, as in, especially, the sola-scriptura of heretics, Protestants.
STUDENT: That is very cool. Let me see if I can put this together myself.
Now we can recall the theology: schismatics, because they do have the stability of the Episcopate, have all seven sacraments, seven loaves. But the Orthodox, and all other schismatics, are a little shaky doctrinally without the Rock of Peter. So they fish a little in the chaotic sea, a few fish.
The heretics, or the Protestants, on the other hand, have lost or rejected the true Episcopate. Because of this, they don’t have valid bishops or priests. Consequently, they lose all sacraments that absolutely require a bishop or priest. These are appropriately five, five loaves:
Confession: requires forgiveness of sins, which only a priest can do
Anointing: ditto
Confirmation: only a priest or bishop can confirm
Eucharist: only a priest can transform bread and wine into God
Holy Orders: only a valid bishop can ordain priests or other bishops
This leaves them with two sacraments, Baptism and Marriage. The Baptism of heretics is valid, de fide! Any person can baptize, even a catechumen who is not yet Christian. Indeed, when a Protestant minister intends to wash away sins and initiate the recipient into Christ’s family, using water and the proper Trinitarian formula, a valid Baptism occurs; moreover, if the recipient has no obstacle, it is fruitful.
TEACHER: Yes, please continue; you are doing well.
STUDENT: Thanks. Moving on, when it comes to the Sacrament of Holy Matrimony, per Saint John Paul II and his perennial Theology of the Body, the priest is not the confector of the sacrament but rather the man and woman are themselves, first, through their vows, and then, through their bodies in the act of consummation. Hence, any validly baptized Protestant man and woman who come together, free to marry, with the proper intentions, and no impediments to a valid marriage, who solemnly and sincerely pronounce the vows, and consummate, contract a sacramental marriage even if they don’t (and they usually don’t) thinkit is a sacrament.
Five sacraments of stability lost, two sacraments in their ocean of confusion retained. Five loaves, two fish.
TEACHER: Excellent, and explain to me deeper the theology of the fish.
STUDENT: Yes, here goes. They only have two fish, which means they are perpetually in the sea, and therefore in chaos. How do we understand their chaos? They have cast aside all Apostolic Succession and the Sacred Tradition, alone which can infallibly illumine the implied meaning of Scripture texts that do not make explicit the intention of the Sacred Author. Consequently, without this sure charism of truth, their lot is inevitable: to confound the Scriptures ad infinitum, tossed to and fro by every wave of doctrine, by every whim and fancy unchecked by human vice and ignorance. Hence, not only do they not have the rock of Peter, but neither do they even have an earth on which to build a house, as the Orthodox do. For the Orthodox have Churches, since in every one of their holy edifices, Jesus Christ is literally and truly there—Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity. But where there is no Bishop, neither is there a priest, and if there is no priest, there is no literal, physical presence of Christ at the altar, and if there is no literal presence of Christ, there is no Church. Hence, though it be ecumenically painful, we really cannot say, “The Lutheran Church,” or the “Baptist Church,” or “the Church of God.” Yes, in all these, there are beautiful people, surely, who will one day see Jesus and be married to him forever, but sadly, their places of dwelling are in the end merely “ecclesial communities.”
TEACHER: You got it. You are the student par excellans. Let me move further:
Later in our analysis, we will see that this chaos they inherit by not possessing the five loaves will give a profound theology to these five sacraments that leave them in this self-same disarray and confounding: these five sacraments form the theological basis for almost all of their primary errors. But we will come to this momentarily.
STUDENT: That sounds very interesting. I cannot wait. Now, are there are any other loaves and/or fishes discourses in the Gospels? Any other error to look at?
The Three Sacraments of Initiation: Three Loaves at Midnight
TEACHER: Yes, there is actually a brief parable by Jesus about three loaves at midnight. This is much less known, but will be the source of great profundity later, a whole dimension even. Let us look at the Scripture.
Luke 11:
And he said to them: Which of you shall have a friend, and shall go to him at midnight, and shall say to him: Friend, lend me three loaves,
[6] Because a friend of mine is come off his journey to me, and I have not what to set before him.[7] And he from within should answer, and say: Trouble me not, the door is now shut, and my children are with me in bed; I cannot rise and give thee. [8] Yet if he shall continue knocking, I say to you, although he will not rise and give him, because he is his friend; yet, because of his importunity, he will rise, and give him as many as he needeth.
What would be your take on this?
STUDENT: Well, this is interesting. Now that I consider what you have gone over earlier, there simply are no more than two forms of Christian division, schism and heresy, and we have found their characteristic partitioning: Schismatics retain all seven sacraments but have a little instability: seven loaves, few fish. Heretics lose five sacraments and retain only two: Five loaves, two fish. There is no three here. So the three loaves must involve something of a different nature of partitioning other than rift in the Body of Christ. Here, it makes me think of ways that the Church might categorize the sacraments. I am drawing a blank.
TEACHER: There are, and, in fact, it is a prime staple of Vatican II. Let me give you a hint: marriage and holy orders are an example of a category.
STUDENT: Yes! Vocation! Now I remember. The other two categories are healing and initiation.
TEACHER: Yes, and they are laid out:
Initiation
Baptism
Confirmation
Eucharist
Healing:
Confession
Anointing
Vocation:
Marriage
Holy Orders
STUDENT: Excellent, and, let me guess: of the three categories above, only one has three sacraments: Initiation! This is gonna have to be our three loaves if we follow the path now. Will it fit the parable.?
TEACHER: It does! Let us probe it.
Again, the three loaves are, so far, the three sacraments of initiation:
Baptism
Confirmation
Eucharist
Now, the parable has a presumably cold and hungry person coming in from a long journey petitioning for three loaves at an inopportune time, midnight. Well, let us just go with it; if we assume the sacraments of initiation, we see that normally, a young person receives these either all at once at birth (the Eastern Rites), or spread out but culminating in late childhood (West). Hence, “my children are with me in bed,” since a normal Catholic wraps up initiation by early in life. But adult converts, who journey long in life, who are never fed sacramentally, and who are therefore hungry for spiritual nourishment, come to the Church at an “inopportune time”, even as, per the Old Rite, the Midnight Easter Vigil. They, then, are brought in with three loaves all at once at “midnight”, the three great sacraments of Initiation: Baptism, Confirmation, and Eucharist.
STUDENT: That is awesome. And now, we have all the theology of the loaves and fishes. Are we ready to apply them to the Alabaster Jar scenes and the extremes? After all, we have the numbers to work with: 5 loaves, 500, 50, and 3 loaves, 300, and 30.
Applying the Sacramental Theology of Separation to the Extremes
TEACHER: Yes, this is where the real meat starts to be ingested. As expected, the 500 and 50, per the Pharisee scene, will symbolize anti-Sacramental theology around the 5 loaves, or five sacraments lost, and the 300 and 30, per the corporal-works-of-mercy scene, will image similar anti-Sacramental theology for the three loaves, or sacraments of initiation.
STUDENT: This is all fascinating. Where should we begin?
Pharisaical Heretics, the 5 Sacraments of Instability
TEACHER: We are going to start with the Pharisaical heretics and their 5-sacrament-deprivation instability. There is an article from months past, where we have seen that Baptism and Marriageare effectively like basicSacraments, summarizing, in their supreme signs, all that is good. Further, mystically, they provide a profound interpretation of Apocalypse 13, the false prophet, as having two horns like Lamb (who has seven, cited in Apocalypse 4-5). These were the two anti-Sacramental interpretations of the lies of the fall, the summary of all evil.
We can then ask, what about these five sacraments? Here, I argue another mystical meaning is present, an unbelievably profound meaning: if Baptism and Marriage are the most basic Sacraments, the sign of all that is good, the signs of rudimentary Christianity, and a sign of the great beginning of Salvation and the hoped-for end, then the five remaining sacraments fill in the gaps, fill in the specificities and subtleties of the general journey between the beginning and the end. More to the point, if the heretics lack these five sacraments through their lack of the Episcopate, and the Episcopate is like and “earth” of stability, it would seem to imply that nearly all of their instability in doctrine should hinge on the full theological implications of these very five sacraments they lack!
STUDENT: That makes perfect sense. And I assume that this has proper theology. Let’s go through it.
TEACHER: Indeed, here were go.
First, let us recall the five that they lack:
Confession: requires forgiveness of sins, which only a priest can do
Anointing: ditto
Confirmation: only a priest or bishop can confirm
Eucharist: only a priest can transform bread and wine into God
Holy Orders: only a valid bishop can ordain priests or other bishops
The Forgiveness of Sins and Justification
The first set of sacraments that form the theological basis of a great portion of debated doctrine in Protestantism is the sacraments of confession and anointing of the sick. The reason is because they entails the issue of the forgiveness of sins. We will see this involves the question of whether grace can be resisted, whether justification can be lost, whether there is unforgivable sin prior to death, and related issues. Let us start with Confession.
Confession
The true doctrines implied by Confession are these, among others:
any grace is resistible
the grace of justification can be lost and is lost through grievous sin
there is non-grievous sin
grievous sin has clear defined parameters: grave matter, full culpability in intellect and will
grace of justification can be restored through confession with at least imperfect contrition
perfect contrition restores justification if penitent intends confession asap
one must die in charity to be saved
charity necessitates proactive acts of love
grave sins of omission of charity result in loss of justification
charitable acts are signs of grace, but are not guaranteed since grace is resistible
Protestants confound these truths ad infinitum. Half of Protestant Christendom believes that grace is resistible, and half [Calvinists] does not. Consequently, Calvinists do not believe that justification can be lost. They believe that positive movement in grace is guaranteed if one is elect, since grace is irresistible. Most Calvinists would say that if someone who seemed elect fell into serious sin, it would mean that person never knew God to begin with. Protestants seem to have aversion to the doctrine that distinguishes mortal sin from venial sin.
On the other side, of those Protestants who believe that grace is resistible, there is no clear agreement as to how justification can be lost. For many, it would involve a grave sin, but probably not as clearly defined as by Rome. Some might just have conditions like, stop believing, stop trying, stop trusting in Jesus to cover you, and so forth. For them also, to get it back is not clear. It almost never involves confession to a priest or minister. Repentance would be common as a condition for reinstatement but not necessarily as defined as imperfect or perfect contrition. Sometimes it might just mean, as per above, resuming in fiducial trust in the merits of Christ, possibly starting trying again, or having faith again.
Works as necessary for salvation might be believed by some on the resistible side, but obviously, for the irresistible side, works are guaranteed from irresistible grace and so are not salvific, being just a manifestation of a salvation begun by initial conversion.
The heresy of imputation also comes in. The notion that there can be a contradiction between the actual state of one’s soul and actions and what God “considers” the reality to be is absurd. Catholicism is very realistic: God sees the soul as it is, whether there is divine love within it or not. This reality translates by way of implication into confession: confession presupposes that God is seeing the true state of the heart of the person. If they have cast Him aside by grave sin, then God can see it and renders the person an enemy as regards charity. If the person is in God’s friendship, that is, is in grace and has no stain of unrepentant grievous sin, then God sees that and is overall pleased with the soul. If these realities were not implied, confession would make no sense.
Let us move on to the Anointing:
Anointing of the Sick
The main true doctrines implied are:
God will pursue the soul unto the bitter end. Mercy is possible right up until the moment before death.
consequently, there is no unforgivable sin before death
suffering is part of the Christian experience and can be united to Jesus’ pains on the cross to purify the soul and to add to the redemption of other souls
through anointing, the soul’s sufferings are sanctified, and one is strengthened in the evening of life to suffer with patience and charity and to prepare for the ultimate union with God at death
suffering does not necessarily represent that the soul has fallen out of favor with God, but rather, God calls all of us, at various times, to participate with Christ in the cross
Protestantism confounds many of these things. With regards to unforgivable sins, Scripture seems to suggest at least these in several places:
Blasphemy against the Holy Spirit, Matthew 12
Apostasy from the faith, Hebrews 6
Swearing before God and breaking the promise [James, but whoever swears is damned]
The mark of the beast
If a Protestant sect has a more conservative bent of eisegesis, then they may have no other choice than to take these frightening passages literally. Consider the fate, then, of souls who are told that they are unforgivable, or who have come to believe they are unforgivable. This would be incomprehensible torture. It could be an “anointing unto damnation”: “Well, since you are now damned beyond relief, you may as well take up what pathetic time you have left before death, and eat, drink, fornicate, and be merry, for when it is through, you go into eternal fire!” This would then be the antithesis of the anointing of the sick, in that whereas the sacrament strengthens one in one’s suffering out of love, to prepare for ultimate salvation, the other, on the other hand, is a diabolical christening of pleasures to prepare for an irreversible damnation. Too, I have seen sects that claim that if any Christian sins seriously, his salvation is lost permanently. This fits here as well.
Moving on to suffering, there are definite poles. On the one hand, because the Pharisaical sects have separated themselves from the Incarnational and Eucharistic reality of the Gospel, where the Church on earth is intimately intertwined with the Christ and the Churches suffering and triumphant, they do not have a strong conception of the Christian who suffers in and through Christ and by His strength. Consequently, suffering is a sign of loss of favor with God. We must repent and get our life back in order if we wish to escape our misfortune. This then spiritually victimizes the suffering soul with spiritual torture like the anointing unto damnation. The suffering soul searches his heart for sin, for what he is doing wrong, and begins to despair. Too, some Calvinists have a teaching that if you are not overcoming some sin despite all efforts, it may be a sign that you are damned.
Election, Predestination, and the Charisms
The next set of errors flows from Confirmation. Here, the implications include election, predestination, gifts and charisms, and the divine resolve to save all men.
Confirmation
God has predestined the elect positively and the damned negatively; the elect were chosen from all eternity but not without consideration of their free will and good deeds. Similarly, God has foreseen and allowed that some men will not make it, but it is merely in consideration of future sins, merely allowedand not positively willed, that this is so, and noting that God will have offered salvation to the soul at multiple intervals, unto the bitter end.
Confirmation is to strengthen the soul for the mature fight for salvation; it is available to all Catholics who desire it and are properly prepared and disposed; it implies a positive Divine resolve to save all men
charisms are gifts to the soul that are not for the soul but for the Church; God gives some unique subset of them to all the faithful.; no one charism or set of charisms are necessary for salvation
The Protestants confound all these issues. Firstly, there are extremes in predestination. On the right, in Calvinism, God not only knows the future, but positively chooses persons to save, and passes over the others. This effectively means that God does not will the salvation of all men but only “the chosen.” Signs of being elect can include, amongst the sects: holiness, worldly favor, materialistic blessings, or charisms, eg. for Pentecostals, one must have tongues to be saved. On a personal note, I once came across a sect that believed that unless you had all of the charisms, you will not be saved.
The tortured souls are then, again, those who are struggling to maintain holiness, those who are in destitution, those who are not blessed in the way of material things, or ones who don’t have “charisms,” or at least the right ones. When God does not desire to save all men, being in the downside group becomes this spiritual torture.
The opposite extreme is an assault on the omniscience of God: Open Theism. This heresy takes beginning Scriptures that use anthropomorphic language and that seem to suggest a God that is “caught off-guard,” and extrapolates to the erroneous notion that God is operating in time and is therefore as surprised by history as we are. He is not adapting His activity to what He knows is coming down the pike, but rather reacting to things He did not know were advancing.
The final set of errors in this section are the conundrums of Holy Orders and Eucharist. Both of these sacraments are intimately tied to the notion of the “true communion,” or, that is, which men truly speak for God.
Holy Orders
Eucharist
the only true men of God, who are guaranteed to speak the truth and mediate the authentic graces formally are the men who have holy orders in union with the Pope: deacons, priests, and bishops. This is the sure sign of faith and right doctrine.
Holy orders inaugurates a sacramental economy of rituals and mysticism
Where the Eucharist is, there is the true Church
Protestants have no stable, centralized authority but only countless men with Bibles in their hands, all mutually conflicting and preaching that the Holy Spirit has shown them the fullness of truth. And which of them really speaks for God? They say, if you call them on it, “Don’t take my word for it, read the Bible for yourself.” This means, as in Steve Ray’s story, once you become a bible-believer, you have an enormous task on your shoulders: to develop the correct doctrines over the rest of your life through painstaking, humble and sincere Bible-study. This is obviously absurd, since you are not a full-time bible scholar and noting that there are full-time bible scholars in every denomination who have accepted Jesus into their heart, and are sincere, and who really repent every day, and who take everything in context, and who have read Scripture 40 times over; and no two of which can agree on all doctrinal issues. And you are not even a bible scholar, yet you have a 40-hour work week, wife, kids, chores, and so forth. How the hell are you supposed to solve Scripture when the full-time people cannot?!
The presumptuous one says, I just know because I am holy and learned, or they say, most of those questions are not essential doctrine. Just repent and follow Jesus. On the other hand, the fearful one who believes that he needs to get all doctrine correct, can only cower before the myriads of hell-fire “men of God” and try to sort out what the truth is. All with a full-time job (not a religious job), family, kids, and so forth.
As for sacraments, Protestantism has divisions across issues of what degree of ritual should be present. Modern evangelicals have a largely absent sacramental and ritual-based worship. Older, but more liberal sects, retain sacramental nature to varying degrees. Indeed, if it was true that in the OT, the Pharisees had physical rituals and no inner renewal, then we can say modern Pharisees have inner renewal but no physical rituals. The Catholic Church has the balance.
The sister doctrine is the Eucharist: the true Communion. This is a corollary problem from just above: you cannot find the true Church unless you figure out which of the 1000+ Bible-thumpers has the fullness of truth. In Calvin’s view, if you don’t find the exact one, you are toast. Today, in light of the confusion, the Protestants usually just shuffle off the doctrinal issues, as above, to non-essential categorization, get into a generic “bible-believing” Church, and consider it good.
Pharisaical Conclusion
STUDENT: This all makes very good sense. It seems, also, to summarize the main doctrines that Protestants contest, with certain aberrational exceptions. The forgiveness of sins is a huge issue. A plethora of Protestant debate centers around justification, sin, renewal, grace, etc, and confession adequately summarizes these topics. Too, predestination, the elect, and God’s foreknowledge are a big issue separating Protestants. Likewise, we have the place of charisms. Finally, the conundrum of finding the true Christian church is a can of worms in Protestantism, an ocean of confusion. Yes, it all comes together well.
So correct me if I am wrong, but this basically shows that not only do these five sacraments confound the heretics of their same great rebellion but also sets up a dichotomy between the presumptuous and fearful, or despairing. Is that true?
TEACHER: Absolutely. On the one hand, presumptuous heretics assume they are immune to the issues of the five sacraments lost, and the fearful, or despairing, cower in fear because they get no relief of definitive answers for their mind or heart.
STUDENT: Can you summarize?
TEACHER: Yes. Here are the basic principles in summary
The Presumptuous Heretic
Confession: I have no need of it, for no true believer can fall from grace. If they do, they never knew God to begin with. Or else, I can sin with impunity.
Anointing of the Sick: Perhaps I might fall from grace temporarily and multiple times, but, in the end, God will guarantee my restoration and save me. Misfortune and illness does not touch me because I am holy.
Confirmation: I know that I am elect, a chosen one, so why do I need special graces to persevere, especially since grace is irresistible?
Holy Orders: Rome is an impostor, but *I* know what the Scriptures mean. No one will give me fear that I do not properly interpret the Word. The Spirit surely inspires me, so let me go out into the field and sow the Word as a man of God for certain. And what about those 99 other preachers like me, no two of which agree with one another, including me? They are not as mature as I, not as sincere, not as wise, not as versed in the Biblical texts.
Holy Communion: I know that my community is the true society of Christ. Never mind that there are 99 other such communities claiming the same sola-scriptura mantra, and not one of them has any other credential to make them stand out from the others more than any other one. I know the truth, and we have it. Or else, it does not matter what church you belong to, just so long as it is bible-believing.
The Innocent, Scrupulous Heretic
This is the innocent heretic. His heart is soft, so he realizes perpetual need for repentance and dependence on God. But the Scriptures, without Rome's stable Tradition, have left fearful uncertain answers by their harsh hyperbole to the five dimensions above, as follows:
Confession: I cannot know if the grace of God’s friendship can be lost or not, let alone in what manner, and let alone if I can get it back. If I can lose it, it is not certain how. Then it is not certain if I can get it back. If I can get it back, how is not known. I cannot lose it, some say; I have no culpability, since my sins will not be imputed to me. If righteousness matters, some say the love of God flows infallibly by irresistible grace, meaning that if I seem to walk with God for many years, and backslide, I must never have known Him to begin with. O, Lord, save me. What shall I do?
Anointing: O, Lord, have I committed the unforgivable sin? Have I blasphemed the Holy Spirit? Have I taken the mark of the beast? Have I swore and been unfaithful to the promise? Have I apostatized? Is there no hope for me now? Must I wait now In horror until judgment day, the day of my damnation? O, Lord, I have sickness and disease. The dear pastor said that this is a sign of judgment. Lord have mercy, don’t damn me!
Confirmation: Am I elect, Lord? Or have you passed over me? Do you love me, or am I condemned? Lord, I am struggling with some sins, am I lost? O, Lord, if I am condemned, I cannot bear it. Take my life and damn me now!
Holy Orders: Lord, I do not trust Rome because of her sins and laxity. I fear her, Lord; she is the antichrist. But now, without her, and her so-called stability, I have only an arena of myriads of competing men and factions, all hell-fire and brimstone, claiming to speak for God, but all mutually conflicting. What must I do? They all say that I must search the Scriptures in fear, cowering in humility, until I think I have found all truth. If I misinterpret, Lord, because of my sins, I will perish! Where are the true men of God, Lord? Save me!
Holy Communion: Lord, Calvin taught that at any age of history, there is guaranteed to be at least one community that fully correctly interprets the Word, but where it is, no one knows! I can only HOPE that I find it! But if I don’t and join even a partially erroneous community, I will perish.
Hyper-Corporal Heretics
STUDENT: Excellent. Shall we move on to the hyper-corporal Christians?
TEACHER: Yes. Let us recall the condition of the left before we build up the Initiation sacraments discourse:
The left is soft-hearted. They have the compassionate experience to know that bad things happen to good people. They know that the suffering many times do not deserve it, that they are victims. So they show compassion; they help the persons materially. But they, then, precisely because of disillusionment of so muchinnocent suffering, have lost faith in the other-worldly things. They say to themselves, where is this God of salvation? Of meaning and purpose and Plan? If there is a Plan, and meaning, and truths, wherefore so much senseless suffering of the innocent and yet counterpart prosperity of the wicked? They, therefore, tend to downplay doctrine, truth, and the other-worldly concerns and focus on the [this-worldly] corporal works of mercy.
Hence, in the scene of the woman lavishly anointing the head of Christ with an expensive alabaster jar of ointment, the disciples complain, “Why such waste? This alabaster jar could have been sold for three hundred days wages and given to the poor”.
The worship of the God-Man, the other-worldly Savior, and the seeking of mercy—imaged by the woman lavishly anointing the head of Christ and, with painfully heart-felt contrition, seeking forgiveness, the necessary condition for salvation—is spurned for the sake of the corporal works of mercy.
We can recall also that the left is effectively anti-Original Sin, meaning, downplaying sin, its nature, and, not only not judging sinners, but not judging sins. This will play later into their anit-sacramentalism in the other four sacraments not part of initiation.
STUDENT: This is all good. But how can all this be related to the three sacraments of initiation?
TEACHER: Excellent question. It is in this: what are the catechumens being initiated into?
STUDENT: The Church!
TEACHER: Yes, but more specific.
STUDENT: A community!
TEACHER: Bingo! A community: the essence of our theology.
STUDENT: How so?
TEACHER: Because, effectively, the resolve of the liberal church is to set up a physical utopia, where all hold hands in peace and love, and where all people have food. A vague and diverse spirituality will be present, but the driving force of the communion is material sustenance. This, in a certain sense, is an image of heaven, if even perverse. Of course, when it divulges, shedding the spiritual, we get a secular utopia, communism. But community is the key, and it is all inclusive, as we saw. Hence, it is universal, even perversely universal, since contradiction in beliefs and irreconcilable cultural confrontations will be either dismissed, downplayed, or ignored. Because, then, of its universal inclusiveness, it most appropriately resembles a community, so that the three sacraments of initiation into a community, stripped of most other-worldly essence, become the rallying cry of the liberal church.
STUDENT: Excellent. Let me give a try to analyze the hyper-corporal sacramental “community.”
Hyper-Corporal Heretics, 3 Sacraments of Community
Let us keep in mind that the hyper-corporal ones all but strip the initiation sacraments of their spiritual and moral essence and leave only the corporal elements. And of those elements of the sacraments that are spiritual, they may replace the principle with something corporal or something minimally spiritual. Hence, building on the theological properties of the liberal community we have studied thus far, we have the following:
Hyper-Corporal Baptism
In reality, Baptism indeed initiates the recipient into a “community”, and, admittedly, the members of this community are persons that have a physical dimension with physical needs [which is not to be neglected, as in the dualistic heresies]. But there is still a whole other dimension of the community, the spiritual, that effectively is even more important, seeing as, if all members of the Church have a full stomach and a wonderful place to live when they die, but go to hell, how does it profit them? For the liberals, however, the community must be reduced to mainly a corporal society that loves God in some vague sense, but mainly just in the context of caring for the victims of temporal misfortune.
We are initiated into a mainly corporal community, the “Church,” where we share “faith” in humanity’s capacity by the “Spirit” to care for the less fortunate and down-trodden, where “salvation” will ultimately mean “all are fed,” physically, all are provided for in the material needs [effectively pushing towards communism].
“Repentance” really only means, turn away from selfishness and help others corporally. In this regard, also, that Baptism truly washes away Original Sin is downplayed. Authentic Original Sin means that whereas human beings are not utterly depraved in nature but, in fact, more or less naturally good, nevertheless, a serious tendency to selfishness and ignorance exists apart from grace and revelation. It is not to be hyperbolized yet must be taken seriously. The liberal interpretation downplays Original Sin to all but non-existent: People are basically really good and more prone to love and goodness than bad, if only they have what they need temporally. Virtually no-one has any substantial culpability. Hence, nearly all men will be saved in their view. Baptism is more emphasized as, again, entrance into a community versus washing away sin and redeeming. Baptism is also liturgical, which is heartfelt, hence, the left is very diverse and inclusive liturgically.
Hyper-Corporal Confirmation
Authentic Confirmation has spiritual gifts to enable other-worldly salvation. It makes one a mature member of the Church. For the liberal, spiritual gifts are replaced with natural talents, or at best, spiritual gifts that are more oriented toward compassion and “love,” rather than concrete gifts to help one on the spiritual way of avoiding sin, discernment of moral and truth situations, and doing that which is right. Hence, their gifts are used not so much to help you get to heaven but to build up the community, to be used to help those in need, as in worldly charisms. One is a mature member, not of so much a spiritual Communion journeying toward other-worldly bliss, but just a “corporal community” ever improving the world to a material utopia, where all are welcome, all are fed.
Hyper-Corporal Eucharist
The Eucharist is no longer primarily aimed at strengthening one’s spiritual condition to avoid sin and grow in sanctity, a sign of a communion of persons joined by common faith and unity in an abundance of positively revealed spiritual truths and mysteries, and worshiping in unified, uniform Liturgy, but becomes merely a “celebration and thanksgiving” of the vague, soft-headed “do unto others as you would have them do unto you” community that is “one in exercising the corporal works of mercy.” Hence, because the left largely disregards the mind, believing as “one” in positive explicit doctrines is downplayed. What you “believe” is less important than that you are “compassionate.” Hence, again, virtually all men will be saved regardless of beliefs and religion. And, effectively, the “food” of the Eucharist is no longer an end unto itself, namely to feed upon Our Lord in all His essence, but merely pointing toward that time when all humanity is “fed” literally, when all humanity has enough corporal sustenance.
TEACHER: Marvelous, Mr Student, Five Stars! Since you are on a role, why not give a try about how the other four sacraments are largely rejected in all ways.
STUDENT: You got it!
The Hyper-Corporal Mockery of the 4 non-Initiation Sacraments
The other sacraments they would rather leave behind:
Confession
Confession is purely spiritual, for the most part, since it deals with salvation, sin, mercy, grace, and spiritual mediation. So the hyper-corporal heretics must necessarily poo-poo it. This easily follows directly from our theology of the hyper-corporal heretic. Here is a sort of verbalization of how they might approach it considering their “judge neither the sinner nor the sin.”
Confession?! No way! We are not sinners! That is offensive. We are all victims. Consider, too, across all of Western Europe and Northern America, amongst other places, the land of hyper-corporal Christianity, confessions lines are veritably empty. Hardly anything is really bad. Even if it is objectively serious, virtually no culpability is ever present. Hardly anyone is really culpable at all for what they do. Just give people food, clothing, and shelter, and then they will be good people. Live and let live. Life is hard. Don’t judge, you Pharisee.
Marriage
Although Marriage is an intensely physical reality in one dimension, especially when it comes to the supreme act of marriage, largely, it has mammoth spiritual and moral implications. If it is true that the corporal heretic is non-judgmental and lenient because of life’s difficulties, especially in the area of sexuality must they have contentions with the Church, for with great gift comes great sacrifice. And here, we know what this means: abstinence from fornication and masturbation before marriage; no artificial birth control; no sexual climax outside of intercourse; no divorce and remarriage; be as generous with children as you reasonably can; work hard to save the whole family’s souls. Chastity can be an enormous challenge for a Christian in a difficult world. All the more, then, will the hyper-corporal heretic have serious issues with the Church’s teachings in this regard:
Who can live chaste lives? They, per St Timothy’s Letter, “Have the semblance of godliness but deny its power thereof.” Sexuality is based on affection, less about children, who are burdens. The pull of our instincts simply cannot be curbed by Jesus or the sacraments.So, admittedly, chastity, in the sense of no fornication, no artificial birth control, no abortion, gays living celibate lives, and so forth, would be nice, but it isn’t practical. So let us go ahead and support sexual activity that is immoral and make provisions for it: birth control, divorce, abortion, gay pride.
Holy Orders
Once again, like confession, holy orders is a sacrament of mostly spiritual dimension. Firstly, it is male only, and with the feminine bent of the corporal heretics, this will not go down well. Here, we recall that Christ became a man because the man images the Creator in the sexual union, not the woman. Hence, the priest, who stands in place of Christ, spiritually making love to his parish community, must be male for the relationship to have theological sense. That is a no go for the liberals, as we all know. From here, we can proceed:
Holy Orders? No way! Patriarchs are tyrants. In fact, let us make WOMEN the supreme ones in authority: in ordination, in teaching, in preaching, … There is a radical push in Western "Catholicism" to ordain women. And even though, "as of yet", women are not ordained, corporal heresy is saturated with women leadership roles to a very low amount of male forms; the priests, in general, are effeminate and unmanly, if not physically, then certainly spiritually. An authentic Patriarch has spiritual potency; when he descends from the altar down upon his bride, the parish community, he is called to proactively penetrate her innermost mind and heart and impregnate her with real seed, real substance: truth, doctrine, meaning, mystery, purpose, and real inspiration to go and live what she has learned, so help her God. The dragon's mockery of the patriarch is effeminacy: the priest is spiritually impotent, and what seed might come forth from him is largely sterile, since it is mainly dessert—no main course. Hence, pretty much, the anti-Patriarch, the effeminate counterfeit of what a priest should be, just massages his bride's abdomen gently and gives her strawberry shortcake before she slumbers.
Anointing of the Sick
Is there meaning in human suffering? For the Pharisee, suffering is a sign of losing favor with God. The corporal heretic DOES know that suffering usually means the opposite: the person is a victim, or at least, has found his misfortune through no fault of his own. The solution, of course, is that suffering can be united with Jesus on the cross and offered up for souls. No suffering that cannot be helped at the time need be wasted. Without this good news, the corporal heretic has a veritable insane drive to eliminate all suffering in the world, as if, in some self-same insane reality, it could be done. They are like the person who wants to save the world, not realizing that God only expects us to do what we can. Hence: can we really help save souls by offering up our crosses to God? A Roman fiction; God is hands off to this world; His involvement is minimal, if non-existent. Suffering should be eliminated at nearly all costs: if it gets bad, you should be able to eliminate substantial burdens: euthanasia, abortion, same-sex activity, and so forth.
In another dimension, the reality of God offering a last minute hope in the anointing leaves a positive note of prospect for even the hardest of sinners. However, the hyper-corporal heretic will hyperbolize this into veritable universalism.
How was that?
TEACHER: Excellent once again! I’ll take over from here and do the secular messiansim for the liberal, and you can do the Pharisee.
STUDENT: Sounds good.
TEACHER: Ok, here we go. As we have already seen in previous sections of this essay, when the religious extremes lose all sense of the spiritual, they ultimately digress into secular messianism. The corporal heretics are no exception:
The Secular Mockery of the Three Sacraments of Community: Communism
The three sacraments are counterfeited by communism, and, as just mentioned, since God has been utterly stripped from the “community”, the STATE REPLACES GOD!
Anti-Baptism:Have not faith in God and do what pleases Him, but have faith in the State and do its bidding. The propogranda and totalitarianism of the communist state.
Anti-Confirmation: You don't need spiritual gifts for your spiritual end, salvation in the next life. Rather, you need worldly gifts for your temporal end in this life: to seek your own personal worldly glory and the end of the state, its survival and prosperity.
Anti-Eucharist: We don't need God to provide us our spiritual food, to build up the spiritual Kingdom, to win salvation in the next life, ending all sin and death. Rather, we need the State to provide us all our physical food, to build up the physical Kingdom, that secular salvation may reign in the this life, that poverty may end.
And yet, the Christ has said, "The poor you will always have with you." It is absolutely not possible to eliminate the cross completely, and it is all the more diabolically impossible to solve the human problems apart from God's truth and grace: "The persecution that accompanies her pilgrimage on earth will unveil the ‘mystery of iniquity’ in the form of a religious deception offering men an apparent solution to their problems at the price of apostasy from the truth." - CCC 574-575
But at the end of the world, the ultimate man of perdition, the Antichrist, will betray "all that is of God, yes, the God-Man," in order that he may have and give to humanity "all that this world can offer," 30 pieces of silver!
The Dragon’s Secular Mockery of the Sacraments of Division
STUDENT: That is so apropos. What then, may I ask, of these numbers, 300, 30, and such?
TEACHER: Excellent question! What is amazing here is to look into these mystical numbers in the alabaster jar scenes. Remember that we had 300 and 30 in the liberal scene (the jar is worth “300 days wages,” and Judas, almost immediately after the scene, goes and begins the betrayal plan of the Christ for “30 pieces of silver”) and 500 and 50 in the Pharisaical scene (in Jesus’ parable, the one servant owes “500 days wages” and the other “50”). We already have the primary factor in association: 3 and 5, or the liberals correlating to the 3 sacraments of initiation, and the pharisees correlating to the 5 sacraments lost by heretics.
Consequently, the only thing left to ascertain is the different degrees of ten: 100 and 10, as in 3*100, 3*10, and so forth.
STUDENT: How can we view 10 and 100 then?
TEACHER: Well, in short, we can view 10 as a symbol of the world, or worldliness.
STUDENT: Really? How so.
TEACHER: Well, for starters, two beasts and a dragon in the Apocalypses of Old and New Testaments have 10 horns. We know these beasts image great, evil manifestations of worldliness opposed to God in history. They are purely of the world, of the flesh. Too, the ten horns have been seen as the Ten Commandments, which the devil and his kingdoms fight with. When you throw out the Ten Commandments, you become solely of the world, the enemy of God’s People, and the fullest expression of the fall in human history. The best you can hope for in terms of goodness is merely natural. So it is fitting to see 10 as a symbol of the world or worldliness.
STUDENT: That makes sense. How then would you apply it to the numbers in question?
TEACHER: As follows: factor each number.
30 = 3 x 10
300 = 3 x 10 x 10
If 10 is the world, or worldliness, then 10 by itself can be PURE worldliness, as in the 30 (only one factor of ten), whereas 10 x 10 can be like a double-dimension world, or, as it were, “other-worldly”; however, even though 10 x 10 is like an other-worldly situation, it is still nothing but tens and so remains worldly. In that vein, it implies a situation that can be called “pseudo-spiritual”.
The results are now immediate: the alabaster jar is worth “300 days wages”, whereas the fully diabolical transaction is 30 pieces of silver. Remember, the alabaster jar is liberal religion, and so 300 must apply to that. This fits perfectly! 10 x 10 gives it a pseudo-spiritual nature: having the semblance of another world, but really just being worldly, e g., per St Timothy’s letter, “having the semblance of godliness but denying its power.” And the 3? What else! The 3 sacraments of community: the jar is like an earthen vessel, our mortal bodies that contain the ointment that is our soul. And what are the works of the mortal world worth except, in the end, “300 days of labor.”
Judas is then easy. He has merely one factor of ten, 3 x 10. So his image is purely worldly, or secular, and also possesses the 3, the number of community, hence, communism, as above.
STUDENT: Totally killer, TEACHER! Why don’t you let me do the Pharisee scene?
TEACHER: You bet!
STUDENT: Ok, here we go. There are two levels of Pharisees: the Pharisees that have some semblance of the spiritual,, but are really in the end, mostly worldly, and then the secularly godless Pharisees, who are purely of the world. The first are 500, the latter, 50. The five derives from the five sacraments that heretics lose and whose theological implications they confound.
TEACHER: Good. Tell me about the 500.
STUDENT: Yes, the reason that the hardened evangelicals merely have the semblance of a spiritual, but are really only worldly, is because that is how the Christ portrayed the OT Pharisees. The OT Pharisees had the pretense of righteousness, but inside they were disgusting, arrogant, self-righteous hypocrites. This is the spitting image salvation by imputation. These are the self-same despicable heretics that say a Christian is merely imputed righteousness by God, while not necessarily actually having it. They claim love but are bigoted, as for example, they regard people who die without receiving the Gospel through no fault of their own as damned to hell. Many times evangelical pastors turn out to be frauds who only wish to fill their bellies and pocketbooks. Is this not all worldly? Not to mention to so much evangelical theology is pop psychology on how to succeed, which is truly of the world. There is no cross, no suffering, no misfortune. In conclusion, the NT Pharisees are largely worldly and not really very spiritual.
The Fascists prove similarly, but utterly of the world, the 50. A harsh, judgmental government that enforces laws to instigate paranoia. Like the bigoted evangelicals, it sees humanity as unequal, and so forth.
Teacher, why don’t you walk through the Fascist sacramental mockery, to bring us toward a close.
TEACHER: Certainly!
The Secular Mockery of the Five Sacraments Lost to Pharisaical Heretics
The Presumptuous Heretic
Confession: The State imposes a climate of fear with regards to her laws. Persons caught can expect terrible punishment, up to and including death. The victims of the bigotry fit here.
Anointing of the Sick: The state seeks to eradicate suffering and difficulties through diabolical means, e.g., euthanasia, eugenics.
Confirmation: The bigotry of the elect and non-elect extends into worldly bigotry: we are Aryans. We are superior. Others are less than us. They must be disposed of, or at best marginalized or used.
Holy Orders: The State manifests a hyper-masculine presence, rule by fear, force and dominance. It mocks authentic priests.
Holy Communion: The Pharisaical Church is hyper-exclusive, like the Fascist state.
STUDENT: This is very good. It seems we have reached the end, no?
The Father, the Child, the Fish, and the Scorpion
TEACHER: Well, I hate to disappoint you. I can let you go, or we can end with a great bang of some outstanding sacramental analogies.
STUDENT: What the hell, it has been awesome already! But first, can you give a sneak peak of where we are going, to entice patience!
TEACHER: You bet! Let us quote the profound yet frightening Scripture.
STUDENT: Go for it!
TEACHER: Thank you, Here we go!
Apocalypse 9
And the fifth angel sounded the trumpet, and I saw a star fall from heaven upon the earth, and there was given to him the key of the bottomless pit. [2] And he opened the bottomless pit: and the smoke of the pit arose, as the smoke of a great furnace; and the sun and the air were darkened with the smoke of the pit. [3] And from the smoke of the pit there came out locusts upon the earth. And power was given to them, as the scorpions of the earth have power: [4] And it was commanded them that they should not hurt the grass of the earth, nor any green thing, nor any tree: but only the men who have not the sign of God on their foreheads. [5] And it was given unto them that they should not kill them; but that they should torment them five months: and their torment was as the torment of a scorpion when he striketh a man.
[6] And in those days men shall seek death, and shall not find it: and they shall desire to die, and death shall fly from them. [7] And the shapes of the locusts were like unto horses prepared unto battle: and on their heads were, as it were, crowns like gold: and their faces were as the faces of men. [8] And they had hair as the hair of women; and their teeth were as lions: [9] And they had breastplates as breastplates of iron, and the noise of their wings was as the noise of chariots and many horses running to battle. [10] And they had tails like to scorpions, and there were stings in their tails; and their power was to hurt men five months. And they had over them
STUDENT: Wow, frightening. I wonder where we will go with this. I can see two prominent things are scorpions and people who do no have the “Seal of God” on their foreheads.
TEACHER: Yes, it is perplexing for sure. Well, to build toward an anti-sacramental interpretation of this spooky Scripture, we need to probe a dimension of allegory regarding loaves and fishes, different from our familiar miraculous feedings. We need to examine a parable, one we may be familiar with already.
STUDENT: Go ahead.
TEACHER: Here it is: the father who gives a serpent for a fish, and so forth.
Luke 11
And which of you, if he ask his father bread, will he give him a stone? or a fish, will he for a fish give him a serpent? [12] Or if he shall ask an egg, will he reach him a scorpion? [13] If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father from heaven give the good Spirit to them that ask him?
How do you think this might apply to our theology?
STUDENT: Let me see. I think after our first reflection on the five loaves, two fish, and such, the loaf and fish here in the parable are sacraments. On the other hand, there are eggs, which are not in the loaves and fishes stories, but we can note that sometimes you use eggs when you make bread. So an egg is probably some positive spiritual entity like a sacrament. Then, we have the scary objects: stones, serpents, and scorpions. There is mention of a father as well.
TEACHER: Yes. Consider this: first, the father figure gives a sacrament in two instances. Who might the father be? Hint, what kind of person dispenses the sacraments?
STUDENT: Ahah, I get it! A priest or bishop is a dispenser of a sacrament. So the father can image the spiritual paternity of the Episcopate.
TEACHER: Excellent. What then, would you make of the negative objects: hint, note another Scripture:
Luke 10
He that heareth you, heareth me; and he that despiseth you, despiseth me; and he that despiseth me, despiseth him that sent me….Behold, I have given you power to tread upon serpents and scorpions, and upon all the power of the enemy: and nothing shall hurt you.
STUDENT: Ahah, this is placing it in better context! The first statement is the Magisterium [“He who hears you hears Me!”], for whoever hears the Bishops united to Peter hears Christ, and whoever does not hear them, resists Christ. This reminds us most poignantly of the reality that the Church is protected from “all power of the enemy,” meaning, from spiritual harm. She will never preach error or heresy, and her power structure, however reduced it may become, will persist validly until the end of time. It reminds me too, that perhaps, just perhaps, those with the Seal of God are good Cathoilcs who listen to the Church, thereby guaranteeing that they shall not be harmed by false teaching, which may or may not be imaged by the tails like scorpions.
TEACHER: Yes, those are good preliminary observations. Would you now see any deeper depth in the serpents and scorpions, which are also present in the father parable?
STUDENT: Yes, you have me thinking. The serpents and scorpions are clearly negative spiritual entities and quite probably either heresies, lies, or counterfeits, just as the devil is the father of counterfeits—like how he plagiarizes the sacraments. In fact, if we look at the Apocalypse, the scorpion enters in the first great Woe, the serpent enters in the second great woe and in Apocalypse 12, and the serpent enters in Apocalyspe 13 with the dragon and the two horns of the false prophet.
TEACHER: Ok, but then, what kind of father gives these negative entities? A bishop or a priest?
STUDENT: Oh, obviously not! Rather, a bad father!
TEACHER: Good; let us start with the worst father of all, since that is the easiest. Who is he?
STUDENT: Obviously, the devil! The father of lies!
TEACHER: Good. Now what about a father that is bad, but not as bad as the devil.
STUDENT: I knew you would ask that! Well, let us see. We obviously need to move from a legitimate priest down the chain toward hell but not completely, which would also seem to imply that this type of father is less degree of counterfeit or lie. Hmm. What we can do? From Catholic priest, you move down to Orthodox priest, but that is still good, as we have seen that the Orthodox have valid orders. From there, we can only descend to heretics. Now, heretical ministers aren’t even as high as Catholic laity, but nevertheless, they can give two fish, Baptism and Marriage. We saw that, right?
TEACHER: You bet! So now what?
STUDENT: Well, they cannot give the five loaves, so maybe we are on to something. I would conjecture this: since the five sacraments that they lose, in their full theological implications, encase almost all doctrine that Protestants contest, and since not knowing the answers to those doctrinal disputes places one in disarray, confusion or even fright, perhaps an innocent heretic might ask a hardened, judgmental heretical minister for any of the five loaves and be given a “heart of stone”. For example, we have seen the presumptuous heretics in contrast to the overly scrupulous described in our reading.
TEACHER: This is good. We have already covered the presumptuous heretic torturing the scared heretic. How might it apply to our parable?
STUDENT: Yes; it would mean that the proud heretic tells the innocent one that those sacraments are inventions from Rome and that he has nothing to give. Possibly, too, if an egg were related to the five sacraments (it can be used to make bread), petitioning one or more of the five sacraments or its implications might render receiving a scorpion which “tortures.” This seems corroborated by our Apocalypse 9 Scripture that we are building toward.
TEACHER: Very good. Let me extrapolate on that: the scorpion tails’ torture for five months in the first great woe is the spitting image of Protestantism: the presumptuous heretics presume immunity from the fuller implications of the five sacraments they lose; on the other hand, the fearful heretics realize their need for these five that fill in the gap and also recognize that all they have is the two sacraments of basic faith [Baptism and Marriage]. As a result, they cannot get any relief from their spiritual instability and so suffer “tortures” from the myriads of presumptuous bigots who toss them to and fro by their conflicting answers to these vital questions.
Now that we have this, show me how to apply it to the parable. This is tricky, because the scorpions are given in place of an egg, not a loaf (which is rather replaced with a stone). Give it a try.
STUDENT: I can do it! As for the stone in place of the loaf, we already have a formal heretical minster who returns a heart of stone in place of a sacrament from amongst the five, as in “Please dear sir, give me [Confession, Anoiting, etc.]” Those are inventions of Rome, I have nothing to give. Go and find your own solution!
Now, for the more involved object, the egg.
Here is what I can come up with. Eggs can sometimes be used to make loaves. And this can convey that mystery and truth are “used” or found in the sacraments, not merely grace [Baptism implies the Flood, dying and rising to new life; marriage points to the Wedding Feast of the Lamb at the end of time; anointing of the sick, redemption in the last hour, the good thief, the suffering and death of the person images Jesus on the cross; confirmation implies God’s resolve to save all, and so forth;].
But even more so, there is the biological origin and process of the egg.
TEACHER: Really. Can you explain?
STUDENT: Yes, let us probe it: The egg originates from the female fowl. She must have intercourse with the male fowl. The male fowl stands upon the earth and heralds the light of dawn.
TEACHER: I like this, please continue, and in particular, how do you see the cock?
STUDENT: Yes, consider: the light of dawn is the light of Christ, His truths and His mystery. So the cock must image some source of truth for Jesus. What do you think?
TEACHER: I would say this: the cock’s pronouncement is Oral. Hence, the crowing can be the Oral Word of God. This also makes sense, since, the heretics do not have the Oral Word of God. That is one of their staple positions. They do not accept the Oral Word, or Sacred Tradition, since they are sola-Scriptura. Moreover, occasionally, they will take writings of the Fathers, which belong to the Bishops of the Church, and take them aside and interpret them without this self-same guidance of the Church. This is where the earth comes in. The crow has planted his feet firmly on the ground, and where have we seen the ground in our loaves and fishes analogies?
STUDENT: The Church, which is to say, the Episcopate!
TEACHER: Amen! The Bishops are the pillar and GROUND of truth, 1 Tim. 3:15. And to authentically receive the Oral Word of God, we must receive it through the Church. And since heretics have rejected the Church, they are doomed to heresies galore.
STUDENT: Great! Let me see if I can finish. Again, the male fowl must have intercourse with the female fowl to create an egg. We saw earlier that male/female intercourse images the interplay between Creator and creature, or between Jesus and the Church. Therefore, the male fowl is none other than God, especially in the Person of Christ, making the female fowl the Church.
Now we can put it all together: God, the cock, firmly seats His authority upon the stable earth of the Episcopate [He who hears you, hears Me]. From this stable foundation, the Oral Word of God flows from God through the Episcopate in the way of the cock crowing out to the world, heralding the dawn of Christ’s light. All these things are carried into the female fowl’s inmost being, the spiritual love shared between Christ and the Church. This divine interplay of exchange of the love between Christ, the Oral Word of God, the bishops, and the Church brings forth a new light, an egg, which, when it grows in the womb of the female fowl, becomes “developed doctrine.” It is precisely this developed doctrine that keeps the Church and faithful on the pure way of truth, protected from spiritual harm, from errors and heresies. None of these protections and blessings can be had by any heretic. Hence, now we come to the scorpion.
TEACHER: Yes, may I finish with the final punch?
STUDENT: Sure, go ahead.
TEACHER: Any heretic who asks for the theological and doctrinal certitude that comes from the egg can never have it, since it must received from the female fowl, the Church. Hence, if they ask a formal heretical minister, our scary creature with a scorpion tail, for an egg, they can only receive a scorpion, a heresy of torture.
STUDENT: This is amazing. And let me guess about the Seal of God in that fifth trumpet, to confirm my hunch. The Seal of God is simply Catholicism. The forehead symbolizes the mind, which is then protected from error. But fearful heretics, innocent though they are, are still tortured because they don’t have that.
One more thing. The five months are the five sacraments, right?
TEACHER: Yes, very good.
Now, There is just one more application, the two sacraments left to heretics, twisted into the ultimate diabolical lies.
STUDENT: That sounds awesome, but I am going to ask you to hammer this out, as this is not entirely clear.
TEACHER: You got it! It would be difficult. Here goes:
The Secularly Messianic Mockery of the Two Base Sacraments left to Heretics, the Fall
We are now down to the two sacraments left to heretics, the two fish, Baptism and Marriage. We will argue that these sacraments, when twisted by the devil completely, become the ultimate lies of the fall, themselves, a symbol of all that has ever been evil, or will be.
STUDENT: That is a tall order. Let us see where you go with this.
TEACHER: Sure, the game plan is this: we will first show that Baptism and Marriage, in their ultimate theological principles and signs, shew forth the two great principles of all goodness, or all purpose, per the Baltimore Catechism. Once we have done that, we will argue that to completely attack or deny these principles—to mock them—we get the principles of all evil, the primary lies of the fall. In conclusion, we will then argue that the Lamb’s seven horns in Apocalypse are the seven sacraments, and that the two horns of the false prophet like a lamb are these two anti-principles of the fall. Finally, we will argue this is what the serpent in place of a fish means: an innocent soul asks the devil for two fish, Baptism and Marriage, and the dragon returns two serpents, the two great lies of the fall.
STUDENT: Sounds good. Fire away!
TEACHER: Will do. Here we go. Now, let me ask you, per our game plan, what are the principles of all goodness and purpose for man?
STUDENT: O, that’s easy! The Baltimore Catechism laid that out:
To know, love, and serve God in this life
To be happy with Him forever in the next
TEACHER: Very good. Allow me to interject that there is really only ONE major reason that we exist, per Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma, Ludwig Ott.
STUDENT: What might that be?
TEACHER: As follows: the one ultimate reason that God creates is to share the Divine life, love, and knowledge of the Trinity with creatures. That just boils down to two reasons when we separate our life here from above. In either case, for us to share in God’s life and love is grace, or loving Him, and to share in His Knowledge is to know Him. And these are the two great things we will do, first on earth, and then, hopefully, in heaven forever.
STUDENT: Excellent. How, now, do we apply this to the Baptism and Marriage?
TEACHER: Simple. Firstly, the primary disposition of Baptism is faith and repentance. It also involves being declared a child of the Father. It is repentance because at the renewal of our Baptismal vows, we are asked to reject sin, the glamour of evil, and the empty promises of the devil. That is repentance down the middle. It is faith because after this, we profess our faith in the basic Creed: “Do you believe in God, … in Jesus Christ…. In the Holy Spirit, in the Catholic Church...”
STUDENT: Excellent point. And we can see that, to follow up, faith is knowing God, for to know God’s truths is to have faith in them; what about marriage?
TEACHER: The Wedding Feast of the Lamb! When we get to the NEXT life, we will marry God, marry Jesus. We will exchange wondrous spiritual love of spiritual marriage to the Creator, completely giving and receiving truly beautiful gifts of love, life, mystery and truth. And that is the happiness that we will have in that same next life.
STUDENT: Amen, that seals that Baptism and Marriage, in their ultimate principles, mirror the two great reasons we exist. How we can argue that their complete counterfeit gives us all evil, the lies of the fall.
TEACHER: Bingo! The argument is immediate. If we completely deny the overarching principles of all good in existence, we must necessarily get the principles of all evil, which is nothing short of the fall. Here we go:
Again, Christ has said, “What father would give his child a serpent if he asked for a fish?” We can imagine the already deluded world that has tickling ears to hear what it would like to hear, to come unto the worst father of all existence, and petition him, this father of lies, for two fish: “Father, should we seek to know, love, and serve God in this life and to be married to him forever in the next as our ultimate goal here below?” In asking for these two sacramental principles, these two fish, these two great laws that all men should live by—whether they be Catholic, Orthodox, Protestant, deist, rationalist, Buddhist, or any other—the dragon offers two counterfeit, anti-sacramental principles, two serpents!
The 1stlie of the Fall: Anti-Baptism:Surely not! You are not dependent on God like a child. Rather, be your own god. And, believe as you wish and do as you wish. Don’t listen to God or any claimed revelation from God, whether by man or book. Decide for yourself what is true. And don’t do what God has told you to do, or what any claimed Revelation of God has told you to do. Rather, do what you want, whatever is convenient. You will be better off in all these things.
The 2ndlie of the Fall: Anti-Marriage Toward God: And as for seeking your ultimate fulfillment in marrying God in the next life, rubbish! Rather, seek your ultimate fulfillment with this world in this life: materialism!” In this way, the dragon will have taken what two remnant sources of goodness are left to heretics, and twisted them into the ultimate heresies.
STUDENT: Marvelous! I think we are done, no?
TEACHER: Yes, phew! Some 25 pages in 11 font. If any of you readers have come this far, congratulation, thank you, and God bless you. Hope you enjoyed the ride. You deserve it if you did. Wrap us up, student, would you?
Conclusion
STUDENT: What have we learned?
Firstly, we saw how the Alabaster Jar scenes in the Scriptures, one with Simon the Pharisee and one with Simon the Leper, were an image the religious extremes of Jesus’ day and our day. We saw the analysis of such extremes in the Pharisee, or the right, and the Sadducee, or the left. We saw that the Pharisee is hard-headed but hard-hearted, whereas the Sadducee is soft-hearted but soft-headed. We saw that the extremes, when they became totally devoid of Christ, diverged into secular messianism, that is, fascism and communism, respectively.
Moreover, we saw the theology of the loaves and/or fishes as the seven sacraments, with five loaves and two fish symbolizing heresy—or how heretics lose five sacraments that require the Episcopate and retain only two, Baptism and Marriage. We also saw how the three loaves at midnight imaged the three sacraments of initiation.
Also, we saw how the five sacraments lost by heretics, in their full theological implications, summarize just about all doctrines that heretics confound. Too, we saw how this situation poled heretics from one side to another, namely, from presumptuous to overly fearful.
Then, we saw how the liberals take upon themselves the three sacraments of initiation, or community, and that, for them, the Church is mostly nothing but a community. We saw how the devil mocks these three sacraments into liberal counterfeits, and that, on the other hand, how he denies and mocks outright the other four sacraments that are mostly spiritual.
We finally saw how the devil takes the secular divulge of these extremes and mocks the sacraments therein into diabolical counterparts, anti-sacraments that replace God with the State, and replace any spiritual components with a promise for temporal salvation.
Moreover, we remember that the Pharisee scene had numbers 500 and 50 [two servants owe the master a debt, one the larger sum, the other the lesser sum], and the Leper scene had 300 and 30 [the alabaster jar could have been sold for 300 days wages, and, Judas betrays our Lord for 30 pieces of silver]. We saw how the numbers divulge to the 3 sacraments for the liberal, and the 5 sacraments for the Pharisee. The 100 and 10 that are common factors in both scenes could be seen in light of the fact that 10 was like the world, as in 10 horns for beast and dragon. Then, 10 by itself is purely worldly, as in the worldly kingdoms, and 10 x 10, or 100, was like a double world, or otherworldly; hence, though it had the semblance of being spiritual, yet, because it is still 10s, it is really just a worldly counterfeit of Christianity.
Finally, we saw how that the loaves and fishes manifested themselves in the parable where a good father would never give his child a serpent for a fish, and so forth. There, the good objects that the child would ask for would be sacraments or related doctrine. A good father would be a bishop or priest. Bad fathers, who would give negative objects like a serpent, a scorpion, or a stone, could be the devil or a judgmental heretical minister. This gave a profound interpretation for Apocalypse 9, where scary creatures [mean heretical ministers] would torture those without the Seal of God [fearful heretics] for five months [the five sacraments heretics lose] with scorpion tails [heresies, uncertainty.]