Tomorrow's Catholic

Question 1

How does a fundamentalist or literalist interpret “the inspired Word of God?”

Answer 1

diction from heaven - God speaks, man writes

Question 2

How do fundamentalist or literalist see everything recorded in Scripture?

Answer 2

literally true and there cannot be errors of any kind.

Question 3

If Scripture is not to be understood as dictation from heaven, then how does God operate?

Answer 3

God cannot be everywhere at the same time.

Question 4

Is God ever absent?

Answer 4

Never

Question 5

God presently works with…

Answer 5

what God has to work with.

Question 6

List 9 things required to understand the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures.

Answer 6

• cultures
• worldviews
• time
• place
• ways of communicating
• literary style
• thought patterns
• community circumstances
• history circumstances.

Question 7

What special commission issued document to help Catholics appreciate the idea of revelation and to go beyond fundamentalism?

Answer 7

The Pontifical Biblical Commission.

Question 8

What does Pontifical mean?

Answer 8

Pope’s orders.

Question 9

How does fundamentalism treat the biblical text?

Answer 9

Dictated word for word by the spirit.

Question 10

What does fundamentalism adopt? What does it accept?

Answer 10

Fundamentalism adopts very narrow points of views. It accepts the literal reality of an ancient, out-of-date cosmology.

Question 11

If God is truly always present everywhere, then what are the two things we should expect?

Answer 11

• God’s presence and something of God’s nature to be revealed in all of creation.
• God’s presence, God’s spirit, has been and is at work in all people, in all places, at all times, in a multitude of different cultures, thought patterns, and world views.

Question 12

What does God work with?

Answer 12

What God has to work with. Our human thought limitations.

Question 13

What can we never claim?

Answer 13

That we are actually imaging or describing what or who “God” is.

Question 14

What does transcendence mean?

Answer 14

God is beyond any statement we can make about God.

Question 15

What mystery are we asked to hold?

Answer 15

Yes, God is distinct from, other than, not identifies by the created universe; and yes, God is concerned, involved with, intimately connected to, moved by the created universe.

Question 16

What is our challenge?

Answer 16

Whether we ca appreciate the reality and mystery of these two dimensions of God, and at the same time speak meaningfully about God in relation to our universe and ourselves in the light of today’s understanding.

Question 17

What does the challenge invite us to do? Explain

Answer 17

To break new ground. When we encounter the challenge we find we are shaking some of the foundation of our religious belief system.

Question 18

What is the primary question?

Answer 18

What do you think you would be believing in if you did not believe in God?

Question 19

List 3 ideas about God that make it easy for atheists.

Answer 19

• God set the universe, then left it.
• God can control and prevent, but doesn’t.
• God who requires praise.

Question 20

What makes these ideas about God easy for atheists?

Answer 20

That God as a manipulator/punisher is hard to accept.

Question 21

What is all creation permeated with?

Answer 21

The presence of God.

Question 22

What do we literally give God? And subsequently, what else do we give?

Answer 22

A voice and arms, We give love a shape and form.

Question 23

If we are loved by others, what is given human form?

Answer 23

The reality of God.

Question 24

We are not “masters of” creation. Instead, what are we??

Answer 24

We are one with, nurtured into life by, totally dependent on Earth’s life systems.

Question 25

According to Thomas Berry, what is the natural world? What happens if we are alienated from it? What happens if we damage it?

Answer 25

The natural world is the largest sacred community to which we belong. To be alienated from this community is to become destitute in all that makes us human. To damage this is to diminish our ow existence.

Question 26

To the question of, “How can God permit evil?” What does the author suggest we discard, and instead focus on?

Answer 26

The idea that God could have made things perfect, but didn’t. We should focus on the fact that God works within and through a “free” environment. Therefore, some things will go wrong.

Question 27

What does multiple creativity make inevitable?

Answer 27

Some disorder and conflict.

Question 28

Why doesn’t God eliminate chance?

Answer 28

Because a world w/o chance is a world w/o freedom.

Question 29

What does the author equate God completely controlling the world to?

Answer 29

As to annihilate it. Completely kill.

Question 30

When catastrophe strikes people ask, Why did God do this to me? This is a non-question b/c….

Answer 30

God does not manipulate things and people.

Question 31

Name one problem with some of our religious language, and an example of it. Name several more.

Answer 31

• Promotes the idea that God DOES manipulate.

- God has plans (hidden agenda)

Question 32

What would be more faithful to what Christians believe about God?

Answer 32

To assert that God is fundamentally, absolutely, infinitely, loving, and life-giving, but operated within a necessary free imperfect universe.

Question 33

What does God “want”?

Answer 33

Life, growth, love, and union.

Question 34

What is the faith and hope we are to live by?

Answer 34

Death is not the end; death is the entrance into the fullness of the mystery of God’s life and love.