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NASB | 2 Corinthians 5:8 we are of good courage, I say, and prefer rather to be absent from the body and to be at home with the Lord. |
AMPLIFIED 2015 | 2 Corinthians 5:8 we are [as I was saying] of good courage and confident hope, and prefer rather to be absent from the body and to be at home with the Lord. |
Subject: How can the church decide saved/unsaved? |
Bible Note: Matthew, I think some of the inforamtion provided to you by Imf, was incorrect in some details. The Catholic Chuch's opposition to cremation was not doctrinal, but a matter of Church discipline. Church doctrine can not change, but Church discipline can change and has been changed changed in the past decade on the matter of cremation. Currently, due to changes in Canon Law, those who are cremated are allowed a funeral Mass of the Ressurection. Let me quote an answer to the question of about the Catholic Church and crmation from a book, The Question Box, by Fr. Bertrand Conway, published in 1962. "The Church does not fobid cremation because it is intrinsically evil, but because it goes counter to the Jewish and Christian tradition, and was initiated by anti-Christians with the express purpose of destroying belief in the immortality of the soul and the resurrection of the body. Cremation has been condemned by three Roman decrees. The first, May 16, 1886, forbids Catholics to join cremation societies or to order their bodies cremated: the second, December 15, 1886, deprives such Catholics of christian burial; the third, July 27, 1892, forbids priests to give them the last sacraments. These decrees of the Hoy Office condemn cremation , not as contrary to the divine or natural law, but as a "detestable pagan practice, introduced by men of doubtful faith," who aim at lessening catholic reverence for the dead. The first attempt in modern times to revive cremation was made by the neo-pagans of the French Directory in the fifth year of the republic. The project did not meet with any popular response at the time, although the spiirt back of it was part of the Revolution's attack on upon Christian doctrine, law and custom. The same scoundrels who put priests to death, abolished the Mass and the Sunday, and invented the new cult of reason, advocated cremationthe better destroy "the superstitios of the immortaility of the soul and the resurrection of the body." The world had to wait nearly seventyfive years before unbelief in Europe made another and more successful attempt to introduce cremation. The first cremations occured in Padua in 1872, and at once the anti-Christians everywhere began to found cremation societies, and to defend the practice in hundreds of books and pamphlets... Absolutely speaking, the Church could change her ritual in this respect, but it is not at all likely that she will. If, however, the state were to make cremation cumpulsory, the Church would readily adopt her prays to the new method of diposing of the dead..." The Church's position on cremation has and had, nothing to do with determining who is not saved. The Church recognizes that as the perogative of God alone. I would also point out that similar disciplinary proscriptions that forbade christian burial to suicides has also been modified recently. Emmaus |