Distance Learning #3: "Are Sacraments Narrow?"

Are Sacraments Narrow? by Mark Shea

1. What is Ludwig's problem? Ludwig does not understand how grace is imparted through the sacraments. He was taught a different meaning of what grace was and believed that God's love was universal.

2. Explain what the Church is not thinking about when it comes to "sacramentality": The Church does not propose sacraments to deny God's universal love and will to save. It does not say that unbaptized people of good will are denied salvation because they were not baptized in the Church.

3. Explain what the Church is thinking about when it comes to "sacramentality": They condemn any doctrine that limits the scope of God's redemption to anything less than every last soul God has created. The Church points out that salvation is a relationship that requires at least two people.

4. "How does God reveal and give to each individual human being his universally offered grace?" The Church refers us us to the primal Sacrament of Sacraments, The Incarnate Son of God. The sacraments of the Church are extensions of his power work in the world.

5. Which Christian doctrine is the foundation for the Sacraments? The Christian doctrine that is the foundation for the Sacraments is the doctrine of the Trinity.

6. Explain what the gobs of modern "spirituality" tells us: It tells us to be more or less disembodied, to dwell in the realm of intuitions and concepts and secret mental "revelations" unknown to those less Highly Evolved.

7. Explain the Christian repudiation of "such spiritual snobbery": God likes matter, so much that he continued to manifest himself through it right up until He took upon himself a real physical body of matter that united himself to the totality of our beings through becoming a real live man in Jesus Christ. 

             

8. "But that was so that he could put his gross body of flesh to death on the Cross and revert back to pure spirituality, wasn't it" Answer & explain: This means Christ was not put to death to return us back to spirituality, it is that we will not only live again but will live as human beings.

9. Explain "That is why the sacramental worldview sees more than just a symbol in a sacrament."God reveals himself through physical acts and causes creation by his grace to show his work of redemption.

10. Explain what G.K. Chesterton said: GK Chesterton said the difference between the sacramental Real Presence in the Eucharist and the universal grace of God. Sacramentality derives from the odd nature of Christianity itself. He describes the grace of God and how it is shown through his divine acts.

11. What does grace do? Grace presents to us God sharing the divine life and God coming to us through physical and divine acts. Grace enables us to experience divine life and see and understand God's love for us.