Angels also Michaelmas

7 things to know about Angels--today is the feast day--September 29^th is the feast of St.s Michael, Gabriel, and Raphael—archangel

{Does this day have any other names?

Yes. Traditionally in English it has also been called “Michaelmas” (i.e., the Mass that celebrates St. Michael, on the same principle that “Christmas” is the Mass that celebrates Christ’s birth).]

Here is the link of 7 things to Know:
Read more: http://www.ncregister.com/blog/jimmy-akin/celebrating-the-archangels-7-things-to-know-and-share#ixzz3Ei9D3ucI  check out the link in this article , also, which traces the history of Michaelmas

http://www.ncregister.com/blog/jimmy-akin/celebrating-the-archangels-7-things-to-know-and-share

And here is a link about the angels here and it gives many other links: http://www.catholicculture.org/culture/liturgicalyear/calendar/day.cfm?date=2014-09-29

from a link http://www.catholicculture.org/culture/library/view.cfm?recnum=4620#114  :

Holy Angels

213. With the clear and sober language of catechesis, the Church teaches that "the existence of the spiritual, non-corporeal beings that Sacred Scripture usually calls 'angels' is a truth of faith. The witness of Scripture is as clear as the unanimity of Tradition"²⁸⁰.

Tradition regards the angels as messengers of God, "potent executives of his commands, and ready at the sound of his words" (Ps 103, 20. They serve his salvific plan, and are "sent to serve those who will inherit salvation" (Hb 1, 14).

214. The faithful are well aware of the numerous interventions of angels in the New and Old Covenants. They closed the gates of the earthly paradise (cf. Gen 3,24), they saved Hagar and her child Ishmael (cf. Gen 21, 17), they stayed the hand of Abraham as he was about to sacrifice Isaac (cf. gen 22, 7), they announce prodigious births (cf. Jud 13, 3-7), they protect the footsteps of the just (cf. Ps 91, 11), they praise God unceasingly (cf. Is 6, 1-4), and they present the prayer of the Saints to God (cf. Ap 8, 34). The faithful are also aware of the angel's coming to help Elijah, an exhausted fugitive (cf. 1 Kings 19, 4-8), of Azariah and his companions in the fiery furnace (cf. Dan 3, 49-50), and are familiar with the story of Tobias in which Raphael, "one of the seven Angels who stand ever ready to enter the presence of the glory of God" (cf. Tb 12, 15), who renders many services to Tobit, his son Tobias and his wife Sarah.

The faithful are also conscious of the roles played by the Angels in the life of Jesus: the Angel Gabriel declared to Mary that she would conceive and give birth to the Son of the Most High (cf. Lk 1, 26-38), and that an Angel revealed to Joseph the supernatural origin of Mary's conception (cf. Mt 1, 18-25); the Angels appear to the shepherds in Bethlehem with the news of great joy of the Saviour's birth (cf. Lk 2, 8-24); "the Angel of the Lord" protected the infant Jesus when he was threatened by Herod (cf. Mt 2, 13-20); the Angels ministered to Jesus in the desert (cf. Mt 4, 11) and comforted him in his agony (Lk 22, 43), and to the women gathered at the tomb, they announced that he had risen (cf. Mk 16, 1-8), they appear again at the Ascension, revealing its meaning to the disciples and announcing that "Jesus ...will come back in the same way as you have seen him go" (Acts 1, 11).

The faithful will have well grasped the significance of Jesus' admonition not to despise the least of those who believe in him for "their Angels in heaven are continually in the presence of my Father in heaven" (Mt 10, 10), and the consolation of his assurance that "there is rejoicing among the Angels of God over one repentant sinner" (Lk 15, 10). The faithful also realize that "the Son of man will come in his glory with all his Angels" (mt 25, 31) to judge the living and the dead, and bring history to a close.

215. The Church, which at its outset was saved and protected by the ministry of Angels, and which constantly experiences their "mysterious and powerful assistance"²⁸¹, venerates these heavenly spirts and has recourse to their prompt intercession.

During the liturgical year, the Church celebrates the role played by the Holy Angels, in the events of salvation²⁸² and commemorates them on specific days: 29 September (feast of the Archangels Michael, Gabriel and Raphael), 2 October (the Guardian Angels). The Church has a votive Mass dedicated to the Holy Angels whose preface proclaims that "the glory of God is reflected in his Angels"²⁸³. In the celebration of the sacred mysteries, the Church associates herself with the angelic hymn and proclaims the thrice holy God (cf. Isaiah 6, 3)²⁸⁴ invoking their assistance so that the Eucharistic sacrifice "may be taken [to your] altar in heaven, in the presence of [...] divine majesty"²⁸⁵. The office of lauds is celebrated in their presence (cf. Ps 137, 1)²⁸⁶. The Church entrusts to the ministry of the Holy Angels (cf. Aps 5, 8; 8, 3) the prayers of the faithful, the contrition of penitents²⁸⁷, and the protection of the innocent from the assaults of the Malign One²⁸⁸. The Church implores God to send his Angels at the end of the day to protect the faithful as they sleep²⁸⁹, prays that the celestial spirits come to the assistance of the faithful in their last agony²⁹⁰, and in the rite of obsequies, invokes God to send his Angels to accompany the souls of just into paradise²⁹¹ and to watch over their graves.

216. Down through the centuries, the faithful have translated into various devotional exercises the teaching of the faith in relation to the ministry of Angels: the Holy Angels have been adopted as patrons of cities and corporations; great shrines in their honour have developed such as Mont-Saint-Michel in Normandy, San Michele della Chiusa in Piemonte and San Michele Gargano in Apulia, each appointed with specific feast days; hymns and devotions to the Holy Angels have also been composed.

Popular piety encompasses many forms of devotion to the Guardian Angels. St. Basil Great (+378) taught that "each and every member of the faithful has a Guardian Angel to protect, guard and guide them through life"²⁹². This ancient teaching was consolidated by biblical and patristic sources and lies behind many forms of piety. St. Bernard of Clarivaux (+1153) was a great master and a notable promoter of devotion to the Guardian Angels. For him, they were a proof "that heaven denies us nothing that assists us", and hence, "these celestial spirits have been placed at our sides to protect us, instruct us and to guide us"²⁹³.

Devotion to the Holy Angels gives rise to a certain form of the Christian life which is characterized by:

• devout gratitude to God for having placed these heavenly spirits of great sanctity and dignity at the service of man;
• an attitude of devotion deriving from the knowledge of living constantly in the presence of the Holy Angels of God;— serenity and confidence in facing difficult situations, since the Lord guides and protects the faithful in the way of justice through the ministry of His Holy Angels.Among the prayers to the Guardian Angels the Angele Dei²⁹⁴ is especially popular, and is often recited by families at morning and evening prayers, or at the recitation of the Angelus.

217. Popular devotion to the Holy Angels, which is legitimate and good, can, however, also give rise to possible deviations:

• when, as sometimes can happen, the faithful are taken by the idea that the world is subject to demiurgical struggles, or an incessant battle between good and evil spirits, or Angels and daemons, in which man is left at the mercy of superior forces and over which he is helpless; such cosmologies bear little relation to the true Gospel vision of the struggle to overcome the Devil, which requires moral commitment, a fundamental option for the Gospel, humility and prayer;
• when the daily events of life, which have nothing or little to do with our progressive maturing on the journey towards Christ are read schematically or simplistically, indeed childishly, so as to ascribe all setbacks to the Devil and all success to the Guardian Angels. The practice of assigning names to the Holy Angels should be discouraged, except in the cases of Gabriel, Raphael and Michael whose names are contained in Holy Scripture.

rule of faith for the Catholic

found here http://www.catholicculture.org/culture/library/dictionary/index.cfm?id=36161

The norm that enables the faithful to know what to believe. The revealed Word of God in Sacred Scripture and sacred tradition is a remote rule of faith. But the teaching of the Church based on divine revelation is considered the immediate rule of faith.


next, from the Catholic Encyclopedia  http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/05766b.htm

 ...the ultimate or remote rule of faith must be the truthfulness of God in revealing Himself. But since Divine revelation is contained in the written books and unwritten traditions (Vatican Council, I, ii), the Bible and Divine tradition must be the rule of our faith; since, however, these are only silent witnesses and cannot interpret themselves, they are commonly termed "proximate but inanimate rules of faith". Unless, then, the Bible and tradition are to be profitless, we must look for some proximate rule which shall be animate or living.

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The Church as the rule of faith

This follows necessarily from any adequate view of the Church as a Divinely constituted body, to whose keeping is entrusted the deposit of faith, but the grounds for this doctrine may be briefly stated as follows:

New Testament

Christ gave His disciples no command to write, but only to teach: "going therefore, teach ye all nations, . . . teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you" (Matthew 28:19-20). "As the Father hath sent me, I also send you" (John 20:21). And in accordance with this, the Church is everywhere presented to us as a living and undying societycomposed of the teachers and the taught. Christ is in the Church, and is its Head; and He promised that the Holy Spirit should be with it and abide in it. "He will teach you all things, and bring all things to your mind, whatsoever I shall have said to you" (John 14:26). Hence St. Paul calls the Church "the pillar and ground of the truth" (1 Timothy 3:15; cf. Mark 16:16; Romans 10:17; Acts 15:28).

end of quote---it goes on to explain more fully the Church being the pillar and ground of the truth as I Tim 3:15 states

see also http://www.strobertbellarmine.net/wilhelm_scannell_05.html

see also  http://people.opposingviews.com/catholic-remote-proximate-rule-faith-3891.html

here is the quote from the above link: 

Faith for Catholics is not only a simple trust in the gospel, it also includes believing in specific ideas. It means accepting certain truths about who God is, the nature of humanity, Christ and his life and even the church. When Catholics talk about the rule of faith they are describing the way in which Christian truth is understood, expressed and lived. Catholics understand God's truth to be perfect, both in its pure essence (or remote rule of faith) as well as in the way Christians must understand that truth (the proximate rule of faith).

REVELATION

An understanding of the Catholic ideas about the rule of faith must start by considering revelation. Catholics believe God has been revealed to humanity through the person of Jesus Christ and his life, death and resurrection. They also believe that God has been revealed in the Bible, and that God self-reveals through other means such as the traditions of the church as well as the natural order. Revelation, then, is the source of the rule of faith.

REMOTE RULE OF FAITH

Catholics believe all truth comes from God. God alone is truth to the Catholic. Catholics describe God's nature, attributes and knowledge as the "remote" rule of faith. God self-reveals to humanity, and that revelation itself is the remote rule of faith. It is considered remote because, as fallible creatures, human beings cannot directly interact with this perfect knowledge without some outside assistance. That assistance comes through the proximate rule of faith.

PROXIMATE BUT INANIMATE

Both the written books of the Bible and the unwritten traditions of the Church make up part of the proximate rules of faith, according to Catholics. This is the part of God's truth that human beings can interact with. Catholics read the scriptures and participate in the traditions of the church and thereby interact with the rules of faith. These are considered "inanimate" rules of faith, however. The Bible and the traditions of the church can't give themselves interpretation; they necessitate something living or animate to be fully understood.

PROXIMATE AND ANIMATE

The Catholic Church, and the magisterium or leadership in particular, has the duty to properly interpret the rule of faith for the Catholic Christian. The teachers of the Church, including theologians of the past, current priests and bishops and of course the Pope provide Catholics with an infallible understanding of the Bible and the church's traditions. Catholics refer to this role as the "proximate and animate" rule of faith because this is a dynamic, living interpretation of the rule of faith.

RULE OF FAITH IN PROTESTANTISM

The Protestant Reformation broke away from the Catholic Church over a number of different doctrinal issues. One of the core issues that separates these two strains of Christianity is the rule of faith. Protestants teach that the rule of faith is simply God's self-revelation through the scriptures, and that it is the duty of every believer to read and interpret the scriptures without interposition from the church. The Catholic Church has argued strongly against this position, fully rejecting private judgment as the rule of faith.

a listing of dogmas http://catho.org/9.php?d=g1  note need to translate

from comment 67 http://www.calledtocommunion.com/2014/09/scripture-and-tradition/

If you are asking whether God’s direct speech is to be the rule of faith for the Church, the answer would have to be no. God’s direct speech and God’s acts in history constitute the material in the deposit of faith. But the rule for transmitting, interpreting, and safeguarding that deposit has been entrusted to authorized individuals. “The reason I left you in Crete was that you might put in order what was left unfinished and appoint elders in every town, as I directed you… the overseer refutes false doctrine, etc.”

None of your examples establish the thing that you’re trying to prove

I think we must have a misunderstanding here. I am not arguing that Christ delivered every detail of the Tridentine Liturgy or Chrysostom’s liturgy, or some such development. But isn’t it obvious that Christ’s institution of the Eucharist predates its record in the Synoptics? And isn’t it obvious that Paul did not rely on his own letter to the Corinthians to convey the Church’s Eucharistic tradition to Corinth? He appealed to the tradition he received from the Lord.

Of course, we also have a written account of the institution, but the rite was in place and celebratedbefore any written account was offered. Is this really that controversial?

I’m still not sure what Apostolic practices you believe have been retained in the liturgy that are not grounded in Scripture.

Here’s one mentioned by Cyprian, but he’s not the first to do so:

Thus the cup of the Lord is not indeed water alone, nor wine alone, unless each be mingled with the other; just as, on the other hand, the body of the Lord cannot be flour alone or water alone, unless both should be united and joined together and compacted in the mass of one bread; in which very sacrament our people are shown to be made one, so that in like manner as many grains, collected, and ground, and mixed together into one mass, make one bread; so in Christ, who is the heavenly bread, we may know that there is one body, with which our number is joined and united” (“On the Sacrament of the Cup of the Lord,” No 13).

From St. Basil, On the Holy Spirit:

For were we to attempt to reject such customs as have no written authority, on the ground that the importance they possess is small, we should unintentionally injure the Gospel in its very vitals; or, rather, should make our public definition a mere phrase and nothing more. For instance, to take the first and most general example, who is thence who has taught us in writing to sign with the sign of the cross those who have trusted in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ? What writing has taught us to turn to the East at the prayer? Which of the saints has left us in writing the words of the invocation at the displaying of the bread of the Eucharist and the cup of blessing? For we are not, as is well known, content with what the apostle or the Gospel has recorded, but both in preface and conclusion we add other words as being of great importance to the validity of the ministry, and these we derive from unwritten teaching. Moreover we bless the water of baptism and the oil of the chrism, and besides this the catechumen who is being baptized. On what written authority do we do this? Is not our authority silent and mystical tradition? Nay, by what written word is the anointing of oil itself taught? And whence comes the custom of baptizing thrice? And as to the other customs of baptism from what Scripture do we derive the renunciation of Satan and his angels? Does not this come from that unpublished and secret teaching which our fathers guarded in a silence out of the reach of curious meddling and inquisitive investigation? Well had they learned the lesson that the awful dignity of the mysteries is best preserved by silence. What the uninitiated are not even allowed to look at was hardly likely to be publicly paraded about in written documents.

I would particularly direct your attention to the mention of the invocation at the display of the eucharistic elements, an extremely important eucharistic tradition (included in all ancient liturgies) that reinforces and confirms the orthodox doctrine of the Eucharist.

from comment 71 at the same link:

I’ve been asking all along for a valid argument that concludes with “God intends the 66 to be the rule of faith.”

What I think I’ve been hearing instead is the assertion that the Scriptures are inspired, that they are the word of God, and that only the word of God should rule the Church, that the word of God is found nowhere but Scripture, therefore, etc. This is the position outlined in WCF and in Calvin. But the conclusion doesn’t follow from the premises and at least one of the premises is question begging. So I’m asking you guys to present a valid argument for this conclusion.

This is why your arguments don’t introduce anything new to the discussion aside from huge leaps in logic.

You haven’t shown that my argument has “leaps.” And, I think that I have introduced something substantive to the discussion. Namely, the claim that the doctrine on the rule of faith must be taught by divine authority. This is a doctrine that the Protestant position implicitly denies. As Richard Muller notes, the Protestant infers Scripture’s regulative authority from its attributes, not from the actual content of revelation. You also seem to concede this, because every time I ask for evidence that God intends the 66, you respond that this is an illegitimate question. Instead, you propose an argument based on the attributes of Scripture, but not on its content. Attributes, I might add, that are alleged on the basis of interior experience (Sheep hearing voices, and all that), rather than on the actual content of revelation.

To summarize the Protestant approach:

1. I feel that these books are divine, so they must be divine.
2. Only the divine can rule the Church.
3. Only these books are divine (presumably, because I don’t get these feelings from other sources),
4. So only these books can rule the Church.

The Catholic position is, rather:

1. Doctrine must be established by divine authority.
2. Christ (a divine authority) teaches that the faith is to be transmitted by authorized interpreters and via ritual/tradition.
3. Therefore, the rule of faith is this apostolic authority established by Christ.
4. And, for good measure, those authorized authorities never indicated that any canon of Scripture was to take over the job Christ gave them. Instead, they appointed men to succeed them and instructed them to hand on the faith, correct error, and appoint successors.

The Catholic position – rightly or wrongly – is based on the objective teaching of Christ and the apostles. The Protestant position is an inference, ultimately, from religious experience.

If you think I’ve mischaracterized the Protestant position, I’m happy to hear an alternate explanation.

[go to the comments on that post and the Protestants give good arguments for their views as well]

Long life Spans in the Bible

from Catholic Answers:

Full Question

Can you give me a logical answer about the people's ages in the book of Genesis? Some of them lived to be 900 years old. What is the Catholic Church's teaching about this?

Answer

The Church has no teaching regarding whether these ages are to be taken literally or not. The Church will say that whatever Scripture says is inerrant but must be understood in terms of the conventions of literature that were in use at the time.

It is known that, in many ancient cultures, fantastically long lives were assigned to famous forebears. This could be an indication that the ages are to be taken as symbolic of the greatness and venerability of the individuals.

However, this is not something the Church has taught. God can keep people alive as long as he wants. If he wants someone to live to be 900 years old, then that person can do so.

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Answered by: Catholic Answers Staff   [found here http://www.catholic.com/quickquestions/did-people-really-live-for-900-years-as-described-in-genesis}

For those who do understand it more literally--who are trying to find scientific explanations to the questions of long life,  this second article describes why they may have lived longer--or what things may have affected their life spans.  http://www.godandscience.org/apologetics/longlife.html

inerrancy--including a history of this concept

http://www.catholicculture.org/culture/library/view.cfm?recnum=8441

Septuagint

Article on Septuagint here: http://www.bibliahebraica.com/the_texts/septuagint.htm  a few quotes:

The oldest witnesses to the LXX include 2nd century BC fragments of Leviticus and Deuteronomy (Rahlfs nos. 801, 819, and 957), and 1st century BC fragments of Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, and the Minor Prophets (Rahlfs nos. 802, 803, 805, 848, 942, and 943). Relatively complete manuscripts of the LXX include the Codex Vaticanus and the Codex Sinaiticus of the 4th century AD/CE and the Codex Alexandrinus of the 5th century. These are indeed the oldest surviving nearly-complete manuscripts of the Old Testament in any language; the oldest extant complete Hebrew texts date much later, from around 1000.

The sources of the many differences between the Septuagint and the Masoretic text have long been debated by scholars. One extreme view was that the Septuagint provides a reasonably accurate record of an early Semitic textual variant, now lost, that differed from the Masoretic text. The other extreme, favored by Jewish religious scholars, was that the differences were primarily due to intentional or accidental corruption of the Septuagint since its original translation from the Masoretic text. Modern scholars follow a path between these two views. The discovery of many fragments in the Dead Sea scrolls that agree with the Septuagint rather than the Masoretic proved that many of the variants in Greek were also present in early Semitic editions.

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The Early Christian Church, however, continued to use the Greek, since it had always been the language of the Church and because the prophetic passages clearly pointed to Jesus as the Christ in the Septuagint version, whereas the same passages were ambiguous or absent in the Hebrew. When Jerome started preparation of a new Vulgate translation of the Bible into Latin, he started with the Septuagint, checking it against the newer Hebrew Masoretic Text, he discovered many significant differences. Encouraged by his Jewish friends who provided him the Masoretic with their insistence of its perfect accuracy, Jerome at last broke with all church tradition to translate the Old Testament not from the age-old Greek but from his new find, the Masoretic. The Psalms in the Masoretic differ particularly from the Septuagint, although the Latin Mass still used the Psalms from the older Greek versions. Indeed, all the other early Christian translations of the Old Testament were done from the Greek version and Church fathers such as Origen remarked on how Jewish religionists differed in both the interpretation of the Old Testament and how over time the Jewish text grew different from the Christian in wording.

The writers of the New Testament, also written in Greek, quoted from the old Greek versions exclusively. This is significant since the new Masoretic text prominently diverged in those passages which prophesied Christ. Thus even when Latin, Syriac, Coptic, Armenian and other translations from the Greek appeared, Greek versions continued to be used by the Greek-speaking portion of the Christian Church. The Eastern Orthodox Church still prefers to use LXX as the basis for translating the Old Testament into other languages, and the Greek Orthodox Church (which has no need for translation) continues to use it in its liturgy even today. Many modern Catholic translations of the Bible, while using the Masoretic text as their basis, employ the Septuagint to decide between different possible translations of the newer Hebrew text whenever the latter is unclear, undeniably corrupt, or ambiguous.

Recent Aramaic findings among the Dead Sea Scrolls read most closely with the LXX, and not with the Masoretic text. For example Deuteronomy 32:8-9, both the LXX and the Aramaic agree that the patron of the people of Jacob is lower in status than the Most High. This suggests that the older LXX may be more accurate than the newer Masoretic text which was given to Jerome.

see also: http://www.fisheaters.com/septuagint.html

Why do some Catholic Bibles have more than 5 books labeled as Pentateuch

I found some answers here http://forums.catholic.com/showthread.php?p=12313283  Here are a few of the answers: 

 The EIGHT books of the Pentateuch??? Per my NAB

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Actually this is not a misprint.

The original NAB translators decided to do this on the basis that many early Greek manuscripts actually include Joshua, Judges, and Ruth as part of the Pentateuch.

Since the Greek Septuagint collection of books defined the accepted canon of the early Church, the original NAB defined its table of contents by this earliest Christian list.

When the NABRE was produced, the translators decided to follow the older (and original) Jewish descriptions, limiting the Pentateuch to the Five Books of Moses or the Torah.

Some scholars still prefer the Greek definition of books, even though technically the "pente" in the Greek word "Pentateuch" means "five."

The reason for this preference among some is that Joshua is considered a continuation of Deuteronomy. Judges picks up the story where the book of Joshua leaves off and Ruth immediately follows setting the stage for the "real" history of Israel under the rule of its kings. The books are seen by many not as mere history as they are setting the stage for the great David dynasty story.

So again it's not a misprint, just a change in editorial direction as how to present the books in the table of contents.