"What do we mean by Truth and Absolute Truth?"

This is an extensive series of posts rom the CathNews Discussion Board in response to a series of questions put to me by PeterS on these questions...

Rich,

I only put this post here to again highlight that the Church really does have a big problem at the moment. It is divided, not "down the middle" but basically 5%/95% between this sector that does passionately believe in the sentiments expressed in Pauline's quote from Sr Lucia (which is actually worth highlighting in bold and colour so that Rome can see it ( LOL )):

But this "pursuit of truth" not in the sense that Peter S is trying to define truth down the board. But "the truth" as in the sense of "what is 'the truth' of this particular moral or life dilemma that I am facing at this moment in my life?".

Nobody denies, least of all myself, that there are Absolute Truths. You don't get to heaven though by demonstrating that you can recite, or even memorise, Absolute Truths. That's what the Sr Lucia's, the Pauline's and the Peter S's would try and convince us the spiritual quest is all about. We get to heaven by the manner in which we learn to make the correct moral choices in all those nitty-gritty and difficult decisions that we have to make each moment in our lives.

We also don't get to heaven by the brownie points we earn for how many times we bless ourselves and say "I'm loyal to His Holiness". We get to heaven by demonstrating how LOYAL we are to those difficult moral truths that we discern through our own consciences, in communion with God, and then obey them. Everything, EVERYTHING ELSE IS IDOLATRY ‹ and even when it involves slavish obsequiousness to a person as important as the Vicar of Jesus Christ on Earth.

If Sr Lucia indeed did say what she is quoted as saying she simply does not understand what has been written in that last highlighted paragraph and I think His Holiness, as comforting as Sr Lucia's words might be to his alter ego, instead of canonising her, ought to be thinking of correcting the wrong Catechesis she is broadcasting to God's most innocent children ‹ and to that 95% of the baptised Catholic population in the Western world who want to run away from all that, or who have already run away from it all (and from all these other canonisations which simply are not serving as "models" and leading to any re-evangelisation in the world)!