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Dan
Copes
wrote:
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Hi, guys —
My priest said on Sunday that he believes
the fish and bread did not miraculously multiply
but rather the people gathered together (that
day) and shared their food and that was the
Miracle.
Dan
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{
When
Christ fed the five thousand was it a miracle or was the miracle the people sharing the food? }
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Paul
replied:
Dan,
There is no place in Scripture that
states people shared their food.
This is an added extrapolation of
the Scriptural text in order to bring
about a point that some people would
want to make regarding the ethics
of sharing.
With some people of a more cynical
bent, it is their way of dismissing
the possibility that God could, or
did, perform supernatural miracles.
Whatever the motivation, we should
avoid placing extra biblical meaning
to the text and always stick to how
Sacred Tradition and the Magisterium
interpret the Scriptures.
Paul
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Dan
replied:
Hi, Paul —
Thank you for the quick response.
It was a tough homily for me. In
one statement, he tries to explain
transubstantiation, which is an amazing
event, with all its power and glory,
and then he switches to how Christ
really didn't multiple the fish and
bread?
Dan
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Paul
replied:
Dan,
You make a great point with that
comparison.
Paul
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John
replied:
Hi, Dan —
Unfortunately, the priest in question
has spent too much time listening
to modern biblical scholars.
Basically, some these guys don't
have anything better to do than to
sit around and think up stupid theories,
like the one you heard from your
priest.
The Church defends the historicity
of the Gospels. That doesn't mean
that we have to believe in the precise
chronology of events as recorded
by a particular evangelist, but we
do believe what they recorded actually
happened.
There were two instances in which
Jesus fed the multitudes. In one
instance, he fed 4,000 (Matthew 15:32-39); in the other
he fed 5,000. (Matthew 14:13-21) Each miracle happened
on different sides of the Sea of
Galilee.
- If you read the original
Greek from the accounts they were written
in, you can see that He multiplied
different kinds of fish, so why on
earth would the Gospel writers include
such details, if the incidents didn't
happen?
Again, the problem is with some modern
critics that fancy themselves
as intellectual elites gifted with
a special knowledge. They are nothing
but a bunch neo-gnostics who can
never accept that the text means
what it says, and says what it means.
John
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