If a six-year old can get it right…

From a readerette:

Father,

Back before the new translation was implemented, I talked to my six year old son about the changes and what the new words meant. Since, then, it hasn’t come up again until today.

We were in the car and my kids were looking through their Holy Trinity Missals. My four year old daughter asked, “Mommy, did the Devil disobey God AND Jesus?” My son replied, “Yes, Bella, because Jesus is consubstantial with the Father. That means they’re the same!”

If a six year old can hear a word and definition and months later bring it up explaining it in his own words, I think most adults should be able to learn it as well.

Ex ore infantium…

“But Father! But Father!”, I can hear some readers saying. “That boy is a heretic! He said the Father and the Son are ‘the same’! ‘The same’! Get it? HERESY! He is a Sabellianist! Father, you should apply can. 915 now that he is proven to be a manifest heretic and – since all six year olds are by definition obstinate – deny him First Holy Communion!”

Let’s give the six-year old a pass on this one and assume that, in all good will, he meant what “consubstantial” conveys, okay? I am pretty sure that, in using “consubstantial”, he gets that the Father and the Son are ‘the same’ in the sense that they are both eternal God, of the same divine substance, etc., but they are different divine Persons and not just different modes of being God.

In any event, Junior were a Sabellianist, he would still have done better than many theologians, including any who might teach at a Jesuit university and who were dressed down by the USCCB’s committee on doctrine for opening the door to modalism when writing about the Trinity.

About Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

Fr. Z is the guy who runs this blog. o{]:¬)
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One Comment

  1. Joe in Canada says:

    Can the remedy of excommunication be applied to someone who has not reached the canonical age of reason? And wouldn’t it be moot if he hasn’t therefore made his first Communion?!

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