DNR

I don't know. I haven't read everything, I haven't heard everything, so maybe I've just missed it. But I've never heard any Catholic ever claim that Christ's Resurrection amounted to "the resuscitation of a corpse."

And yet I keep coming across Catholics who claim that Christ's Resurrection did not amount to "the resuscitation of a corpse."

To these people, I reply: Nor did Christ's Resurrection amount to a recipe for Marillenknoedel.

Now, as I say, I haven't read or heard everything, but from what I have read and heard, I have the impression that the majority of people who are particularly keen on insisting that the Resurrection wasn't merely the resuscitation of a corpse are not particularly keen on the idea that a corpse was at any point involved in the Resurrection. The idea that Jesus' physical body rose from the dead is not an idea that much appeals to them.

And I'm kind of tired of it.

That Jesus' physical body rose from the dead is, not merely a dogma of the Catholic Faith, but the absolute foundation of it.

For various reasons, this undeniable fact is denied by various pseudo-sophisticates proposing various laughable bits of hokum as enlightened theology.

I call them "pseudo-sophisticates" because -- again, from what I've read and heard -- I get a strong sense that they regard an actual resurrection as somehow too crude or common to put much faith in, as something of an intellectual embarrassment, as something they'd be just as happy to define out of Christianity. I think they think asking questions like, "What would it mean if scientists discovered Jesus' skeleton?" is taking a more sophisticated approach to their faith.

But it isn't sophisticated. It's sophomoric. The answer to such questions should be, "Whoah, dude, I never thought of that before!," because such questions shouldn't be asked once you grow up and stop thinking everything revolves around you.

I don't mean to suggest there's no place for a discussion of the distinction between the Resurrection and the various returns to life mentioned elsewhere in Scripture and in history. I do mean to suggest -- or rather, to insist explicitly, that any obstinate denial or doubt that the risen body in which Jesus appeared to His disciples is the same body that had been tortured and crucified is heresy.

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