Catholic Fundamentalists describe our concept of souls with the phrase “ether disc”. It reflects our definition of God as the Unprogrammed Programmer by seeing that each of us carries within a tiny bit of something akin to the “cloud”, in which form, though vastly larger and more powerful, He appeared frequently in the Old Testament.
As our body, mind, and soul traverse life, we, His free-will programs, are surrounded by His other programs, seen and unseen. There is a particle program that includes subsidiary programs of water, air, and earth. He has downloaded energy programs, movement programs, plant programs, animal programs, and various versions of all of them. Each of us is an individual Free Will Program that chooses how it will operate within what we see, and may categorize as, Outside Programs.
Thinking too much about the Outside Program keeps us from seeing that our own, individual programs, written and downloaded at the moment of our conception, give each of us unique abilities to work with the Outside Programs. If St. Therese of Lisieux was correct in saying, “People’s souls differ more than their faces.”, then each of us has our own utterly unique spiritual gifts that we often ignore.
If we continue the analogy between our own bodies, minds, and ether discs with our computers, operating systems, and discs, we see that all six entities have the possibility of corruption in common. Bodies, minds and souls, like our computers, operating systems, and discs will crash if any becomes too corrupted.
Our computer may be corrupted by viruses again and again. Some computer technicians refer to particularly thorough disc cleaning as “sandblasting”, blowing out every possible error so that the fresh download will not have any residual errors that will corrupt the new, fresh program. Many priests, hearing the same sins over and over, wish there were some sort of “spiritual sandblasting” they could provide.
When our bodies are corrupted by microbes, they may be “cleaned out” with antibiotics. Viruses may be cleaned out by very high fevers. Improperly working minds may be “cleaned out” by replacing erroneous assumptions and conclusions with sounder thinking. When our souls are corrupted, they may be “cleaned out” by requesting, and getting, Absolution.
Catholics have an easier time with this, because the priest, a living link with Jesus by the miracle of Apostolic Succession, has a Scripture-endorsed ability to forgive sins. Protestants’ sins are forgiven when God is asked to do so, but the mechanics are less certain, partly because a skilled confessor has not had an opportunity to inquire into, and encourage the removal of, the particular sin’s proximate causes.
When considering our bodies, minds, and souls, we have to avoid many kinds of corruption. Earlier Catholics recognized a way to keep themselves safe from spiritual viruses by their admonition to “avoid the near occasion of sin”.
