This is a Nativity Scene...and they are rightfully bowing to 'the King of Kings and Lord of Lords'....not Mary.
Posted on 06/13/2015 3:56:17 PM PDT by Eleutheria5
Thank you for your posts. I used to post the same thing up until about a year ago when they even started attacking that! I’m a former Protestant and newly minted Catholic. My folks are Baptist and my husband and children are like me, Catholic. We all get along just fine, mainly because we all know who the real enemy is. I can’t say enough, the FR religion forum is the last place one should go for religion. Sad.
As she said, "Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord."
I know you're not against them, my FRiend.
You missed the point....but I think possible you’ve seen it before.
This is a Nativity Scene...and they are rightfully bowing to 'the King of Kings and Lord of Lords'....not Mary.
If you want to proclaim your faith and not be called on the truth, you better stick to the Catholic Caucus threads.
This is a good point. It's one where different people may have honest differences about where that line should be drawn. Note that there is a way to err on the other side of the line, too: to fail in giving proper scope to our thinking and esteem of the persons, places, and things which are truly admirable and especially those things which may serve God.
There is a danger in impoverishing the faculties of the memory, the artistic imagination, the devotional "heart," so that we fail to do as St. Paul said, for he told us to
Philippians 4:8
"Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is gracious, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things."
Romans 13:7
"Pay to all their dues, taxes to whom taxes are due, toll to whom toll is due, respect to whom respect is due, honor to whom honor is due."
I am realizing more and more that loving God "with our whole mind" means with more than just the left-brain, rational, computer-in-the-skull. It means expressing "Blessed be God in His angels and in His saints" with the loving memory, the artistic imagination, the splendid musical flourish, the blessing on the garden, the little child's affection for his Good Shepherd figurine, the Byzantine icon and the Baroque baldaccino, the lyre and harp, the pipes and drums.
How much is too much? Its companion question is "How little is too little?"
This was debated, and continues to be debated centuries later, in the mission of Matteo Ricci, the Italian Jesuit who brought the Gospel to the Imperial Ming Court of China in the late 16th and early 17th century. Perhaps you know his story? It is well worth looking into.
The part I'm interested in, is his brilliant initiative in making Christian comprehensible to highly civilized people already steeped in Confucian ethical philosophy and a non-theistic piety, but not touching upon, or unaware of, a personal God or of their need for salvation.
Ricci regarded the Imperial Chinese customs as primarily "civic piety". By this I mean, not religious: similar, say, to the U.S. military customs for the burial of a fallen soldier, the salute, the flag, the Pledge of Allegiance, the singing of the National Anthem, the patriotic statuary and "shrines" to George Washington or Paul Revere, the annual commemorations of the Fourth of July, Memorial Day, etc., secular and therefore not in conflict with Christianity.
Pope Clement XI, on the other hand, worried that Ricci's mission was accepting of pagan "Chinese rites." The pope ended up suppressing the mission, and that basically stopped the effctive evangelization of the continent, since by Chinese custom one couldn't even enter a house or a public building without words and gestures of honor for the family's and the city's ancestors.
Yet (this is so ironic) in 1939 the Vatican formally said they now thought Ricci's approach was right. Wow. Talk about a failure of papal diplomacy. China could have been Christian 300 years already.
But I've rattled on too long, and jumped around a bit, too. I love cross-cultural intersections, especially those which can introduce people to my Lord.
1 Cor 9:20-23
"To the Jews I became like a Jew to win over Jews... To those outside the law I became like one outside the law—though I am not outside God’s law but within the law of Christ—to win over those outside the law. ...I have become all things to all men, to save at least some."All this I do for the sake of the gospel, so that I too may have a share in it."
What I don't get is this idea that if you're honoring "somebody," you're dishonoring God. This is not a Biblical or doctrinal concept. The Bible is just brimming over with dozens and dozens of examples of God's people recognizing and venerating people, places and things with due honor. Such recognition and veneration are not only permitted, they are commanded
Your uncomfortableness with this gives the impression --- surely unintended --- that you think Jesus gets overcome by waves of petty snit whenever anybody gets noticed other than Him. "Don't look at my Mom! It's me, MEEE-E-E-E!"
Of course you don't really think this, neither would any reasonable person, because it would be blasphemy indeed: makes God look, not like the Gracious Lord of Lords but the Petty Pipsqueak of Pipsqueaks.
On the contrary: God Himself glorifies men. As Scripture says:
Psalm 8:5-7
What is man that you are mindful of him,
and a son of man that you care for him?
Yet you have made him little less than a god,
crowned him with glory and honor.
You have given him rule over the works of your hands,
put all things at his feet
We're commanded to honor other human beings (our mothers and fathers, the king, Blessed Mary ("All generations will call me Blessed") --- yes, Jesus honored her, because assuredly He kept the commandments. So is it fitting for Him to honor her, but not for us, His disciples, to do the same?
This is no the same as "idolizing" or "adoring" her. Get that clean out of your head!
Learn from the Holy Bible about bowing to men (and women):
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/religion/3059418/posts?page=292#292
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God bless you.
"One indeed is the universal Church of the faithful, outside which no one at all is saved, in which the priest himself is the sacrifice, Jesus Christ, whose body and blood are truly contained in the sacrament of the altar under the species of bread and wine; the bread (changed) into His body by the divine power of transubstantiation, and the wine into the blood, so that to accomplish the mystery of unity we ourselves receive from His (nature) what He Himself received from ours." — Pope Innocent III and Lateran Council IV (A.D. 1215)
Therefore, if anyone says that it is not by the institution of Christ the lord himself (that is to say, by divine law) that blessed Peter should have perpetual successors in the primacy over the whole Church; or that the Roman Pontiff is not the successor of blessed Peter in this primacy: let him be anathema. — Vatican 1, Ses. 4, Cp. 1
Well....I sure don’t see any sign of it...this place is REALLY PRO-Bible lately.
An 'official' explanation follows:
http://www.ewtn.com/expert/answers/brown_scapular.htm
Who was it up thread that mentioned EMOTIONS??
Some self-appointed censors are incensed about it!
When the 'christians' showed up; they learned quite quickly!
Today's world is rightly upset because fanatic Muslims are destroying everything that is NOT Islamic in some places today.
I'm so glad ROME kept all of the Aztec and local cultures intact so that we can learn from them today.
Oh...
Wait...
Your looker seems broken.
The honor due Rome's imaginary creature with god-like powers is what's at play here.
How can you continue to pester me all these years when you KNOW I have this headache!!!
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