Posted on 06/23/2005 9:06:58 AM PDT by murphE
New York's massive Roman Catholic population will sit out this weekend's Billy Graham crusade in Queens because its parishes are too busy, spokesmen for the two closest dioceses say.
The 413 parishes in the Archdiocese of New York, representing 2.5 million Catholics, are too involved with school graduations, confirmations and the Vatican's emphasis on the Eucharist during 2005, spokesman Joseph Zwilling said yesterday.
The Graham crusade "asked if it would be possible for our churches to invite their people to come," he said, but "given everything happening in our parishes, especially it being the Year of the Eucharist, we didn't feel it'd be possible to ask our parishes to take on any additional activities."
Across the East River in the Diocese of Brooklyn, which lists 1.8 million Catholics, church leaders have also declined involvement, although the crusade will take place there in Flushing Meadows' Corona Park. Spokesman Frank DeRosa cited Year of the Eucharist preparations as a key reason.
Thus, none of that diocese's 217 parishes is among the 1,300 sponsoring congregations for the crusade, which is expected to draw up to 70,000 people a night for what's been billed as the evangelist's last American crusade. Neither are Catholics officially among the 15,000 volunteers amassed for the event.
The Rev. A.R. Bernard, crusade chairman, professed some puzzlement over the archdiocese's reasoning, noting Catholic involvement in other crusades.
"Those who were touched by the Catholic charismatic renewal will be there," he predicted. "You cannot judge by the leadership's protests because the lay people will come anyway."
Catholics are still welcome to attend, but the lack of official involvement amazed Graham biographer Bill Martin, who characterized the archdiocese's reasoning as a "change in policy" from Mr. Graham's 1991 Central Park crusade. Back then, he said, 630 Catholic churches cooperated with the crusade and information on the meetings was handed out at St. Patrick's Cathedral.
That 1991 stance had been a huge shift from Mr. Graham's first New York crusade in 1957, he said, when Catholics boycotted the event and Catholic clergy were instructed on how to counter Mr. Graham's preaching.
"So maybe something's come down from above saying not to be involved in this," Mr. Martin added.
Mr. Zwilling said he didn't remember any such cooperation from churches back then, but Catholic clergy in 1991 did receive names of Catholics who answered Mr. Graham's altar calls at the Central Park event.
In a column to be released Saturday in the diocesan newspaper the Tablet, Brooklyn Bishop Nicholas DiMarzio outlined the significant divide over how Catholics and Protestants understand salvation.
The bishop said he welcomed Mr. Graham into the area and promised to follow up on any names given to them by crusade organizers.
To forestall objections of "sheep stealing," crusade policy is that all Catholics attending the event who sign a card signifying a desire for salvation are referred to the diocese.
Another Graham biographer, David Aikman, said Mr. Graham had a "good relationship" with many Catholic prelates, such as the late Boston Cardinal Richard Cushing, who in 1964 praised the evangelist's talent for converting non-Christians, adding, "I only wish we had half a dozen men of his caliber to go forth and do likewise."
In 1997, Mr. Graham told New Man magazine, an evangelical publication, that "through the years I have made many friends within the Roman Catholic Church. In fact, when we hold a crusade in a city now, nearly all the Roman Catholic churches support it.
"And when we went to Minneapolis-St. Paul, Minnesota, for the crusade [last year], we saw St. Paul, which is largely Catholic, and Minneapolis, which is largely Lutheran, both supporting the crusade. That wouldn't have happened 25 years ago."
That seems pretty small-minded. I consider myself an agnostic and I still think Billy Graham and his kids are worth a listen. He is obviously a good and thoughtful person with a message that could hurt no one.
Closed minded maybe, but not small minded. Just like closing your mind to 2+2=5, once you acknowledge 2+2=4. Once you know truth, it makes no sense to keep your mind open to error.
Hailing Mary is not the issue. The theological debate centers on the Line following the biblical quotation - the one that says "Holy Mary, mother of God, pray for us sinners now, and in the hour of our death".
Please note: I am protestant, my wife (and kids) are Roman Catholic. I have studied the issues here, and I am only trying to discuss the basis for the dispute. I have come to my own peace about the theological debate, which I intend to keep to myself.
The crux of the matter is the concept of intercessory prayer. The RC position is that you can ask the saints to pray for you much the same as asking your friend, priest, or pastor. The vehicle for doing that is the intercessory prayer.
For many protestant denominations, that is theologically unpalatable, because it requires saying a prayer to a human being rather than to God directly (through Christ). These humans are saints, but canonization does not confer divinity (and I am NOT alleging that anyone has said it does).
The bottom line seems to rest with one's ability to view the intercessory prayer as a conversation with a saint, versus a plea to divinity.
Again, I have tried to come to no conlusions in this post, because I recognize the validity of the two positions, as well as the fact that they are not easily reconciled. Please feel free to correct anything I have misstated.
When considering questions of the infinite, it takes a considerable lack of humility to assume there is no more to learn, IMHO
BTW, check Kurt Godel re: 2+2=4
The Catholic faith is a revealed religion. We know God by how He has revealed Himself to us, most completely in the person of Jesus Christ. We believe what God has revealed about Himself, because being God, He can neither deceive nor be deceived. The Church guards this deposit of faith as it was given by Our Lord Jesus Christ. The Church can neither add to it, nor subtract from it for that would take "a considerable lack of humility" to profess anything other than what God has revealed about Himself.
The Church cannot profess anything about God that He has not revealed about Himself, nor can it accept anything contrary to what has been revealed by God to be true.
Wrong. You've got to drink it. He said so.
You're saying it's a good thing for a man who is Jewish to go forward to commit himself to Christ and then be sent by the preacher to a Rabbi?
What kind of commitment to Christ is that?
If Graham was a friend to Catholics he would become one.
A man can be honest and still not hold to the truth. He's simply honestly mistaken.
That whole statement is guesswork on your part and it is not taught that way by the Church. You are reading too much of the politically correct gobbledygook in the CCC. You need to read the Trent Catechism. God is not a liar. It has been revealed that no one is saved outside of his Church. That doesn't mean that people are saved by his Church that are outside. That is heresy. If someone never becomes Catholic, they will not get into Heaven. St. John Vianney explained it as the time between the bridge and the water. No one knows the graces and helps God provides in between two seconds before life and death. If someone who was not Catholic dies and goes to Heaven, it's because they became a Catholic before death. Angels are Shepherds of the Church and can minister and baptise before the end. Perfect contrition can obtain forgiveness for the already Baptized. It's all in how one reacts to God's grace.
So you say
I don't see how endorsing someone to go get counseling from someone who is in one kind of error is better than allowing someone to embrace another kind of error. Neither the Rabbi nor Graham is pointing the way to Salvation. And Graham is exposed as a hypocrite if he professes salvation through Christ and tells a Jew to seek help from a Rabbi. He's part of the one world Church group.
Jesus didn't tell the fisherman and tax collectors that he picked as disciples to go get cleared by the authorities in the Temple to preach his word.
Sheep "stealing" ping.
Mary is someone to love, among other things, for those whose mothers were monsters.
On page 224, under a heading, Outside the Church there is no salvation, paragraph #846 begins:
How are we to understand this affirmation, often repeated by the Church Fathers? Re-formulated positively, it means that all salvation comes from Christ the Head through the Church which is his Body:
Here, at the very beginning of the discussion, we encounter trickery. First, we are told that the "affirmation" cannot easily be understood; it must be explained to us! This is typical Modernist "hokum." What could be more clear than the words used by Pope Boniface VIII in his Bull Unam Sanctam in 1302:
"We declare, say, define and pronounce that it is absolutely necessary for the salvation of every human creature to be subject to the Roman Pontiff."
Then we are told it is just an "affirmation" by Church Fathers; the catechumen is not informed that it is a dogma of the Church, defined infallibly by three Popes, one in Council. Finally, the exclusive negative formula of the dogma is restated in the form of an inclusive affirmative truism, or obvious truth. What does this do to the meaning of the dogma? Pope Innocent III had declared ex cathedra:
"There is but one universal Church of the faithful, outside of which no one at all is saved." (Lateran Council IV, 1215)
In the philosophical science called Logic, this proposition is known as a UNIVERSAL NEGATIVE; it permits no exceptions at all! On the other hand, by substituting for it the simple truism that "all salvation comes from Christ ... through the Church ..." the door is opened to every exception imaginable, and that includes Rahner's "universal salvation." Let us demonstrate our point:
Universal Affirmative: "All men have rational souls" This proposition does not rule out the possibility of creatures, other than men, also having rational souls.
Universal Negative: "Outside of men, there are no rational souls" This proposition permits no exceptions; only men have rational souls. (Note: Angels are intellectual spirits, not rational souls.)
Even if everything else in the Catechism were Traditional and orthodox, which it is not, this piece of sleight-of-hand alone justifies our rejecting it. Here, its Modernist authors completely change the meaning of the key dogma of the Church.
The Catechism continues, quoting another truism from Vatican II:
" ... Hence they could not be saved who, knowing that the Catholic Church was founded as necessary by God through Christ, would refuse either to enter it or to remain in it." (Lumen Gentium 14)
It then introduces its first exception, "This affirmation is not aimed at those who, through no fault of their own, do not know Christ and his Church, and quotes Lumen Gentium 16:
"Those who, through no fault of their own, do not know the Gospel of Christ or his Church, but who nevertheless seek God with a sincere heart, and moved by grace, try in their actions to do his will as they know it through the dictates of their conscience those too may achieve eternal salvation."
With the positively stated, non-qualifying formula for the dogma as its reference, the Catechism introduces exceptions based on a distinction between "knowing" or "not knowing" about the Church. This distinction, with its ultimate destructive effect on the de fide requirements for salvation, is a logical consequence of the denial of Original Sin by the heretic Pelagius in the 4th century. This heresy was laid to rest by Saints Augustine and Jerome, and the Papally approved Councils of Carthage (418) and Orange (529), but was resurrected in the infamous 1949 "Letter to the Archbishop of Boston," to which the decrees of Vatican II, and its catechism, give credit for the resurrection. It is a novel teaching which, heretofore, has never been approved by the Church. We disregard and reject it, as Pope John Paul II says we must.
On page 320 of the Catechism, under a topic heading, The Necessity of Baptism, we are taught the following in numbered paragraphs:
#1257 Baptism is necessary for salvation for those to whom the Gospel has been proclaimed and who have had the possibility of asking for this sacrament. ...God has bound salvation to the sacrament of Baptism, but he himself is not bound by his sacraments.
Both of these sentences are novelties, never before taught by the Church. The first contradicts the Council of Trent's Canon V on Baptism: "If anyone saith that Baptism is optional, that is, not necessary unto salvation, let him be anathema." The second infers that Christ deceived us when He said, "Unless a man be born again of water and the Holy Ghost, he cannot enter the kingdom of God." By this clear, unequivocal statement, Our Lord not only bound salvation to the Sacrament of Baptism, but He also bound Himself to the same Sacrament.
In their determination to make salvation easily available to all men, and nullify the necessity of the Church, these Modernist fabricators deliberately ignore the fact of the Providence of God His proven willingness to provide a teacher and the Sacrament for every worthy man who needs them, as demonstrated in the cases of Cornelius the Centurion, the Eunuch of Candace, and Saul of Tarsus, all related in the Acts of the Apostles.
Eighth grade graduation, Senior high graduation, dance recitals,graduation related events like brunches, dinners, masses and recognition assemblies.... We had three weeks of school-church overdrive last May. Catholic schools also require more family and parent involvement to the point that asking school families - who are the most active parishoners by and large, to do any more is cruel and unusual punishment.
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