Posted on 07/02/2012 12:06:36 PM PDT by marshmallow
SHELBY, N.C. — The day after a newspaper in the small town of Shelby, N.C., reported that the Te Deum Foundation had acquired nearby land for a new Catholic seminary and monastery, a group of nuns in habits stopped at a local service station.
Fifty years ago — 10 years ago and, to some extent, even today — many Southerners regarded Catholics as unsaved and Catholicism as a non-Christian mystery religion.
But that day, everyone at the station greeted and welcomed the sisters. One woman even asked the nuns to pray for her injured nephew.
This acceptance marks a sea change in the Southern Baptist and evangelical Protestant-dominated South, where Catholics make up less than 10% of the population, compared with double-digit percentages in most northern states.
The Diocese of Charlotte, where the seminary will be located, is a prime example of Catholicism’s explosive growth in the South. Formed in 1972, the diocese had an initial 11,200 registered Catholic families.
By 2010, there were more than 63,000 registered families and an estimated 291,000 unregistered Catholics, including many of Hispanic origin. This brings the total Catholic population up from just 1.3% in 1972 to 9.7% today.
Much of the growth comes from immigration: northern Catholics following technology jobs southward and Catholics arriving from Spanish-speaking countries. But Catholics from the north can’t expect to find the pockets of cultural Catholicism typical of the ethnic enclaves of big cities, and Hispanic Catholics won’t find a village whose rhythm revolves around feast days.
Within hours of their arrival in the South, newcomers will be welcomed heartily by their Protestant neighbors — and invited to their church services.
“In such an environment,” wrote Father Jay Scott Newman, pastor of St. Mary’s Church in Greenville, S.C., in his website welcome to parishioners, “those who are casual....
(Excerpt) Read more at ncregister.com ...
So basic is confession to the Christian life, that the Large Catechism simply says: “When I urge you to go to confession, I am simply urging you to be a Christian.” Christians confess their sins and are forgiven. Unbelievers deny their sins and have no use for forgiveness.so, as you see, this is shared with our Lutheran brethernBonhoeffer calls absolution without personal confession a form of “cheap grace,” a cross-less Christianity. It is the attempt to have repentance without shame, contrition without guilt. It is the equivalent of an out of court settlement - just pay the money admit no wrongdoing. God wants us at the bar of His justice. There is no back room bargaining with the Lord. There is only the Law and the Gospel, our sin and the death of Christ for our sin.
Confession is directed in three ways - to God, to the neighbor, and to the pastor. A Christian always confesses to God, and can always confess to God directly, as we do in the Lord’s Prayer and in our own personal prayers. That is your privilege as a baptized child of God. People sometimes use this privilege as a dodge and an excuse. “I can confess directly to God; therefore, I don’t need to confess before another.” That isn’t humility, but pride. The very words and deeds we are ashamed to admit before a fellow sinner, we were not ashamed to say and do in full view of the Lord of heaven and earth
Though we may confess to God directly, He always deals with us through the external Word, the Word outside of ourselves - through Baptism, through the Lord’s Supper, through the preached Word. The person who boasts confidently, “I can confess my sins to God directly, and therefore don’t need the church,” misses the basic point. It’s not our confession, but God’s forgiveness that matters. And God always deals with us through the incarnation of Jesus, through earthy, creaturely means such as water, bread, wine, words, in this case sound waves that emanate from mouths and go into ear holes.
Christians also confess to their pastor. There are several good reasons for doing this. First, he is ordained to hear confession. That’s what we put him there for. It is one of the tasks laid on a pastor at his ordination. Second, he is equipped by practice and training to help others sharpen and deepen their confession and to square them to the Word of God. Third, he is bound by solemn vow to secrecy, something that a close friends is not. For a pastor to break the seal of confession is grounds for dismissal
Fourth, the pastor is a public, corporate person. He holds an office. The pastor does not speak for himself but for Christ and for the whole church. The pastor is a minister, a servant of the Word, a steward of God’s mysteries revealed in Christ. He is not there as superior, but as servant. He serves not “from above” but “from below.” He is there not to condemn but to forgive. He is under holy orders to forgive. A friend may forgive you simply to keep you as a friend. A family member may forgive you for no other reason than to keep peace in the family. Friends and family we have aplenty. Pastors, we have precious few. A pastor forgives by the divine order of the crucified, risen, and reigning Son of God, “in his stead and by his command.” He represents the person of Jesus, not his own person. Even if the pastor doesn’t like you, or even if you don’t like him, his forgiveness is Christ’s forgiveness, sure and certain, addressed to you. And that’s really all that matters.
Sure don't understand how your friend could say that, if she actually attends Mass. Every single Mass involves at least 1 reading from the Old Testament, one from the Epistles, written by Jesus's apostles, and one from the Gospels, dealing with the actual events in Jesus's life.
In addition, there is always a Psalm that is either read or sung, in between the Old Testament reading, and the Epistle reading. All you have to do is listen, and read along, and in three years, with the cycle of readings, you've heard almost the entire Scriptures, and listened to countless sermons about them.
I think the lady was being sarcastic to George.
Yep, that's where my Sicilian Grandaddy's parents entered the US, in the 1880s.
Where are they building it??
As I understand it, Jefferson Davis may have converted to Catholicism on his deathbed, and the only foreign power who recognized the Confederacy was His Holiness Pope Pius IX, who sent Davis (after the war) a crown of thorns he himself had made. It’s still visible at the Confederate Museum in New Orleans, I’ve heard.
Thanks to all of you, most anyway, for your wonderful helpful comments. I usually stay away from these threads because I would never ever bash anybody’s beliefs or faiths.
I have always been drawn to the Catholic church for some unknown reason to me. There is a lot I don’t understand since I wasn’t raised a Catholic but I have always admired the faith. Both churches are very good to help the community. The local Baptist church kept me afloat when my husband was critically injured in an accident and I have the utmost respect for them.
I was raised a Southern Baptist and while I greatly admire that religion also, and believe most of what they teach, they have been a disappointment to me on a few occasions. I have found way to many leaders in the church that are not trustworthy and I think this has spilled over to make me hesitant to trust Priests. I have noticed a lot of teachings that I could not back up 100% in the Bible. I have a problem with churches that use the church to make money, the way several wealthy TV preachers have.
In all my life there is one Baptist minister that I admired due to his honesty. I could talk to him about anything. My dad used to make homemade grape wine. Yes, a Southern Baptist that made wine. :-) The practice was passed down through my family for hundreds of years. We originated in Scotland. Anyway, the pastor came every Wednesday night to share a glass of wine with my dad when I was a young teenager. I asked him once how he could be a Baptist preacher and drink wine. I had noticed that he never preached against it. He said that the sin is in being a drunkard but that drinking wine in itself was not sinful. He said that drinking wine (in moderation) was even encouraged as being healthy and good for the body. He said that if anybody asks he always tells them the truth but that if you want to stay a pastor in a Baptist church that you do not say anything about wine being OK in church.
There are a lot of Baptists that believe the same way he does but the church is so consumed with hatred of anything like this that most people just keep their thoughts to themselves and their mouths shut. I also have issues with some of the extreme evangelical churches here that practice handling poisonous snakes. I know that taking up snakes is mentioned in the Bible but to me, that is tempting God and definitely not something that we should do. Faith in God is good, tempting HIM is not.
I would not have a problem with confession to a trustworthy Priest because I know that confession is good but I haven’t found many of that type in the Baptist churches I have attended in my life.
Confession IS good for the soul, and I agree with you to some degree. Like I said in the “book” I just posted, I don’t have a problem with confession and I understand how you see it. Since I am not Catholic I must talk to a Baptist pastor and that is not something I’m comfortable doing because I haven’t found many I trust. :-)
have found way to many leaders in the church that are not trustworthy and I think this has spilled over to make me hesitant to trust Priests. -- oh, you'll find dumb priests too, but the beauty is that the priest is just the ministerial priest -- we're all priests and during the mass we have our ONE High Priest, Jesus Christ, present in the Eucharist. It's Him there, at every mass all over the world, presiding.
That weak, fallible tool that is the ministerial priest is just a tool for the High Priest.
Ditto for confession, we are confessing to God, the priest is a tool for this. the priest doesn't forgive the sins, God does and the priest follows.
” He said that the sin is in being a drunkard but that drinking wine in itself was not sinful. He said that drinking wine (in moderation) was even encouraged as being healthy and good for the body. “ — that’s straight from proverbs. God gave us a mind to control, we are not animals...
Thank you Cronos. I think I’m really a closet Catholic at heart. It’s really odd how I have always been drawn to the Catholic church but have been a Baptist all my life.
We get blessed by folks revitalizing the Church... but, the main thing is that you are seeking to imitate Christ. That’s the best any of us can try for.
Melinda, we need to talk.:-)
I’m putting you on my prayer list! Daggum!
This is not the official theology on sacramental confession, but it’s part of how I think of it: IF we think that IHS truly forgives us when we repent, IF we think that His forgiveness more than over-balances our own self-condemnation and the judgments of men, If we realio-trulio thought that through and through, we’d have little difficulty in confessing our sins to one another, much less to some guy in his office or “the box.” [cue scary music.]
So one thing I think I’m doing when I approach confession is that I’m training myself in my belief that the most important thing is not the opinion of men but the Love of God. It’s a version of “put your money where your mouth is.” Leaving aside the sacramental part, it’s just a good discipline. I need to do it more than my current once a month, more or less.
(Also, you get to make GREAT jokes. One priest and I keep promising ourselves we’re going to put up a sign outside his “box” saying, “EXPRESS LANE — 7 sins or fewer only!”)
A young (mainland Chinese) man who was baptized this Easter passed me the other say grinning like an idiot. I said, “Aoxing! What’s up?” He said, “I just made my first confession. It was GREAT!”
A lady I sponsored into “full communion” about 6 years ago was so anxious about her first confession that she asked me to sit with her until she went into the pastor’s office. So we kind of sat there awkwardly the way you do before surgery or something. Then she goes in. Maybe 20 minutes later she comes out smiling. I said, “Well?”
She said, “THAT’s the best weight-loss program EVER!”
So, leaving aside the “hafta-gotta” side of it, those Catholics who have had a personal experience of Christ’s love and “know [at least a little] Him whom they have believed” usually experience confession as happy thing.
“Where are they building it?”
Here’s the story:
http://www.newsobserver.com/2011/09/08/1469341/cathedral-will-go-up-in-west-raleigh.html
2012 years
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