Posted on 05/31/2013 2:44:05 PM PDT by NYer
Do our Catholic children and most adults know what these images teach?
All of us know one of the elephants in the room of the Catholic Church. Our religious education programs are not handing on the essence of our Catholic Faith, our parents are befuddled about their role in handing on the faith and the materials we use are vapid or if good do not make an impression on young minds. We are afraid of asking for memorization and thus most don't remember anything they've learned about God and Church other than some niceties and feel good emotions.
I teach each class of our grades 1-6 (we don't have 7th or 8th) each Thursday, rotating classes from week to week. For the last two years I have used Baltimore Catechism #1 as my text book. It is wonderful to use with children and it is so simple yet has so much content. If Catholics, all Catholics, simply studied Baltimore Catechism #1, we would have very knowledgeable Catholics.
These past two years I've used Baltimore Catechism #2 with our adult religious program which we call Coffee and Conversation following our 9:30 AM Sunday Mass, which coincides with our CCD program which we call PREP (Parish Religious Education Program).
This #2 book has more content and is for middle school, but upper elementary school children must have been more capable of more serious content back when this book was formulated and used through the mid 1960's because it is a great book to use with adults and not childish at all. We all use this same book as a supplemental book for the RCIA because it is so clear, nobly simple and chocked full of content!
Yes, there are some adjustments that need to be made to some chapters, but not that many, in light of Vatican II and the new emphasis we have on certain aspects of Church that are not present in the Baltimore Catechism. But these are really minor.
What is more important though is that when the Baltimore Catechism was used through the mid 1960's it was basically the only book that was used for children in elementary and junior high school. It was used across the board in the USA thus uniting all Catholics in learning the same content. There was not, in other words, a cottage industry of competing publishing houses selling new books and different content each year.
The same thing has occurred with liturgical music, a cottage industry of big bucks has developed around the sale of new hymnals, missalettes and new music put on the open market for parishes to purchase. It is a money making scheme.
Why do our bishop allow this to happen in both liturgical music and parish catechesis? The business of selling stuff to parishes and making mega bucks off of it is a scandal that has not be addressed.
In the meantime, our liturgies suffer and become fragmented because every parish uses a different resource for liturgical music and the same is true of religious formation, everyone uses something different of differing quality or no quality at all.
Isn't it time to wake up and move forward with tried and true practices that were tossed out in favor of a consumerist's approach to our faith that has weakened our liturgies, our parishes and our individual Catholics?
“Augustine and some others were so convinced””
Correction: You are so convinced that Augustine believed in transubstantiation, because to believe otherwise is a fatal blow to your Catholicism.
Obviously, a look at Augustine’s entire view on John 6 and his view on sacraments, over the small snippets offered by the Romanists, proves a very different story.
Ready to be proven wrong.
Justin Martyr-
“This food we call the Eucharist, of which no one is allowed to partake except one who believes that the things we teach are true, and has received the washing for forgiveness of sins and for rebirth, and who lives as Christ handed down to us. For we do not receive these things as common bread or common drink; but as Jesus Christ our Savior being incarnate by God’s Word took flesh and blood for our salvation, so also we have been taught that the food consecrated by the Word of prayer which comes from him, from which our flesh and blood are nourished by transformation, is the flesh and blood of that incarnate Jesus.”-”First Apology”, Ch. 66, inter A.D. 148-155
Clement of Alexandria-”The Word is everything to a child: both Father and Mother, both Instructor and Nurse. ‘Eat My Flesh,’ He says, ‘and drink My Blood.’ The Lord supplies us with these intimate nutrients. He delivers over His Flesh, and pours out His Blood; and nothing is lacking for the growth of His children. O incredible mystery!”,-”The Instructor of the Children” [1,6,41,3] ante
Irenaeus -”So then, if the mixed cup and the manufactured bread receive the Word of God and become the Eucharist, that is to say, the Blood and Body of Christ, which fortify and build up the substance of our flesh, how can these people claim that the flesh is incapable of receiving God’s gift of eternal life, when it is nourished by Christ’s Blood and Body and is His member? As the blessed apostle says in his letter to the Ephesians, ‘For we are members of His Body, of His flesh and of His bones’ (Eph. 5:30). He is not talking about some kind of ‘spiritual’ and ‘invisible’ man, ‘for a spirit does not have flesh an bones’ (Lk. 24:39). No, he is talking of the organism possessed by a real human being, composed of flesh and nerves and bones. It is this which is nourished by the cup which is His Blood, and is fortified by the bread which is His Body. The stem of the vine takes root in the earth and eventually bears fruit, and ‘the grain of wheat falls into the earth’ (Jn. 12:24), dissolves, rises again, multiplied by the all-containing Spirit of God, and finally after skilled processing, is put to human use. These two then receive the Word of God and become the Eucharist, which is the Body and Blood of Christ.”-”Five Books on the Unmasking and Refutation of the Falsely Named Gnosis”. Book 5:2, 2-3, circa 180 A.D.
Tertullian-”Then, having taken the bread and given it to His disciples, He made it His own body, by saying, ‘This is my body,’ that is, the figure of my body. A figure, however, there could not have been, unless there were first a veritable body…He did not understand how ancient was this figure of the body of Christ, who said Himself by Jeremiah: ‘I was like a lamb or an ox that is brought to the slaughter, and I knew not that they devised a device against me, saying, Let us cast the tree upon His bread,’ which means, of course, the cross upon His body. And thus, casting light, as He always did, upon the ancient prophecies, He declared plainly enough what He meant by the bread, when He called the bread His own body. He likewise, when mentioning the cup and making the new testament to be sealed ‘in His blood,’ affirms the reality of His body. For no blood can belong to a body which is not a body of flesh. If any sort of body were presented to our view, which is not one of flesh, not being fleshly, it would not possess blood. Thus, from the evidence of the flesh, we get a proof of the body, and a proof of the flesh from the evidence of the blood.” Tertullian, Against Marcion, 40 (A.D. 212).
The Magisteruum the teaching authority. Do try to stay on topic.
Obviously you’re not well educated about the Church Fathers.
I hoped for better from you than the same ole un-researched nonsense.
Good Night.I wish you a Blessed Evening!
“Ready to be proven wrong.”
Are you able to logically explain how they prove me wrong? Unless you’re alleging that my quotes are false. If not, you would have to take the time to explain how they’re just kidding in my quotes, but how they’re serious in yours, and how yours, despite the existence of other quotes that define the Eucharist in spiritual and symbolic terms, really proves that they were literalists all along.
“Obviously you’re not well educated about the Church Fathers.”
I am well educated about the church “Fathers.” Here’s one now on John 6:
“Why dost thou prepare thine teeth and stomach? Believe, and thou hast eaten already.” (Augustine)
Have fun with that.
I am on topic. I just read that Roman Catolics can’t agree on what they are being taught.
"Attributed to Ignatius Loyola in Spiritual Exercises..."
God does not want us to abandon our reason and our senses.However,that spirit within us that drives our reasoning is another matter altogether.
"...be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God." (Romans 12:2) "Come now, and let us reason together, saith the Lord..." (Isaiah 1:18)
"Call unto me, and I will answer thee, and show thee great and mighty things, which thou knowest not." (Jeremiah 33:3)
"But strong meat belongeth to them that are of full age, even those who by reason of use have their senses exercised to discern both good and evil." (Hebrews 5:14)
You're automatically wrong because you're not Catholic. Had you borrowed a power drill and turned yourself Catholic, you could quote those exact same "Church father" excerpts and magically been counted "right" by the local branch of the FR Magisterium.
The sky's only blue because/when a Catholic says it is. That's how it works around here.
“Tertullian-”Then, having taken the bread and given it to His disciples, He made it His own body, by saying, ‘This is my body,’ that is, the figure of my body. A figure, however, there could not have been, unless there were first a veritable body…He did not understand how ancient was this figure of the body of Christ, who said Himself by Jeremiah: ‘I was like a lamb or an ox that is brought to the slaughter, and I knew not that they devised a device against me, saying, Let us cast the tree upon His bread,’ which means, of course, the cross upon His body. And thus, casting light, as He always did, upon the ancient prophecies, He declared plainly enough what He meant by the bread, when He called the bread His own body. He likewise, when mentioning the cup and making the new testament to be sealed ‘in His blood,’ affirms the reality of His body. For no blood can belong to a body which is not a body of flesh. If any sort of body were presented to our view, which is not one of flesh, not being fleshly, it would not possess blood. Thus, from the evidence of the flesh, we get a proof of the body, and a proof of the flesh from the evidence of the blood.” Tertullian, Against Marcion, 40 (A.D. 212).”
By the way, why did you quote my same quote at me? So does “the figure of his body” mean something different when you quote it?
Or are you trying to say that the “real body” he is referring to is the Eucharist, instead of Christ Himself possessing a body? Tertullian was writing against those who denied that Christ even had a body, thus the “figure” of the Eucharist stands for a real physical body, and not a “phantasm.” His opponents argue that Christ didn’t really physically die, or even had a physical body, and therefore the symbolism of the Lord’s Supper is a firm repudiation of their heresy. I guess that’s why YOUR quote removes that comment, as seen in the ellipses, while mine retains it.
“Some empty thing, which is a phantasm, were not able to satisfy a figure.”
-— Are you able to logically explain how they prove me wrong? ——
There is usually a clear consensus of the Church Fathers. They did not have the gift of infallibility. But “The exception proves the rule.”
Additionally, some statements, taken out of the context of the author’s other writings, or contemporaneous Church Teaching, appear to be ambiguous, when they’re not.
For example, there is a thread on the Catholic Answers web site that addresses Augustine’s Sermon #227, which is supposed to disprove his belief in transubstantiation.
“What you see is the bread and the chalice; that is what your own eyes report to you. But what your faith obliges you to accept is that THE BREAD IS THE BODY OF CHRIST ANDTHECHALICE [WINE] THE BLOOD OF CHRIST.”(Sermons 272)
* * *
“In the reading of Augustine in the perspective of later problems, an attempt has been made to OPPOSE his realistic and symbolic affirmations regarding the Eucharist. But, in fact, his realism and symbolism are NOT in opposition. The reality of the Eucharist is expressed in the Sacrament, which is essentially a SIGN (C. Admin 12.2) : the reality (-res-) of the Eucharistic bread and wine IS the body of Christ, the WHOLE Christ, the Church (Serm 272; In evang Ioh 21.25.4; 26.15). But without pausing over what has since been termed the -res et sacramentum-, Augustine most OFTEN stressed (Serm 37; 131.1) the ULTIMATE REALITY of this Sacrament of UNITY (Serm 227). All his theology of the Church and of the Sacraments is thus centered on UNITY, which is the ultimate reality, because ‘God is love.’”
“For example, there is a thread on the Catholic Answers web site that addresses Augustine’s Sermon #227,”
Your quote only makes a bland assertion as a matter of faith, and then says some gibberish as if it proves that what they confess Augustine understood as symbolism, was still somehow also a reality. It doesn’t actually answer anything I posted from sermon 227 that shows a very radical and different view to the sacraments. I myself would consider using Augustine’s use of the sacraments in church service, such as the “sacrament of the Holy Spirit,” or a variant on the “sacrament of the kiss of peace,” since they are quite rich in setting the mind to understand the ultimate realities that they are meant to teach.
“then says some gibberish”
Yet Christ himself says and turns away those who refuse to eat of his flesh and drink of his blood!
What is so hard to understand about the consensus of the magisterium? Cherry picking fathers isn’t going to address the main point.
There were over 400 bishops, and you’re quoting the one who happens to support what you believe.
You missed this one from my previous list of church “Fathers”:
Jesus Christ - Anti-transubstantiation
The blood in the cup still wine, which He will drink again when reunited with the Apostles in Heaven:
Mat 26:27-29 And he took the cup, and gave thanks, and gave it to them, saying, Drink ye all of it; (28) For this is my blood of the new testament, which is shed for many for the remission of sins. (29) But I say unto you, I will not drink henceforth of this fruit of the vine, until that day when I drink it new with you in my Father’s kingdom.
I snuck it in there and, since the Romanists don’t actually read the quotes, no one commented on it.
Your questions and "discoveries" only accentuate your ignorance of the Church. Actually, if you read my earlier postings you will see that there are two Magisteriums; the infallible Sacred Magisterium and the non-infallible Ordinary Magisterium. Your discussion is centered around the Sacred Magiserium, whose proclamations are issued under the authority of the Pope. Because there is only one pope all his proclamations are unanimous.
Peace to you
John 6:53
“Jesus said to them, “Very truly I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you.”
I'm not at all interested in starting an argument on this, but how do you reconcile the Catholic doctrine of Mary's immaculate conception - whereby she is said to have been conceived without "original sin" and to have remained sinless throughout her entire life - with what you are saying here about Mary's freedom of will to accept or reject the opportunity God had for her? Think in terms of the possibility that, if she had said "no", what would have happened about her sinlessness? Would she have then become a "retroactive" sinner (her sin being the rejection of God's will) and been as unrighteous as all mankind, continuing to sin further and needing the redemption that is in Christ?
It sounds to me like there is a contradiction with the way you phrase your opinion of "free will" applying to Mary. Her being created without a sin nature would have made her incapable of saying "no" to God, but you crudely say that would make Mary "God's brood mare", his "rent-a-womb" and make the Holy Spirit a "rapist". It is only the logical conclusion of your OWN argument and highlights the error of pronouncing Mary as a created sinless vessel but with a free will.
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