“NKP_Vet” - I always find it interesting when someone dumps and runs on a post like this here on FR - ZERO follow up reply posts. Zero.
For the record I was born and raised Roman Catholic. I renounced that “denomination” and left that Church when God began to reveal the truth about himself to me through the person of Jesus Christ.
I KNEW something was wrong when as a young boy I made my first confession - long meditated on and heartfelt - the Priest, after asking me several questions which basically identified me personally to him, said “Ah you’re a good kid go say 10 hail marys and you’ll be all set”. I KNEW THIS COULD NOT POSSIBLY BE THE TRUTH AND COULD NOT CLEANSE ME NOR FORGIVE ME OF MY SINS.
Love and Truth won out in my life and I am a follower of Jesus Christ, my Savior AND Lord. Hope the same for all of you who earnestly seek Him. Jesus is the Way, the Truth, and the Life, not the Catholic Church or any other for that matter.
So you hang your current position regarding the Catholic Church on the perceptions of a seven-year-old child?
The priest was trying to be encouraging. A seven-year-old is incapable of committing grave sins.
You apparently were not conscious at that time of the words of absolution:
God, the Father of mercies, through the death and resurrection of his Son has reconciled the world to himself and sent the Holy Spirit among us for the forgiveness of sins; through the ministry of the Church may God give you pardon and peace, and I absolve you from your sins in the name of the Father, and of the Son, + and of the Holy Spirit.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sacrament_of_penance
Guess where hospitals came from?
http://americanminute.com/index.php?date=01-23&view=View
The Catholic Church is the oldest institution in the Western World and the originator of ‘hospitals’.
Just as the Syrian Church did in the East, the Catholic Church in the West pioneered putting into practice the words of Jesus:
“I was sick and you visited me,”
and
“Whatever you have done to the least of my brethren, you have done unto me.”
Though some ancient cultures had some medical/superstitious practices, it was primarily for the royalty and wealthy.
Health care for the poor traces its roots to Christianity.
In the 4th century, under the ministry of St. Jerome, a wealthy Christian widow named St. Fabiola gave money to build a hospital in Rome and cared for the sick herself.
Around the same time, St. Basil distributed food to the poor of Caesarea, then built a poorhouse, hospice, and hospital.
In 325 AD, the Council of Nicea directed that every city having a cathedral should also have a hospital, as people traveling on pilgrimages would often arrive ill.
The word “hosp” is Latin for “traveler,” the root word of hospital, hospitality, host, hostel and hotel. Hospitals were staffed by religious orders.
In the 6th century, the Benedictine Order had every monastery establish an infirmary.
With the invasion of Islam, hospitals needed to be defended, giving rise to the order of Knights of Hospitallers.
In the 1300’s, the Bubonic Plague, or Black Death, ravaged Europe killing 75 million people.
Crops were left standing in fields as there was no one to harvest them.
With often no one to bury the dead, an order of Catholic men called ‘Alexian Brothers’ collected the bodies and gave them a Christian burial.
They also ministered to the dying who were banished from the cities.
“NKP_Vet” - I always find it interesting when someone dumps and runs on a post like this here on FR - ZERO follow up reply posts. Zero.”
I call it dropping out of warp firing a few photon torpedoes and engaging the warp drive.