Defending the Roman Catholic Faith: Catholic Apologetics (vanity)

Oct. 19 | Global2010

[Global2010]

Hi Ya'll,

Need some quick to the point answers to what you all as Roman Catholics are asked by non Catholics.

It is my homework assignment and I told my teacher I would post this vanity to help sort out ???? that I will be asked as a Catholic in years to come.

I am not having a problem with ???? about chastity, prudence, temptations, reading the Holy Bible ect...

I know in my head answers to ???? below but having a hard time articulating them.

Questions about our Mother Mary and the Saints, going to Heaven/purgatory takes more then just saving Grace (once saved always saved non Catholic Christians often say).

What ??? are you all often faced to answer? I don't want to go into a deep theological discussion with other non Catholics just a quick to the point answer would suffice.

My idea of just telling them to take an Adult Conservative Catechism Class and they will have all the answers is not really acceptable in defending the faith (lol but it does swiftly end discussion).

[BipolarBob]

Is there no longer a human life involved?

There is no life involved in contraception. Therefore there is no murder. Abortion, on the other hand, involves the taking of the life of a fetus. You see no difference because you were taught there is no difference. Again, why continue? If you are content with your life in your chuch, then continue it. But allow others to choose their course.

[Uri’el-2012]

How do you read Luke 1:46-47

Luke 1:46 And Mary said: “My soul glorifies the Lord

Luke 1:47 and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior,

Was Mary a sinner?

Did Mary need a Savior?

She said she needed a Savior.

b'shem Y'shua

[Campion]

Pray to God through Christ, and let the saints attend to their own business.

Real saints are in the presence of God. Their "business" is to participate in his glory. Participating in his glory means also participating in his love for us. Hence it is perfectly logical to ask for their prayers, since they are united to Christ the Head of the Church even more perfectly than we are.

It's a shallow and pinched understanding of heaven that refuses to recognize God's friends in heaven as our friends.

[Campion]

Did Mary need a Savior?

Yes, she did. And she had one. That much is Catholic dogma.

It does not follow from that the she was a "sinner". A person who commits no actual sins, but is descended from Adam, still requires salvation through Christ. To say otherwise is the heresy of Pelagianism.

[William Terrell]

Real saints are in the presence of God.

So are you.

Their "business" is to participate in his glory.

So is yours.

Participating in his glory means also participating in his love for us.

My point exactly.

Hence it is perfectly logical to ask for their prayers, since they are united to Christ the Head of the Church even more perfectly than we are.

Matters not. Jesus was clear about through Whom you go to God, and it ain't through a dead saint. That is not Biblical, that is merely the pronouncements of men, exactly the reason Jesus criticized the Pharisees and scribes.

[Uri’el-2012]

savior ( Brit. saviour) noun a person who saves someone or something
(esp. a country or cause) from danger, and who is regarded with the
veneration of a religious figure. • ( the/our Savior) (in Christianity)
God or Jesus Christ as the redeemer of sin and saver of souls.
ORIGIN Middle English : from Old French sauveour,
from ecclesiastical Latin salvator (translating Greek s?t?r),
from late Latin salvare ‘to save.’

[Campion]

Jesus was clear about through Whom you go to God, and it ain't through a dead saint.

Red herring alert. We aren't going through "dead saints" (there is no such thing, nobody in heaven is dead: Jesus said so!) to get to God apart from Jesus. In fact, a "dead [sic] saint's" prayers go through Jesus just as much as any other Christian's prayers do.

Your objection applies equally well to asking Christians on earth to pray for you, and yet Paul did that in several places in his letters. If you can't "go through dead saints to get to God," you can't go through living ones either.

[Campion]

Thanks, Chuck. I'm glad to see you know how to use a dictionary. So do I.

[BipolarBob]

If you can't "go through dead saints to get to God," you can't go through living ones either.

Prayer keeps our faith and our connection to God alive. Saints dead or alive are no longer in need of that. Their trials and tribulations are over. To which of the saints did Christ or the Apostles appeal to?

[Campion]

Prayer keeps our faith and our connection to God alive. Saints dead or alive are no longer in need of that. Their trials and tribulations are over.

But their connection to the church is not. They are still part of the Body of Christ, not lost in some la-la Buddhist nirvana.

To which of the saints did Christ or the Apostles appeal to?

God doesn't appeal to mortals, but Christ did speak to Moses and Elijah at the Transfiguration.

(Of course, he was only setting a bad example for us. Right?)

[Uri’el-2012]

How do you explain

"being obedient she (Mary) became the cause of salvation for herself and for the whole human race"

CCC Para 494

b'shem Y'shua

[Global2010]

Mary was born without Original sin.

Yet she had free will.

She concieved Jesus by the Holy Spirit.

The other two ???? I have to work on. Thanks for posting them to me.

[Global2010]

OK Let me start over I had to call my teacher before I try and answer.

the passage you sniped from is the Canticle of Mary

Read it in whole and the foot note

---

Just from Catechism (I am very fortunate to have 2 teachers in class one has 20+ yrs and the other is our Priest whom is University level in teaching) class/Holy Confirmation I learned that Mary was born without original sin.

Now from my limited knowledge/opinion did Mary need a Saviour? No as she was born without sin and she may have not had it revealed to her pre birth of our Saviour whom she conceived via the Holy Spirit and she stayed pure hence Jesus did not have brothers genetically speaking.

The Luke chapter 26-to the end of the Canticle has 2 possible origins as to Luke writing it on what premise.
To get the full context I would suggest all to read it in it's entirety.

I am using The New American Bible.

[Pyro7480]

Now from my limited knowledge/opinion did Mary need a Saviour? No as she was born without sin and she may have not had it revealed to her pre birth of our Saviour whom she conceived via the Holy Spirit and she stayed pure hence Jesus did not have brothers genetically speaking.

God was her Saviour, in the sense that the omnipotence of God, in preparing for the Incarnation of His Son, spared her from the stain of original sin. It's like someone warned you of a deep pit that you might fall into. That person saved you, but in a different sense from someone who has lowered a rope down to you after you fell into the pit (if you hadn't been warned about it).

[franky]

###"If a woman is in an unsafe environment and makes a choice to not bring a child into the world through contraceptive means, that is HER choice and it may be a humane one."###

The real problem with contraception is that it takes away all responsibility of the person. Following is a newspaper article I wrote for our local paper. It presents the short comings and poses questions on the use of contraceptives:

"While Family Planning Plus made an effort to promulgate contraception as a cure all for the moral ineptitude in the world that causes unwanted pregnancies and sexual transmitted disease, statistics from the American Pregnancy Association, Irving TX shows that 68,000,000 American individuals have Sexual Transmitted Disease, with 15,300,000 new cases reported each year and 3,000,000 teenagers acquiring and STD each year.

(http://www.americanpregnancy.org/main/statistics.html)

Those very numbers indicate the failure of the contraceptive mentality that family planners promote.

The writer’s claim that the “Griswold v. Baird decision made contraception legal 40 years ago”, is misleading as the real law loosening contraception on the United States was the Comstock Law which prohibited birth control and was overturned by the U.S. v. One Package of Japanese Pessaries case in 1936. There is a definite significance between the time periods of the two laws. Except for a few people such as Margaret Sanger, “family planning” groups did not exist in the 1930s. It was not until the mid 1960s and 1970s that these groups started to manifest themselves. What is coincidental and significant is that during that time moral degeneration, led by such happenings as Woodstock and Timothy Leary’s free drugs and many other things, the United States’ social mores started to decline to what we have today.

A question rises: Did this same family planning and contraceptive society thinking cause the United States’ social mores to decline to today’s lows or is it all just coincidence ? If it is coincidence then the following must be coincidental:

-As divorce is above 50% of all marriages, it was reported by Creighton University’s Center for Marriage and Family, “That the main causes for divorce are infidelity, and frequency of sexual relations were of greatest concern to those ages 29 and under.”

-Other startling statistics show children of divorce are twice as likely to drop out of school as those from intact homes.

-Children of divorce (whose parents divorced while they were children) are 62% more likely than children of non-divorced parents to no longer identify with the faith of their parents when they grow up. Divorced adults quadrupled from 4.3 million in 1970 to 17.4 million in 1994."

I don't think that the 15 million plus woman in the world were all in unsafe environments

[BipolarBob]

The real problem with contraception is that it takes away all responsibility of the person.

Says who? You? We are all responsible for our actions. The real problem with banning contraception is that we have a built-in excuse for failures because somebody didn't do the responsible thing. Do you like seeing children starve? suffer from AIDS? sold into prostitution? When there is a high likelihood of that a woman should be able to choose to take a responsible position.

[William Terrell]

The saint you pray to to ask for intercession is not corporate and not seen. It is by your faith and belief that he exists and hears your prayer. That faith and belief belongs to God and Christ.

The person you ask to pray for you is clear and present and requires no faith at all.

How can the difference be any clearer?

The righteous man's prayer availeth much. He doesn't need any amplification from a saint.

[Global2010]

This is why Catholic Apoligetics is soooo important to each and everyone of us...

I want to be able to articulate verbally what I have in my mind/soul...

Geeze.

BTW Can anyone list Catholic Sports figures and such who via their level of fame will step up to bat and defend the faith?

[Global2010]

BipolarBob what is your position on sex?

Do you feel free to live with a gal for awhile and such?

Or...do you feel that you trust in Marraige as a lifelong commit and procreation?
What exactly are your views on the subject...help us to understand.

[Global2010]

BTW Bipolar Bob....

I wanted to openly Thank You.

You have engaged and opinionated on this thread in such a positive way that has given' Catholics a great exercise in practicing Apolegetics.

It has not been fun and a bit heated but you did a good job.

Thanks.