I've lived long enough to realize that not all explanations are even reasonable approximations of "objective reality" . . . sometimes . . . even my own explanations.
I do hope, however, that brittleness, sacred shoulder chips and thin skins do not become sacraments in any group.
I do hope, however, that brittleness, sacred shoulder chips and thin skins do not become sacraments in any group.Okay: if somebody insists that I think that priests are God, that the bread in the Eucharist "physically" becomes the body of Christ, that the body of Christ genetically bonds with my DNA, if somebody suggests that Catholics do not think for themselves or want to,
if somebody suggests, as a conclusive criticism that such and such a practice is not Biblical (when an objective review of the scholarship would indicate that the Bible is equivocal on the matter in question) after repeated attempts to discuss the difference between the RC and Bible-believing Protestant approach to Scripture and Tradition,
if the same charge of idolatry is repeated tirelessly, if when one Protestant makes a slur which is based on a mischaracterization of what we think and immediately three other Protestants come up to give verbal high-fives,
if then when we complain about that you think we're tnin-skinned, we're going to have a tough time communicating.
I understand you to say that the term magicsterical has nothing to do with magisterium and the similarity came to your attention after you coined the term. I believe you.
Is is really astonishing or excessively thin-skinned for us to react negatively when it sure LOOKS like the term is a play on Magisterium, magic, and hysterical and it is used in the context of your criticizing the psychology of our allegiance to what we think is God's promise to the Church?
Evidently moving from one thread to another is supposed to mean that everything starts de novo. I don't buy it. If you look at the Rosary thread, where one of us started the nastiness, or the Eucharist thread, where the sacrament we hold most dear is repeatedly mocked and our thinking about it is, well, to be parliamentary, subjected to massive untruth delivered in a contemptuous tone, I think by the time this thread started all of us RC felt like we'd just come out of a debriding session in the burn ward. THIN skin? How about NO skin, having been flayed repeatedly by what is either a massive group communicative disorder or an intentional effort to give offense!
It is simply impossible for me to believe that there is no conscious and intentional hostility in alleging that we think priests are God or in the 359th iteration of "Stock of wood". If one spouse treated the other like this it would be clinically described as abuse. Someone makes derogatory comments about me because after I've studied sacramental theology, and philosophy from The Pre-Socratics to Heidegger with extensive time in amateur study of Buddhist metaphysics (with a pretend major in Dogen Zenji and a manful attempt at the Lankavatara and I actually read the entire Lotus Sutra) I won't say either that the bread IS God or that it is not God. After all in CHinese buddhist metaphysics you get 4 choices, (1)is,(2)is not(3)both is and is not (4) neither is nor is not. But another professorial PH.D. (double risk of God complex) tells me "It doesn't work that way." I'm sorry gang, but I read an entire book called "What is a thing"? (It's great!) and I still have questions about it. I'm not certain about what "presence" is, much less "Real (or thingly - to look at the etymology of the word "real") Presence", much less "Real Presence of the Son of God." I wonder what it means to say God is "there" when omnipresence is one of the things we attribute to God and when Jesus said He'd be with us always.
So the nanny nanny boo boo -- gotcha approach to sacramental theology just isn't going to cut it with me. "It doesn't work that way." One of the tings I love about sacramental theology is that it is the nexus of everything that I like to think about.
So if I insist the subject be approached with the meticulous care and reverence it deserves, whatever one's own doctrine the Eucharist, and in retaliation have PERSONAL disparagement and mockery and mocking misstatements of what I believe hurled at mere, then I think I have a right to complain, and I will consider the suggestion that my being troubled by personal insult and insult (as opposed to argument) to my religion is a thin skin problem as another insult.
You yourself say that something merits a "guffaws to the max". But surely you know that feelings, even the impulse to laughter, are not always a reliable indicator of the nature or value of a person or an idea. And surely you know it is painful to advance a proposition or a thought about something personal and intimate and have it greeted with laughter.
I will readily concede that some RCs are aggressive and rude and disparaging. But I think an objective review of the threads will point out a pack mentality on the part of many Protestants. They make false charges in abusive language and then cpngratulate each other on thier wit and perspicacity. Anybody who has been on more than three of these threads and suggests that the problem with Catholics is that they prefer traditions of men to the Word of God - while, objectively that might be true, though obviously I think not -- either lacks finesse or intelligence., or means to do harm.
We KNOW that's what a lot of Protestants think of us. By now I don't think it unreasonable of us to expect that the more active Protestant posters would understand that we think that not all traditions are "of men". That that is where the hinge point lies, and the re-statement of the point of disagreement is not an argument.
Look at how much you posted in response to my brief post last night. Now imagine if I acted as though you STILL intended to mock especially Catholics and the Magisterium with you "Magicsterical". Imagine that I acted as though you had never said that or as though I was SO persuaded that I knew better than you what's REALLY going on inside that twisted mind of yours that it was legitimate for me to ignore what you said and to make mock of you -- to respond with gales of happy laughter or with the 100th repetition of some hackneyed argument.
Then imagine that when you finally complain about that abuse somebody else advises you that maybe, just maybe, you have a thin-skin issue, or, as has happened to me, calls you a cry-baby.
In the post to which this is a response you pretty much give yourself permission to ignore what we say because your experience is that explanations and "objective reality" don't live in the same neighborhood. But you accused someone else of mind-reading when he doubted the objective reality of your explanation.
As my late mother would say, "This can only end in tears."
Or, finally, yeah, when it comes to discussing religion, I have a thin skin. Outside of sadistic fanatics for whom religion is chiefly a club to beat other on the head with, I know of few who don't. I would think that a need to mock and lie about someone else's religion would qualify as pathological, and I would be amazed if you wouldn't agree.
I'll try harder.