Post 638 doesn't mention those events at all.
Perhaps you can reproduce what you said and explain it to me. 
Posted on 07/23/2007 3:36:15 PM PDT by annalex
Sunday, July 22, 2007
As a young Catholic I was unaware of the amount of irrational hatred that was directed toward the Catholic Church and Catholics themselves. Growing up in Los Angeles I was not subject to the Fundamentalist “tracts” being placed on my family car while we were at Mass as I would have been had I lived in the “Bible Belt”. My exposure to people of other faiths was frequent and always positive. The majority of my friends growing were Jewish as were the girls whom I had the honor of dating. My babysitter growing up was Mormon, as was my Paternal Grandfather. My Paternal Grandmother is a Methodist and my Father was an atheist for most of his life. My Maternal Grandfather was a Presbyterian from a family that produced many deacons. However, my Maternal Grandmother was an Irish Catholic and thus my Mother was a Catholic and therefore we were raised Catholic. None of this was seen as a conflict. None of the above people in my family ever acted as though anything was “wrong” with my siblings and I being raised Catholic.
In my college years I essentially fell away from the faith. I still called myself a “Catholic” but had no particular belief in any of the dogmas that makes one a Catholic. I just knew that I was of Irish ancestry and thus was “Catholic”. My beliefs were for the most part agnostic. I thought that true believers were absurd (I included both theist and atheist true believers as absurd).
While in college I heard all about how the Catholic Church was responsible for the Dark Ages, the destruction of the Native Peoples of the Americas, the Holocaust, the Inquisition, pimples on teenagers, Milli-Vanilli and just about everything else that negatively effected anyone anywhere at anytime everywhere. I learned how peaceful and wonderful Muslim societies were and how Christians lived very well under Islamic rule. And how the Crusades were an evil move by a corrupt Pope to throw off that wonderful balance and have a huge land grab for greedy Churchman and Nobles. I heard how nothing good happened in the Christian world and no good men were produced in the Christian world until Marin Luther and later "the Enlightenment". I look back now and marvel at how I remained a Catholic even if it was in name only. All my history professors with their fancy PhDs thought Catholicism was a force for evil in the Western World who was I to disagree? Of course I just went along and got good grades and degrees not really challenging the idiocy that I was being taught.
There I was just a young guy going through life not contemplating the great issues of life and certainly not contemplating being a Catholic when I had the misfortune to meet a Rabbi that was a friend of my wife’s family. During our discussion, the rabbi told me about things that Christians “buy into” like the Trinity and the fact that Jesus was God. I was told that I could never understand Jews and their suffering at the hands of Catholics. I was told that I “would never know what it is to be a Jew or how it feels to have your children forced to sing Christmas carols (oh the horror! the horror!)”. I would never know what it is like to look at someone like me and see the Inquisition and the Crusades. Now, anyone who is not a self absorbed bigot would know that talking to a person who is half Irish and Catholic knows a little something of prejudice and persecution. My ancestors could not own land in their own country. They had to pay taxes to a foreign English master and support his foreign Church that was a parasite on their own land. They had real persecution. If they could have gotten off with simply singing Church of Ireland songs rather than pay taxes to and be persecuted by the British, I'm sure they would have gladly accepted. But why look past ones on victim-hood in order to see truth, when victim-hood is so much more of a commodity in our modern society.
At that point I made a commitment to understand my faith. I would never let someone attack the beliefs of my ancestors as this rabbi did without making a strong defense. My ancestors were willing to be persecuted (the real kind of persecution not the Christmas Carol kind) rather than abandon their faith. The least I could do is understand what they found so important as to endure what they did. Thus starting my journey toward becoming a passionate believer. The irony of a anti-Catholic bigoted rabbi bringing me closer to the truth of Christ is absolutely wonderful.
I started reading books by the usual authors that are sold at Borders and Barnes & Noble like George Weigel. While informative they were, upon reflection, very superficial. However, I happened upon a book called “Catholicism verses Fundamentalism” by Karl Keating. I thought it was simply going to be an analysis of Catholic beliefs versus Fundamentalist beliefs. What I had purchased was a wonderful combination of satire and apologetics. It has become the definitive apologetics book produced in the last 30 years. The title of the book itself mocks Jimmy Swaggarts silly book “Catholicism and Christianity”. Throughout the book I was baptized by fire into the world of anti-Catholicism. I learned about such Fundamentalist writers and “thinkers” as Lorraine Boettner, Alexander Hislop, Jimmy Swaggart, Jack Chick and others. Keating dismantled their arguments so thoroughly that one wonders how these people are not all routinely dismissed even by honest Fundamentalists. Sadly, low rent bigots like Hislop, Boettner and Dave Hunt are still widely read in Fundamentalist circles. Swaggart has fallen out of favor as we all know. Keating opened up a new door to me. I now was ready for the next step and started buying every book by Chesterton and Belloc I could find as they are the greatest apologists for the Catholic faith in the last 100 years.
The Holy Spirit has a funny way of working. I became friends with a wonderful guy who happens to be a Fundamentalist Christian. As we would talk he would mention some of the things that Keating talked about in his book. I was informed that Peter never went to Rome and that the Church was founded by Constantine the Great, and that Easter is really “Ishtar” and other scholarly insights that occupy the minds of Fundamentalist writers. I was told all about Catholicism and how it is really just paganism re-written. To his and most Fundamentalists credit, they literally do not know they are repeating lies. These books are sold at Protestant Book Stores and Churches. Also, he informed me of these things out of love as he believed my soul was in peril. So he could not process the refutations that I would make to him and just go on to the next attack. Most Catholics know about this tactic that Fundamentalists use. They will tell us what we believe and how stupid we are for believing it. 99% of the time they are wrong. The problem is that they have been told by Dave Hunt (his bio is from "rapture ready") or James White that the Calumnies that they are stating are Gospel truth.
After a while I began to pick up more and more apologetics material to refute my friends claims. I also decided that I would no longer play defense with him. I would attack his belief in sola scriptura (scripture alone) and sola fide (faith alone). When I would press him and ask about where those teachings are found in the Bible he would have no answer. This lead to his anger that I was asking too much to show me where the Bible taught either one of those Protestant Traditions (Traditions of men, not of God I might add). I would also repeat what he would say to me but re-phrase it to see if he really was willing to stand by it. For instance, he once told me that he was passionately anti-Catholic. I responded “Really? So if I were Jewish would it be okay for you to tell me that you are passionately anti-Jew?” He was taken aback and responded “Of course not!” I then responded “I guess some hatred is acceptable while others is not”. His response….silence. And then move on to the next attack. That is generally the tactic of the anti-Catholic. Never acknowledge that they are wrong, just move on to the next attack until they find something that the Catholic cannot answer. Usually it ends with some obscure Pope from the 7th century that no one knows about.
Anti-Catholicism rots the mind. It blinds people and they become obsessed with the destruction of something that they cannot destroy. People have been trying for 2000 years. Churchmen like Roger Mahoney have done their best. But the Gates of Hell will not prevail against it. So this leads to desperation. Which then leads to all kinds of ridiculous theories and outright lies about what Catholics believe and do. It does not stop with Fundamentalist Christians though. Before we think “well that’s just those weird bible-thumpers” let’s examine some things that people just “know”.
People "just know" that the Catholic Church did nothing in the Americas but persecute the indigenous people and massacre them. We "just know" that Priests never stood up to the Spaniards. Of course this is untrue. It is true that there were Catholic Priests who conducted themselves terribly during colonial times. However, it was Catholic Priests who sought to make life better for the indigenous people. Jesuits armed Indians against the Spanish in Paraguay, Francisco de Vittoria pleaded with the Spanish King in defense of the Indians. Most people in the Americas have never heard of Bartoleme de las Casas. Las Casas, a Spanish Dominican Priest has been called the Father of anti-imperialism and anti-racism. There is also Antonio Montesino who was the first person, in 1511, to denounce publicly in America the enslavement and oppression of the Indians as sinful and disgraceful to the Spanish nation. There of course were villains in the Spanish system but so were there in the American and English systems that were dominated by Protestants. We don’t hear about the brutality of Protestant lands in the US. We hear about those backward Spanish Catholics (who built the first Universities in the Americas) but not about the theocratic police state established in Geneva by John Calvin or the massacres carried out by Anabaptists in Munster.
In some cases anti-Catholicism is not only profitable it can allow for common bullies to slander and desecrate the memory of men finer than themselves without repercussions. Take the case of Daniel Goldhagen. He has made a career out of slandering the Catholic Church. Commenting on Mr. Goldhagens slanderous book A Moral Reckoning, Rabbi David Dalin, described Goldhagens work as "failing to meet even the minimum standards of scholarship.” He went on to say “That the book has found its readership out in the fever swamps of anti-Catholicism isn't surprising. But that a mainstream publisher like Knopf would print the thing is an intellectual and publishing scandal." This statement is absolutely correct. Let us be honest though, Goldhagen simply represents the double-standard that exists in our society. He is a left wing Jew who attacks the only group that it is acceptable to attack in modern American society, the evil Catholics. If a right wing Catholic were to make his living by attacking Judaism and slandering a prominent rabbi while blaming Judaism for the Marxist massacres under the NKVD he would be an out of work “conspiracy kook” and a anti-Semite. He would certainly not be published in the New Republic. Goldhagen has made the absurd statement that Christianity is anti-Semitic at its core. Imagine if one were to say that Judaism is anti-Gentile to its core. They would be isolated as an anti-Semite. The message is clear. A Jewish bigot like Goldhagen gets published by Knopf and the New Republic while his mirror image would be isolated and vilified.
I would like to wrap up with some other observations. All Catholics are told endless stories about Catholics persecuting people. Generally it starts with a Catholic King who orders the persecution of a group and despite the Bishops or Pope condemning it, "the Catholics" are to blame. An example of his would be during the Crusades when Crusaders massacred Jews along the Rhine. That was “the Catholics” despite the local Bishops hiding and protecting Jews. When a Protestant barbarian like Oliver Cromwell slaughters Catholics at Drogheda and sells the women and children into sex slavery or sacks Wexford that’s not “the Protestants”. That’s just Cromwell.
Much is made about Hitler being a baptized Catholic by ignoramuses like Dave Hunt. Other bigots like Goldhagen argue that Nazism was an extension of Catholic bigotry through the ages. Yet these people do not mention that Karl Marx was a Jew and that the ranks of the NKVD, some of the greatest murderers of all time, were filled with Jews. By using Goldhagens logic should we not attack Judaism and Jews? If we Catholics are and our faith are responsible for a former Catholic who later went so far as to persecute the Church, should not Jews be held responsible for Karl Marx and Genrikh Yagoda and the fact that some of greatest murderers of modern times were Jewish. The answer is of course not. Your Jewish neighbor has likely not heard of the NKVD, Yagoda let alone support what he and they did.
As I wrap up my thoughts on this I should say thank you to all of the people that I mention above. Especially the Rabbi who started my journey. Had he not been a self absorbed bigot, he would not have angered me and I would not have explored my own faith. I would have continued in my ignorance and would not have understood the faith that built Western Civilization and sustained my ancestors. I would not have understood the faith that Christ taught to the Apostles, that was passed on to their successors, our Bishops. I would not truly know the joy of being a Catholic. His ignorant statements brought about my reversion back to the true faith and my wife’s conversion to it. For that, I will literally be eternally indebted to him.
The Catohlic teaching on election is not substantially different from the Protestant one; maybe in some details, depending on the brand of Protestantism. We were talking about hope and security of salvation.
There isn't a single teaching on election among "protestants". They are all over the map even within small fundy churches of 50 people.
Election is 100 percent connected to the security of salvation. I've heard 3 takes on it from protestants.
1: God elects who will be saved and gives them faith.
2: God elects and also man chooses.
3: Man choses because God will not touch free will.
There are postable verses to support any of the 3. I believe the first. People that believe their salvation is based on their own ability to have faith always have to wonder if they will lose faith and lose their salvation.
If you know me answer for me and make your point. I don’t jump through hoops. If you know me you should know that about me.
All three have merit, as the interaction between divine election and free will is complex. The point on hand is much simpler: there is no scriptural basis for believing that the journey of faith is a one time even following which one is “saved”. It is a lifelong process for both the elect and the condemned.
I don’t know you from squat.
Perhaps you think that you are well known but actually, I have no clue who you are.
I’m not asking you to jump through anything. I’m asking you to type an answer.
I’m not going to assume your answer, I might be pleasantly surprised!
Does the first choice mean that God has elected people to go to eternal damnation?
If so, then how does that square with 2 Peter 3:9 and John 3:16 and other verses that would seem to indicate that He wants all to go to heaven?
Post 638 doesn't mention those events at all.
Perhaps you can reproduce what you said and explain it to me.
Hardly. I truly believe that you think Catholics worship Mary, and that they themselves are unaware of this worship. I’m just trying to figure out what that means.
Freegards
Two times He point out the reasons of our veneration of Mary:
My mother and my brethren are they who hear the word of God, and do it (Luke 8:21, similar Matthew 12, Mark 3)Blessed is the womb that bore thee, and the paps that gave thee suck. But he said: Yea rather, blessed are they who hear the word of God, and keep it. (Luke 11:27-28)
Mary is to be venerated not for her physiological motherhood, but for her hearing the command of God and keeping the incarnate Word in her womb. We, men and women, can all follow the pattern she established and be sanctified with her. These alone would be sufficient scriptural basis of Marian devotions.
Than, in 628, I clarified in response to your follow up about men not having babies:
Exactly; but men can "hear the words of God and keep it" (Luke 11:28). This is the reason Jesus made his comments on venerating Our Lady: one does not have to be a woman to be a saint.
“I don’t seek to correct all your errors. I just seek to correct the Catholic church’s errors.”
Wow. Imagine that.
Mommy? Can I smack him up 'side the haid now, mommy?
Thou Dodo! It's not that SHE's going to make me worthy of squat! I'm/We're asking her to PRAY that we be made worthy, not that SHE make us worthy. I agree: she cain't do any making worthy stuff. We would seriously agree that that is significant heresy. It is God who justifies.
And you are very welcome and I think you for reading it all.
And I think your last comment is telling. It would be interesting to read some of the findings of the interfaith commissions on where the points of contact are on this question. (what's the "official" terminology for "blessed assurance"?)
I've posted the definition of "veneration", and what I've seen seems to fit that definition. If the church has redefined that word, speak with the church.
In Luke 11:27 we have an instance of veneration. Christ does not forbid it, but he properly directs it: "Yea rather, blessed are they who hear the word of God, and keep it". In the miracle in Cana, of course, we have an instance of Mary inrceding on behalf of the groom's family.
What are you talking about? You're actually taking an instance where Jesus spreads a call to respect His mother specifically to the general attitude of all believers and interpret it as veneration?
I do not think your reading is reasonable, because Jesus, Who knew the approaching passion, could have made the economic arrangements for His mother ahead of time. The reason he united St. John and His Mother at the pinnacle of His sacrifice must be related to the sacrifice itself, and its purpose.
I think you read entirely too much into the passage. He probably did already arrange it and repeated Himself in the press on the cross as His body was dying.
It would seem that if such was the case, we would have heard more about it and about Mary in the acts and the letters, but we don't. At all, except one mention in Acts.
Don't you think that if Mary had the status that the church affords to Mary, this would have been mentioned somewhere in the rest of the New Testament? Mediatrix/co-redemptrix with the Lord HImself?
The woman is shown giving physical birth (Apoc 12:2) to a man Who is described as Jesus Christ functionally (verses 5 and 11), and by title as the Christ (verse 10).
Goodness. Read what else is said about the woman. Does it fit real events that could happen within the context of physical reality? Regard the timeframe. Every single word in Revelation is symbolism. The woman is a symbol. How can the church even go there with honest intent.
In both those cases Jesus would have said something entirely different if His intent was what the church proclaims.
This is outside of Birmingham, Alabama. But, this same behavior I've seen on TV, in magizines and posted to threads like these.
And it is consistant with the policy of Mariology posted from Catholic writing on these threads.
You, personally, don't do these things? Good. Bless you.
You don't make these kinds of judgements?
First, you asked about an alternative interpretation. I know full well that for every proper interpretation there are a dozen false ones. This is why there is no such thing as Sola Scriptura.
On the fact that people kneel and even prostrate themselves venerating the saints, no one has argued to the contrary. I certainly agree that these forms of veneration exist, are proper, and should be encouraged. They will know we are Christians by our love. By our love. Not stiff-necked arrogance.
In Luke 11:27 a woman in the crowd venerated Mary. Did Christ stop her? No, He said, in effect “Yea rather, blessed are all the saints and not just her, and not for the physiology of motherhood but for obedience to God”.
Regarding the scene at the foot of the cross, you rationalize your mariophobia. There is plenty in the scripture as it is to venerate Mary, — the entire Old Testament is building up for her immaculate birth. Don’t like the Catholic interpretation, — your loss.
Regarding the Revelation, sorry. A woman who cries in birth pain and delivers child Christ is not described as a symbol. This is another mariophobic ratiionalization.
“-—obedience to God”.
This is the key.
I think that is the essential part of understanding the God-designed role that Mary played in salvation history. She was the template—the paradim—the role model—(how ever one wants to phrase it)—of the person of faith, the obedient servant of the Lord, the first believer, the archetype for us to see what it means to believe, to live and move and have our being in Christ Jesus, to walk that narrow path with Him to eternity. She is His mother.
How can anyone thinking rationally not accept this?
This is the key question, if we are into the rational thinking. What prevented God from sending the Christ down sooner? The answer is, Mary wasn’t born yet. To produce the Theotokos was the purpose of the Old Testament salvation history.
Sorry, but there are no approved apparitions in AL
http://www.catholicdoors.com/isit/approved.htm
What you see there is people taking advantage of others. It’s Disney World. It must be an AL thing.
Instead of blaming it on the church, how about praying for those being taken advantage of?
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