[Alamo-Girl]

LOLOL! I find your posts to be such delightful reads, dear brother in Christ! You have a way with words.

Thank you for sharing your insights - especially about the sprinkling!

But truly, I did not accuse anyone I knew of idolatry. Quite the contrary.

The point I raised - which is explained by Christ in Mark 7:5-23 quoted in post 237 - is that defilement comes from within the heart of the man. If a person kneeling and kissing the wood believed in his heart that he was worshipping it, then it is an abomination to him.

As to the Eucharist, I find the exclusiveness doctrine to be quite fascinating - and revealing. I am not offended by it, but others may be. The Catholic Church should have paid closer attention to this:

Forasmuch then as God gave them the like gift as [he did] unto us, who believed on the Lord Jesus Christ; what was I, that I could withstand God? - Acts 11:17

To God be the glory!

[Mad Dawg]

Just to be clear, I didn't think you, yourself, personally were saying that we were idolatrous and, not only that but, I thank you for your perceptiveness. In our big old barn of a Church we had approximately 90 gazillion people at the Good Friday service so I was asked to help "direct traffic" up to the crucifix at veneration time. It was all I could do not to weep at the beauty of some of the devotion I saw. It was in the faces of some of the people. (If I weren't such an extremely manly man, I would have sobbed. I kind of failed as traffic director. Sniffling doesn't do much for the air of authority.)

I will wrassle some more with closed communion. We do think it's kind of like sex before marriage, sort of, in a way, more or less because it's not just, as it were, vertical - believer and Jesus, but horizontal - believer and the rest of us. But let me think about it some.

Looky here: I know an ex-Lutheran - who is now who knows what, who told me with some kind of pride that his dad swung an altar candle-stick into the belly of a priest who told him (NOT during a service, before it) that the Catholic Church practices closed communion. There certainly is an appearance here of, "You are superstitious scoundrels for saying what you say about the Eucharist AND you deserve a beating for not letting me share in this worthless thing." I think that needs examining.

[Mad Dawg]

P.S. Thanks for the type-size. A balm to my eyeballs! My corneas (corneae?) thank you.

P.P.S. My mom and I had an up-and-dpown relationship, but we could almost always make each other laugh and loved to do so. Her mom was on the music-hall stage of England, which was ALL corny jokes, like vaudeville, I guess.

I remember with real pleasure the first time I made both my parents laugh, I must have been about 6, with some joke I told. Words and laughter mean a lot to me.