Posted on 05/14/2008 10:16:49 PM PDT by Dr. Eckleburg
Well I would reply to your beliefs with sequiturs if only you would state them.
“Well I guess they ‘all’ ought to if that’s what they are being taught...”
The problem is in definition, what you think it means and the referential point of the definition which is Mary, and what it truly means from our referential point, again, Mary.
We view Mary as our Mother. You do not.
It is the same as some views of Calvinsim which point to Calvin’s embrace of Karma.
It’s all in the viewpoint and definition.
I think I would accept that you and Calvin do not believe in karma if you said it was not a tenet although on the face of it, it does appear to me that election is the same thing as karma.
Similarly, I think if we say that we do not worship Mary and that Adoration is God’s and God’s alone, you would accept our tenet.
Otherwise, I am defining what you believe as you define what I believe and neither of us has an understanding of the other’s religion.
"Thou shalt love the Lord, thy God, with thy whole heart and with thy whole soul and with thy whole strength and with thy whole mind" -- an all-consuming love! But, wait -- "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself." Do you think God should have said, "Forget the neighbor -- all your love is to be toward Me!" As we love our neighbor (even the unlovable) for the sake of God, that does not diminish the love we have for God -- quite the contrary, any more than "honoring" our father and mother detracts from the much greater -- and different in kind, not only degree -- honor we give to God, though in Hebrew it's the same word.
Re the thesaurus, there is no such thing as an exact synonym, else the economy of language would drop one of them as useless. If you've ever taught English at the college level (or advanced high school, I guess), you can always tell a student who depends on a thesaurus rather than knowing the language from the way he will use a really "classy" word that is entirely inappropriate in context. I used to warn my students that a thesaurus is valuable only as a reminder of words you really know in all their connotation and denotations, not as a handy source to plug something in.
I'm not so sure. I think what they are saying is that even though individual Catholics may THINK they are not worshipping Mary, they really are, due to the insidious manipulations of Church authority.
So you see, merely asserting you don't worship Mary is insufficient, inasmuch as you are blinded by a false consciousness.
Either that, or they are saying you're a liar.
Reading some of these posts is just like reading this....
“Posted on Monday, May 05, 2008 1:34:28 PM by seanmerc
The American people have heard President George W. Bush and his spokespersons say many times that the U.S. government does not engage in torture.
Whether Bush was believed or not is another story — especially in light of the photographic evidence of the abuse of prisoners in Abu Ghraib, the prison near Baghdad. It’s understood that many of the photos are too sadistically graphic to be made public.
Still, the official U.S. denials of torture continued until earlier this month when Bush acknowledged in an interview with ABC-TV that he knew about and approved “enhanced interrogation” of detainees, including “waterboarding” or simulated drowning.
“As a matter of fact,” Bush added, “I told the country we did that. And I told them it was legal. We had legal opinions that enabled us to do it.” The president added, “I didn’t have any problems at all trying to find out what Khalid Sheik Mohammed knew.”
“He was the person who ordered the suicide attack — I mean, the 9-11 attacks,” Bush said. “And back then, there was all kind of concern about people saying, ‘Well, the administration is not connecting the dots.’ You might remember those — that period.” Bush said.
Bush also said in the interview that he had been aware of several meetings his national security advisers held to discuss “enhanced interrogation” methods.
Surely this president is also aware of the U.S. commitment to international treaties barring “cruel and inhumane” treatment of prisoners.
What is startling is that he feels no remorse about the cruel image he has created for America — and the damage done to its credibility and probity.
In referring to the legality of torture, Bush apparently was thinking of a 2002-2003 memo written by John Yoo, a Justice Department official, who argued that military interrogators could subject detainees to harsh treatment as long as it didn’t cause “death, organ failure or permanent damage.”
The memo was later rescinded.
Bush who has insisted “we do not torture” also recently vetoed legislation that explicitly banned torture. And Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., whose whole political persona has been defined by the fact that he had been tortured while a prisoner of war during the Vietnam era, supported Bush’s veto.
For both Bush and McCain, I recall the words of Joseph Welch, the special counselor for the Army during the 1954 Army-McCarthy hearings when Welch asked Sen. Joseph McCarthy, R-Wis.: “Sir, have you no sense of decency?”
We expected the usual cast of characters including Vice President Dick Cheney to be in on the sinister torture-planning sessions.
But it came as a shock that Gen. Colin Powell, then Secretary of State, sat in on the meetings and went along with the planning. Powell had been on record warning against U.S. torture policies on the basis that if we mistreat our prisoners, foreign countries will feel no qualms about abusing American captives in wartime.
Once revered for his integrity, Powell has lost his halo.
Now we have this week’s testimony of Air Force Col. Morris Davis, a former chief prosecutor, who took the witness stand at Guantanamo Bay on behalf of a prisoner. Davis told how top Pentagon officials had pressured him on sensitive prosecutorial decisions for political reasons. He said he was told that the charges against well-known detainees “could have real strategic value” and that there could be no acquittals.
Davis also testified that Brig. Gen. Thomas W. Hartmann reversed a decision he had made and insisted that prosecutors proceed with evidence they had obtained through waterboarding and other methods of torture.
Davis also testified he was told to speed up the cases to give the system legitimacy before a new president takes over in January.
Is Congress so cowed that it accepts the statements of a president who has little regard for the truth?
Is there no lawmaker who is appalled about the tarnishing of our image in world opinion? And where are the voices of the other presidential candidates who will inherit the Bush legacy of torture? Why the silence?
I count on the American people to refuse to be shamed any more.
Helen Thomas can be reached at hthomas@hearstdc.com.”
May I ask, then, is Mary equated with “Jerusalem which is above” (Galatians 4:26) in Catholic dogma? Would that be one of her other names?
Oops! I only pinged you and Petronski because you were involved in this strand of discussion and I wanted to draw you attention to the post, expecting (I hoped!) back-up from fellow Catholics! I do see how you could have misunderstood, though — sorry! :(
There is no belief in reincarnation amongst all but a few fringe groups such as the neo Christian Gnostics. None of the Reformers advocated such belief and no Catholics have - we do have record of Origen advancing such a belief in his heretical period and the Church condemning it.
http://www.ewtn.com/library/MARY/MEDIATRI.HTM
ewtn wouldn't be lying, would it????
***It is fair to take issue with Catholics concerning beliefs we actually hold but not to attribute something to us that we strenuously deny. This is slander, pure and simple.***
RIIIIGHT!!!
And, the attribution that what drives the “anti-Catholic polemic” here at FR is hatred and bigotry is what, exactly?
BTW, has it also occured to Catholics here that the reason many Protestants continue to maintain that Catholics worship Mary OVER Catholic protestations to the contrary is that Protestants believe that Catholics are self-deceived and don’t even realize that they do it? IOW, some actually do hope that eventually the lightbulb will come on and someone will figure out that they really were doing what they said they weren’t. We all get off track. Accusing some people trying to help Catholics of hatred and bigotry doesn’t help.
The heart is deceitful above all things; who can know it?
>>http://www.ewtn.com/library/MARY/MEDIATRI.HTM
ewtn wouldn’t be lying, would it???? <<
Lying about what? That “some” Catholics want to make Mary a Co-redemer? Nope not at all.
See that EWTN/library? That means that it’s not always the word of EWTN but from another source.
Has it occurred to Catholics that you think we're too stupid to know what we're doing?
Yes, it has, at least to me.
I would imagine the same impulse that drove "Reformers & Calvist saints" to pursue, persecute, and slaughter countless numbers of Catholics . . . misguided on both sides in my opinion, but "different times, different customs."
>>BTW, has it also occured to Catholics here that the reason many Protestants continue to maintain that Catholics worship Mary OVER Catholic protestations to the contrary is that Protestants believe that Catholics are self-deceived and don’t even realize that they do it?<<
And the libs think that we are crazy for being Pro-choice and supporting the second amendment.
Is that the conservative’s problem? We are right, and nothing they say is going to convince us otherwise.
>>Has it occurred to Catholics that you think we’re too stupid to know what we’re doing?
Yes, it has, at least to me. <<
Has it occured to you that most Catholics don’t care what you are doing as long as you have a good relationship with Our Lord?
I married a Protestant, have tons in my family. Some of the most righteous family members are non-Catholic. Why do you assume that I think you are stupid when all I think is that you have a different way than I do?
Why do you believe that God only grants us a finite amount of love to express?
Since the point was missed I'll say it again. To love Mary to the point of handing her the position of Christ is not Christian love. It's worship.
Not interested in reading your mind.
“...“Jerusalem which is above” (Galatians 4:26) in Catholic dogma?”
The Church.
The Ecclesiology Of The Constitution On The Church, Vatican II, ‘Lumen Gentium’
By Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger
“The Marian vision of the Church and the ecclesial, salvation-historical vision of Mary take us back ultimately to Christ and to the Trinitarian God, because it is here that we find revealed what holiness means, what is God’s dwelling in man and in the world, what we should understand by the “eschatological” tension of the Church. Thus it is only the chapter on Mary that leads conciliar ecclesiology to its fulfillment and brings us back to its Christological and Trinitarian starting point.”
http://www.catholicculture.org/library/view.cfm?id=3920
The mystical aspects of the church take a lot of time and reading.
Mary carried Christ. She was prepared by God and singularly set apart in humanity to carry Jesus.
Again, there is that referential point. You do not believe Mary is anything but a walking womb. Chosen, yes, but another could have done as well if necessary.
There is where we again part company.
I think you misread my post.
When you make a statement like this...
>>I know that the RC attempt to redefine worship as something only toward God, which conveniently make idolatry impossible, doesn’t fly. <<
I am a Roman Catholic and you are telling me that I am redefining worship. It’s telling me what I am doing and against the rules here.
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