Posted on 09/06/2009 3:50:15 PM PDT by NYer
And in a big way. A lot of you have seen the great ads produced by a group called Catholics Come Home. The ads, evidently, are working. And spreading.
From the Los Angeles Times:
The Roman Catholic Diocese of Sacramento is home to nearly 1 million Catholics. On a typical Sunday, less than 137,000 can be found in church.Curious to see what all the fuss is about? Check out the videos below. And you can find more at the Catholics Come Home link.
Now, using a strategy straight from the secular playbook, its leaders hope to lure back those who have drifted.
The diocese and nearly a dozen others across the country are preparing to air several thousand prime-time TV commercials in English and Spanish, inviting inactive Catholics to return to their religious roots.
In addition to Sacramento, dioceses in Chicago, Omaha, Providence, R.I., and four other cities will launch the “Catholics Come Home” advertising blitz during Advent, the period before Christmas.
Four more dioceses will follow during Lent next spring. Los Angeles is not among the initial group but could be part of a nationwide campaign slated for December 2010.
"I'm hoping that a significant number of people will give us another look," Sacramento Bishop Jaime Soto said of the campaign. "Many Catholics have a sense of believing but not always a sense of belonging."
The potential audience is huge.
Only about one-quarter of U.S. Catholics say they attend Mass every week, and a majority go to religious services a few times a year or less, according to the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate at Georgetown University, which conducts social science research about the Catholic church.
Researchers there also found that two-thirds of Catholics believe they can be good members of their faith without attending Mass regularly.
Inactive Catholics cite a number of reasons for their absence. Many do not believe that missing Mass is a sin, the center reported. Others say they are too busy with family or work, or, as other analysts point out, are more interested in material happiness than spiritual fulfillment.
"There is a strange pattern of people who aren't practicing but still have beliefs and pick up parts of the faith," said Mark Gray, a research associate with the center. "They may give up meat on Fridays during Lent or attend Ash Wednesday services."
I realize you’ve read those scriptures before and ignored them - doesn’t mean you will ignore them forever, or that others reading have read them before.
One cannot "realize" what isn't so. It is always interesting to encounter someone who thinks that if you don't agree with his interpretation of Scripture you are ignoring the passage in question.
If Mariology is, as YOU said, “The body of belief or dogma OR [my emphasis] the systematic study of the Virgin Mary and her role in the Incarnation," Then a very small body of belief or dogma (= teaching) would be, "Mary lived, she gave birth to Jesus." Further explanations about why that would NOT make her in anyway special among creatures would involve systematic explanations of, e.g. the distinction between Creator and creature, etc.
Denying that those who reject the Catholic dogmas about Mary have a mariology is like saying that if the three side figure is small enough is ceases to be a triangle.
This may seem a quibble, but it's actually important for discourse. If the starting point of the conversation is, "YOU have a mariology, which is a false and idolatrous thing to have, while WE have the true and right belief about Mary," then all we've accomplished is to give ourselves more work. Now we have to say there are two sorts of beliefs and discourses about Mary:
(1)The true one, which we hold; and
(2)The false one, also known as "mariology", held by Orthodox, Catholics, some Anglicans and maybe some others.
How much more handy to say, "Of mariologies there are two major divisions:
(1) The correct and brief one; and
(2)The false and lengthy one.
A very, very small human is not a human?
Further is it a tad sophistical to suggest that all that true believers believe is that she lived. They have an opinion, one way or another, about her virginity. They have -- or ought to have -- some opinion about what happened when she visited Elisabeth, about just what exactly was going on when she told her Son, "They have no wine," and what she was doing at the Cross and in the upper room at Pentecost, and so forth. John thinks her role at Cana was worth mentioning (as do I. "Do whatever He tells you," is good advice.) Luke thinks the various incidents he recounts are worth mentioning. Which is to say, all these are part of the revelation.
We are on the one hand excoriated for ignoring Scripture and on the other accused of blasphemy for reading it and noting these events.
By "context" I mean the the stylistic context of what we would consider in this age to be rhetorical excess.
But even these days, Cheerleaders say "Jimmy, Jimmy! He's our man, if he can't do it, no one can." No dark-browed protestant rises up to say, "All that Jimmy can do is through the power and grace of the Lord, and it is blasphemy to say, 'If he can't do it, no one can." Why? Because everyone knows this excess is not to be taken with absolute logical precision.
At least nightly, we Dominicans (and many others) call Mary, "Mater misericordiae, vita, dulcedo, et spes nostra" - "Mother of Mercy (is she not the mother of Jesus, the Mercy of God?), our life, our sweetness, and our hope."
(I won't note here what we say about Dominic -- I don't want to be responsible for conniptions)
But we know perfectly well, indeed we celebrate, that Mary can only be called these things by analogy and by the gift of God in Christ.
Today we feelthy papists celebrate the birth of Mary. As I prayed the two morning "offices" (Ofice means "duty" and God is certainly "due" our prayes and praise,) I found lines like these:
Before Ps. 95:Come, let us celebrate the birth of the Virgin Mary, let us worship her Son, Christ the Lord.
Before Ps. 24: Mary received a blessing from the Lord and loving kindness from God her savior.
Before Ps. 46: The most High has made his dwelling place a holy temple.
Before Ps. 87: Glorious things are said of you, O Virgin Mary.
Before Ps. 69: We commemorate the birth of the blessed Virgin Mary, a descendant of Abraham, born of the tribe of Judah and of David's seed.
Before "The Song of the Three Young Men" (from Daniel): When the most holy Virgin was born, the who world was made radiant; blessed is the branch and blessed is the stem which bore such holy fruit.
Before Ps. 149: Let us joyfully celebrate the birth of blessed Mary so that she may intercede for us before Jesus Christ the Lord.
And before the "Benedictus" (Luke 1: 68-79): Your birth, O Virgin Mother of God, proclaims joy to the whole world, for from you arose the glorious Sun of Justice, Christ our God; he freed us from the age-old curse and filled us with holiness; he destroyed death and gave us eternal life.
It seems to me clear that even as we celebrate Mary we give GOD the glory. Sure we say "Glorious things are said of you, Mary", but that is right before we say "Glorious things of thee are spoken, Zion, city of our God."
Psalm 150,v. 2 asks us to praise God in His acts. If I am to obey that advice, I will spend some time talking about the excellence of the acts themselves. God forbid I should ever stop praising sunsets! God forbid I should ever stop praising what God does in His chosen ones!
Given them an opening? What does that mean? Evos are evos whether I give them an opening or not, and these particular evos are very loud, very vociferous Catholics who consider an openness to evolution as one of the distinguishing characteristics of Catholicism (as opposed to "those awful people").
I do not understand how you can stand by while your co-religionists so loudly proclaim the Bible riddled with scientific and historical errors. Total inerrancy does not mean total theological inerrancy but total inerrancy on all subjects whatsoever. Your co-religionists have loudly, time and time again, insisted that the "old testament" is only "theologically" inerrant. They have hypocritically allowed G-dless "science" to sit in judgment on G-d's Words while refusing to let it sit in judgment on the "new testament" or the miracles of chr*stianity. Why should I not find this absolutely infuriating?
How you can be at such utter peace with these people is beyond me--not to mention the silence of the "ultra-traditionalists" on this forum.
Of course there was.
I wrote what God said...
And more.
How old is the earth (ballpark figure)?
If Mariology includes any acknowledgment of Mary, then where is Catholicism’s Adamology, or Paulology, or Johnology?
There is only one creature in the scripture that Catholics have an “ology” for - and that is Mary.
A sneeze and Hurricane Katrina both involve movement of air, but only one is a disaster.
As for charges of blasphemy, I’ve quoted your Pope. Let anyone who reads it decide for themselves if that is appropriate admiration for a woman blessed by God, or adoration belonging to God.
Do you think Mary enjoyed it when Jesus looked at her and called her, “Woman”? Judging from the mothers I’ve known, it stabbed her heart every time - and I believe Jesus HAD to do it to counter the worship of the “Queen of Heaven, Spouse of the Holy Spirit” that would arise in the Catholic Church.
When one stops calling Mary blessed by God, and starts calling her Mrs God, one crosses from respect to worship.
Thanks. Worth repeating:
“As evangelical Christians we identify and honour a pastor as a worthy minister of Christ if he faithfully preaches the apostolic message and if his life is consistent with his message. We do not hesitate to identify immoral and greedy ministers as false teachers no matter what they claim to be. They are false teachers!
Take Peter and Judas as examples. Both were apostles of Jesus Christ. Both made very serious mistakes — Peter denied the Lord, and Judas betrayed him. Yet Peter repented and was restored to the ministry, while Judas did not, and was disowned by the church.”
There was only one creature in scripture venerated by an archangel.
Seems worthy of an "ology".
Name it.
Since you claim that the Church believes the pope is personally perfect, can you provide documentation to that effect?
“And coming in, he said to her, “Greetings, favored one! The Lord is with you.”
Venerate: “to regard or treat with reverence; revere”
I don’t see where the angel Gabriel treated her with veneration.
Actually, the angel said “Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with you.”
Mistranslating the text to deprecate Mary is an tried and true protestant trick.
Earth to Catholic-hating bigots everywhere: Catholics are already Christian.
You should at least give credit where credit is due. The author of the words you posted seems to be Dr. Joseph Mizzi.
So, science doesn't have the authority to declare that dead people don't come back to life, that people can't be born from virgins, loaves and fishes don't multiply (other than by dividing them!), or that bread and wine don't become flesh and blood, but it does have the authority to sit in judgment of G-d's historical account of the creation? Interesting. (Please pardon my use of a euphemism here.)
The Gospels are eyewitness accounts, and therefore, not subject to allegory, except where it is stated a priori(e.g., the parables). The story of Creation was witnessed by no one except God Himself. It is certainly open to allegory since a scientific explanation of Creation would be of absolutely no efficacy to an uneducated people wandering in the desert. The equivalent would be a modern revelation to people like us, using string theory.
That said, it certainly COULD have been a six-day creation. I don't deny that. But it wasn't certainly a six-day creation, given that science - which is given to us from the Divine knowledge, for our implementation (good or bad) - indicates the world to be much older than a few thousand years.
The miracles you cite, which are not proven by science, are, by definition, unprovable by science, since they are SUPER-natural. The age of the earth is not a supernatural subject. It's all about nature. And so, good science can verify. But, what is good science? Carbon dating COULD be completely wrong. It could be completely right. But guess what - it's irrelevant to our salvation what happens in the course of nature. Those miracles - the supernatural - the thumbprints of God - those are absolutely relevant to our salvation.
And who determines what is literal and what is allegory? The ancient popes? The church fathers? The councils? No sirree. "Science" determines what is literal and what is allegory. Except that "science" dare not do the same thing to the "new testament" that it does to the "old" our you'll tell it where to get off.
The Church has only defined a few instances in Scripture which must be taken only literally. And as I mentioned above, science can't touch the New Testament because science cannot explain or contradict something that is supernatural. So, science has effectively "no comment" on the New Testament miracles you speak of. The creation of the world out of nothing is a miracle that science cannot explain. But science can certainly explain how long its been around.
2Pe 3:8 But, beloved, be not ignorant of this one thing, that one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.
Venerate: “to regard or treat with reverence; revere”
I don’t see where the angel Gabriel treated her with veneration.
Is this the Wal-Mart translation? At any rate, let's play ball. How is this not veneration? Can you find any other instances in scripture where an archangel greets a creature in such fashion? You'll find that in almost every instance, the creature is compelled (wrongly) to worship the angel or react in fear. In this instant, there's no overpowering of Mary by an angel. She is not compelled to worship Gabriel. In fact, she QUESTIONS Gabriel. Zecheriah questioned Gabriel and he was punished. Mary questioned Gabriel, announced that she herself would be called "blessed", and became the Mother of Jesus. Do you not see the difference?
The translation is the New American Standard, which is generally conceded to be the most literal translation into English. The ESV, another translation known for accuracy, has it “”Greetings, O favored one, the Lord is with you!”
“You’ll find that in almost every instance, the creature is compelled (wrongly) to worship the angel or react in fear. In this instant, there’s no overpowering of Mary by an angel. She is not compelled to worship Gabriel.”
Reading further, we get, “29 But she was greatly troubled at the saying, and tried to discern what sort of greeting this might be. 30 And the angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary...”
As for Zechariah, he asks for proof - a sign - and he gets it. “18 And Zechariah said to the angel, “How shall I know this? For I am an old man, and my wife is advanced in years.”
Mary doesn’t ask for a sign.
I'm of the old earth, new creation bent...Age of the earth is unimportant...What's important is there was/is no evolution...
And why is that important, you say??? It's a matter of authority...When God says there is no evolution, I believe Him...Regardless of when the earth was originally created...
God is the authority...And His authority rests in His word...
You guys take the cake...I didn't make the claim...One of your own did in post 320...
not one pope (no matter how bad) has ever erred in matters of faith or morals.
What, I should get all my info from the Vatican web site???
But while the site is anti-Catholic it is pro Christian, pro Scripture...Go figure...
Do you have any idea what Peter is talking about there???
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