Posted on 01/08/2010 11:01:28 AM PST by Judith Anne
In the age of the internet, a lot of very good information is readily available for those who have sincere questions about the Catholic Church. The Catholic Encyclopedia, the Online Catechism, many good apologetic sites--all have excellent answers to nearly any question that anyone could devise.
There is really no need for FR Catholics to engage in endless religious argument, and I would like to urge us all to simply refrain. We could resign from the debating society and let those who sincerely want to learn seek it out for themselves from a local priest or look it up on the net. Others, who do not sincerely want to learn, could be ignored, and privately remembered in prayer.
Opinions from fellow Catholics?
Believe me, I understand. Our poor music librarian...
I always ask to join a caucus thread out of politeness. Don’t want to step on any toes and I do understand why they were created.
Please remember that the Lord's intention for us may not be to win the war or even to win today's battle, but merely to fight the good fight and honor Him with our sacrifice. In my experience I have done best in attempting a variety or works of mercy. You have made a valuable contribution here over the years in this newly emerging global public square of the Internet. I hope that you will continue on this forum. Please just pray to have God guide you and go where you feel God is calling (or, more often than not, pushing!).
Well, if you have the time, knock yourself out. Like I said you are a better man than I.
Rarely will a dispassionate bystander tread through those 500+ posts sorting out the distortions and minutia. Instead it is like reading a....(He who must not be named) comic. You can go picture by picture describing the lies and showing the hate, or you can simply call it what it is, drop it in the trash, and move on.
Hate groups feed on attention, whether positive or negative. I’d rather see them starve.
Good morning, God bless us!
I’ve just caught up on all the remarks after having overnight dialup trouble due to the extreme cold.
Again, may you all be greatly blessed for your love of our Lord and our Church.
So, on open threads, any anti-Catholic can repeat any calumny s/he wishes about Our Lady and Catholic behavior, and we are to remain civil within the boundaries of the rules. Because we are (contrary to the opinion of some choir directors, LOL!) a fairly cohesive group such calumnies affect us all, and because our beliefs are deeply held, any anti-Catholc can engage the entire Catholic group by any such calumny.
I’d like to see all us Catholics stop the automatic argumentative response to such behavior. It serves mainly to entertain the insulter, who, no matter if s/he has had lies corrected before, does not earn the label “troll” for what is clearly trollish behavior. I’m not sure the arguments are “defending the faith” as much as providing jokes for the insulters to privately enjoy.
At one time, Mad Dawg wrote a hilarious breakdown of the tactics of anti-Catholics, and my copy of it has disappeared along with my last hard drive. Does anyone still have it? Because I’m sure it still applies.
Is there something specifically CATHOLIC we could do, in these religious arguments to remind us (and the lurkers) of who we are with respect to those who wish to tear us down?
Religion argument threads ought to be, at least in some respects, Holy Ground. Laugh if you want to, but if we are defending The Faith, it’s One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic.
I pinged the RM because of my discussion of “trolls.”
That was profound. Of course, the outcome is not my responsibility, God will take care of it. All I have to do is what I can do for Him.
I like your “inside joke.” LOL!
We're in temporary quarters while the parish hall is being rebuilt, we share the room with the handbell ringers and overflow paper and supplies from the copy room. At least somebody gave us a fairly decent small grand piano and we got rid of the nasty old Sunday School upright! (I proposed that we haul it to the local range and sell shots at it from a shotgun or rifle at $5 a pop, but everyone agreed it would be too much trouble to lift it into the back of the pickup truck, so it's been cast into outer darkness in the basement storage room.)
The Bruckner is one of a set of 7 or 8, all titled "Gradual". "Locus iste" and "Os justi" are two of the others that we have sung. I think our director's eventual intention is to work through them all.
That is the objective of the “ecumenical” Religion Forum threads - no antagonism is allowed.
We could, indeed, and you could start it; the overall topic, though, is huge. It might be an idea to compare/contrast one particular area of belief, ie sainthood, and compare/contrast two or three groups. And as the RM said, it would be under the “Ecumenical” heading, meaning no antagonism allowed, no criticism of others’ beliefs, only a statement of one’s own beliefs or civil, open questions about others’ positions, as I recall.
It is true that I am sleepy, so if I haven’t been clear in this post, please let me know and I’ll try to do better tomorrow.
If you click on the RM’s name at the bottom of an RM post, you will see the definitions pertinent to the Religion Forum.
Here’s the RM’s definition of Ecumenical threads:
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Ecumenic threads are closed to antagonism.
To antagonize is to incur or to provoke hostility in others.
Unlike the caucus threads, the article and reply posts of an ecumenic thread can discuss more than one belief, but antagonism is not tolerable.
More leeway is granted to what is acceptable in the text of the article than to the reply posts. For example, the term gross error in an article will not prevent an ecumenical discussion, but a poster should not use that term in his reply because it is antagonistic. As another example, the article might be a passage from the Bible which would be antagonistic to Jews. The passage should be considered historical fact and a legitimate subject for an ecumenic discussion. The reply posts however must not be antagonistic.
Contrasting of beliefs or even criticisms can be made without provoking hostilities. But when in doubt, only post what you are for and not what you are against. Or ask questions.
Ecumenical threads will be moderated on a where theres smoke, theres fire basis. When hostility has broken out on an ecumenic thread, Ill be looking for the source.
Therefore anti posters must not try to finesse the guidelines by asking loaded questions, using inflammatory taglines, gratuitous quote mining or trying to slip in an anti or ex article under the color of the ecumenic tag.
Posters who try to tear down others beliefs or use subterfuge to accomplish the same goal are the disrupters on ecumenic threads and will be booted from the thread and/or suspended.
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So, one or another topic could be proposed in an Ecumenic thread (they are very much under-used, in my opinion) and FReepers could be invited to share their own confession’s positions.
One example.
This, I think, is illustrative of what we need to do: push these toadies to really identify what they believe and make them come out to be the nasty pieces of work they, in fact, are.
And remember, <he who must not be named> must not be named in the Religion Forum. Not the other fora.
I have two requests for the "defending the faith" folks who have participated on this thread:
I think if we confront these folks, we may end up getting some progress. Not with the <he who must not be named>-ista's, but with anybody who is somewhat reasonable...that is, most people.
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