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Locked on 05/04/2011 9:36:24 AM PDT by Religion Moderator, reason:
Childish behavior |
Posted on 04/28/2011 8:24:27 AM PDT by Cronos
The problem I had was that what I had been told about Catholicism was simply not true; it was distorted teaching from Protestants who did not bother to discover the truth. ....
Over the last several years, I have known deep down that the Catholic Church must be more than I thought it was. I fought myself and denied all the signs I was seeing. I was afraid; even though I knew deep down there can only be one truth, I would always find something to dismiss Catholicism
At this time I had been a member of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church for almost 10 years.. I had also been in a constant journey for God’s truth, studying his word as well as church history. The problem I began to see, however, was that my church had no authority for how it interpreted Scriptures. We claimed to be sola scriptura, and yet to hold office in the church you had to subscribe also to the full truth of the Westminster Confession of Faith
(Excerpt) Read more at ncregister.com ...
We protestants love you.
bump...
A sign that the Protestant are coming home.
and forgive you.
There is no stopping abortion without an ocean of grace from Jesus Christ. No way will human means stop abortion. The principal source of this grace is the Holy Eucharist. --Fr. John A. Hardon
And we of orthodoxy part of the One Holy Apostolic Church (Catholics, Orthodox, Orientals, Assyrians) love all our brothers in Christ, the traditional Lutherans, Anglicans, Pentecostals, Presbyterians, Methodists, etc. We join with you in rejecting the anti-Christian groups like the OPC and the Westboro BAptist Club.
We protestants also pray for you.
We pray for the full unity of all Christian believers just as Christ prayed.
What I find interesting is that this person did not want to subscribe to the Westminster Confession, but rather chose a far more restrictive set of confessions in the form of the catechisms. Futher, the author does not go into which articles of the Westminster Confession they have a disagreement or find incorrect.
Nicene Creed Credo in unum Deum, Patrem omnipotentem, factorem caeli et terrae, visibilium omnium et invisibilium. Et in unum Dominum Iesum Christum, Filium Dei unigenitum, et ex Patre natum ante omnia saecula. Deum de Deo, Lumen de Lumine, Deum verum de Deo vero, genitum non factum, consubstantialem Patri; per quem omnia facta sunt.
Qui propter nos homines et propter nostram salutem descendit de caelis. Et incarnatus est de Spiritu Sancto ex Maria Virgine, et homo factus est.
Crucifixus etiam pro nobis sub Pontio Pilato, passus et sepultus est, et resurrexit tertia die, secundum Scripturas, et ascendit in caelum, sedet ad dexteram Patris.
Et iterum venturus est cum gloria, iudicare vivos et mortuos, cuius regni non erit finis.
Et in Spiritum Sanctum, Dominum et vivificantem, qui ex Patre Filioque procedit.
Qui cum Patre et Filio simul adoratur et conglorificatur: qui locutus est per prophetas.
Et unam, sanctam, catholicam et apostolicam Ecclesiam.
Confiteor unum baptisma in remissionem peccatorum. Et expecto resurrectionem mortuorum, et vitam venturi saeculi. Amen.
We believe in one God,
the Father, the Almighty,
maker of heaven and earth,
of all that is, seen and unseen.We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ,
the only Son of God,
eternally begotten of the Father,
God from God, Light from Light,
true God from true God,
begotten, not made,
of one Being with the Father.
Through him all things were made.
For us and for our salvation
he came down from heaven:
by the power of the Holy Spirit
he became incarnate from the Virgin Mary,
and was made man.
For our sake he was crucified under Pontius Pilate;
he suffered death and was buried.
On the third day he rose again
in accordance with the Scriptures;
he ascended into heaven
and is seated at the right hand of the Father.
He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead,
and his kingdom will have no end.We believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life,
who proceeds from the Father.
With the Father and the Son he is worshiped and glorified.
He has spoken through the Prophets.
We believe in One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church.
We acknowledge one baptism for the forgiveness of sins.
We look for the resurrection of the dead,
and the life of the world to come. Amen.you personally may use the lower case in the maroon line, but that is your interpretation :) and does not detract from the fact that we share the basic beliefs.
We Catholics love you, too.
I have a question for your Catholics:
A 20 year old boy/man has a baby out of wedlock with his girlfriend. They go to the Catholic church to get the baby baptized, but the church makes him first go through/perform/whatever a sacrament - Confirmation! Yes, that’s right, he missed being confirmed as a kid, now they’re making him do so now. OK, fine.
But who cares about that when the real sacrament at hand, marriage, is totally ignored! The kid and his baby mama are still sleeping together, living together on and off, passing the kid around from relative to relative for baby sitting, etc. There is absoltely no committment to a family or the parents to each other. While marriage does not ensure that such a commitment will actually play out, at least it’s a step in the right direction, and signifies that such a commitment SHOULD exist. It would have at least been a good start!
So what on earth did “confirmation” do to enhance this family? And to what was the kid confirming? Certainly not his Christian faith, because I believe even Catholics feel that fornication is still wrong (although my argument with people here a few weeks ago did not give me that impression).
Any justification for why this would occur would be appreciated.
Where have we heard that line before???
“I have a question for your Catholics:”
Should read “you” Catholics.
Sorry, the “your” sounds confrontational.
but the main thing is that if your child is to be brought up Christian, at least one parent must be Christian and both must assent to this. Being confirmed is not that simple, he has to learn the basics of the faith.
The two are still living in sin but now the thing is that the father will KNOW he is living in sin.
What does it do to enhance the family? Just this -- the father has no excuse for not confessing and repenting and marrying his girlfriend. For the child, an even more important thing -- the child is baptised and since the child is a BABY, there must be someone to assent to this, and this is one of the parents, but one of these has GOT to be a confirmed Catholic, otherwise no baptism for the baby.
A sign that the Catholic Church is hemmoraging members, and needs to trumpet every conversion to mask the problem.
"Roman Catholics, the largest U.S. church with a reported 69 million members, start counting baptized infants as members and often don’t remove people until they die. Most membership surveys don’t actually count who’s in the pews on Sunday. To be disenrolled, Catholics must write a bishop to ask that their baptisms be revoked..."
....it is possible, for example, to be born Catholic, married Methodist, die Lutheran and still be listed as a member of the 1 billion-member Roman Catholic Church....
"...The Catholic understanding of membership is that a person becomes a member upon baptism and remains a member for life," Gautier said. "Whether you show up at church or not is not what determines whether you're a member."
-- from the thread When It Comes to Church Membership Numbers, the Devil's in the Details
.... Catholics still account for just under a quarter of the population, as they have for many years. That's because the surge in Hispanic immigration has offset the steady decline of white Catholics. Roughly 2 in 3 Latino immigrants are Catholic, according to Luis Lugo, director of the Pew Forum. He also notes that Hispanic fertility rates are higher than those of white Americans, ensuring more Latino Catholic growth in the United States.
.... from the thread Does the American Catholic Church Have a Numbers Problem?
Catholics are leaving the faith at four times the rate that newcomers are joining. "Religious change is not simply a function of retention; it's a function of recruitment. It's both sides of the ledger," explains the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life's Greg Smith. "In no other religious groups we looked at did we see this high a ratio people leaving versus joining."
.... from the thread Does the American Catholic Church Have a Numbers Problem?
No other religion in the United States has lost more members to other faiths, or to no faith at all, than Catholicism, according to the new survey released by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life. The survey, conducted in 2007, found that 31 percent of Americans were raised Catholic, but less than 25 per cent of them still identify as Catholic. Roughly 10 percent of all Americans have strayed from Catholic roots, the study reported.....The Hidden Exodus: Catholics becoming Protestants
....“It’s our mission to evangelize and we are failing that,” said [The Rev. Allan Figueroa Deck, S.J., executive director of cultural diversity for the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops], explaining that the term ‘evangelize’ includes the “conversion of the human heart and the promotion of social justice.”
.... from the thread Study: Catholics losing the faith
That is why folks like these need to be prayed for, for true conversion to Christ and to repentence.
Confirmation means full entry into the Church as a knowing, acting member, without this, you are technically unaware of your duties etc. and you cannot get married in Church either.
The father may continue living in sin, but know he has no excuse that he was not aware of this, so hopefullly it leads to a change in him. We should pray for such folks
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