Posted on 05/31/2013 2:44:05 PM PDT by NYer
Do our Catholic children and most adults know what these images teach?
All of us know one of the elephants in the room of the Catholic Church. Our religious education programs are not handing on the essence of our Catholic Faith, our parents are befuddled about their role in handing on the faith and the materials we use are vapid or if good do not make an impression on young minds. We are afraid of asking for memorization and thus most don't remember anything they've learned about God and Church other than some niceties and feel good emotions.
I teach each class of our grades 1-6 (we don't have 7th or 8th) each Thursday, rotating classes from week to week. For the last two years I have used Baltimore Catechism #1 as my text book. It is wonderful to use with children and it is so simple yet has so much content. If Catholics, all Catholics, simply studied Baltimore Catechism #1, we would have very knowledgeable Catholics.
These past two years I've used Baltimore Catechism #2 with our adult religious program which we call Coffee and Conversation following our 9:30 AM Sunday Mass, which coincides with our CCD program which we call PREP (Parish Religious Education Program).
This #2 book has more content and is for middle school, but upper elementary school children must have been more capable of more serious content back when this book was formulated and used through the mid 1960's because it is a great book to use with adults and not childish at all. We all use this same book as a supplemental book for the RCIA because it is so clear, nobly simple and chocked full of content!
Yes, there are some adjustments that need to be made to some chapters, but not that many, in light of Vatican II and the new emphasis we have on certain aspects of Church that are not present in the Baltimore Catechism. But these are really minor.
What is more important though is that when the Baltimore Catechism was used through the mid 1960's it was basically the only book that was used for children in elementary and junior high school. It was used across the board in the USA thus uniting all Catholics in learning the same content. There was not, in other words, a cottage industry of competing publishing houses selling new books and different content each year.
The same thing has occurred with liturgical music, a cottage industry of big bucks has developed around the sale of new hymnals, missalettes and new music put on the open market for parishes to purchase. It is a money making scheme.
Why do our bishop allow this to happen in both liturgical music and parish catechesis? The business of selling stuff to parishes and making mega bucks off of it is a scandal that has not be addressed.
In the meantime, our liturgies suffer and become fragmented because every parish uses a different resource for liturgical music and the same is true of religious formation, everyone uses something different of differing quality or no quality at all.
Isn't it time to wake up and move forward with tried and true practices that were tossed out in favor of a consumerist's approach to our faith that has weakened our liturgies, our parishes and our individual Catholics?
Let's not forget that Mary was the first Christian and the first Evangelist because her first act after she assented to the Holy Spirit was to go and proclaim Him to Elizabeth.
I take my lead on Marian devotion from JPII who said that we are to ask Her help in forming the Christ within us as God asked her help to form the Christ within her. He spent 30 years with Her, three years in His ministry with the Apostles, three days in the tomb and three hours on the cross. I would say She did a pretty good job on Him and He on Her.
Peace be with you
Reading The Bible made me leave the RCC
How is reading it with my eyes wide open reading it wrong?
Did you ever hear the old joke. The protestant minister is walking down the road and he sees a boy with a box of puppies. The boy says reverand would you like one of my protestant puppies? The minister thanks him and says no. Two days later he brings back his friend the Catholic priest. thinking he will play a joke on him. As they walk up to the box and boy he says would either of you like to buy one of my Catholic puppies. The protestant is amazed and says two days ago you said they were protestant. The boy says yes, but today they had their eyes opened.
My grand kids read the Bible as part of the assignment for each week for the following Sunday as well as having readings for each day as well. My children had a Bible Scripture assignment each and every day from the time they were in kindergarten until they got out of high school. And like I said, The One Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church Jesus Christ Himself founded accepts the entire Bible Christ and the Apostles relied on so Catholics actually do read the Bible when they study Scripture instead of only reading what their Lord and Master Luther said they should read.
Sincere Catholics everywhere refer to their Missal everyday and study of Scriptures referenced in the Mass readings for the day.
I understand, though, because CINOs who are now attending the Church of Snakes & Shakes or some other "church" are often people who were baptised by their parents as Catholic and that's it. They were never Catholic in any real sense of the word and they're more than happy to reinforce the sterotypes that make their fellow Snakers and Shakers happy.
*YAWN*
Like so many of your kind, you misquote or twist the words of another to prove yourself superior in some way. Jesus has never been wrong. Jesus was part man and part God on His stay on earth. It is a mystery that we cannot fully comprehend here. He was born in sin but was not sin. Sin was all around Him but did not contaminate Him. He could touch the leper (not permissible because of the uncleanness) and yet remained sinless. He was born in a sinful world but overcame it. Jesus was never wrong and never sinned.
In your opinion.
You might want to refresh your memory about what Jesus had to say to Judas when the latter was complaining about the cost of spikenard, for starters.
"There is a holy reverence that is lacking is Protestant churches, . . . "
Amen, Amen, Amen. In hindsight it's astonishing how little reverence for the Scripture there really was in my Lutheran Church and they were far, far, more reverent about The Word than any of the Fundamentalist and Independent Baptist churches my parents were members of.
“Nowhere. Now as to the definition of Church, we would have a divergence in thought. Mine would be more etheral whereas you think of the worldly manmade institution you call the Catholic Church. Tell me, did your Church really put Galileo under house arrest and threaten him for asserting the world was round rather than flat as your Church officials taught?”
Well, seeing as I studied Rocket Science...
There’s a couple problems with this statement.
1. Galileo never asserted that the earth was round. Eratosthenes did, when he measured the circumference of the earth before the time of Ptolemy and the Algamest. Simple observance of the moon and the Sun would lead one to believe that roundness was also applicable to the Earth.
2. Galileo’s actual assertions challenged the platonic notion of the impermeability of the spheres - that the heavens were not fixed - that the did change. He defended this observation based on his observations of the Moon via telescope.
You can find this notion in Copernicus’s, De Revolutionibis.
3. Why was Galileo placed under House Arrest?
The conflict had to do with Galileo’s assertion that his observations were not simply materially true, but were true for how things were in the spiritual realm. In essence, Galileo asserted that where his observations and the bible conflicted, that his observations should take precedence. His argument in essence is materialism, and he did not advocate the later division between the material and spiritual world as advocated by Descartes.
So, not only are you grossly ignorant about the Church, you are grossly ignorant about Galileo, about what he claimed, about the nature of the dispute with the church.
I’m not sure there’s even one thing correct in your post.
Why
Yeah did you ever notice that ex Catholics are like ex wives. Never really have much good to say about the ex. On the other hand, Those of us that were smart enough to leave protestantism have only decent things to say about our former churches. I wonder why that is, Hmmmmmmm.....
“Jesus was part man and part God”
Fully God and Fully man.
The problem is that the parents don’t know it either. Vatican II effectively cut the cord with the past - including Catholic knowledge of the faith.
My oldest child went to Catholic school for exactly one year because the sisters were teaching him such garbage that I couldn’t take it. There was no longer any Faith, any morality, anything a child could understand. They had the kids drawing pictures of butterflies and carving Bibles out of bars of soap (a big Protestant thing, but at least some of the Protestants, back in the 70s, talked about what was in the Bible). My son knew absolutely nothing about the Faith and in fact was quite confused after his experience there, because when he wanted to recite a traditional prayer, the sister made him stop.
So it’s not the parents. Modern parents don’t know enough to even teach their kids, but that’s because Vatican II killed Catholic teaching and Catholic learning.
I do not find it so. I find that man makes it so when trying to pressure others to believe "their" way or face doom. I believe Jesus taught simple Truths that could be easily seen and understood.
“Those of us that were smart enough to leave protestantism have only decent things to say about our former churches.”
Probably because there’s nothing bad to say about Protestant churches. On the other hand, the Catholicism that teaches salvation through rosary beads is soul destroying.
Yes, we know that Protestants rely on the Bible alone and do not follow the traditions of man:
Nor should we forget that St. Jerome, who translated the entire Bible into Latin left the Catholic Church. In reality the Catholic Church has been studying the Bible for 2000 years. For those who are interested advanced degrees in Sacred Scriptures are available at the Catholic University of America.
Probably because one of us is incorrect. But you did not answer the question as to whether your Church placed an old man under house arrest for his beliefs.
Metzger - PC USA.
William Whitaker - COE.
So why are we to believe that either of them are reliable sources on these issues?
Are you saying you believe that the PCUSE and the COE are the sources of divine truth in Christianity today?
I am able to concede to you on this. I am neither too proud or stubborn to do so. -:)
Who taught you that Galileo was arrested because he believed the earth was round?
Care to quote a dogmatic teaching on that. Oh that's right you just spout what ever pops into your little head.
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