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?
Cite chapter and verse, please
One main problem is that there are not many parents who can afford to send their children to a Catholic school.
Is that what you were taught? He knew better than to openly cross the tyrannical Church I don't care if he thought the moon was made of green cheese. What gave your Church the right to imprison an old man in poor health?? Who do they think they are? Is this the Spirit of Christ? Did Jesus preach imprisonment of those who didn't believe a certain way? Heliocentrism is a FACT and it don't take no Rocket Scientist to know that.
“DOGMATIC TEACHING, Cite a DOGMATIC TEACHING. Catholics are NOT required to say the rosary.”
No, but evidently it can make the difference between life or death:
“Later on, when she was at prayer she fell into ecstasy and had a vision of her soul appearing before the Supreme Judge. Saint Michael put all her penances and to her prayers on one side of the scale and all her sins and imperfections on the other. The tray of her good works were greatly outweighed by that of her sins and imperfections.
Filled with alarm, she cried out for mercy, imploring the help of the Blessed Virgin, her gracious advocate, who took the one and only Rosary she had said for her penance and dropped it on the tray of her good works. This one Rosary was so heavy that it weighed more than all her sins as well as her good works. Our Lady then reproved her for having refused to follow the counsel of her servant Dominic and for not saying the Rosary every day.
As soon as she came to herself she rushed and threw herself at the feet of Saint Dominic and told him all that had happened, begged his forgiveness and promised to say the Rosary faithfully every day. By this means she rose to Christian perfection and finally to the glory of everlasting life.”
http://www.rosary-center.org/secret.htm
“We constantly seek for help from Heaven - the sole means of effecting anything - that our labours and our care may obtain their wished for object. We deem that there could be no surer and more efficacious means to this end than by religion and piety to obtain the favour of the great Virgin Mary, the Mother of God, the guardian of our peace and the minister to us of heavenly grace, who is placed on the highest summit of power and glory in Heaven, in order that she may bestow the help of her patronage on men who through so many labours and dangers are striving to reach that eternal city. Now that the anniversary, therefore, of manifold and exceedingly great favours obtained by a Christian people through the devotion of the Rosary is at hand, We desire that that same devotion should be offered by the whole Catholic world with the greatest earnestness to the Blessed Virgin, that by her intercession her Divine Son may be appeased and softened in the evils which afflict us. And therefore We determined, Venerable Brethren, to despatch to you these letters in order that, informed of Our designs, your authority and zeal might excite the piety of your people to conform themselves to them.” (ENCYCLICAL OF POPE LEO XIII ON DEVOTION OF THE ROSARY)
http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/leo_xiii/encyclicals/documents/hf_l-xiii_enc_01091883_supremi-apostolatus-officio_en.html
“With these words, dear brothers and sisters, I set the first year of my Pontificate within the daily rhythm of the Rosary. Today, as I begin the twenty-fifth year of my service as the Successor of Peter, I wish to do the same. How many graces have I received in these years from the Blessed Virgin through the Rosary: Magnificat anima mea Dominum! I wish to lift up my thanks to the Lord in the words of his Most Holy Mother, under whose protection I have placed my Petrine ministry: Totus Tuus!” (ROSARIUM VIRGINIS MARIAE OF THE SUPREME PONTIFF JOHN PAUL II)
Looks like it’s highly recommended, at least. It can make the difference between life and death in saving you from the terrible judgments of Jesus Christ, so goes the traditional Catholic perspective.
Singular verse or not, it is irrelevant when it is misinterpreted. You talk about building a big old bridge off of an willow twig . . . it is a stretch to build a whole religion and AUTHORITY (that's really the key) on a single verse which has many meanings OTHER than the one your Church claims.
Galileo was justly imprisoned for breach of contract. It was his actions, not his ideas that got him into trouble.
Galileo was commissioned by the Church to investigate helioceotricism and to submit a report for consideration. He took the money, performed the study and then released his report to the public. Heliocentrism was a "revolutionary" (that's where we get the word) idea and any formal announcement or endoresement, either way, was going to be contentious. It had been sometimes violently contentious since introduced by Copernicus over 20 years before Galileo's birth. Galileo caused a lot of problems with his disclosure that could have been prevented had the work been more delicately introduced. The whole issue has been a distorted Protestant polemic cause since it occurred.
Peace be with you
“In your unlearned opinion. You need to stop omitting that caveat.”
I didn’t give my opinion. I gave the Catholic Church opinion prior to the reformation.
Go to the part where God gives Moses the Ten Commandments. Try somewhere in Exodus. There are probably search engines you could use.
... show me
a) mortal sin
b) you die if you willingly refuse to go to church
What does that have to do with anything?
Other than on a few social issues (gay marriage for example) the Catholic church is basically a leftist organization. Liberal on economic issues, immigration, gun control, etc, etc, etc. What makes it even worse is most Catholics seem to ignore the RCC's teaching on the few social conservative issues they are good on, and support the populist, liberal economic crap the comes out of the Catholic church all too often. Pope Frances has gone out of his way to bemoan cutting government run social welfare programs and seems to spend an inordinate amount of time complaining about free market capitalism. It's no wonder his homeland of Argentina has been an economic basketcase, in endless defaults and fiscal failure for generations.
I didn’t know Jews went to church after the Exodus
Not as you would have us believe. You're parroting an urban legend which is your modus operandi. You must be a masochist since you enjoy exposing your lack of intelligence on a regular basis.
Do you know that the Catholic Priest Copernicus; whom Luther called a madman, was teaching heliocentric theory 21 years prior to the birth of Galileo? Of course you don't. You probably also don't know that the protestant faculty at Tubingen unanimously condemned Johannes Kepler as a heretic for teaching heliocentrism. You probably also don't know that Kepler had to flee his country and was given refuge by the Jesuits. You probably also don't know that Pope Clement VIII himself gave Kepler a position in a Catholic university teaching astronomy.
If only you knew what you don't know.
So,
The messenger just didn't say it right ... right?
Like a democrat ?
(Galileo) Tortured for His Beliefs? (absolutely NOT)
http://www.catholic.com/tracts/the-galileo-controversy
In the end, Galileo recanted his heliocentric teachings, but it was not—as is commonly supposed—under torture nor after a harsh imprison- ment. Galileo was, in fact, treated surprisingly well.
As historian Giorgio de Santillana, who is not overly fond of the Catholic Church, noted, “We must, if anything, admire the cautiousness and legal scruples of the Roman authorities.” Galileo was offered every convenience possible to make his imprisonment in his home bearable.
Galileo’s friend Nicolini, Tuscan ambassador to the Vatican, sent regular reports to the court regarding affairs in Rome. Many of his letters dealt with the ongoing controversy surrounding Galileo.
Nicolini revealed the circumstances surrounding Galileo’s “imprisonment” when he reported to the Tuscan king: “The pope told me that he had shown Galileo a favor never accorded to another” (letter dated Feb. 13, 1633); “ . . . he has a servant and every convenience” (letter, April 16); and “[i]n regard to the person of Galileo, he ought to be imprisoned for some time because he disobeyed the orders of 1616, but the pope says that after the publication of the sentence he will consider with me as to what can be done to afflict him as little as possible” (letter, June 18).
Had Galileo been tortured, Nicolini would have reported it to his king. While instruments of torture may have been present during Galileo’s recantation (this was the custom of the legal system in Europe at that time), they definitely were not used.
The records demonstrate that Galileo could not be tortured because of regulations laid down in The Directory for Inquisitors (Nicholas Eymeric, 1595). This was the official guide of the Holy Office, the Church office charged with dealing with such matters, and was followed to the letter.
As noted scientist and philosopher Alfred North Whitehead remarked, in an age that saw a large number of “witches” subjected to torture and execution by Protestants in New England, “the worst that happened to the men of science was that Galileo suffered an honorable detention and a mild reproof.” Even so, the Catholic Church today acknowledges that Galileo’s condemnation was wrong. The Vatican has even issued two stamps of Galileo as an expression of regret for his mistreatment.
I am a practicing Catholic and have been for most of my almost eighty years on this planet.
One thing that I find abhorrent is to hear and read a fellow Catholic say that he is proud to be Catholic.
But for the grace of God, we could all be atheists. It was pride that drove man out of paradise and we are still paying the price for it in our daily sufferings in spite of Christ’s supreme sacrifice in order to open the door to heaven.
I never hear anyone say that he is humbly grateful to be Catholic.
“What does that have to do with anything?”
Where do you think the push for social security comes from?
The idea that you family cannot or will not support you and that the state should provide for you - in the event that you do not have a family is the largest single component of socialism in America today.
Where do you think the single moms come from? The percent of children born out of wedlock? Why is it that the poorest families are those who choose to shack up and split instead of getting married.
Do you not see how contraception facilitates all of these weakened families? The weaker the families, the stronger the state - and that is what contraception seeps into first. It preys on your insecurity.
Protestants pride themselves on attacking ‘socialism’, while making sure to insert condoms into the baskets of their children should they happen to actually marry. Then, after their inevitable divorce, they move on to marry someone else and so on and so forth.
St. Peter contradicts you as does Christ exhoration on keeping the Commandments and the Real Presence, amongst many others.
I believe Jesus taught simple Truths that could be easily seen and understood.
So you accept Christ's literal teaching in John 6, right?
You're not unlike the eunuch who met Philip.
"And Philip running thither, heard him reading the prophet Isaias. And he said: Thinkest thou that thou understandest what thou readest? Who said: And how can I, unless some man shew me? And he desired Philip that he would come up and sit with him." Acts 8:30-31
Catholicism doesn't teach that.
You understand what the consequences of violating the Eighth Commandment are, don't you or do you simply not care what those consequences are?
“Singular verse or not, it is irrelevant when it is misinterpreted.”
So what you are saying is that sola scriptura means nothing. Interpretation of scripture is crucial to proper understanding of it.
“which has many meanings OTHER than the one your Church claims.”
Which returns us to the question of authority. Who has the authority to interpret scripture?
“Catholicism doesn’t teach that”
It teaches it. See post #209
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