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?
Actually, the more accurate description would be Messianic Jews.
“RCs have great liberty to make Mary part of the Trinity”
I see this sola scripturist doesn’t have the book of deuteronomy in his personal canon.
It seems a significant number of Catholics (not only) contend for geocentrism today.
You obviously don't.
Peter was given a duty which has yet to be fulfilled.
In your opinion.
You quite obviously aren't familiar with typology and I doubt that whoever reads excerpts from Scripture to you on Sunday or Saturday or over the TV has ever explained it but you would be well served to carefully and methodically reflect on Isaias 22:22 and Matthew 16:19. See if you can figure it out.
"And I will lay the key of the house of David upon his shoulder: and he shall open, and none shall shut: and he shall shut, and none shall open." Isaias 22:22
"And I will give to thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven. And whatsoever thou shalt bind upon earth, it shall be bound also in heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt loose upon earth, it shall be loosed also in heaven." Matthew 16:19
Again, I don’t see the term ‘messianic Jew’ anywhere in Scripture.
I do, however see Paul preaching that:
“All are alive in Christ Jesus”, indicating that the Church of Acts did not regard themselves as ‘messianic Jews’, but rather as followers of Christ, and, as Paul states, members of the Church. Significantly no distinction is made between Jews and Gentiles.
Inside information , and it also depends which century,
We Catholics do not have to rely solely upon our interpretation of the not-so-self-interpreting Scripture. We have the entire depositum fidei (deposit of faith) and the Paraclete expressed through the ordinary Magisterium. Maybe you should have actually read the Catechism.
CCC - 84 The apostles entrusted the "Sacred deposit" of the faith (the depositum fidei),45 contained in Sacred Scripture and Tradition, to the whole of the Church. "By adhering to [this heritage] the entire holy people, united to its pastors, remains always faithful to the teaching of the apostles, to the brotherhood, to the breaking of bread and the prayers. So, in maintaining, practicing and professing the faith that has been handed on, there should be a remarkable harmony between the bishops and the faithful."46
The Magisterium of the Church
CCC 85 "The task of giving an authentic interpretation of the Word of God, whether in its written form or in the form of Tradition, has been entrusted to the living teaching office of the Church alone. Its authority in this matter is exercised in the name of Jesus Christ."47 This means that the task of interpretation has been entrusted to the bishops in communion with the successor of Peter, the Bishop of Rome.
CCC 86 "Yet this Magisterium is not superior to the Word of God, but is its servant. It teaches only what has been handed on to it. At the divine command and with the help of the Holy Spirit, it listens to this devotedly, guards it with dedication and expounds it faithfully. All that it proposes for belief as being divinely revealed is drawn from this single deposit of faith."48
CCC 87 Mindful of Christ's words to his apostles: "He who hears you, hears me",49 the faithful receive with docility the teachings and directives that their pastors give them in different forms.
Peace be with you
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St Jerome, 345-420. Doctor of Biblical Science, Feast Sept 30th. |
The world was created five minutes ago, complete with our memories.
There were no such things as graduation back then in Spain (I don't know how it is now, I've been gone 33 years) but there were some kind of celebrations at the end of the 12th grade. The day after I took my last test, I stayed home. Never set foot in my school again.
I Became a Christian by Grace Alone through Faith Alone in Christ Alone after God revealed to me the Gospel of Grace in the Scriptures. Going back to Rome is denying the Gospel.
Rome has saddled herself to the yoke of the law. Christians are free from the law.
Gal 2:16 yet we know that a person is not justified by works of the law but through faith in Jesus Christ, so we also have believed in Christ Jesus, in order to be justified by faith in Christ and not by works of the law, because by works of the law no one will be justified.
God wants the United States to come back to him.
Are we listening?
In parochial school in the 60s we were required to have a Bible for theology class.
was told I could not have my New King James withing sight of the students!!!
You do realize that the KJV; which showed up over 12 centuries after the original, is an abridged, heavily edited, corrupted text, right?
“I would put her in the same category than the sister that, after finding out that my 14-day old sister had died, came and told me it was wonderful because she would never sin!”
And why precisely would this shock you?
No, that isn't what I'm saying at all. I was simply calling you out on the idea that contraception leads to socialism. I used South American Catholic countries with generally high birthrates as an example of your point simply being wrong.
In general you tend to find that wealth leads to lower birthrates. It's a fairly consistent phenomenon across the world. Free market countries tend to have an advantage in the wealth department, and their birthrates decline. Probably largely to due to all the choices in life available to wealthier people (travel, hobbies, etc). Sometimes you get a morally sick country like Russia that is growing simply because it had nowhere to go but up as it dumps socialism, yet still has declining birth rates.
The point is, contraception does not lead to socialism. The Catholic church is dominant in central and south American. The birth rates are generally high, and yet many of those countries have been absolutely ruined by socialist policies. Unfortunately, part of the problem is the Catholic church tends to be supportive of massive redistributive policies, the people often listen to the priests and bishops, and the countries fester in ruin because of those terrible ideas.
I ask you again, why is it so hard for many Catholics to admit their church's failings on economic issues?. Along with being wrong on immigration, gun control, etc. Is it really so hard to just admit the Pope and RCC leadership is wrong on the economic stuff? It's not like we can't agree the Catholic church does do some incredibly great works. I'm not some Catholic hater. I'm just endlessly irritated that the RCC takes these populist left positions that influence so many people and wind up doing so much damage, economically, throughout the world.
**In general I hear far more scripture in the Catholic church each Sunday than I ever heard in a Baptist or other similar church growing up.**
BTTT!
Someone finally posts the truth!
And since you didn't give the definition or an example the answer would actually be "No, I really don't."
Let's try this gain. Bob, What is the definition of loosing and binding? What did it mean to a first Century Jew? Cite at least one example.
Sounds like your experience was different than mine.
I am quite comfortable in saying that my experience is probably the majority experience. Its common knowledge.
If you are going to use a term from NT days, I reckon it would be “People of the Way” and later on “Christians”. Granted, there were no Messianic Jews... or Catholics then. If you are going to use modern terms, to justify calling them Catholics, I insist, Messianic Jews would be more accurate.
Rome has not infallibly interpreted it.
According to whom, you?
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