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?
Do you believe Jesus can help prevent you from sinning, if you freely choose to ask Him for that kind of help? Or, is that impossible for Jesus to do?
If Jesus did help keep you from sinning, would that be "compelling" you to behave like that, or would that be Jesus filling you with His grace to enable you to freely choose to refrain from sinning?
Here are two examples, the first from the Collect (Opening Prayer) on the Feast of Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary:
Impart to your servants, we pray, O Lord,The second from the Preface of Blessed Virgin Mary:
the gift of heavenly grace,
that the feast of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin
may bring deeper peace
to those for whom the birth of her Son
was the dawning of salvation.
Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son,
who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, for ever and ever.
It is truly right and just, our duty and our salvation,And of course the actual act of worship is the offering of the Sacrifice of Jesus to the Father. From the Roman Canon of the Mass:
always and everywhere to give you thanks,
Lord, holy Father, almighty and eternal God,
and to praise, bless, and glorify your name
(on the Solemnity of the Motherhood / on the feast day / on the Nativity / in veneration ) of the Blessed ever-Virgin Mary.
For by the overshadowing of the Holy Spirit
she conceived your Only Begotten Son,
and without losing the glory of virginity,
brought forth into the world the eternal Light,
Jesus Christ our Lord.
Through him the Angels praise your majesty,
Dominions adore and Powers tremble before you.
Heaven and the Virtues of heaven and the blessed Seraphim
worship together with exultation.
May our voices, we pray, join with theirs
in humble praise, as we acclaim:Holy, Holy, Holy Lord God of hosts . . .
Therefore, O Lord,So I hope that you will have the honesty to admit that Catholics do not worship Mary.
as we celebrate the memorial of the blessed Passion,
the Resurrection from the dead,
and the glorious Ascension into heaven
of Christ, your Son, our Lord,
we, your servants and your holy people,
offer to your glorious majesty
from the gifts that you have given us,
this pure victim,
this holy victim,
this spotless victim,
the holy Bread of eternal life
and the Chalice of everlasting salvation.Be pleased to look upon these offerings
with a serene and kindly countenance,
and to accept them,
as once you were pleased to accept
the gifts of your servant Abel the just,
the sacrifice of Abraham, our father in faith,
and the offering of your high priest Melchizedek,
a holy sacrifice, a spotless victim.In humble prayer we ask you, almighty God:
command that these gifts be borne
by the hands of your holy Angel
to your altar on high
in the sight of your divine majesty,
so that all of us, who through this participation at the altar
receive the most holy Body and Blood of your Son,
may be filled with every grace and heavenly blessing.
(Through Christ our Lord. Amen.)
He is speaking of a group of believers, not another Freeper personally. It is therefore not “making it personal.”
You must read Scott Hahn's books...He changes scripture just like you do...
No, there are no weeds in the church...The weeds are in the world...So if there are weeds in the Catholic religion, that's because the Catholic religion is the World, not the church...There are no weed in Jesus Christ's Bride...
Apparently you guys mean an 'empty' church when you say that the gates of hell will not prevail against his church...An empty building...And that's because because God certainly did not prevail when your popes, God's men on Earth murdered people for not bowing down to them or for killing each other or stealing from the pot or living as queers...And if God wasn't prevailing, who was???
So it was the empty buildings that hell wouldn't prevail against, eh???
But here's a clue...If the building is empty, there is no church/Bride there...
For your gentle correction, Jesus IS both God and man.
Would I be immaculately conceived if he did? No.
Obviously Adam did not get a sinless human nature...He sinned...
Sadly, what was the Church’s responsibility was taken away by the government.
What a bunch of nonsense! Paul himself said that we don’t mourn like those who have no hope (1 Thess 4:13), but he did not say that we don’t mourn. We are humans. I would agree to tell someone his/her loved one is in heaven, with Jesus. But to walk up to a 10 year old and tell her it is good that her sister died... well, that’s wrong! I don’t doubt the sister meant well, but the way she said it...it was like telling me I was wrong to mourn for my sister. Were my parents wrong also? I don’t remember them throwing a party! My most vivid memories are trying to watch tv, hearing the doorbell and, knowing it was someone else coming to express condolences, my mom would start crying again. While we are at it, why express condolences at all? Should we do like the sister and just tell someone that we’ve heard the great news?
No you wouldm't, but that was not the point.
The point is that God can keep you free from sinning merely by His Grace and your full but free will acceptance of it, not by "compelling you".
Good grief, why all this arguing about the Bible?!
At a time when Christians are being attacked in the Middle East by jihadis, there is still here arguing about the scriptures.
PLEASE brothers and sisters in Christ, regardless of where we go to worship on Sundays, remember we have “one Lord,one faith, one baptism”. The apostle Paul.
Please lets not make this a I am better then you in regards to knowing the Bible. Thank-you.
Alright...I'll rephrase that...Temptation is a consequence of a sinful nature...
Although people tried to tempt God, God could not be tempted...Jesus on the other hand could be tempted but he did not succumb to sin...
Amen. The infinite perfection and harmony of creation, revealed in science, is called Natural Revelation by the Church. The Church has long been a patron of science, and the founding schools, universities and hospitals. Catholic scientists, both religious and lay, have led scientific discovery in many fields and produced foundational works in the linguistics, medicine, archeology, geology, genetics, zoology, astronomy, chemistry, and physics.
Peace be with you
I got the 1967. Until then, if you wanted to buy one, all the Bibles were in Latin! What happened to the older translations? I don’t know, all I know is that, after Vatican II allowed for the Mass in vernacular, they made a great deal in Spain about translating the Bible into Spanish. Maybe I did not get the first Spanish Bible ever, but I did get the first available one!
Do you seriously want us to believe you actually read Scott Hahn's books? If so, please give me couple of examples so that I can check them against his books and Scripture.
Thanks!
You will need to rephrase that again. Temptation is external to us. Concupiscence is a consequence of original sin.
Then you said, "Baloney. I've sat through masses for years and they do NOT go through the whole Bible."
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Of course, the Church does not read certain big chunks of the Bible in the Mass such as the long lists of Mosaic Laws, and appropriate sacrifices for the Israelites, and priestly duties, and the census counting the tribes of Israel in the Books "Leviticus" and "Numbers" and so forth, but it has been my experience that there is much more Biblical quoting and referencing during a Catholic Mass than there is during a Protestant church service, where a preacher usually picks out a verse or two, then preaches about it for a half hour or more.
(In my younger years, I passed through quite a few Protestant denominations on my winding path to the True Church founded by Jesus Christ including -- in alphabetical order -- Baptist, Lutheran, Methodist, Pentecostal, and Seventh-day Adventist, and attended many others, so I know what they do. The Catholic Church goes through a whole lot more Scripture during a Mass than Protestants do during a typical Protestant church service.)
If you don't believe me, you can check for yourself. The monthly "Magnificat" magazine contains all the many Bible references used for the Daily and Sunday Masses for each month, and can be obtained here:
As an added devotional, Catholic clergy and "Religious", and a large number of Catholic lay people, read daily (several times each day) what is known as "The Liturgy of the Hours", which is a cyclical reading through the Psalms and other Biblical readings, and various book forms of those "Liturgy of the Hours" biblical readings can be obtained here:
Before the fall, Adam and Eve wouldn’t have had a sinful nature.
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