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?
We’ve been debating scripture on this forum for quite a number of years.
If we quit debating, all the terrorism and Jihad and war in the Middle East will stop?
Promise?
It doesn't matter what any Catholic thinks worship is...If you eat a hot dog and convince yourself it's a taco salad, sorry, it's still really a hot dog...
Another thing that gets me is how do you guys have the audacity to think you can offer the 2nd part of the Trinity, Jesus as a sacrifice to God??? Who taught you this nonsense and how can you even claim to believe it???
God offered his son for you...You don't offer nothing, except insults to God...
Then you said, "No you don't. Tell me how much time passed between verse one and verse two. Even with a literal reading of the English, there's no way of telling without assuming."
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Then you are obviously in direct, complete opposition to those other Protestants know as "Fundamentalists" (the young-Earth creationists branch) who do subscribe to that young age of the Earth.
This is another clear, blatant example of how following your own personal interpetation of scripture often leads to opposing interpretations. Those two views completely oppose and conflict with each other, and they can't both be right.
In another post (post 512) you say it makes no difference where you worship, just as long as the "local assembly" preaches the "gospel". A major problem with that is that many Protestant groups radically differ on what the gospel actually teaches.
For example, some Protestant groups teach the doctrine known as "once saved, always saved", while other Protestant groups teach that that "once saved, always saved" teaching/doctrine is completely wrong and false. Both views can't be right -- they are in direct opposition to each other, and are completely incompatible. Anyone who falsely claims that all Protestants agree on the essential teachings of the gospel would, of course, be lying. There are vast, irreconciliable differences between various Protestant denominations and groups -- that is simply the truth, whether one chooses to accept ir or not.
Also, why do you refuse to tell us the denomination of the church you attend? Are you afraid to reveal that, or embarrassed by it, or ashamed about it, or what is it that makes you continue to obstinately hide that information from us "under a bushel"?
(I'm off to do some errands right now, but I'll try to check back later for your response, if you write one.)
Ok, enough is enough! Hopefully I have learned my lesson and will stay away from discussions with Catholics. Just let me tell you, people, that several of you (not all) are the least Christ-like people that I know. But enough is enough, I have a Sunday school class to prepare.
Thanks for being gentle, but while Jesus is both God and man, Jesus and God are also separate...
Just when I thought that you could not be more wrong, you once again prove me wrong. Congratulations on escalating the level of error that you have posted.
This was supposed to be a thread about how the Church could improve its catechesis. Within the first 5 posts, somebody from your side implied that if Catholics would “read the Bible” (as if we don’t already), we would learn everything we need to know, but we wouldn’t be Catholic anymore. We took exception to that.
But yet they sinned...And yet you guys claim Mary didn't sin because she had the same nature...
JCBreckenridge documents: That’s not what scripture actually says.
Matthew 18:15-7 “If your brother or sister[b] sins, go and point out their fault, just between the two of you. If they listen to you, you have won them over. But if they will not listen, take one or two others along, so that ‘every matter may be established by the testimony of two or three witnesses.’ “If they still refuse to listen, tell it to the church;” and if they refuse to listen even to the church, treat them as you would a pagan or a tax collector.”
Izzy is proven guilty of the very thing that he has accused Hahn and Staples of. WOW I mean WOW, whoda thunk it Wally?
MAYBE WE NEED TO TEACH IN ALLCAPS FROM NOW ON!!!!!
GPH metmommy is saying your 50 priests that left is not a real source. Let me get some popcorn while you two settle this.
Where can I get a beach ball wirh a Crusader’s Cross on it? Cool, I want one.
Well certainly both views are right...Just because you or others don't get it doesn't make it wrong...
And just because some of my brothers and sisters in the Lord disagree with me doesn't mean we aren't all members of the body of Christ...
We have the testimony of salvatin...A personal relationship with our Savior...If you knew what the bible says and believed it, you would know that we all learn at different rates...And you would know that heresies exist so that others would learn the truth because of those heresies...So what that we are not united in knowledge...We are united in Christ...
What about prayers said at Vespers? You forgot those.
When you are wrong and you usually are, I correct you with scripture...You got something to correct me with other than 'you're wrong'???
I’m sorry ... what are you ranting about again ?
The notion that two opposing views are both right is positively Orwellian. The notion that they are both right unless one of them happens to be Catholic is positively Satanic.
Resolution 15 opens the door
This is the part where you say Verga you are correct. I highly doubt that you will, but if you have even the least bit of Christian dignity you will.
Project Canterbury
Lambeth on Contraceptives
By Charles Gore, D.D., D.C.L., LL. D. Bishop of Oxford
London: Mowbray, 1930, 30 pp
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- § I The Resolution 15 of the Lambeth Conference SOME years ago I published a pamphlet on The Prevention of Conception, which has been quite recently reprinted. I had hoped that I might now remain silent on the subject, but the recent action of the Lambeth Conference, giving a restricted sanction to the use of preventives of conception, constrains me to publish a reasoned protest against what seems to me to be a disastrous abandonment of the position that the Conference of 1920 took up. I quote the Resolution (68) of 1920:
The Conference, while declining to lay down rules which will meet the needs of every abnormal case, regards with grave concern the spread in modern society of theories and practices hostile to the family. We utter an emphatic warning against the use of unnatural means for the avoidance of conception, together with the grave dangers—physical, moral, and religious—thereby incurred, and against the evils with which the extension of such use threatens the race. In opposition to the teaching which, under the name of science and religion, encourages married people in the deliberate cultivation of sexual union as an end in itself, we steadfastly uphold what must always be regarded as the governing considerations of Christian marriage. One is the primary purpose for which marriage exists—namely the continuation of the race through the gift and heritage of children; the other is the paramount importance in married life of deliberate and thoughtful self-control. We desire solemnly to commend what we have said to Christian people and to all who will hear. Here we have a refusal to go into detail about abnormal 'hard cases,' but a quite general condemnation of contraceptive methods. The recent Conference, on the contrary, has given a restricted approval of them. To be quite fair we will analyse the Resolutions 13—18. Resolutions 13 and 14 are on the lines of the latter part of the pronouncement of the earlier Conference, emphasizing the dignity and glory of parenthood and the necessity of self-control within marriage. Resolution 16 expresses abhorrence of the crime of abortion. Resolution 17 repudiates the idea that unsatisfactory economic and social conditions can be met by the control of conception. Resolution 18 condemns fornication accompanied by the use of some contraceptive as no less sinful than without such accompaniment. It also demands legislation forbidding the exposure for sale and advertisement of contraceptives. But Resolution 15 (carried, it is noted, by a majority of 193 votes over 67, which would seem to imply that there must have been some forty bishops who did not vote), which contemplates cases where 'there is a clearly felt obligation to limit or avoid parenthood,' while giving the preference to the self-discipline and self-control which makes abstinence from intercourse possible, and recording the 'strong condemnation' by the Conference 'of the use of methods of conception-control from motives of selfishness, luxury, or mere convenience,' yet admits the legitimacy of these methods 'where there is a morally sound reason for avoiding complete abstinence.'
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.