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?
Why deliver this fantasy in a supposed discussion of the word?
Why declare Joseph to be in open sin without a shred of evidence to support it?
Why not just accept the plain words of scripture?
Izzy please respond to post #430 you have made contradictory staements and you need to tell us which one is correct. You do know I will not give up on this.
That is just stupid. Were the "plain words" sufficient there would be no need of the thousands of Protestant Bible colleges, seminaries, preachers, ministers, authors, bloggers, ministries, Bible Study group leaders, and theologians who make their living explaining the "plain words" and the foolish Freepers who spend their lives "setting the Catholics right".
Assuming that you could have gotten a Bible without the aid of the Church, all you would have needed was Mrs. Johnson's 3rd Grade Reading class for Salvation.
You dismissals of the scriptures is colossal.
How does one that does that rationalize their abundant unbelief?
Credibility: 0
I have not declared Joseph to be in open sin. On the contrary it is you who suggest that sin was present and that it is an either or proposition between Joseph and Mary as to who would be in open sin if Joseph took a consecrated virgin as his wife after the death of his first wife. Joseph is an righteous man and Mary was Immaculate.
Quite the comedian, huh?
My dear ES, I am not dismissing Scripture, I am dismissing you.
Peace be with you
The burden of proof is and remains with you, as you have injected contra-scriptural theories without basis.
Your posts make of Joseph (and thereby Mary too) an adulterer and fornicator.
If, as you contend, Scripture were "plain words" what possible purpose or use is there in you offering correction. By your continued participation and rebukes you prove the opposite of what you preach. Scripture is not simple and plain and it is most assuredly not self interpreting. Outside the Church, there is no unanimity, but contradiction, chaos, and division. Were Scripture actually "plain words" there would have been no need for St. Paul's letters.
There is no Aramaic word for "cousin", there's only "brother".
In each case, though, the rabid anti-Catholic crowd yells about the Greek translation of those words is the correct way to understand what was originally said in Aramaic. When they want to throw out part of the Scripture Christ and the Apostles accepted, though, they agree with the anti-Christ Pharisees and claim they can't accept part of the Septauigent because it was originally written in Greek.
"Self Alone" interpretation leaves clear little hoofprints of deliberate deception wherever it goes.
Absolutely. We also teach that the Apostles were granted this authority by Christ.
Anyone else want to nuke the church?
Seeing as the church began in dissent from those who were the stewards of Holy Writ and the official teachers of it, and those who sat in the seat of Moses (Rm. 3:2; 9:4; Mt. 23:2) having historical descent and being the inheritor of the promises of God. (Rm. 3:2; 9:4; Lv. 10:11; Dt. 4:31; 17:8-13; Num. 23:19,23; Is. 41:10, Ps. 89:33,34; Mal. 3:6)
And who followed a itinerant Preacher, who reproved them by Scripture for teaching as doctrines mere tradition of the elders, (Mk. 7:3-16) and established His claims upon Scriptural substantiation, in text and in power, as did the apostles and early church. (Mt. 22:23-45; Lk. 24:27,44; Jn. 5:36,39; Acts 2:14-35; 4:33; 5:12; 15:6-21;17:2,11; 18:28; 28:23; Rm. 15:19; 2Cor. 12:12, etc.)
Under the Roman model souls would be told to reject this itinerant Preacher as a renegade, as in response to their demand, "By what authority doest thou these things? and who gave thee this authority to do these things?," He invoked the baptism of a holy man in the desert eating insects, who also did not have the sanction of the magisterium.
But like Rome, they presumed a level of assured veracity and authority above what is written., (cf. 1Cor. 4:6)
But as Rome has infallibly declared she is and will be perpetually infallible whenever she speaks in accordance with her infallibly defined (scope and subject-based) formula, this renders her declaration that she is infallible, to be infallible, as well as all else she accordingly declares.
And wherein is your full assurance.
Please link to a statement that I made that said that Galileo was burned at the stake. your fault for not clarifying who you were talking about. I will forgive your ignorant action.Gee, that's kind of personal and accusatory.
I thought Catholics were up on their history and not prone to jump right on a comment without knowing if it is correct or not.
I always forget that doing that is SOP.
Do you have an answer to my question in the post you are replying to?
If you have no answer, we shall concede that your statement in question has no Biblical basis.
Mark, it is because we are not playing the same game as they are. We are playing Whack-A-Mole dealing with each outlandish outburst and they are playing Frogger. I haven't seen any of their ideas make it across four lanes and back yet.
Peace be with you
Thank you so much for this. It makes battling the papists so much more relaxing.
When you show some documentation for Mary being sinless and moving on up to heaven while still alive, I'll rush right in with the documentation...
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