Posted on 09/30/2013 11:30:08 AM PDT by NYer
How do you read the Bible? Today is the feast day of Saint Jerome, who once quipped, “Ignorance of Scripture is ignorance of Christ.”
It’s a running joke that if you want to find a Bible verse, you ought to ask a Protestant and not a Catholic. Protestants read the Bible. Catholics not so much.
This raises the question:
I think the answer lies in the fact that we Catholics go to Mass. The Holy Mass has at least two Bible readings every time. If you pray the Breviary or Liturgy of Hours, multiply that several times.
Joe Catholic says to himself, “Why should I study the Bible? I go to Mass. I hear it there. Check and check.”
There is something beautiful in this. For Catholics, Bible reading is liturgical. Hence, Bible reading remains chiefly a community experience.
It’s good to listen to the readings from the Bible at Holy Mass. However, we also need a personal (even private) encounter with God in the pages of Sacred Scripture. All of the saints breathed Sacred Scripture. Scripture served as the grammar for their souls. They couldn’t communicate without it.
Here are some basic spiritual needs that you have every single day of your life:
So when you wake up tomorrow, do the following:
What? You’re too busy. Sorry, you just got served a yellow card:
Doing these three readings will take you only 3-5 minutes. That’s the time of a commercial break. It will change your life for good. I promise. It takes 21 days to make a habit, so give it 21 days and see if you aren’t hooked. Put the Bible on your night stand and read it in the mornings. Start fresh.
“Ignorance of Scripture is ignorance of Christ.” – Saint Jerome, Doctor of the Church
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Jesus answered, The work of God is this: to believe in the one he has sent.
Go ahead and DO all those extra things the TRUE church has placed upon you; I choose not to.
5 Then some of the believers who belonged to the party of the Pharisees stood up and said, The Gentiles must be circumcised and required to keep the law of Moses.
6 The apostles and elders met to consider this question. 7 After much discussion, Peter got up and addressed them: Brothers, you know that some time ago God made a choice among you that the Gentiles might hear from my lips the message of the gospel and believe. 8 God, who knows the heart, showed that he accepted them by giving the Holy Spirit to them, just as he did to us. 9 He did not discriminate between us and them, for he purified their hearts by faith. 10 Now then, why do you try to test God by putting on the necks of Gentiles a yoke that neither we nor our ancestors have been able to bear? 11 No! We believe it is through the grace of our Lord Jesus that we are saved, just as they are.
12 The whole assembly became silent as they listened to Barnabas and Paul telling about the signs and wonders God had done among the Gentiles through them. 13 When they finished, James spoke up. Brothers, he said, listen to me. 14 Simon[a] has described to us how God first intervened to choose a people for his name from the Gentiles. 15 The words of the prophets are in agreement with this, as it is written:
16 After this I will return
and rebuild Davids fallen tent.
Its ruins I will rebuild,
and I will restore it,
17 that the rest of mankind may seek the Lord,
even all the Gentiles who bear my name,
says the Lord, who does these things[b]
18 things known from long ago.[c]
19 It is my judgment, therefore, that we should not make it difficult for the Gentiles who are turning to God. 20 Instead we should write to them, telling them to abstain from food polluted by idols, from sexual immorality, from the meat of strangled animals and from blood. 21 For the law of Moses has been preached in every city from the earliest times and is read in the synagogues on every Sabbath.
The apostles and elders, your brothers,
To the Gentile believers in Antioch, Syria and Cilicia:
Greetings.
24 We have heard that some went out from us without our authorization and disturbed you, troubling your minds by what they said. 25 So we all agreed to choose some men and send them to you with our dear friends Barnabas and Paul 26 men who have risked their lives for the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. 27 Therefore we are sending Judas and Silas to confirm by word of mouth what we are writing. 28 It seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us not to burden you with anything beyond the following requirements: 29 You are to abstain from food sacrificed to idols, from blood, from the meat of strangled animals and from sexual immorality. You will do well to avoid these things.
Farewell.
30 So the men were sent off and went down to Antioch, where they gathered the church together and delivered the letter. 31 The people read it and were glad for its encouraging message. 32 Judas and Silas, who themselves were prophets, said much to encourage and strengthen the believers. 33 After spending some time there, they were sent off by the believers with the blessing of peace to return to those who had sent them. [34] [d] 35 But Paul and Barnabas remained in Antioch, where they and many others taught and preached the word of the Lord.
You respond to the one who pinged you with: "Please remove me from your ping list."
No WONDER these guys are so rabid about it!
If the mechanics (kneeling, standing, etc) are not important, what's to object to then?
No, you are wrong because there HAVE been changes to Catholic doctrine and teaching.
A few examples are: almost all the doctrine and teaching about Mary, the whole issue about no salvation outside the Catholic church, the owning of Bibles, the primacy of the pope,, for example.
There is plenty of evidence of those changes in the simple fact that there are the EO, whose doctrine differs in major areas that Rome claims are critical for salvation, and the traditionalists, who refuse to accept the Vatican 2 changes and call the RCC apostate.
*cough* mind-reading *cough*......
Ain’t it amazing!
We can show SCRIPTURE to prove him WRONG;
but he can’t show ANYTHING to prove himself RIGHT!
(...and you KNOW it!!!)
This horse is DEAD (just like Mary).
Let’s ride a new one!
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3079723/posts
Just checked and I don't find your name on my list. Perhaps someone else pinged you?
So one can neither the truth of every Catholic teaching over the past 2,013 years, which means the church of Rome began before Jesus began His ministry. But i suppose that cannot be proven to a RC.
.HOWEVER you, nor anyone else on Earth can disprove it....even 1 time!!!
That has been done many times, from the idea of infants being cleansed from sin and made holy enough to be accepted with God thru sprinkling upon proxy faith, to souls becoming good enough to enter Heaven thru purgatory, commencing at death , to some believers in the Bible being called saints in distinction to the majority, and that they could have or did pray to departed saints in Heaven, to ">to pastors being titled "priests" in distinction to the laity, or of souls needing to obtain spiritual life in them by physically eating, to the perpetuated Petrine papacy of Rome, with the church looking to an exalted Peter reigning supreme over the church as its assuredly infallible head, and more .
These things lack actual Scriptural evidence while being contrary to what is most clearly written on the subject, while even the EOs reject some of them as based upon Tradition.
But what you really mean is that "you, nor anyone else on Earth can disprove anything Rome claims to a RC," as they are not to objectively examine evidence in order to ascertain the veracity of doctrines of Rome, while they have much liberty to compel Scripture to support them. And like Rome, they are right no matter what the weight of contrary evidence says.
That is often indeed the real argument. Consistent papal pronouncing of truth by fiat, popes and or other RCs can assert not only that that the Mary of Rome) is bodily resurrected, but triple crowned, seated at God's right hand and pronounced Queen of the Universe, and Queen of Heaven, with almost unlimited power, and whose words are almost like commands to God, and that the Holy Spirit acts only by the Most Blessed Virgin, who is the dispenser of all grace, and who suffered for our sins as co-redemptrix, who saves us by her merits, and is formally titled the Mother of God. Etc.
Indeed. And thus they are not "to endeavor to discover religious truths by examining both sides of the question."
I’m surprised they haven’t rewritten their history to support it, ala 1984.....
Protestants forget that it is the Catholic Church that has given to the world the Bible.
LOLOL!!!!
IOW, nothing but personal attack.
Thanks for conceding.
“IOW, nothing but personal attack.”
Show one personal attack.
No, never mind, you’ll just take something that isn’t a personal attack and insist that it is.
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