Posted on 01/28/2021 5:30:10 PM PST by ebb tide
Our tlm parish is doing well too.
Mmm...not really, the emphasis wasn't on the Bible text so much as the Christian liturgy. Throughout most of Christian history, people were illiterate and couldn't read even in their own language.
That, and handcopied books were fantastically expensive. In the Middle Ages, they cost about as much as a house.
True, and most are drifting South (and Catholicism is already there), but you can get into hair-splitting
For example: Codd, now pastor at St. Thomas Aquinas Church in Charlotte, has asked that all who were baptized in his church in recent years be rebaptized because the proper Vatican mandated formula — the preferred saying is "I baptize" — was not used. Previously a deacon in the parish might have used a formula that began "we baptize."
Every song sounds as if it were written for a ten-year-old girl. It’s like a Disney musical.
The most liberal ones are usually those which are closest to Catholicism.
While on vacation in Florida in 2005 we went to a local church for Sunday Mass. No kneelers at all and after communion the priest asks the children to process up for a blessing while they played - wait for it - It’s a Small World After All. I kid you not, during Mass.
I used to have a cd of the Benedictine Monks of Santo Domingo de Silos. Very relaxing to listen to their chants.
A few years ago a Freeper posted about taking his hard of hearing father to mass. The mass was a "new" mass with guitars and no Latin. At some point after the mass began. a woman came out and began her 'spiritual dancing' accompanied by guitar music.
When the spiritual dance was finished, the Freeper's hard-of-hearing father said it a loud voice, " What the hell was that?"
Even the priest got laughing over that.
That’s not hair splitting. That’s a serious defect of form.
A couple years ago we went to mass at the church I grew up in. It’s in another state. The elementary school, which once taught 800 pupils, now boasts 160. This in an area notorious for its crappy public schools. They were promoting the school on a slide show during the mass.
Once of the slides showed the children performing some sort of Buddhist meditation. I remember when I was there, we had a deeply spiritual meditation. We called it The Rosary.
At this very moment I am listening to Gregorian Chants sung by Monks of the Abbey of St Ottilien, Germany.
It’s a daily around here.
I have that CD, and I often play it as I say my morning prayers.
That is correct. While it is true that most people were illiterate at the time of the creation of the Vulgate (in fact, the world never approached anything close to universal basic literacy until the late 19th century), the people who could read, read Latin.
Meaning that rather than baptizing as member of the priesthood of all believers, for "we (true believers) are all baptized into one body" then "I" must be used as representing Christ, although He rarely baptized. Yet I do think "I" should be the standard as this how it is described such as in " I baptized also the household of Stephanas: besides, I know not whether I baptized any other." (1 Corinthians 1:16) Yet not as making all those who were baptized as "we baptize" as needing to be baptized again, and also rendering the ordination of one who was baptized thusly to be invalid, as well as his sacramental acts (except baptism, which is contradictory) as in this case: https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2020/09/why-the-words-of-baptism-matter
But of course, those who believe that they became Christians thru Catholic baptism by Catholicism's unscriptural priests even without the Biblical requirement of whole-hearted repentant faith (Acts 2:38; 8:36,37) and thereby regenerated by the acts itself (ex opere operato “from the work having been worked") and thus made good enough to be with God at the moment (but which usually means needing to later go to Purgatory to attain that state) are subjects of a tragic deception.
And which is only one of the distinctive Catholic teachings are not manifest in the only wholly inspired substantive authoritative record of what the NT church believed (which is Scripture, in particular Acts through Revelation, which best shows how the NT church understood the gospels).
It is effectual, penitent heart-purifying regenerating faith that is needed, (Acts 10:43-47; 15:7-9) and which is imputed for righteousness, (Romans 4:5) whereby the redeemed soul is "accepted in the Beloved" (Ephesians 1:6) on His account and thus is marked be obedience. (1 Thes. 1; Heb. 6:9,10) And the same will go to be with the Lord at death or at His return (Luke 23:43 [cf. 2 Cor. 12:4; Rv. 2:7]; Phil 1:23; 2Cor. 5:8 [“we”]; 1Cor. 15:51ff; 1Thess. 4:17 ) if they have preserved in faith. (Heb. 3:9-14; 10:25-39; Gal. 5:1-4) Glory and thanks be to God.
“the parish website proclaims that while masks are allowed, they are symbolic of anti-Christian attitudes not conducive to authentic Catholic life.”
False - neither the website nor its Jan 13 Wayback Machine snapshot say that.
Not a Roman Catholic expert (convent school does not count) but why would this be a problem?
Lay ministers should only be used if a priest or deacon is not available. He was and he apparently did do the job. IIRC there are a number of things a lay minister can not do that a priest can.
I do not understand the issue.
I disagree. The Holy Scriptures were the foundation upon which the liturgy was built. Jerome's commission by the Roman church to translate the Hebrew and Greek texts into Latin was precisely for the purpose of individual knowledge and study. There were other translations in different languages that existed then and continued to be others. The New Testament was written in Koine Greek because it was the lingua franca of that time.
I think the idea that everyone was illiterate is a common misconception that many people just accept. We shouldn't forget the many, many times Scripture encourages believers to study the word, to hear it and to obey what God has revealed and preserved in the written word. Also, the first Christians were Jews and it was customary that they could read and write. From https://christianpublishinghouse.co/2019/02/19/were-jesus-the-apostles-and-the-early-christians-illiterate-uneducated/ we learn:
During the first seven years of Christianity (29-36 C.E.), three and a half with Jesus’ ministry and three and a half after his ascension, only Jewish people became disciples of Christ and formed the newly founded Christian congregation. In 36 C.E. the first gentile was baptized: Cornelius.[7] From that time forward Gentiles came into the Christian congregations. However, the church still consisted largely of Jewish converts. What do we know of the Jewish family, as far as education? Within the nation of Israel, everyone was strongly encouraged to be literate. The texts of Deuteronomy 6:8-9 and 11:20 were figurative (not to be taken literally). However, we are to ascertain what was meant by the figurative language, and that meaning is what we take literally.
8 You shall bind them [God’s Word] as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. 9 You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.
Deuteronomy 11:20 English Standard Version (ESV)
20 You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates,
The command to bind God’s Word “as a sign on your hand,” denoted constant remembrance and attention. The command that the Word of God was “to be as frontlet bands between your eyes,” denoted that the Law should be kept before their eyes constantly, so that wherever they looked, whatever was before them, they would see the law before them. Therefore, while figurative, these texts implied that Jewish children grew up being taught how to read and to write. The Gezer Calendar (ancient Hebrew writing), dated to the 10th-century B.C.E., is believed by some scholars to be a schoolboy’s memory exercise.
Philo of Alexandria (20 B.C.E.–50 C. E.) a Hellenistic Jewish philosopher, whose first language was Greek, had this to say about Jewish parents and how they taught their Children the Law and how to read it. Philo stated, “All men guard their own customs, but this is especially true of the Jewish nation. Holding that the laws are oracles vouchsafed by God and having been trained [paideuthentes] in this doctrine from their earliest years, they carry the likenesses of the commandments enshrined in their souls.” (Borgen 1997, 187) This certainly involved the ability to read and write at a competent level. Josephus (37-100 C.E.), the first-century Jewish historian, writes, “Our principle care of all is this, to educate our children [paidotrophian] well; and we think it to be the most necessary business of our whole life to observe the laws that have been given us, and to keep those rules of piety that have been delivered down to us.” (Whiston 1987, Against Apion 1.60) Even allowing for an overemphasis for apologetic purposes; clearly, Jesus was carefully grounded in the Word of God (Hebrew Old Testament), as was true of other Jews of the time. Josephus also says,
“but for our people, if anybody do but ask any one of them about our laws, he will more readily tell them all than he will tell his own name, and this in consequence of our having learned them immediately as soon as ever we became sensible of anything, and of our having them, as it were engraven on our souls. Our transgressors of them are but few; and it is impossible when any do offend, to escape punishment.” (Whiston 1987, Against Apion 2.178) He also says: “[the Law] also commands us to bring those children up in learning [grammata paideuein] and to exercise them in the laws, and make them acquainted with the acts of their predecessors, in order to their imitation of them, and that they may be nourished up in the laws from their infancy, and might neither transgress them nor yet have any pretense for their ignorance of them.” (Whiston 1987, Against Apion 2.204) Again, this clearly involves at a minimum the ability to read and write at a competent level.
From the above, we find that the Jewish family education revolved around the study of the Mosaic Law. If their children were going to live by the Law, they needed to know what it says, as well as understand it. If they were going to know and understand the Law, this would require the ability to read it, and hopefully apply it. Emil Schurer writes: “All zeal for education in the family, the school and the synagogue aimed at making the whole people a people of the law. The common man too was to know what the law commanded, and not only to know but to do it. His whole life was to be ruled according to the norm of the law; obedience thereto was to become a fixed custom, and departure therefrom an inward impossibility. On the whole, this object was to a great degree attained.” (Schurer 1890, Vol. 4, p. 89) Scott writes that “from at least the time of Ezra’s reading of the law (Neh. 8), education was a public process; study of the law was the focus of Jewish society as a whole. It was a lifelong commitment to all men. It began with the very young. The Mishnah[8] requires that children be taught ‘therein one year or two years before [they are of age], that they may become versed in the commandments.’ Other sources set different ages for beginning formal studies, some as early as five years.”[9] (Scott 1995, 257)
It may be that both Philo and Josephus are presenting their readers with an idyllic picture, and what they have to say could possibly refer primarily to wealthy Jewish families who could afford formal education. However, this would be shortsighted, for the Israelites had long been a people who valued the ability to read and write competently. In the apocryphal account of 4 Maccabees 18:10-19, a mother addresses her seven sons, who would be martyred, reminding them of their father’s teaching. There is nothing in the account to suggest that they were from a wealthy family. Herein the mother referred to numerous historical characters throughout the Old Testament and quoted from numerous books – Isaiah 43.2; Psalm 34:19; Proverbs 3:18; Ezekiel 37:3; Deuteronomy 32:39.
Jesus would have received his education from three sources. As was made clear from the above, Joseph, Jesus’ stepfather would have played a major role in his education. Paul said that young Timothy was trained in “the sacred writings” by his mother, Eunice, and his grandmother Lois. (2 Tim. 1:5; 3:15) Certainly, if Timothy received education in the law from his mother because his Father was a Greek (Acts 16:1), no doubt Jesus did as well after Joseph died.
Jesus would have also received education in the Scriptures from the attendant at the synagogue. In the first-century C.E., the synagogue was a place of instruction, not a place of sacrifices. The people carried out their sacrifices to God at the temple. The exercises within the synagogue covered such areas as praise, prayer, and recitation and reading of the Scriptures, in addition to expository preaching. – Mark 12:40; Luke 20:47
Before any instruction in the holy laws and unwritten customs are taught… from their swaddling clothes by parents and teachers and educators to believe in God, the one Father, and Creator of the world. (Philo Legatio ad Gaium 115.)
National Catholic Reporter is a liberal rag that still thinks it’s the 1960’s. Rad Trads don’t abort or contracept. They win!
There's no such thing as a sacrament that is administered by a group ("we") to an individual. THe minister of a sacrament stands in the place of Christ. Christ is not a committee.
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