Posted on 06/18/2024 1:48:05 AM PDT by Cronos
While faith has always been important to Catherine, 26, she did not always plan on joining a religious order. "I'd had this dream of getting married and having seven children - you know, proper Catholic, you need to have lots of babies, right?".
Yet here she is, part of a small group of women in a convent on the edge of Dereham, a small Norfolk town. Growing up a Catholic and working for the local diocese, .
She initially had doubts about joining them, working instead as an au pair in Austria. She hoped to find "a nice, handsome man", but that did not happen.
"There were lots of moments on my day off I'd go exploring some of the beautiful surroundings," she says. "And I can remember those times where I'd come across a chapel or a church and have that real sense of deep peace - almost a sense of being held - in God's presence. "And so I realised this desire to belong totally to God was still there."
Shortly after the first Covid lockdown, Sister Catherine joined the convent of The Community of Our Lady of Walsingham, based in a converted barn. "I thought I'd give it three weeks. Almost four years later, I'm still here," she says. A typical day involves at least three hours in prayer and silent contemplation.
But Catherine and the other sisters are also involved in the community, giving talks in schools, working in prisons and also with university students. They also maintain the convent and its grounds, as well as its website and social media channels.
...She met "some really joyful sisters" and says that, through prayer, she came to trust that what God wanted "is what's best for me".
(Excerpt) Read more at bbc.com ...
BWAHAHAHAhyahahahahahahahahaha!!!
You actually believe that???
Wow! That's hilarious!
It's also the stupidest thing I have read in a long time ... even more ridiculously false than the Biden Regime's blandishments about the wonderful state of the American economy.
That’s what I hear when I hear somebody tell me that to join the priesthood cannot be a temporary thing, no matter how devoted that person is for the time they decide to do that.
Anybody can read the Bible, including Satan.
Then I guess we shouldn’t read the Bible if Satan can read it as well?
The Bible is the only thing we have to guide us. He can read it all he wants, he’s lost.
With respect, sir or madam, that's a personal problem on your part.
The priesthood is a vocation, not a mere job, and is no more a "temporary thing" than is marriage. Religious life is likewise.
Engineer, accountant, factoryman, electrician are all jobs frequently held by men whose vocations are husband and father.
Pastor, Vicar, Teacher, Professor, Principal, Missionary are all jobs frequently held by men whose vocation is the priesthood.
I’m basically an economist, as far as I think anyway.
I think it’s a useful thing for the church to have lay members who can completely devote themselves to the service of the church without the expectation of permanent service while they prepare their life in other ways.
As I said, that’s a perfectly Biblical position because the Nazarenes were like that and Timothy, by the evidence of the New Testament, likely took a Nazarene oath when he was refusing to mix water with wine to make the water digestible.
They already exist. School teachers, employees of the parish or the diocese, various ministries and apostolates ... you name it.
I taught in Catholic schools for a time (the pay is not high, nobody does it to get rich) then left for industry. It was a job, one of several that I have held. My vocation is husband and father. THAT is permanent. Until death do us part.
Amen.
Mohammad, Martin Luther, John Calvin and Huldrych Zwingli all read the Bible; and each of them created his own false religion.
Joseph Stalin and Adolf Hitler both read the Bible at some point in their wretched lives.
N.B. Luther, like Hitler, was anti-Semitic.
This is a silly and groundless canard. If your father works for IBM, do you have some sort of claim against IBM's assets? Of course not, and it's never been that way.
The people who make this claim never provide a bit of evidence for it.
Every Apostle was married. The only Apostle not married was Paul, but it is presumed he was a widow.
There's not a shred of evidence that St. John the Evangelist was married, neither in Scripture nor in tradition.
If you cannot rely on the Bible, then there is nothing at all to rely upon.
Having said that, those men you listed crafted their Bibles to match their philosophies and not the other way around. The didn’t let the Bible explain itself.
You may have taught in the schools, but you were ministering full-time. You were a teacher.
I’m speaking about the Christian equivalent to the Nazarene.
Thanks for admitting that. Most prots will deny that.
I try to be plainfully truthful at all times, right or wrong. That’s how you sharpen iron upon iron.
not everybody should marry or can marry...single life if done right can be very fulfilling in itself...
Please elucidate. I'm not clear on what you mean by that.
Thanks!
A Nazarite was a Jew, who for a one year period, would be totally and completely devoted to God. They wouldn’t be involved in earthly matters.
As an application for the Christian, for a temporary time, they would do the same. Kind of like a lay priest, but not obligated for life.
Being a nun is as permanent as marriage. It is committing to God.
St. Paul would disagree with you.
Both men and women consecrating themselves to God as virgins was a feature of ancient Israel’s religion. Its greatest prophets Elijah, Elisha, Jeremy and John the Baptizer were such consecrated celibates.
St Paul several times speaks of women in the churches he founded being “enrolled in the order of virgins” or “enrolled in the order of widows”. These seem to have been proto-nuns living communally.
From the first century starting in Egypt, some Christians both men and women began living a celibate life of prayer in the desert, firstly alone as hermits, and later as communities of several such monks and nuns.
People become monks or nuns because they feel called to an intensive life of prayer and to following the example of Jesus in living the evangelical counsels of poverty, chastity and obedience.
Consecrated / vowed chastity is a call, a gift, a charism, and a task. It is a call initiated by God the Father to follow His Son Jesus Christ, who is chaste, through the power of the Holy Spirit. “Through it the Spirit conforms us with the virginity / chastity of Jesus Christ; it brings us to ‘re-present in the Church’ the virginal / chaste lifestyle of Christ Jesus.”
That is quite, utterly false -- the utter loneliness and despair is what you see in Calvinist predestination.
As regards nuns and monks - their life are far from bleak or joyless.
The withdrawal from the external world into the silence of the inner universe can offer its own satisfaction for those so disposed. Saint Teresa wrote eloquently on this journey
Back in the 1990s, there were a series of studies rating the happiness of different occupations, ethnic groups, and geographic areas of the USA.
Consistently, the researchers found that two groups topped the charts in terms of happiness.
Just as the Amish seem to find above-average happiness without electricity or internet doing manual labor in a close-knit community, Catholic nuns and monks—monastics of both genders—seem to find above-average happiness in the cloister walls doing work, praying, and singing, and living in a close-knit community.
It is not a life for everyone. It is for those called to it, as in Matthew 19:12.
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