Posted on 01/05/2010 9:46:47 PM PST by the_conscience
I just witnessed a couple of Orthodox posters get kicked off a "Catholic Caucus" thread. I thought, despite their differences, they had a mutual understanding that each sect was considered "Catholic". Are not the Orthodox considered Catholic? Why do the Romanists get to monopolize the term "Catholic"?
I consider myself to be Catholic being a part of the universal church of Christ. Why should one sect be able to use a universal concept to identify themselves in a caucus thread while other Christian denominations need to use specific qualifiers to identify themselves in a caucus thread?
Thank God you’re not describing the Catholic Church.
Naw. I'm NOT describing the UNIVERSAL CHURCH OF JESUS THE CHRIST at all.
I'm ONLY describing those organizations, structures and congregations
Affiliated with; submissive to; in communion with; the Vatican in Rome and to the Pope heading that edifice and collection of "Sees," congregations, orders, organizatioins, churches, hospitals, colleges, universities, embassies, etc. thereof.
Just them.
I think y'all's cliques see them quite often . . . in mirrors.
This may be why some Catholics are getting tired of these conversations. They all end up the same, and the original accusation, that we are denying the Jesus is Lord, gets lost, until a few posts later when it is resurrected as though nobody had ever thought of it before.
You think Mary is dead. We don't.
You think if she were not dead, she couldn't possibly "hear" all the requests made of her. We think that (a) time and space are different with God and with those who are with Him than they are with us; (b)With God all things are possible. So, we think Mary has all the time she needs to hear the prayers made to her and to pass them on in intercession.
Your side adduces the"one mediator" line from Timothy. Our side notices that that line comes right after Paul asks us to make intercession for all men. This usually leads to some bogus dickering about the difference, if any between, mediation and intercession.
So finally at the end it comes down to, IF we thought all the things you guys think, then we'd think we were denying Jesus' unique role.
But we don't think the things necessary to prove that denial. So we may be in error but we are not intending the denial you say we intend.
And I know this is completely futile, and that this conversation will be as if it never happened.
Your other point is that God's word uses hyperbole and YOUR word uses hyperbole so therefore, um, your word is as true as God's and shouldn't be required to conform to the standards of reason.
[edging away ...] Okay. Sure.
But, my point was that while you individually may think they are in peril, the Catholic Church doesn't seem to agree with you. They are just sort of naughty boys/girls that should come to confession and get absolved, then return to work.
The Reformed perspective (not the kooky junk from Osteen/Warren/et al) is that these folks are not believers. We would admonish them that there lives demonstrate they have no part with the Body of Christ. The Catholic Church, however, continues to embrace them as "confessing Catholics" (interpreted as true "Christians")and is this, I am asking, what leads to the decay of countries? Broad-based easy acceptance of continuing evil as long as certain rituals are performed afterward.
It was the case for years hereon that
Roman Catholics/ Vatican Affiliates/ Papal Submissives/ Romanists/ Papists/ Vatican Associates/ Latins/ et al
Would run rough shod over every other identifiable group with virtual impunity and in the harshest, most hostile, most arrogant and even sleasiest ways.
I don't know if some mods were members of the Vatican institutions(s) or if they were intimidated by such fierceness or if money was influential or what. I just know that's what it looked like 'on the street' in the threads day in day out, year in year out. It was somewhat common, from Protty's perspectives, for the Vatican Affiliates/ Papal submissives et al to get Prottys ran off totally.
THANKFULLY, a tireless, wise, brilliant, seasoned, balanced, understanding, compassionate, fair, tough as nails, truly spiritual, truly prayerful, with a good sense of humor, anointed, model Christian of a Religion Moderator stepped up to the plate.
In relatively short order, categories of threads were established which afforded all groups a chance to post and interact without being hassled or sabotaged by their oponents. Devotional and other threads were established wherein God could be the focus without any negativity at all. Personal assaults . . . which had been worst on the Rel Forum were now minimized compared to the rest of FR.
Finally, the Religion Forum began to be a place where MORE civil AUTHENTIC DIALOGUE !COULD! occur about truly spiritual and Biblical issues instead of mostly about how one group had more snot & zits on their faces than their opposing groups.
I realize that a significant collection of cliques of Vatican Affiliates/ Papal Submissives; Roman Catholics/ Romanists/ Latins/ Papists/ Vatican Associates/ et al in their chronic !!!!CONTROL!!!! phreaque and !!!!DEMANDING!!!! modes are upset that FR has NOT YET been brought to utterly and totally heel, kowtow as a low ranking department of the Vatican. I realize that causes some to lose sleep and be most disagreeable to the max.
If there's any "evil" involved, it's the evil of such a black, arrogant, selfish, self-righteous, willfully blind heart that would dare !!!!DEMAND!!!! such a mentality and treatment on such a forum.
God have mercy.
I believe you owe the RM and JimRob a very vivid, wholesale and contrite confession, repentance and apology. And given the FREEPATHON, probably a $1,000 penance donation would be a nice token of recompense for the outrageous spiritual slander that statement lobbed against the RM and JimRob and this site.
The Roman Catholic Church is the big box store of religion, it can't stand all the independents
if you are going to bash people at least ping them over
INDEED.
!!!!!CONTROL!!!!! AND !!!!DEMANDS!!!!!
are inherent bone marrow characteristics of virtually all bureaucracies—particularly RELIGIOUS ones.
When we preach sin and damnation, it is so rarely heard. When we preach the suffering and victorious love of Jesus it is taken advantage of, used as "cover." (This is not just true of Catholics, BTW) I don't know what we can expect the Catholics -- or any church, sect, denomination, conventicle, ashram, dojo, or reading room -- to do. I don't know, myself, whether the drug lords of Columbia or Mexico go to confession and Mass any more. I do know that some Catholic "religious" are basically Marxists in habits, but that kind doesn't resort much to confession.
Other points/observations: I'm not sure that there's all that important a difference between my idolatry about money and pleasure and that of a drug lord or human trafficker. It's a matter of degree, maybe.
Glad you liked the sound effects. ;-)
Summation of vague inchoate thoughts. I know from being an Episcopalian priest (but, who knows, maybe I was a terrible, silly, feckless and sinful one) that you don't get to see a lot of lives really changed. Paul plants, Apollos waters, and the increase happens ten years later.
I don't know why some people go to church. I really don't. If they are getting good instruction they MUST know that what they are doing is viewed by the Church as deadly. But they come anyway. And as long as they come, I won't turn them away from the doors, though I might from the sacrament. ,P.The Buddhists have a saying something like, if you hold a lotus up to a rock long enough, who knows? It might take root? I'm not going to bad people from hearing the word. Maybe, who knows, one day it might take root.
Sorry. It's a HUGE problem. I don't know what to say. I can understand why it would give non-Catholics pause. I GUESS my point is that no Church "function" sacrament, ordinance, blah blah, is incapable of being abused. IT MAY be a Catholic problem, but I'm not sure it would go away or get better if the Catholics went away.
Further, on this topic, I try to add to the line anyone who is mentioned or should in my opinion read my reply. If I am not responding to a post that has my name in the beginning of the list, it means that I do not see enough substance in the post to which to respond, or I somehow missed it, or I on some gross level agree with it. I often skip without response posts that are addressed to me among others, but not firstly to me. At times someone asks me not to write to him; I will honor that request and will not initiate a post to him, but I will not pick his name out of ping lists responding to others, and I will consider the request moot if he posts to me.
This is just a restatement of my habits, no one did anything wrong, and I don't think I did.
Now to the substance of this very good question about the process of reconciliation.
here the Roman Catholic is to trust his conscience, but the Protestant who believes in Jesus Christ is not to trust in or rely on his conscience.
Since we, Catholics and Protestants, have the same human nature, we should trust our conscience to the same rational degree, and not absolutely. We should consider a possibility of a mistake: we should listen to inputs from others and seek proof that our conscience is giving us valid advice.
On matters of faith, we should not simply arrive at a particular conclusion and never test it again. We should on these matters behave with the same rationality as in any other human activity: operating machinery, fixing a dinner or teaching a child. If a saltbox contains substance that does not look like salt, we test it before using it in the soup.
A Catholic has an obligation of obedience that is in addition to the above, but that does not replace the above. If a Catholic forms an opinion that is contrary to his faith as he knows it to be (for example, forms an opinion that women should be able to be ordained priests), his additional obligation is to actively seek deeper understanding by studying what the Church teaches on the matter. So now it is not like cooking soup: I am at liberty to decide what I like in my soup, but I am not at liberty to decide that woman ordination is OK and leave it at that. I have to master the theology of the roles of the sexes and the nature of Christ and priesthood before I gain a right to contend for female ordination. Further, should my opinion become hardened rather than tentative, I should leave the Catholic Church completely, and present that opinion as solely my own.
Something similar may apply to Protestants. For one thing, Protestantism is big on the rule of scripture, and this is why I as Catholic never tire of pointing out that major Protestant tenets of faith, those that started the so-called Reformation, are flatly contradicted by scripture. This should bother our Protestant brethrens' conscience, and their lively participation in open Catholic threads is a testimony to that.
In summary, conscience is a subjective matter that needs to be open to the witness of others, and especially the historical witness of the Church, in order to be taken as valid.
Let us turn to how this philosophy applies to the process of sacramental reconciliation.
A Catholic is required to examine his conscience before going to confession. Further, he is required to go to confession at least once if not twice a year. The flock is urged to confess in Advent, in Lent and any time a self-evident sin (e.g. a crime or a sexual sin) is committed; confession is recommended even if the faithful is in doubt whether he has sinned at all. From this it is clear that examination of conscience has to be thourough, and that is has to be done even if no conscience of sin presently exists in the faithful.
The examination of conscience is not a formal process, although it is not hard to find a checklist or some other method to follow. The Ten Commandments is such checklist. The list of cardinal or deadly sins approaches the same task looking not at categories of sinful acts like the Decalogue does, but rather at the mental disposition that causes sins: Pride, Envy, Wrath, Sloth, Lust, Avarice, Gluttony. Your priest will be glad to assist either with informal advice or even during the sacramental confession itself.
Circumstances outside of the individual's conscience also need to be considered. A soldier, for example, needs to examine the tactical situation as well as his mental state when reflecting on hostile acts he has done.
So what happens if despite all this rigorous examination, a sin goes unrecognized and therefore unconfessed?
Then there is nothing to confess. A sin is a decision made consciously. A child, or an unconscious person cannot sin, even if the act itself is an offense to God. One who has examined his conscience honestly and thouroughly, sought advice from his spiritual director (your priest, normally), and found no sin, has not sinned. An example of that is material sins committed before conversion to the Catholic Church. My formerly Protestant wife, for example, asked if she should confess the anti-Catholic opinions she once held. The answer is no, so long as they were what she was taught by credible teachers in the Protestant environment. Anger, dishonesty, lack of serious attention to the Scripture when attacking the Church might be sinful, but growing up in an environment that is not Catholic, or even not Christian, is not in itself a sin; it is a form of innocent ignorance that excuses material sin.
Another example is when non-Catholics enter into an invalid marriage, such as a marriage following a divorce that has not been annuled. Let's say one of them then converts: should she go to confession for living in sin? The answer is no, -- while the marriage was invalid in the eye of God and carnal relations that occur in its context should cease till and if the marriage is properly consecrated, the carnal relations done prior to the conversion are done with a sincerely held at the time presumption of marriage.
To conclude, the only difference between examination of conscience as pertains to confession, and examination of conscience as pertains to theological disputes is that sin has this subjective element of free will, and theology is a science as objective as any other science.
But that is all we need to know to see why you should not be receiving in the Catholic Church. You will be doing one thing and thinking another.
Out of curiosity, what are your thoughts about communities of faith that do not even claim the Real Presence? In most Protestant services that I visited, the words of Institution might be quoted, to be sure, but the minister quoting them does not believe nor does he teach that the bread becomes anything other than bread during the Last Supper ceremony he conducts.
re: Apples and Oranges.
I made it about half way so far . . . and need to rush along to other tasks.
1. I agree about “To” line stuff. I think folks on all sides can be far too thin skinned about who’s addressed.
Their scroll buttons work. Why make a fuss. For whatever reason, if someone acknowledges one’s existence enough to include you in the To, line, I think one should consider one’s self fortunate. They could have denied one’s existence totally. Sheesh.
I think your point about we are all human is an exceedingly important one. None of our consciences are totally pure and certainly not totally all knowing.
Thx.
The prayer to Mary I know is entirely quotes and references from the Gospel.
Yes.
The lack of union is the governing presumption; it is not a presumption of an unconfessed sin as much.
You have no idea what the Catholic Church thinks or intends. The Church is not an adjudicator of salvation like the Protestant hierarchy strives to become. The Church is a teaching and nurturing institution here to assist in the Plan for Salvation that exists even for the most heinous of sinners.
Not necessarily. If an Atheist, Jew or Muslim does something of heroic virtue, that is despite his well-being, then he does not receive any social reward. The only reward he gets is the same reward a Christian will get: the spiritual reward of imitating Christ. And conversely, any good work a Christian might do out of legal obligation or for social reward is not salvific.
What Roman 3 is teaching, is that the faith in Jesus Christ justifies through His grace, but it does not speak of those whose faith does not lead to good works, or of those who do not have a conscious faith at all. That we are judged by our works St. Paul has established already, in the preceding chapter, Rm 2:6-10.
Well, fair enough. You have absolutely hit the thumb on the nail that sin is sin is sin, and I don’t want to fall into the “degree” error. Christ’s cleansing blood is necessary to wash us clean from all of this filth, and then to clothe us with a righteousness of His own (Phil. 3:9). Great points.
I suppose being a resident of AZ, my concern is partly born of what seems to be the pressing return of the SW US to Mexico. Nuevo California appears on the horizon. And the latino goal (strongly Catholic folks), never has any resistence from the Catholic leadership.
It is a little like the silence of the Muslim community about the Muslim terrorists.
We’re like the Indians. Waves of immigration are going to force us to retreat to reservations, and that’s apparently what the government wants
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