Posted on 04/30/2010 8:03:48 AM PDT by Quix
.
|
7 “When you pray, don’t babble on and on as people of other religions do. They think their prayers are answered merely by repeating their words again and again. 8 Don’t be like them, for your Father knows exactly what you need even before you ask him! 9 Pray like this: Our Father in heaven, --New Living Translation 7And when you pray, do not heap up phrases (multiply words, repeating the same ones over and over) as the Gentiles do, for they think they will be heard for their much speaking. [I Kings 18:25-29.] 8Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask Him. 9Pray, therefore, like this: 15But if you do not forgive others their trespasses [their [j]reckless and willful sins, [k]leaving them, letting them go, and [l]giving up resentment], neither will your Father forgive you your trespasses. --Amplified Pray with Simplicity 5"And when you come before God, don't turn that into a theatrical production either. All these people making a regular show out of their prayers, hoping for stardom! Do you think God sits in a box seat? 6"Here's what I want you to do: Find a quiet, secluded place so you won't be tempted to role-play before God. Just be there as simply and honestly as you can manage. The focus will shift from you to God, and you will begin to sense his grace. 7-13"The world is full of so-called prayer warriors who are prayer-ignorant. They're full of formulas and programs and advice, peddling techniques for getting what you want from God. Don't fall for that nonsense. This is your Father you are dealing with, and he knows better than you what you need. With a God like this loving you, you can pray very simply. Like this: 16-18"When you practice some appetite-denying discipline to better concentrate on God, don't make a production out of it. It might turn you into a small-time celebrity but it won't make you a saint. If you 'go into training' inwardly, act normal outwardly. Shampoo and comb your hair, brush your teeth, wash your face. God doesn't require attention-getting devices. He won't overlook what you are doing; he'll reward you well. |
Mark Kirby: O Mother of Good Counsel, I am all thine, Most Holy Mary, There is no part of my life that is not open to thee, I want to be completely transparent with thee, Praying in this way, I can be at rest, |
.
.
.
I already resent the time I spent on this. I feel as if I allowed myself to be manipulated and controlled. I do not see how these alleged questions could really be about gaining information or understanding.
Forgive me...for I'm not about to question you on your responses to the list given by Quix.
I'd just like to say that what you say about various things in that list brings back to my mind what "truthdefender" said you described yourself as - a "philosophical theologian" of sorts, or something similar. Now I can understand why you describe yourself as such - by your philosophical approach taken in this post. Dale and I both took "philosophy" courses in college, and came away thinking that philosophy can make anything mean something other than what it truly is. IMHO, you have done just that :-)
Well done! However, I don't think any non-Catholic will accept your answers. Sorry about that.
I went to the SBC.net website to see what’s what. I found out a few things.
Opposition to female clergy - unambiguous.
Opposition to homosexual practice - unambiguous.
Opposition to the US keeping an ambassador to the Holy See - unambiguous.
Opposition to any connection to consuming or being involved in the production and distribution of alcohol - only to the point where they urge that members not drink or participate in the production and distribution of alcohol.
Opposition to Roman Catholics sneaking into their houses at night and converting the children to Catholicism.
Approval of sex education is conditional so as to limit the sex education teachers to only the very ugly.
But I found this very interesting:
Autonomy - We affirm the autonomy of the local church. Each church is free to determine its own membership and to set its own course under the headship of Jesus.
I take this to mean that any church can do whatever it pleases and that the 16 million members of the SBC are not held to any of the principles or resolutions of the SBC. Would you please confirm that for me? If true, then the claim that all churches under the SBC hold all the positions of the SBC is not valid.
I don't have a church.
And darn, I was hoping to compare the list of additions and departures to the list that I was hoping to amass from the Church of the Holy Ken4TA.
So, you will just have to live with all the arguments presented against your church by those who know the truth of the matter. Sorry about that, but what will be will be.
Most of the claims against the Church have little or no basis in truth. Just hubris, pride and egocentrism.
Gambit declined.
In our thought sin is bad for you. As the quote says, the temporal punishment of sin is not imposed from without. It is part and parcel of the sin.
When I teach on this, I DE-stress the juridical metaphor because it leads to the kind of confusion or misunderstanding that I see in your response. I find a therapeutic analogy more accurate.
So you hit a baseball through my window. (1)IF you appreciate what you did, if you are truly interested in doing justice and in being just, you will want to pay for the window. Now, if i saw that you were poor through no fault of your own, I might say, Forget about it. But if you were, say, an indolent rich kid, FOR YOUR OWN GOOD, I might insist that you pay, knowing that your taking responsibility would tend to ennoble you.
But usually hitting a baseball through a window results from a lack of some virtues. Maybe there's insufficient prudence - didn't think it trough. Maybe there's insufficient temperance -- poor impulse control. If you ran away afterwards, probably there's insufficient justice and courage. And certainly there's alack of agape.
These problems will remain even if I invite you into the house for milk and cookies and pay for the window myself and act like nothing ever happened.
These defects of virtue, unless amended, will contaminate your other relationships, and your life altogether. To flip to the other side of the analogy, they make you the kind of person who would be unhappy in heaven, who couldn't bear the beatific vision
To enter an entirely different metaphor for just a second, an untrained palate would fail to appreciate the 1959 Margaux of which I still have two bottles. An educated palate could taste this FAR too old wine and discern the marvel it once was, and take great pleasure from it. (Vetus melior est.) The untrained person might even spit it out!
Okay, back to the baseball through the window. Because we are, or ought to be, free persons, we take, or ought to take, responsibility for our misdeeds. We ought to try to discern and amend those vices (defects of virtue) that led to the baseball through the window.
In this work we need (and get) LOTS of help from God (duh -- and in an important way it's right to way that we get ALL the help, including wanting to make the amendments from Him) and from the better of our friends and acquaintances. But part of the joy of it all is the personal growth and strength which helps us rejoice as a giant to run the course God sets before us.
Now the reason this is such a bear to talk about is the same reason that freedom is so hard to understand in the same line of thought as Divine Providence. I quite see how it sounds like Pelagianism or semi-Pelagianism. As far as I can tell there is a gift which prevents this from becoming one of those heresies and leading to pride. That gift is the perception that EVERYTHING is a gift. I am saved, praise God, from pride when I pray because I know that the impulse to pray and every good thing about it is a gift, and that knowledge is a gift.
My purgatory rap compares purgatory to Physical therapy. Let me know if you want me to inflict it on you. It's probably as verbose as this post.
There never was a sadder face in all of TV than poor Henry, surrounded by time and books and solitude...and broken spectacles.
EXCELLENT POST.
THX.
How'd I do that?
TRULY AND WELL PUT.
THX.
UNMITIGATED BALDERDASH.
WHAT AN UNREASONABLE BLACKWASHING.
Do you have any documentation as to the date, and how many men married in the Church when they were ordained?
All the churches that are still Calvinist or holiness
How many of them are in the US and what are their numbers? Do they make up less than 5% of the non Catholic Christian population? And shrinking?
If you want to play the Peter was not married game..we could play the bible does not clearly exclude women for the diaconate or even preaching ...
My point is that there is no record of Peter's wife or any children. I do not know if he was married at the time. It seems unlikely, given the rest of the NT. How many of the other Apostles were married - at any time?
Calvinist churches (reformation churches)do not ordain women or allow them to teach men ..
I suppose that the good Dr. E. is teaching ex-cathedra. :) However, the question remains about who are they and what are their numbers.
So where are all the Catholics on Sunday? (attendance is a RULE of the church), How many 2 child families do you see? Half of Catholics see a priest at their first communion and again for the last rites, some may make it for Christmas or Easter ...but basically they are cafeteria catholics picking and choosing the doctrine they like .
Far too many Catholics do not follow the Church - the appeal of the various Protestant destinations is the comparative ease or freedom of doctrine. That is not an incrimination of the doctrines of the Church, but rather, an incrimination of the catechesis, of which you have indicated was rather lacking in your case.
The Reformation has led to the formation of your beliefs, Quix. That is quite a condemnation in itself.
Two things:
(1)I was once a non-Catholic and I accepted them.
(2)What interests me is that the people who don't accept this don't often present coherent arguments too explain why they don't accept it.
Forgiveness is forgiveness.
That’s the whole reason for Christ dying. HE took the punishment for our sins.
Since He took the punishment for our sins, we don’t have to.
God’s wrath was satisfied with Christ’s death on the cross.
Therefore there is no need for Purgatory, for punishment of sin forgiven. It’s already been decided.
If we’re being punished for it, than it hasn’t been forgiven.
I am familiar with this line of thought. It does not deal with what I presented beyond contradicting it. I already knew that you disagreed with it. Maybe some lurkers will be persuaded.
He's right on that one. I've seen it particularly on the abortion threads. And considering the way a huge majority of Catholics vote come election time......
Besides, you know what church attendance is like and what happens to it at Christmas and Easter.
I remember when communion went from being given at the altar rail to standing in lines going up to the altar. It happened in between the holidays and had been in effect for a couple months at least.
Christmas (or Easter, I don't recall which holiday it was) rolled around and HALF the people going up for communion, looking all pious and smug, went to the altar rail for communion. You just KNEW right then who the holiday attenders were. The thing that amazed me was the huge number of people who just demonstrated that they hadn't been to church for MONTHS.
Another thing is, my brothers and sisters are also baptized Catholics as I am, and not one of them attends any Catholic church, if they go.
So if the church is counting all us, the numbers are falsely inflated. And I don't believe that we are all that unusual.
Makes perfect sense to me, MarkBsnr! The Words of Christ are directly quoted throughout the Four Gospels, in many cases running for more than a page length, interrupted. (My Bible prints the Lord's Words in redface type, so this is easy to see.)
Thank you again for writing!
Sorry Mark!
Matthew 8:14
When Jesus came into Peter’s house, he saw Peter’s mother-in-law lying in bed with a fever.
1 Corinthians 9:5
Don’t we have the right to take a believing wife along with us, as do the other apostles and the Lord’s brothers and Cephas ?
(Cephas is Syriac for Peter)
Burgess Meredith was going to be my second guess, but the good Dr. beat me to it.
OTOH Henry Bemis does make a wicked toilet seat.
Our separated friends often mix up the Word (Jesus) with the word (Scripture) and get them confused. When you are your own Pope and eat a heaping bowl of YOPIOS each day, it is obviously easy to do. As so many demonstrate.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.