Posted on 04/30/2010 8:03:48 AM PDT by Quix
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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, |
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St. Michael the archangel, defend us in battle, be thou our safeguard against the wickedness and snares of the devil. May God repuke him, we humbly pray. And do thou, o prince of the heavenly host, by the power of God, cast into hell satan, and all the evil spirits who prowl about the world, seeking the ruin of souls.
Our Father, Who art in heaven, Hallowed by Thy Name. Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one. For Thine is the kingdom, the power, and the glory forever and ever. Amen.
You may be distressed that no Catholic made the kind of profession of faith in Christ that would suit you. I hope you get that, on our side, there's a certain sense of outrage in being essentially accused by the post at the head of this thread -- Here! Explain THIS, if you can -- and then criticized because we did not all leap to the task of finding words to suit our challengers.
The first temptation is to tell you all -- ALL -- to take a flying leap. And this is especially true because of the certainty that a few on either side use members of the other side as punching bags and because while the nature of almost any good conversation about difficult things requires patience and good will, one can be assured here that very little effort will be made to understand what we say.
The temptation to strut around disparaging the other side is just too great.
You ask:
IF you saw some hideous idolatry, blasphemy that you believed/perceived me or my congregation or Pentecostalism in general to be chronically caught up in . . .
Do you honestly believe I would resist with great hostility and self-righteous affrontedness your ministrations to alert me to such and persuade me away from such?
Maybe not you yourself, but I would bet all I have that there are plenty here who would respond with unwavering and intense hostility to any such suggestion.
I do recall that in this thread someone made some comment about the Holy Spirit guiding the Church and was called arrogant for his pains.
It's not so much the constant insult and derogation, combined with immensely sloppy arguing, as it is the sense of futility.
Were I to see some dreadful thing going on in your congregation -- and don't forget that my being a Catholic implies that I think you are inflicting a hardship on yourself by not being Catholic, I would try to establish some kind of trust and to get to a place where I thought real conversation would take place. If I had not taken the trouble to establish credibility, if I had not been prudent, but rather had just stood around and yelled at you, I would consider myself to have indulged myself at the expense of my hearers.
If the folks can walk away still caring for each other with Christ’s Love, and with increased understanding between them, that’s sufficient for me.
I think a lot of the thin-skinned sensitivity about intense emotions and other such stuff is a sign of chronic insecurity, self-righteous arrogance, !!!!
Well, you see? My retort to the suggestion that I am thin-skinned and arrogant (for such it is, whatever you meant it to be) is to say that I think it self-indulgent to abuse people with whom one disagrees and the excuse the ineffectiveness of the approach by calling them thin-skinned. Is the task before us to live together in charity or is it to find suitable names to call those with whom we disagree?
Serious questions: Why should I care what some people think of my religious beliefs? I am confident that the Catholic Church is "the true Church" pretty much in the sense that that was explained in Dominus Iesus. The very things that your side uses as arguments against that proposition seem to me to confirm it. The responses to arguments -- unimaginative, poorly argued, misdirected -- confirm me in my opinions and prompt me to prayer. Every time the non-Catholics start up another one of the endless cycles of disparagement I am assured that such persistent hostility is not a matter of flesh and blood, but of principalities, powers, world rulers (in the demonic sense) of this present darkness, and the spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places.
So, 1000 silverlings asks why we disobey Christ? I'll be sure to answer as soon as he tells me when he stopped beating his wife. That little exchange is a fine example, (no offense, I'm increasingly persuaded that a lot of this is unintended) of what I mean.
There are PLENTY of interpretations of Mary's words to the servants who drew the water made wine. To seize upon one and to use it as a cheap attempt to score rhetorical points is maybe something that impresses lurkers. To me it's just jejune.
The repeated, stylized, almost kabuki-like observations that after years of careful study, deliberation, thought, and prayer, somebody has concluded -- surprise surprise! -- that the Catholic religion is an unmitigated disaster ... Fine. Whatever. One way or another we'll all know in 100 years.
I will certainly continue to intercede for you all and to ask the Mother of God to join me in my prayers. If anybody who has given careful study, deliberation, thought, and prayer to this thread thinks it is going anywhere useful, is building up rather than tearing down, I'd be interested in reading those thoughts.
My perception is that not one new argument has been made for or against devotion to the Mother of God. So I'm left wondering what the goals and objectives are here.
THANKS for your compassionate concern for my diet and welfare.
Very touching.
However, I don’t recall being truly full blown hysterical ever in my 63 years of living—though I was near it ONCE, as a young kid contemplating Christ’s pain on the cross.
I think I already have been eating many of your suggested foods.
I don’t gnaw on others’ faults. Things flash before my awareness and in my spirit from time to time and I may or may not comment on them as seems fitting, however.
Part of my thrownness in life has been to note and help relieve and prevent greater suffering on the part of those I touch. That’s very meaningful and Christian, to me.
Judith The angel Michael has an assignment, given by God ..it is the patron and protector of Israel we have no right to reassign him
AGREED.
I’ve often read the business about satan only managing trickery vs real ‘magical’ things.
I’m not so sure. He’s a potent force within the boundaries that God has set for him.
Counterfeit miracles, however, ALWAYS carry with them an INCREASED DEGREE AND ELEMENT OF BONDAGE to satan’s deceptions and authority.
The sleep comment was a generic comment to anyone manifesting that problem for those reasons.
INDEED. WELL PUT.
AMEN! AMEN! AMEN!
More of the Queen of Heaven mythology from hell.
AMEN! AMEN! AMEN!
The following sure sounds like many of the Roman Catholics et al:
- - -
cannot back up many of their beliefs with historical consistent writings?
O my Jesus, forgive us our sins, save us from the fires of hell, and lead all souls to heaven, especially those most in need of Thy Mercy.
Any interpretations beyond the fact that she was just ordering the servants to do something is reading way more into it than the context warrants.
It occurred to me one day that since weddings in those days were family affairs, Jesus was most probably at a relative's wedding. Perhaps Mary just came to Him with this problem because it was her family's responsibility to host the wedding, just like today it's the bride's family's responsibility to host the wedding. He did that one miracle, which I'm not positive in the least that Mary had any idea He would do, and moved on from there.
Making a whole doctrine of how Jesus cannot refuse His Mother's requests out of that one incident is ludicrous. There is no teaching by any writer of the NT so support that, as I would expect if it were really a spiritual truth.
From there He went on as far as to almost snub His mother, as is recorded in THREE of the Gospels when His family came looking for Him.
The Catholic Church simply cannot justify its Mary doctrines and teachings from Scripture.
Anybody's all should be given to Christ and Christ alone. Not Mary. Not the saints. Not the pope. Not the church.
When any of those are added to the mix, one is not giving one's all to Christ. One's heart is divided. If Christ is not first in one's life, Christ is not Lord of one's life.
Praying to angels.
Where in Scripture were we ever commanded to do that?
And Catholics can't understand why they're accused of idolatry.
Unbelievable.
You showed your opinion that historical Christianity does not agree with, therfore it's Gnostic.
God did not give you a special revelation above Saints
I adduced indulgences ONLY in response to the false accusation that the Church discourages Catholics from reading the Bible. The implied argument was that if the Church grants indulgences for an activity she does so because she thinks it's a good activity. Q.E.D.
Then you say that, to judge by the record of some abuses, indulgences are a bad thing.
So I point out (1) that that doesn't touch the argument I was making (it is a change of subject, in other words); and (2) the abuse of a thing doesn't mean the thing abused is bad in itself; and that that generalization is true whatever one thinks of indulgences.
To develop (1) a little. The Catholic Church does not think indulgences are a bad thing. She thinks they are a good thing, and to be desired. So, rightly or wrongly, the grants them to people who study their Bibles. SO it is hard to argue in the light of that that she thinks reading the Bible is bad. And that argument stands whether or not you think indulgences or Bible study or the Catholic Church is a good thing or a bad thing.
Those questions would be ANOTHER argument.
SO I never said that granting indulgences is a bad thing. Consequently I don't get why you ask me:
If granting indulgences is a bad thing how would using them to accomplish a good change them?
I don't think granting indulgences is a bad thing. But even if it IS a bad thing, the Catholic Church's granting indulgences to people who read the Bible shows that the Catholic Church is not discouraging people from reading their Bibles, which was the argument I initially made.
I also was not discussing the place of the Bible in the formation and development of Catholic Doctrine. And I certainly was not disputing the proposition we do not hold to the notion of Sola Scriptura for a number of reasons, of which two are that it seems unscriptural to us as well as unreasonable.
But, of course that, too, is a different topic.
Just once, it would be nice for a non-Catholic who turns out to be shown to have argued for something that is not true would say, "Okay, that makes sense; I was wrong," before changing the subject and acting as though the initial discussion had never taken place.
And one reason that I think that would be nice would be that I could have SOME sense that I might go two or three months without someone else saying that the Catholic Church discourages the reading of the Bible.
The "shoot and move" debate technique lends support to my conjecture that these are not real debates, real conversations and exchanges in which adults develop their thoughts and reach conclusions. And because "shoot and move" leads to illusory triumphs and obfuscation, it gives weight to my recent conjecture that these debates may be more a matter of demonic influence than anything else.
Catholic teaching is not equivalent to historical Christianity.
There was no special revelation in the twisting of Scripture that was done to try to make the comparison between Mary and the Ark of the Covenant.
All that the Catholic church has done is demonstrate that it will stop at nothing, not even corrupting Scripture, to bolster its Mary doctrines and teaching.
Would Catholicism fall apart without Mary? It certainly appears that, based on the responses of Catholics on this thread, that if you took Mary out of the mix, Catholicism would crumble.
I find it very telling the fervor with which Mary is defended and the almost complete lack of mention of Jesus by the FRoman Catholics.
I thinking this is the Novus Ordo translation, huh?
(Man! I'd think being puked ONCE would be enough. Being REpuked ... I don't even want to TRY to imagine it ...)
There are so many things in this post that are true—and true also for me even as you express yourself.
“..take a flying leap”. Yes, I have experienced that temptation as well.
“...criticized because we did not all leap to the task of finding words to suit our challengers” Yep—been there.
“...very little effort will be made to understand what we say.” Yep
“The temptation to strut around disparaging the other side is just too great.” It certainly seems so. It’s something that I’ve made every effort not to do, following the counsel of “do unto others....”
“It’s not so much the constant insult and derogation....as it is the sense of futility” True. That’s why I don’t respond (anymore) to some posters, nor do I read their posts anymore, all the while exercising my right to be part of the forum.
“...I think it self-indulgent to abuse people with whom one disagrees and then excuse the ineffectiveness of the approach by calling them thin-skinned.” I agree that some posts actually are verbally abusive; and/or they are cuttingly sarcastic all the while trying to parade as some sort of twisted humor.
And now for the sake of brevity:
“I am confident the Catholic Church is the ‘true Church” “ Yes
“...arguments against that proposition seem to me to confirm it” Yes
“...prompt me to prayer” Yes
“...endless cycles of disparagement” Yes
“...not one new argument has been made” True
“I’m left wondering what the goals and objectives are here” Yes
Heavens to Betsey, I found so many things to agree with in this post.
While I already know the perils of making an “opus”, I am certainly convinced—now—that there are many reasons and a certain genre of postings here that have slowly turned me away from believing in the efficacy of these sort of exchanges. And it has informed me, to my surprise, just how many truly anti-Catholic people there are and how easily the put-downs and disparagements and hostility can be framed as their duty in the Lord to “save us”.
I am Catholic. I am Roman Catholic. I am grateful to be Catholic. I belong to the Lord and He has me in His Sacred Hands. That is sufficient for me.
Thanks for your post, MD
“God did not give you a special revelation above Saints”
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LOL! - We ARE the saints!
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