This explains why Mother Teresa's words are not understood. I can post A and be met with an argument against, not even B or C, but Z. Bizarre!
It is not humility to believe that your good works substitute for the gospel and the work of Christ..that is nothing but pride.
I do not think you can show me where Mother Teresa said anything of the kind. The proposition you state is true but irrelevant. It has nothing to do with Mother Teresa.
It was HER stated job to be a missionary
Her "job"?
You think a vocation is a JOB?
And now you get to define terms for the Catholic Church? It doesn't say "Hanes" until you say it says "Hanes?" I grew up (well, aged anyway) in the so-called "Protestant Episcopal Church" and I knew that medical missionaries, much to everybody's surprise practiced, um, medicine.
This is now going to become a discussion of terminology? It would have been okay if she had taken a different name for her order? The problem is she used the word "Missionaries" and some Protestants think that necessitates preaching at the expense of everything else?
Part of the problem here is that your side does not trust God. You do not think that He knows how to run His missions. If someone goes out in a team that worships Him for hours every day and then goes and performs corporal works of mercy, you think that is not sufficiently Christian to warrant their use of a term in a manner common among Catholics but maybe less so among non-Catholics?
It's a very limited idea of evangelizing. If it's not confrontative and verbal it's not evangelical? "Look, ma'am, I'm sorry your kid is dying of cholera and I'm the only medical person in town, but I'm a missionary, so let him die. I have to preach now. I'll get back to you tomorrow about funeral arrangements. What's that? You'll go to the swami instead? That's okay; you were predestined for damnation. Have a cursed day."
So basically you think the Seventh Day Adventist physician, outside of maybe believing the wrong stuff, had the right idea of evangelizing because when I was in pain and drugged out of my gourd he came in to try to make me a Seventh Day Adventist? It was verbal, it was confrontative, it was urgent -- and it was contemptible.
A characteristic of co-dependents is that they force things to conclusions. They'd rather have someone stomp out of the room in a rage and receive no help than be patient so that they can receive a little help today and maybe a little more tomorrow.
Grant won the Civil War because he took his time and wasn't going for the big win tomorrow. If he'd been the addict some people thought he was, he would have preferred to force a full battle and lose it in a week rather than dog Lee's lines from Culpeper to Petersburg until Lee's army collapsed.
When I go fishing, I go prepared to take more than my lifetime to land a big one. It beats scaring them off by thrashing around in the water.Dante, Aquinas, and Mother Teresa contribute more conversions dead than the average preacher does while he's alive.
Of course, I do not have the luxury of saying Lee was predestined to win, those fish were predestined to get away. Grant was about winning. Successful fishermen are about landing fish.
Evangelizing can require patience with one's patients. I can assure you one thing I will never consider being is a 7th day Adventist.
Okay. I have been advised that sometimes it is better to back off. I'm off this pathetic travesty of a discussion until Thursday.
Perhaps you’ll feel up to responding to my post responding to you re Mother T then?
Nevertheless, some of the signal is getting through despite all the surrounding noise, you may not be accomplishing anything with your direct interlocutors but what you write is making an impact. Not only have you demonstrated the beauty of Catholic thought and action, you've managed to reveal the ugly underbelly of Calvinism. I suppose that's a good thing, all things considered I'd prefer not to know it.
I've spent most of the last 15 years living among devout Calvinists and I think now that I've done to them exactly what they do to us. No matter what they say about what they believe I've always tried to refocus it through my Catholic understanding and give them the benefit of the doubt... "they can't really mean what it sounds like they mean, so they must mean something more like what I believe", that sort of thing. I see now that the theory and the practice really do coincide, and I'm appalled.
When I see a Catholic behaving badly and I think "I don't want to be like that" it's because he's failing to follow the teaching of his Faith. When I see a Calvinist behaving badly and I think "I don't want to be like that" it's because he's following the teaching of his faith to the letter. So whatever else happens this thread is going to have a real world impact on how I interact with the people around me.
I think you used the word nausea to describe the revulsion you experienced when you read the gleeful attacks against Mother Teresa last night and I thought you were using a bit of hyperbole. In catching up with the thread today I realized that it wasn't hyperbole at all, it's physically sickening. Nevertheless, in this as in all things, may Jesus Christ be praised.