We are told repeatedly that someone knows about the Catholic Church because he was a Catholic.
This opinion is maintained with such strength that when I say that the Catholic Church has permitted married priests for hundreds of years, my facts are challenged -- on what other basis than superior knowledge? But the facts are on my side.
Further, the Church has taught for hundreds of years that the very quality of the change in the 'sacred species' is imperceptible. Aquinas (1225 - 1274) not only says this in his theological writings but in his famous hymns. Before Aquinas was even born the fourth Lateran Council declared the doctrine of transubstantiation to be the real deal, implying by the phrase "under the forms of bread and wine" that there is no perceptible change.
Whether one agrees or disagrees with the teaching, it is NO argument against it that "There isn't any visible change," BECAUSE that's precisely what the teaching says.
It's like saying that Pentecostalism is no good because it doesn't proclaim the Holy Spirit. If someone claimed to know ALL about Pentecostalism and said that, what would YOU say about their instruction?
A person claims to know all about something, and gets the first things wrong out of the box. When the error in fact is pointed out, the person claims that the disagreement is wrong and that he knows. It seems to me generous to say that the person was cheated in his instruction as well as mistaken in his estimation of his own knowledge.
Suppose I attack your profession thus: You psychologists are wrong and stupidly wrong. I know, I used to be a psychologist. Heck, you guys think hysteria is caused by displacement of the womb, just because only women suffer from it!
Would you hesitate to challenge my training?
If an opponent brings his training into the discussion to support his authority, it seems to me that that's an invitation to the other side to examine what the opponent brought to the discussion. One can't stop a discussion by saying "I know better, period!" it seems to me.
The psychologist thing is a LOT simpler and more clear cut than ANY of the usual stuff about
POOR CATHECHIZATION SP?
I don’t know how to demonstrate quickly for you . . . tired and heading for the showere . . . how hollow and empty that tired old straw dog is to Proddys.
1. IT DOES NOT RING TRUE.
2. WE HAVE FREEPERS WHO HAVE DESCRIBED THEIR EXTENSIVE HIGH QUALITY SCHOOLING AND EXTENSIVE TRAINING in the core documents of the RC faith. IT IS NEVER enough. We get the feeling that even if a famous Cardinal who trained folks in TEACHING proper Catechization were to convert to say an Assembly of God perspective, HE WOULD STILL BE ACCUSED OF BEING POORLY CATECHIZED sp. Gads I hate trying to spell that word.
3. When former priests who have had extensive training and served in doctrinaire teaching positions convert to Protestantism, THEY are ALSO CHRONICALLY ACCUSED of being POORLY CATECHIZED. IT’S ABSURD. IT’S LAUGHABLE. It make’s ya’ll’s position look extremely weak and totally outrageously absurd.
4. It may be a comforthing phrase to throw around in such cases for the sheeple. It is absolutely absurd when Proddys read it.
5. Yeah, we could allow that occasionally, it might be accurate. For all those examples all the time on every issue and case. ABSOLUTELY NOT. ABSOLUTELY ABSURD. WHAT A COP-OUT. WHAT A FARCE.
6. That’s why I think of it as beneath you to cling to that rationalization.
7. There’s no way that I think it applies to MetMom. There’s no way I think it applies to Dr E’s hubby. There’s no way I think it applies to RNMomOf7. That stinking pile of rationalization in their cases just does not fly. It’s absurd to the max.
It’s absurd to the max.
AND IT’S GROSSLY CHEEKY AND INSULTING.
It essentially calls them liars.
And, it says their high quality RC education was equal to used toilet paper.
And, it implies that they didn’t have the horse sense to learn even their ABC’s from whatever quality of RC education they are ‘pretending’ to have had.
GRRRRRR.
What tripe.
Catechism deals primarily church doctrine, not church history. It teaches that priests take a vow of celibacy and does not dwell on historical cases of priests being allowed to be married. The statement is challenged by some simply on the basis that the church has been so adamant about the celibacy of priests that it's met with incredulity. So, yeah, I can see why that could be challenged and it shouldn't really come as that much of a surprise.
As far as communion, FRoman Catholics insist, and quote Scripture to support it, that the bread and the wine become the LITERAL, ACTUAL body and blood of Christ. That in John 6 Jesus said that one must eat his flesh and drink His blood, and that at the Last Supper that Jesus actually turned the bread and wine into flesh and blood and they partook, in direct violation of the commandments of the Law against eating blood.
And the response is that Jesus can do anything He wants and that He changed the covenant. But that could not have happened BEFORE He was crucified or else He could not have possible FULFILLED the requirements of the Law.
So, the Catholics on these threads absolutely insist that the body and blood is real and literal and must be really, literally eaten, and then go on to tell us that the host and cup do not change in physical substance after all, even when they claim on the other hand that they did, the whole purpose of the mass. It simply cannot be both ways. Either it is changed and verified by change in physical and chemical form, or it is symbolic as non-Catholics believe, representing a spiritual reality. Even Jesus said about eating His flesh and blood in John 6:63 It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh is no help at all. The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life.
Claiming that someone is poorly catechized seems to have turned into a catch all to every statement a former Catholic makes which FRoman Catholics disagree with. It's simply not true. Understanding of what Catholicism teaches is often the reason people leave the Catholic church.
Just like Calvin who had a first-class papist education. He disagreed with much of what he learned in that education when he read the Bible and realized that what he had learned was not what the Bible taught.
Reagan was not ignorant of democrat policies or ideals or methods. Calvin was not poorly catechized. Both men looked at what they had been taught and came to believe what they had been taught was wrong.
So, too, metmom, Rnmomof7, Irishtenor, Topcat54, my husband, and hundreds of other Christians on this website, who all saw that Rome preached another Gospel. They did not rebuke that false Gospel because they didn't understand it. They rebuked it because they did understand it.
Once again, I enter here where angels fear to tread.
There can be no doubt that life experiences and personal anecdotal experiences can color our perception of things. This can happen in the sphere of religious experiences in life, and of experiences in our familial history and in our professional life.
And we all know in just the living of ordinary lives that we have a “history” that has left footnotes in our memories.
I don’t need to give my personal history other than to say that I have memories of my childhood and adolescence in the Protestant (mixed Presbyterian and Methodist)milieu.
I have vivid memories of the “shunning” that was my lot with my two best friends in high school who were Baptist and pretty much went ballistic when I decided to become a Catholic.
My neighbor when I was raising my family was the principal of a Christian high school in my area. He had daughters the same age as my daughters, but told me that they could not spend any time together as they believed that they were to “come out and be separate” from Catholics, who were considered to be basically non-Christian.
I don’t choose to dwell on these incidents because the only person that is affected by any negativity about them is me. As my priest tells me: “Bearing grudges is like walking around with a dead fish in your pocket—you’re the only one who smells.”
As to bad or faulty catechesis: I was received into the Church as an adult in 1949. I think even then there was a need for a new look at catechesis and the catechumenate. But the one thing that made a difference for me (personally) was that I never wanted to stop learning about the faith that I had been baptized into. From the time I was baptized up to this moment, I made an effort to continually study and understand my faith.
Teaching in the catechetical programs I was working with I was required to take a lot of courses before I went into any classroom.
I also believe that the Dei Verbum of the VAT II Council documents was the catalyst for a very big up-take in Scriptural studies. It was the impetus for the sprouting of parish Biblical studies, which is now an on-going thing in parishes. I was very fortunate to have had two outstanding Scripture teachers.
It’s only right and good that each generation of those who profess belief in the Triune God and the Redemption of the Cross should always be improving the Message and the understanding and transmission of it.
I believe that this is happening now in the Catholic Church. Not only are we experiencing the uptake of Young Adult groups using the “Theology on Tap” program, but we are also seeing something new in the parishes; there are programs now in which whole families are engaged together in the catechesis of their children. They come together as FAMILIES to the catechism classes and these families and these children interact together on a weekly basis.
There are also small Catholic colleges springing up that are enjoying early accreditation and an enthusiastic student body—the latest one being a Catholic College in Utah.
There is always room for improvement in Catholic education and the on-going transmission of the Faith; and it’s not lacking now.
Meanwhile, the “lay” communities are growing so fast that sometimes there isn’t enough room to accomodate all those who wish to enter. In my Carmelite Lay Community alone there are already 10,000 members and the roster grows every year.
About that book about Mary posted by Quix:
I have a library of over 300 books, most of them the more or less “classics” of Catholicism. These books are some of the best we have in Catholicism, from Augustine and deSales and aKempis, etc., down to Sheen and von Hildebrand and Kreeft, to mention only a few.
None of these books place Mary in any other position than what is Scriptural and is perfectly presented in her “Magnificat” in the first chapter of the Gospel of Luke.
That one small book (which easily could be perceived as in excess),should be used as an iconic demonstration of Marian devotion seems to me to be the same kind of lop-sided “expose” as any complaint about the “misrepresentation” of the UFO phenomena.
Isn’t there something quite wonderfully Scriptural about the Lord’s words from the Cross—the important words of the dying Savior: “Son, behold your mother”-—”and from that day he took her into his home.” This is what we Catholics do to this day—we take her into our homes. We understand the literal words of Jesus spoken to John as surely as we understand “this day you shall be with Me in Paradise.”
I will concede that there is always a need and a time to improve catechesis. The ever-evolving social milieu and culture always calls us to look anew at the absolutes of our Faith and find a way to improve the understanding and transmission of them.
It is the work of a lifetime and from one generation to the next.
Deo gratias.
Your frustration with what "We are told repeatedly" has some merit when considered in it's totality. On the other hand derisively dismissing what an ex-Catholic says about what they were taught and what their Catholic relatives and friends believe as simply "you were poorly catechized" is a simplistic and disengenerous argument.
The fact is, especially by your standards, that the vast majority of Catholics throughout the world are and always have been "poorly catechized".
I certainly hope you have cooled off enough in the last few days to reconsider whether your challenge which follows is realistic by any standards.
If your catechesis was as good as you say, you will be able to translate this:
Verbum caro, panem verum verbo carnem efficit: fitque sanguis Christi merum, et si sensus deficit, ad firmandum cor sincerum sola fides sufficit.
Tantum ergo Sacramentum veneremur cernui: et antiquum documentum novo cedat ritui: praestet fides supplementum sensuum defectui.
Do you honestly believe 1% of the Catholics in the world could pass your test?
Also, I see no valid for your crying to the Religion Moderator over this matter.