!HALLELUJAH!
!HALLELUJAH!
There are some on this forum who feel personal slights whenever something they have been told is true is shown to not necessarily be true according to the Bible. Some, in defense, try to complicate or over-pontificate the issue and when the exact Scripture point is quoted, they go into offensive mode and attack the poster rather than join in the discussion. When that happens, the flame wars usually start depending on the individual Freepers involved. Flame wars seem to never resolve anything and the point of discussion is usually always left in the dust and is why we see the same issues brought up repeatedly.
Wouldn't it be nice to have a mature, respectful dialog where opposing viewpoints can be aired and everyone goes away knowing they gave it their best shot and the results belong to God? I HAVE seen it happen, but it is rare. It would be wonderful if in this season of remembrance of our Savior's sacrifice and resurrection for our new birth, we also determine to post in “newness of life”.
I come from writing a defense of the Catholic attitude toward sex. Metmom's post, to which I was responding included several falsehoods. One of them she herself admitted earlier (maybe a year ago?) to be wrong. And yet here it is again.
When I first came to the RF,one of the first things I saw -- and I have seen it a hundred times or more since -- was a gross misrepresentation of our teaching on the Eucharist. I don't mind discussing -- even debating -- what we DO teach. I think it wrong for our antagonists to insist that we teach what we do not teach and to attack that untaught thing.
But -- and, again,it was metmom recently -- who said we teach that the Eucharist is "literally" and "physically" the body and blood of Christ. Now I have seen "literal" used by imprecise speakers, not by theologians. I know of no theologian who uses "physically", and if I were to find one, I am confidant that he would not be using it in the usual way.
When one asks the run-of-the-mill non-Catholic contender "What is a thing?" one usually gets a huffy, "you know perfectly well what a thing is!" sort of answer. That explains the misrepresentation of our Eucharistic thought. We are saying one thing miraculously becomes another. We are most certainly not saying it "physically" becomes another -- not as the normal occurrence. Those who have not thought hard about what a thing is simply cannot coherently criticize what we say -- they don't have the tools or don't know how to use them. But that impossibility does not stop them from cluttering discourse with falsehoods about what we teach.
And at this point they are gratuitous, if not malevolent, falsehoods. Plenty of introductory explanations have been offered and been ignored by all except for one or two folks.
As a subset of this perversion of discourse there is the tactic of weighing in with a massive attack on ONE aspect of our Eucharistic thought and piety. And when we have brought all our troops over to meet this assault, then we are told that we think nothing of the many other aspects of the Mass. Thatis, of course, false as an hour with, say Fr, Louis Bouyer's Liturgical Piety would make plain.
In one of Dylan's songs there is the line, "Don't criticize what you can't understand." I won't say that the non-Catholics CAN'T understand. I will say that they don't understand and don't take the trouble to understand. They just burst through the doors, guns blazing and shoot at anything that moves.
And then, ludicrously, they complain that they are not welcomed with gentle courtesy.
I just made (as you noted) a sincere defense of the OPC. I don't see how I could reach out any more than to defend the denomination which has produced arguably the most aggressive, relentless and offensive of our assailants, for such they are, when they attack us with falsehoods, KNOWN falsehoods.
It takes two to tango. I have gone to the center of the dance floor and am waiting for a dance partner. What I get is lies and mockery shouted from those standing along the walls.
I am for peace: but when I speak, they are for warre.- Psalm 120:7 KJV