Posted on 05/31/2013 2:44:05 PM PDT by NYer
Do our Catholic children and most adults know what these images teach?
All of us know one of the elephants in the room of the Catholic Church. Our religious education programs are not handing on the essence of our Catholic Faith, our parents are befuddled about their role in handing on the faith and the materials we use are vapid or if good do not make an impression on young minds. We are afraid of asking for memorization and thus most don't remember anything they've learned about God and Church other than some niceties and feel good emotions.
I teach each class of our grades 1-6 (we don't have 7th or 8th) each Thursday, rotating classes from week to week. For the last two years I have used Baltimore Catechism #1 as my text book. It is wonderful to use with children and it is so simple yet has so much content. If Catholics, all Catholics, simply studied Baltimore Catechism #1, we would have very knowledgeable Catholics.
These past two years I've used Baltimore Catechism #2 with our adult religious program which we call Coffee and Conversation following our 9:30 AM Sunday Mass, which coincides with our CCD program which we call PREP (Parish Religious Education Program).
This #2 book has more content and is for middle school, but upper elementary school children must have been more capable of more serious content back when this book was formulated and used through the mid 1960's because it is a great book to use with adults and not childish at all. We all use this same book as a supplemental book for the RCIA because it is so clear, nobly simple and chocked full of content!
Yes, there are some adjustments that need to be made to some chapters, but not that many, in light of Vatican II and the new emphasis we have on certain aspects of Church that are not present in the Baltimore Catechism. But these are really minor.
What is more important though is that when the Baltimore Catechism was used through the mid 1960's it was basically the only book that was used for children in elementary and junior high school. It was used across the board in the USA thus uniting all Catholics in learning the same content. There was not, in other words, a cottage industry of competing publishing houses selling new books and different content each year.
The same thing has occurred with liturgical music, a cottage industry of big bucks has developed around the sale of new hymnals, missalettes and new music put on the open market for parishes to purchase. It is a money making scheme.
Why do our bishop allow this to happen in both liturgical music and parish catechesis? The business of selling stuff to parishes and making mega bucks off of it is a scandal that has not be addressed.
In the meantime, our liturgies suffer and become fragmented because every parish uses a different resource for liturgical music and the same is true of religious formation, everyone uses something different of differing quality or no quality at all.
Isn't it time to wake up and move forward with tried and true practices that were tossed out in favor of a consumerist's approach to our faith that has weakened our liturgies, our parishes and our individual Catholics?
Because most of them were self-evident at the time. We had no idea that such as Martin Luther would arise.
Post of the day, Elsie.
oops!
Oops indeed. We have done the unanticipated Protestants a disservice, it seems.
That says nothing about the *Church*.
Read Paul.
He is the one most devoted to the creation of the Church as an entity (inspired by God, of course). He spends much if not most of his writings going after his flock and keeping them in line.
If the Holy Spirit didn't see fit to include it when He breathed out Scripture, then it's not important at all.
John 20:30-31 30 Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book; 31 but these are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.
1 John 5:13-15 13 I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God that you may know that you have eternal life. 14 And this is the confidence that we have toward him, that if we ask anything according to his will he hears us. 15 And if we know that he hears us in whatever we ask, we know that we have the requests that we have asked of him.
Sheesh, that EVVVIILLL Martin Luther. Imagine the nerve of him wanting to get back to just what was written down in the Bible. How dare he!!!!
MB: If you or anyone else chooses to disregard His Church, well, then, you may explain it to Him, as we all must explain ALL of our life to Him at our Judgement.
The passage you posted had nothing to do with answering for disregarding the church.
Nor does your reference to Paul have anything to do with it.
Our judgment is what we do with Christ, not the church.
John 3:14-18 14 And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, 15 that whoever believes in him may have eternal life. 16 “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. 17 For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. 18 Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God.
John 1:12-13 12 But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God, 13 who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God.
It's all about Jesus, Mark. Only about Jesus.
Not the *church*. Not the pope. Not Mary. Not saints, angels, incense, works, baptism, confirmation, rites, rituals, sacraments, penance, nothing but Jesus.
The Hebrews were only healed when they looked at the serpent as it was lifted up.
If HE, Jesus, be lifted up.
Peter tells us that there is no other name under heaven by which we MUST be saved. Acts 4:12. Listen to the guy you claim to be your first pope.
Naw - That's the cracker god... Apollo, Sol Invictus, Mithras...
Is the horn looking object supposed to be Venus? the moon?
Technically it is the crescent moon. But you are right, it could be horns too - Isis/Ishtar/Astarte is often pictured sitting in a crescent moon. There is WAY more in that image than that... Best go look at paganism so you can see. Look at the old gods.... look at satanism. Look at witchcraft (both Druidic and Babylonian).
No, what I see is a monstrosity produced by sculptor Stefan Niedorezo.
It presents the Real Presence of Christ for adoration surrounded by the images of the Ark of the Covenant and Mary, the Ark of the New Covenant.
No it doesn't.
I do not see blasphemy, instead I see Goodness, Truth and Beauty converging on their apex; Love.
Then, my FRiend, it seems you have been over-catechized.
Except that the imagery presented is older than Mary...
Heretics screaming “BLASPHEMY!” in the biggest fonts to persuade themselves of their nonsense’s veracity. Can it get any better?!
Peace.
Mary sitting on the Mercy seat of God??? The Mercy seat belongs to God, only...That is pure Paganism...It's nothing more than a continuation of Pagan religion of ancient Rome...
If only that were all, albeit that is blasphemous enough to be beyond the pale... (btw, how does one know what Mary looked like?)
If I squinch my eyes a bit, I can see a scarlet woman between the horns of a beast, overbearing the Ark of YHWH... with angels bowed down in defeat...
But if I don't squinch my eyes, It looks like a Mithric altar with Ishtar sitting in her crescent moon...
Look at the sun rays streaming from the monstrance, and the Mithric halo behind the image... This is not an altar to YHWH.
...and rightly so. Such talk is irresponsibly misleading.
Transfusions perhaps? She trotted alongside with a perpetual IV hook-up? Ok, not that, and all joking aside, you were speaking of his humanity, of course.
And in that, towards his humanity, according to medical proof, the blood of the mother and that of the child while in the womb do not mix. They do not have or share the same blood flow at all, unless there be some abnormality or injury.
The life is in the blood, as it is written [Leviticus 17:11], but from where did this life itself come?
"And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.
as it is written --- not arising by it's own self-organizing power, evolving little by little by random change [mutation] & natural selection, the dust becoming a proto-baterium, etc., etc...
Although God may well have employed what would be from a human perspective, an extremely long and intricately drawn out process to "create" the universe as we know it, let us set aside for a moment, opinions, my own or others in this inquiry as to life. Instead, since we are speaking of Christ, let us look to Life and to man, as written of in the sacred texts, [excerpt blockquoted above] Gen 2:7.
Returning from those; Mary, along with the rest of us, in her own creatureliness, is herself a created being such as we all are.
Though we are to honor our father and mother, it is not our own fathers and mothers who Created us, but more so their own union together bringing forth additional lifeforms (children). To speak poetically; bringing forth new life, by way of the spirit of life itself which they carried... with our parents and ourselves too, a part of this flow of life much as droplets or molecules of water together, are themselves the stream, and taken all together flow as continuing stream, with Life itself again coming from, originating from, the Creator. Mary did not create herself, nor create her son, although she did nourish the Son of God within herself.
As an aside, you may find here some answer to the question you posed in http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/religion/3025958/posts?page=1347#1347.
Returning back to the flow here;
Christian parents, even those with detailed medical knowledge, if not simply birds & the bees understanding of egg & fertilization, gestation and birth, as nature shows abundant evidence for, many times regard their own offspring as "gifts from God". Mary's child most certainly was a gift from God, given through Mary, in this sense. And yes, the Christ may well have left (within Mary) a few of his own "foreign foetal cells" behind.
As for Life, which is in the Blood of the Lamb which was slain from before the foundations of the world, John 1:29-36, 1 Peter 1:17-20, Rev 13:8
Rev 22:1see also Ezekekiel 47:1-5 where beginning with a "trickling" flow from water coming out from under the threshold of the temple toward the east increases it's volume within about 1 1/4 miles distant, becoming now it was a river that I could not cross, because the water had risen and was deep enough to swim in—a river that no one could cross.And he shewed me a pure river of water of life, clear as crystal, proceeding out of the throne of God and of the Lamb.
There will be no Christians at this judgment...Ignorance of scripture will be no excuse...
Then what will you present?
Because most of them were self-evident at the time. We had no idea that such as Martin Luther would arise.
Since the writing of scripture was inspired by God, God must have figured that 'those' teachings were self evident and He had no idea Martin Luther would arise...
I just wanted to magnify the ignorance of your post...
1400
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