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WHY ARE OUR CATHOLIC LAITY SO ILLITERATE WHEN IT COMES TO THE CATHOLIC FAITH
Southern Orders ^ | May 31, 2013 | Fr. Allan J. McDonald

Posted on 05/31/2013 2:44:05 PM PDT by NYer

WHY ARE OUR CATHOLIC LAITY SO ILLITERATE WHEN IT COMES TO THE CATHOLIC FAITH--BLAME THE TEXT BOOKS, BLAME THE TEACHING METHODS AND BLAME THE PARENTS, BUT BLAME THE BISHOPS, PRIESTS AND CATECHISTS TOO, BLAME EVERYONE INCLUDING SATAN, EXCEPT NO ONE TEACHES ABOUT HIM ANYMORE OTHER THAN POPE FRANCIS, DON'T BLAME HIM!

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?


TOPICS: Apologetics; Catholic; Ministry/Outreach; Religion & Culture
KEYWORDS: catechism; catholic; catholicsects; ignorantprotestants; papalpromotion; traditionalcatholic
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To: Gamecock
"So here is one ordained member of the Roman Catholic religion saying no."

"Jesus took His Flesh from the flesh of Mary." -St. Augustine

1,541 posted on 06/10/2013 1:18:51 PM PDT by Natural Law (Jesus did not leave us a book, He left us a Church.)
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To: Jack of all Trades
"She had only the illusion of free will."

No, Catholics reject the heresy of Calvin's TULIP. Everyone, including Mary, has/had full freewill. Mary freely chose to become the Theotokos.

You are undermining the Protestant position on Mary's sinlessness. If she had no freewill, she was no more capable of sin than the beasts of the field. Either way, Protestantism is undermined.

Peace be with you

1,542 posted on 06/10/2013 1:30:34 PM PDT by Natural Law (Jesus did not leave us a book, He left us a Church.)
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To: Natural Law

Flesh isn’t blood.


1,543 posted on 06/10/2013 1:35:39 PM PDT by Gamecock ("Ultimately, Jesus died to save us from the wrath of God." —R.C. Sproul)
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To: Natural Law; Gamecock
"Jesus took His Flesh from the flesh of Mary." -St. Augustine

"[Jesus] did not receive His blood from [Mary] ... His blood was solely His." -Fr. Vincent Serpa, O.P.

"Jesus received his body and blood exclusively from Mary and Her womb was the Tabernacle for 9 months. No Mary, no Blood. - Natural Law

Old People: 2
Natural Law: 0

1,544 posted on 06/10/2013 1:36:48 PM PDT by Alex Murphy
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To: Gamecock
Flesh isn’t blood.

In the same way, a communion wafer isn't wine.

1,545 posted on 06/10/2013 1:38:31 PM PDT by Alex Murphy
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To: Natural Law
Mary was not God's brood mare, nor the rape victim of the Holy Spirit nor some rent-a-womb
Those suppositions come ONLY from your posts.

How anyone could even post the words bolded above is completely unbelievable.

But IIRC you have posted other equally sick comments in the past.

What a completely degrading thing to twist opinions of other posters into close to, if not, blasphemy of the Holy Spirit.

From a Catholicism expert no less. Oh that explains it, duly noted.

1,546 posted on 06/10/2013 1:42:26 PM PDT by Syncro ("So?")
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To: Jack of all Trades
There are no other possibilities - well, except “It a mystery! To the rack with anyone who says otherwise!”

FWIW, I believe the corporate-approved phrasing is "shut up and kiss the ring".

1,547 posted on 06/10/2013 2:15:49 PM PDT by Alex Murphy
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To: boatbums

The claim was that blood NEVER mixes between mother and child in the womb. I was just pointing out that that claim is wrong.


1,548 posted on 06/10/2013 2:41:03 PM PDT by MarkBsnr (I would not believe in the Gospel, if the authority of the Catholic Church did not move me to do so.)
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To: roamer_1
[MarkBsnr:] Who knew that Judas would turn out as he did?

Jesus did. So did the Prophets. It is written.

What was written, and where?

1,549 posted on 06/10/2013 2:42:37 PM PDT by MarkBsnr (I would not believe in the Gospel, if the authority of the Catholic Church did not move me to do so.)
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To: Elsie
There is no need of the Mass for those who define their own Christianity. believe the very words of JESUS in John 6:2-29, and the LETTER found in Acts chapter 15.

Hmm, there evidently are works required.

1,550 posted on 06/10/2013 2:44:19 PM PDT by MarkBsnr (I would not believe in the Gospel, if the authority of the Catholic Church did not move me to do so.)
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To: metmom; Iscool
Iscool does not need the sacrifice of the mass and he is beyond that. Jesus work is finished and He is sitted at the right hand of the Father in heaven.

That is so cute. I love everyone who thinks that they are saved simply because they declare it.

1,551 posted on 06/10/2013 2:45:43 PM PDT by MarkBsnr (I would not believe in the Gospel, if the authority of the Catholic Church did not move me to do so.)
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To: BlueDragon
Then when does the blood mix?

The growing child gets its food and oxygen from the mother through the placenta, and its waste is taken away in the same manner. There is always a small leakage across the membranes.

1,552 posted on 06/10/2013 2:47:07 PM PDT by MarkBsnr (I would not believe in the Gospel, if the authority of the Catholic Church did not move me to do so.)
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To: Natural Law; Jack of all Trades
If she had no freewill, she was no more capable of sin than the beasts of the field. Either way, Protestantism is undermined.
You will say to me then, “Why does He still find fault? For who has resisted His will?”
But indeed, O man, who are you to reply against God? Will the thing formed say to him who formed it, “Why have you made me like this?”
Does not the potter have power over the clay, from the same lump to make one vessel for honor and another for dishonor?
What if God, wanting to show His wrath and to make His power known, endured with much longsuffering the vessels of wrath prepared for destruction,
and that He might make known the riches of His glory on the vessels of mercy, which He had prepared beforehand for glory,
-- Romans 9:19-23

...just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before Him in love,
having predestined us to adoption as sons by Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the good pleasure of His will...

-- Ephesians 1:4-5


1,553 posted on 06/10/2013 2:56:51 PM PDT by Alex Murphy
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To: Alex Murphy
"In the same way, a communion wafer isn't wine."

I (again) recommend that you investigate the difference between substance and property.

"Taken from the intact Virgin, the Flesh of Jesus is of the maternal flesh of Mary, the Blood of Jesus is of the maternal blood of Mary. Therefore, it will never be possible to separate Jesus from Mary." - St. Thomas Aquinas

1,554 posted on 06/10/2013 2:59:22 PM PDT by Natural Law (Jesus did not leave us a book, He left us a Church.)
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To: Jack of all Trades
This means that either the nature of God would have had to change at the moment that the mother of Jesus was impregnated (an impossibility) or that the mother gave nothing of herself to Him during the pregnancy - God just came through her.

Only TWO guesses to choose from?

1,555 posted on 06/10/2013 3:00:20 PM PDT by Elsie (Heck is where people, who don't believe in Gosh, think they are not going...)
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To: Natural Law
Foreknowledge is not predestination.

LIKEWISE...

Catholic speculation is not fact.

1,556 posted on 06/10/2013 3:01:02 PM PDT by Elsie (Heck is where people, who don't believe in Gosh, think they are not going...)
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To: Natural Law
If there was anything in your posting history to suggest that you actually wanted and answer I would accommodate you. I do not care to play word games with you again.

So, in essence, you have no answer.

1,557 posted on 06/10/2013 3:01:38 PM PDT by Elsie (Heck is where people, who don't believe in Gosh, think they are not going...)
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To: metmom; Gamecock
I suppose those in the R.C. religion who insist otherwise are being their own Pope.

Well...





Pope Stephen VI (896–897), who had his predecessor Pope Formosus exhumed, tried, de-fingered, briefly reburied, and thrown in the Tiber.[1]

Pope John XII (955–964), who gave land to a mistress, murdered several people, and was killed by a man who caught him in bed with his wife.

Pope Benedict IX (1032–1044, 1045, 1047–1048), who "sold" the Papacy

Pope Boniface VIII (1294–1303), who is lampooned in Dante's Divine Comedy

Pope Urban VI (1378–1389), who complained that he did not hear enough screaming when Cardinals who had conspired against him were tortured.[2]

Pope Alexander VI (1492–1503), a Borgia, who was guilty of nepotism and whose unattended corpse swelled until it could barely fit in a coffin.[3]

Pope Leo X (1513–1521), a spendthrift member of the Medici family who once spent 1/7 of his predecessors' reserves on a single ceremony[4]

Pope Clement VII (1523–1534), also a Medici, whose power-politicking with France, Spain, and Germany got Rome sacked.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bad_Popes

1,558 posted on 06/10/2013 3:02:47 PM PDT by Elsie (Heck is where people, who don't believe in Gosh, think they are not going...)
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To: metmom

From what I’ve been seeing, nothing happens without Mary involved...


1,559 posted on 06/10/2013 3:03:12 PM PDT by Iscool
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Comment #1,560 Removed by Moderator


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