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?
I suppose he could have been, but that’s not how it happened.
You can post the verse but you can't control what the verse means. It cannot be manipulated to what you want it to mean. Now impress me with verse of the Angel Gabriel declaring at the birth of Mary that she was born without sin. She was born a sinner. You'll just have to live with that.
Michael Servetus (Spanish: Miguel Serveto Conesa), also known as Miguel Servet, Miguel Serveto, Revés, or Michel de Villeneuve (29 September? 1509 or 1511 – 27 October 1553), was a Spanish theologian, physician, cartographer, and Renaissance humanist. Condemned by Catholics and Protestants alike, he was arrested in Geneva and burnt at the stake as a heretic by order of the Protestant Geneva governing council.
From 1535 to 1681 Tyburn was transformed into a place of cruelty, torture and execution for men and women because of their religious belief. It had become an act of high treason to be a Catholic priest, or to associate with Catholic priests. It was also legal treason to refuse to accept the monarch as “the only Supreme Head on earth of the Church of England”, in the reign of King Henry VIII, from 1534 onwards under Elizabeth I, Charles I and Charles II.
Tyburn had been a place of public spectacle where crowds gathered for entertainment. The martyrs, however, brought a new spirit into the barbarities and butchery of Tyburn. This new spirit was one of joy, spontaneous humour and wholehearted forgiveness of those who had brought them to their life’s end at Tyburn. This spirit flowed over into the crowds around the Tyburn Gallows. When Blessed Thomas Maxfield was dragged to the Tyburn Tree in 1616, the Gallows had been adorned with garlands of fragrant flowers while the ground around it was strewn with sweet-smelling herbs and branches of laurel and bay.
Blessed Philip Powel announced from the Tyburn Tree, “This is the happiest day and the greatest joy that ever befell me, for I am brought hither for no other cause or reason than that I am a Roman Catholic priest and a monk of the Order of St Benedict.” (1646)
Saint Edmund Campion, Jesuit priest, prayed on the scaffold for those responsible for his death - “I recommend your case and mine to Almightie God, the Searcher of hearts, to the end that we may at last be friends in heaven, when all injuries shall be forgotten.” (1581)
Edward Morgan, priest, was reproved by a minister on the scaffold for being so cheerful. The martyr replied - “Why should anyone be offended at my going to heaven cheerfully? For God loves a cheerful giver.” (1642) ref
Matthew 7:5 - for the benefit of those who enjoy pointing fingers of blame.
Denying the rest of scripture in support of doctrine derived from speculation regarding the mechanics of sinless conception led to the logical necessity of yet another sinless conception, but not requiring a sinless mother, otherwise it’s turtles all the way down with an entire line if sinless women all the wat back to Eve, a logical contradiction even further astray from scripture.
Or, maybe Mary wasn’t sinless, yet conceived a sinless child, herself, rather than her mother doing so as you believe?
She was born full of grace, preserved from original sin. That’s why she didn’t die a bodily death. When her time on Earth was complete, she was assumed, body and soul, into Heaven. That’s why she isn’t buried anywhere, unlike St. Peter, for example, who is buried in the Vatican.
What if Jesus kept her from sinning?
Would that not make Christ her saviour?
We’re not denying the rest of scripture. We’re keeping it in context.
Your argument is from silence. You have no direct evidence that Mary sinned.
Name one.
Nope...But when we see and hear them worshiping Mary, they are worshiping Mary regardless of what title you guys give it...
If you see me whittling an idol of Mary but I tell you I'm actually eating a carrot, I ain't fooling anybody...And neither are you guys...
Had that been the case, she did not have free will in becoming the mother of Jesus, she was merely a vessel. So, that attempted workaround of problematic theology does not withstand scrutiny.
Is this an Idol?
You’re confusing Christ’s Virgin birth with Mary’s immaculate conception.
The immaculate conception teaches that Mary was preserved from sin by Christ at her conception. Christ CHOSE Mary, and then Mary chose Christ.
No, I’m not confusing the Roman Catholic belief, that Jesus required a sinless mother in order to himself be sinless, while Mary did not require a sinless mother in order to herself be sinless.
While it is true that significant portions of the Bible, and 100% of the Gospels, are read over a three year cycle, the purpose of the Mass is not to educate, but to make present the one sacrifice, to share in the Body and Blood, and to worship. Within the Mass, like within the Church itself, every word, every object, every motion and gesture is directly from Scripture. It is decidedly not worship or scriptural and highly sacrilegious to substitute a podium for an altar and tabernacle.
Peace be with you
Yes, you are.
If Jesus didn’t need Mary to be sinless, then how did he get a sinless human nature.
The same way Mary did under your own faulty doctrine.
If Christ gave himself a human nature, then how does one distinguish his human nature from his divine nature?
Christ didn’t simply ‘put on’ a human nature, he was Fully God and Fully man.
He was born OF Mary, as her son, not born IN Mary.
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