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?
What has that got to do with the Real Presence?
You thought wrong.
What is that supposed to mean?
You’ll find out soon enough.
You heard wrong.
Again, what is that supposed to mean?
While Mary was a blessed and graced (which all believers are: Eph. 1:6) holy women and virtuous mother of the Christ, neither Luke or any other writer supports her as one sinless or bodily assumed, and second in position after the Lord, with almost unlimited power, and prayed to, or other like things ascribed to her which parallel Christ and almost make her a 4th person of the Godhead. The specious extrapolation of texts which RCs must engage in attempting to such testifies to it being a tradition that is not in Scripture, and is overall contrary to it.
2. Priests
Nowhere does the Holy Spirit refer to NT pastors as priests (hiereus), except as part of the general priesthood (hierateuma) of believers, (1Pt. 2:9) who are also called to render sacrifices. (Rm. 12:1; Heb. 13:15)
And see here before trying to defend the migration of presbuteros into priest.
3. CELIBATE Priests
Again you are trying to extrapolate sanction for celibacy into a requirement that requires that all (with exceptions for married pastoral converts) clergy to have the gift of singleness/continence.
While certainly being advantageous, this condition is not a requirement, and instead the requirements for clergy assume they are married, (1Tim. 3:1-7) and the only two single pastors recorded in Scripture were traveling missionary apostles. And who yet had freedom to marry. (1Cor. 9:5) Thus single pastors are the exception, not the rule as in Rome.
But we prefer for our priests to follow the example set by Jesus and St. Paul.
Commendable, but besides Paul being relatively marginalized compared to Mary and Peter, and despite his stature being such that he might be called (in satire) "pope Paul ," he typically supported himself, and is the one who set down the aforementioned requirements for clergy.
4. Rosary beads
For which you wisely do not attempt to support by Scripture, as there is zero mention of such, nor of prayers to Mary or need for such, while in principle it fosters rote repetition of prayers which the Lord warned against, besides the admonition against ostentatious religious clothing to command respect which the beads are often part of.
5. Infant baptism is suggested when St. Paul says he baptized the household of Stephanas in 1 Corinthians
Out of which is extrapolated infant baptism, yet all Paul says is that he baptized also the household of Stephanas, (1Cor. 1:16) likewise in Acts 16:15, while in the account where any more detail of a household baptism is given then it indicates the baptized were able to hear/understand the word. (Acts 16:32,33)
In addition, the requirements which God sets down as a prerequisite for baptism, that of repentance and wholehearted faith, (Acts 2:28; 8:36,37) cannot be met by infants. Who, being innocent, are not accountable for Adam's sin and need to be redeemed.
6. Praying the Dead Out of Purgatory. 2 Timothy 1:16-18..This was a prayer offered by St. Paul for his dead friend Onesiphorous.
More unwarranted conclusions. Paul's is not praying for Onesiphorous, whom you can only assume was dead, yet Paul salutes his household in 2 Tim. 4:19, and he was quite active recently.
And his hope that he expressed to Timothy is not that of God having mercy on him as he suffers torments or purifying punishments in purgatory, but of God having mercy on him at the judgment of Christ, "that day" (1Ths. 5:4; 2Tim. 1:8; 4:8) which takes place at the Lord's return, not at the believers death. (1Cor. 4:5; 2Tim. 4:1,8; Rev.11:18; Mt. 25:21-23; 1Pt. 1:7; 5:4)
Thus, rather than showing these traditions are found in Scripture, they are exposed for what the are, mere traditions of men taught as rules or doctrines.
John 6:54 "Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him on the last day."
How are we supposed to eat his flesh and drink his blood without the Real Presence?
First, do you must take Jn. 6:53 as a unequivocal literal requirement? If not, why not?
But in response to your question, how could the “meat” of Jesus be doing His Father's will. The Bible abounds in language that could be taken as literal:
We read of how, “And David longed, and said, Oh that one would give me drink of the water of the well of Bethlehem, which is by the gate! And the three mighty men brake through the host of the Philistines, and drew water out of the well of Bethlehem, that was by the gate, and took it, and brought it to David: nevertheless he would not drink thereof, but poured it out unto the LORD. And he said, Be it far from me, O LORD, that I should do this: is not this the blood of the men that went in jeopardy of their lives ? therefore he would not drink it. These things did these three mighty men.”
Nowhere does David say “it is NOT the blood” of these men, and it is akin to the Lord referring to wine as blood, yet both are consistent with Biblical use of allegorical language, and can be easily recognized by such by those who are familiar with it.
The fearful Israelites exclaimed that the Promised Land was “a land that eateth up the inhabitants thereof;” but Joshua exhorted the Israelites, “Only rebel not ye against the LORD, neither fear ye the people of the land; for they are bread for us.” (Num. 13:32; 14:9) Thus humans are described as being food, , yet it is not to be supposed that the land or the Israelites would become cannibals, though it does not say they would not become cannibals.
Likewise David declared, “When the wicked, even mine enemies and my foes, came upon me to eat up my flesh, they stumbled and fell.” (Psa 27:2)
Then there is Jeremiah who proclaims, Your words were found. and I ate them. and your word was to me the joy and rejoicing of my heart” (Jer. 15:16), or Ezekiel is told, “eat this scroll, and go, speak to the house of Israel” (Ezek. 3:1), and John is told, “Take the scroll … Take it and eat it” (Rev. 10:8-9 ), but it is not speaking of physically eating literal material scrolls even if it does not say this is NOT literal.
Other examples of figurative language abound, and John in particular abundantly uses it:
• In John 1:29, Jesus is called “the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world” — but he does not have hoofs and literal physical wool.
• In John 2:19 Jesus is the temple of God: “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up” — but He is not made of literal stone.
• In John 3:14,15, Jesus is the likened to the serpent in the wilderness (Num. 21) who must “be lifted up: That whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have eternal” (vs. 14, 15) — but He is not made of literal bronze.
• In John 4:14, Jesus provides living water, that “whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst; but the water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life” (v. 14) — but which was not literally consumed by mouth.
• And again in John 4:34, Jesus is the Son whose “meat” is to do the Father’s will, whose commandment is life everlasting (Jn. 12:15) — but He did not literally eat the Father’s physical flesh.
• In. Jn. 6:57, Jesus tells us that by eating Him we live by Him as He lives by the Father, by His every word, and which was the Scriptures. (Mt. 4:4) For as referred to above, Jesus did not live by literally eating the Father’s physical flesh, but by keeping His every word according to Scripture.
• In John 7:37 Jesus is the One who promises “He that believeth on me, as the scripture hath said, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water” — but this spake he of the Spirit, which they that believe on him should receive. (John 7:38)
• In Jn. 9:5 Jesus is “the Light of the world” — but who is not blocked by an umbrella.
• In John 10, Jesus is “the door of the sheep,”, and the good shepherd [who] giveth his life for the sheep”, “that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly” vs. 7, 10, 11) — but who again, is not literally an animal with cloven hoofs.
• In John 15, Jesus is the true vine — but who does not physically grow from the ground nor whose fruit is literally physically consumed.
Thus the figurative understanding of Jn. 6 is consistent with John and his and the Biblical means of obtaining life in you, and living thereby. For nowhere did anyone become spiritually alive and thus pass from death unto life (Jn. 56:24; Eph. 2:5) by physically eating, but by believing the gospel message, (Acts 10:43-47; 11:18; 15:5-7) as the words of the “living bread,” who redeems by His blood, (and “the life of the flesh is in the blood,” Lv. 17:11) “are spirit, they are life.” (Jn. 6:63)
Go ahead and read all of John chapter 6.
Indeed.
That is a dishonest biased statement, as "some" is the word you should have added, while as can be documented, RCs often reject scholarly sources - even by Catholics - as legitimate if they impugn Rome. Even sanctioned teaching in their own Bible.
And as also can be documented, Rome herself made far more use of forgeries and for far longer.
Well ok.
Good luck with being a Jew. :)
Ahahahaha.
Man, that yopios cereals really stings doesn’t it.
Interesting. So what you are saying is that women cannot get sin from their mothers. A statement which appears nowhere in scripture...
Deus animae tuae misereatur.
A simple test for these “proofs” you give for RCC Mariolatry, priests, celibacy, etc., is the book of Acts. You don’t find Mariolatry, priests, etc., things that identify the RCC, there. You quoted from the gospels and the epistles, so do the cults to allegedly “prove” their beliefs and pracitices, the book of Acts, however, is where the rubber meets the road. The book of Acts is where we should see what we claim in the gospels and epistles played out in real time.
RCC Mariolatry, for instance, is not in the book of Acts. Anybody with half a brain can see that. With all the emphasis Romanists place on Mary, we should see it pop up somewhere in Acts… if it were a true belief held by the Apostles. The same with all these other things the RCC is known for.
Since evidence for the RCC is not there, it follows that the RCC practices and beliefs they are known for everywhere are products of compromise with the pagan world, taking many years to evolve. In the case of such things as rosary beads centuries. The book of Acts full name is, of course, “The Acts of the Apostles.” Anybody can claim apostolicity for their particular practices and beliefs, but can they find it in the Acts of the Apostles? Acts renders RCC “Apostolic” claims bogus.
No one gets sin from their mothers. If they did, Jesus would not have been born sinless. Neither would Mary have been able to if she had been.
Adam watched Eve eat. So? How does that transpose that Adam and all fathers pass sin on to the children. How did Adam know better than Eve. Are you being sexist in claiming that Adam knew better but Eve did not?
Protestantism seeks to limit the potential sources of Revealed Truth to a few sources that can be manipulated to meet their theology absent any other context or conflicting proof. When the entire Sacred Deposit of Faith is not rejected, and with the corroboration of Natural Revelation, the truth of Catholic teaching shines brilliantly.
Your efforts here will not sway Catholics away from the Church and we do not need your explanations and rationalizations. In other words these incessant posts are meaningless.
Peace be with you
OK, as you say, for you scripture is not plain.
What do you think that says about you?
Scripture is quite plain to me, and to most that read it with the intention of accepting what it tells us.
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