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Post by royalosiodhachain on Jun 15, 2008 4:04:02 GMT
I don't think I'd agree that the "Catholics by Name" as you call them are the minority. In my experience they are most likely in the majority. When something becomes so all pervading or dominant as Catholicism is in this country or say Buddism is (or was) in Tibet it tends to be followed automatically and as a result without question. Anything followed without question can be followed with little regard to what it actually is or is not. People do it with the attitude "thats just the way things are".[/quote][/i]
Your presumption that Catholics follow the faith without question is false. Your assumption that they have no intelligence is also false. God calls people to faith as the Scriptures explain, "No one can come to the Father except through the Son and no one comes to the Son unless the Father wills it". This essentially means that God calls sinners whom He knows their final destiny. Your limited viewpoint caused by your lack of understanding creates your poor perspective of the behavior of the faithful. Despite bad behavior, those chosen by God to be Catholic will....in the end....find salvation through Christ Our Lord. Perhaps you need to study the situation more thoroughly with some intense meditation before the Blessed Sacrament.
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Post by royalosiodhachain on Jun 15, 2008 4:07:49 GMT
Beyond the BDM (births, deaths, marriages) variety are there really that many devout Catholics in Ireland?[/quote][/i]
Falconer, Yes of course there are thousands of devout Catholic's in Ireland. I suspect they simply do not associate themselves with you, that is why they are so hard to find.
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Post by royalosiodhachain on Jun 15, 2008 4:15:21 GMT
Something that's lasted 1700 years is not going to fade away overnight because of a temporary attention deficit.
Most people I know who consider themselves Catholic don't even seem to know any of the basic tenets of it nor do they go to mass but despite that would not countenance being called anything other than Catholic.[/quote][/i]
Falconer, There you go again with your presumptions. Have you not heard the Scripture, "To those who have been given much, more will be given, and to those who have been given little, even that will be taken away from them"?
Apparantly you are absent minded concerning the effect of God Himself upon the faithful. Not all are required to know all, only those chosen by God to know more will know more. Do you comprehend what I am writing to you, if so, nod your head.
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Post by hibernicus on Dec 11, 2008 13:54:02 GMT
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Post by guillaume on Dec 11, 2008 14:28:02 GMT
Not 100 % sure, but I think the Boston Institute is very progressive indeed. It got this reputation anyway.
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Post by Hemingway on Dec 12, 2008 9:15:57 GMT
Not all are required to know all, only those chosen by God to know more will know more. So god loves us all but has a few favourites? What a silly notion.
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Post by Michael O'Donovan on Dec 12, 2008 19:41:58 GMT
So god loves us all but has a few favourites? What a silly notion. Yes, it would be silly. However another way of approaching the idea would be to say that no human mind, being finite, could understand God's infinite mind; but that some see more than others.
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Post by hibernicus on Dec 16, 2008 15:23:27 GMT
Hemingway - the idea that God gives more to some than to others does not necessarrily mean that they are favourites; it is generally associated with the view that if these people misuse their gifts they will be punished more severely than others. (If that sounds harsh, think of some of the more vicious criminals of the twentieth century and of the abilities which enabled them to be criminals on such a scale.)
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Post by Hemingway on Dec 17, 2008 15:16:43 GMT
Hemingway - the idea that God gives more to some than to others does not necessarrily mean that they are favourites; it is generally associated with the view that if these people misuse their gifts they will be punished more severely than others. (If that sounds harsh, think of some of the more vicious criminals of the twentieth century and of the abilities which enabled them to be criminals on such a scale.) Thanks for the clarification. I was a catholic for 20 odd years and have read the bible many times (in fact I think its a facinating book for different reasons than yourself of course) but there are always areas of Catechism that I didnt pick up on. Being here can be quite educational in that regard.
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Post by hibernicus on Dec 30, 2008 14:00:22 GMT
To get this thread going again; the state papers from 1978 have just been released and the newspaper commentators are poking fun at those who wrote to the government denouncing the proposed legalisation of contraception - but the striking thing is that while some of the fears expressed were indeed over the top (e.g. the howls about Freemason influences) others were in fact largely accurate. Irish society has indeed seen a vast increase in sexual promiscuity, breakdown of marriage, moves towards normalisation of abortion etc - the thing is that these have themselves become so normalised that most commentators, and perhaps most people, no longer recognise them as the results of their earlier decisions. One element of this is the persistent jeer at Haughey's "Irish solution for an Irish problem" phrase in reference to legalising contraception for married couples only - whatever about Haughey's personal hypcrisy this can be seen as a reasonable compromise if you believe the state should encourage marriage as a builiding block of society and discourage sexual transience of the sort associated with David McWilliams' Breakfast Roll Man as both personally and socially damaging - at least as much so as cigarette smoking. As for me, I agree with Bishop Arthur Winnington-Ingram, who 100 years ago declared that he would like to gather all the contraceptives in the world into one big heap, set fire to them, and dance around the flames. (By the way, he was an Anglican bishop - how times change.)
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Post by mrsreneoriordan on Jan 3, 2009 21:20:56 GMT
Re: Is Church teaching no longer acceptable? - Jesus teaching was not acceptable and scandalised the Jewish leaders of the time and as Jesus said if they mistreated Him they will also mistreat us. In actual fact if you are having an easy ride of it - be afraid etc....... Are we sure we actually know what the Church teaches? Be assured you wont get it from the media. They are really ignorant about the teachings of the Church, one example; when B16 was elected Pope one of the "religious correspondents" sent to cover the story exclaimed "and he's also the Bishop of Rome, what a co-incidence!" a more recent example; the week before Christmas the headlines screamed "Pope is homophobic"; B16 had just given his Christmas talk to the Curia and spoke about ecology, but ecology, not only of the forests and the earth but of also of man and the need to protect man from his own destructive leanings, never once did he use the word homosexual. Either media folk are too lazy to actually read what the Pope said or they are in fact as Michael Voris in his wonderful Vortex programme said they are Popeaphobic.(see Real Catholic TV
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Post by mrsreneoriordan on Jan 3, 2009 21:22:58 GMT
Re: Is Church teaching no longer acceptable? - Jesus teaching was not acceptable and scandalised the Jewish leaders of the time and as Jesus said if they mistreated Him they will also mistreat us. In actual fact if you are having an easy ride of it - be afraid etc....... Are we sure we actually know what the Church teaches? Be assured you wont get it from the media. They are really ignorant about the teachings of the Church, one example; when B16 was elected Pope one of the "religious correspondents" sent to cover the story exclaimed "and he's also the Bishop of Rome, what a co-incidence!" a more recent example; the week before Christmas the headlines screamed "Pope is homophobic"; B16 had just given his Christmas talk to the Curia and spoke about ecology, but ecology, not only of the forests and the earth but of also of man and the need to protect man from his own destructive leanings, never once did he use the word homosexual. Either media folk are too lazy to actually read what the Pope said or they are in fact as Michael Voris in his wonderful "Vortex" programme said they are Popaphobic.(see Real Catholic TV.com ). - Blessings - Rene
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Post by Noelfitz on Jan 3, 2009 21:40:53 GMT
Mrs O'Riordan,
Thank you so much for your posts.
Not all the media are fully ill-informed about Catholicism.
The Daily Telegraph web pages have the following:;
"The BBC told us: "Pope Benedict XVI has said that saving humanity from homosexual or transsexual behaviour is just as important as saving the rainforest from destruction." That is very close to an outright lie on the part of the BBC website. My question: why didn't the "communications office" of the Catholic Church in England and Wales mount an instant media blitz to fight this campaign of misinformation?"
In an article headed by “Pope Revealed to be Catholic – Shock Horroe” I see:
"He's done it again. The Pope has reiterated unfashionable Catholic teaching on sexuality. And at Christmas! What poor taste. Moreover, he has dared to do so in the context of a discussion of (pause to genuflect) the environment. Is nothing sacred? Benedict XVI stands accused today of ecclesiastical gay-bashing. When I was woken up very early this morning by a radio station looking for a quote, I was given the impression that he'd given a speech saying homosexuals were as big a threat to the planet as climate change. That would have been an own goal, I admit. But look at the text of the Pope's speech to the Curia and he doesn't even come close to saying that."
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Post by hibernicus on Nov 2, 2010 15:02:29 GMT
Here is a talk by Archbishop Chaput of Denver which I think is highly relevant to this thread. The 1950s American Gothic writer Shirley Jackson wrote a short story called "The lottery" which is often used as a set text in American school and university ethics classes. [Don't go on reading this post if you haven't read the story and don't want to know how it ends]. The story describes a small town in the wilds of rural America where every year the citizens gather to pray for a good corn harvest. then they hold a lottery, whose nature is intially left unexplained to the reader. It transpires that the "winner" is stoned to death as a human sacrifice to ensure a good harvest. Archbishop Chaput quotes a teacher who told him that when the story was taught in the 1970s the students were shocked by the revelation about the nature of the lottery and engaged in passionate discussions about the dangers of conformism, the need to stand up for wha is right, etc. By the 1990s, however, the students had grown blase and some even defended the lottery on the grounds that if that was the villagers' culture outsiders were not entitled to condemn them. Archbishop Chaput argues that this reflects society's loss of a moral vocabulary, of a sense that some things are always wrong and of the language to explain why this is so. (A secondary reason may be that as the story is widely set as a text and has become well-known over time, the students may be more likely to know in advance how it ends - but this does not affect the Archbishop's central point, I think.) This relates to the question raised on this thread. It is not just that Catholic teaching is "no longer acceptable" to many - it is that because of the neglect of the teaching mission by previous generations (and also, let's admit, because of rebellion against distorted or rigorist versions of it) these people are no longer capable ofunderstanding why it is true and important - they've been rendered religiously and to a consderable extent morally illiterate. PERTINACIOUS PAPIST blog, where I found the original link, compares this to the moment in the 90s when, after decades of arguing with pro-aborts who maintained that the unborn child was not really human, he started to encounter opponents who said that of course it's human, but it's still OK to kill it... www.ewtnnews.com/new.php?id=1932
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Post by hibernicus on Nov 5, 2010 11:57:05 GMT
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