<p>Woodwork: I keep meaning to read Chesterton’s “Orthodoxy”, but I just haven’t made myself take the time.
Hope to do so in the summer.</p>
<p>The Malachy Prophesies
<a href=“Casino Online Brazil 2023 | Jogos De Casino Online”>http://www.catholic-pages.com/grabbag/malachy.asp</a></p>
<p>Irishbird, you raise good points. Here is an interesting point: US dioceses that are the most orthodox (just basically Roman Catholic) have no problems attracting young men to the priesthood. The Arlington Diocese comes to mind. I wonder how a young man could <em>ever</em> feel called to the priesthood if Catholicism is all over the board? How do you hang your religious, spiritual, and vocational hat on a bunch of relativist ideas that can change with the wind. What is Truth? Does God have an opinion and should ours supercede his? How do we discern his Truth over ours?</p>
<p>Most men going into the priesthood would like to know exactly what it is they’re dedicating their entire lives TO. Regular old Roman Catholicism, doctrinally unchanging, can supply this. There is no such seminary as Liberal Catholicism, and the seminaries that tried to provide such an animal are dying from a severe lack of interest. </p>
<p>If anyone is interested in a very good read on this subject, I suggest, “Good-bye, Good Men” by Michael Rose. It was criticized when it first came out for its lack of naming names (the author respected some of his sources wishes to remain anonymous) but it names <em>enough</em> of them to be considered quite valid.</p>
<p>I sometimes wonder why we feel that the Holy Spirit stopped moving through people centuries ago. After the doctrine was written, is there to be no additional consideration or evolved thought as guided by the Holy Spirit? </p>
<p>Is prayer really necessary if all I have to do to be a good Catholic is listen, repeat, remember? Or, am I just praying that I can listen well, repeat perfectly and remember with precision. </p>
<p>If someone is “moved” to embrace other faiths and explore other ways of thinking about spirituality, should we really dismiss them as sinful because the movement of their spirit doesn’t line up with the what was written thousands of years ago?</p>
<p>Communion under both species for members of the congregation. Mass said in local vernacular instead of Latin. Congregants as participants in the Mass, not witnesses. Women on the altar for purposes beyond cleaning and setting the flowers, e.g., as sacristans, eucharistic ministers, and chaplains. Evolving re-definitions of relationships with other faith communities, particularly Episcopalian, Lutheran, Jewish. Off the top of my head right after waking up… Hmm. Add support of chattel slavery, attitudes towards remarriage after divorce…</p>
<p>Anyone who thinks the Roman Cathholic church is doctrinally unchanging is ignorant of the history of his or her own church. TheMom has noted that many conservative American Catholics are locked into 1955 and the church of their childhood, thinking that’s the Way that Catholicism is, was, and will be.</p>
<p>I wonder if the Catholic church will change its ideas about divorce and annulment…I know quite a few people who sit during communion while their families go up, because they never got their first marriages annulled. Seems sort of …divisive to me.</p>
<p>Yep, and for me, Communion is between me and God, I decide if I am taking it that week. If everyone in Church who did not fast, not do confession, who was pro choice, took birth control, sinned, didn’t take communion, only 8 year olds would go up!!! Everyone has something and communion is a time (supposed to be) of reconnecting. </p>
<p>What bothered me A LOT was having Law do a mass at the Vatican. What a slap in the face.</p>
<p>CGM, exactly: Communion is between you and God. As one our priests once delicately observed, “There are many who say the Church should not be so Pharisaical.”</p>
<p>DKE: don’t bet on it under Benedict. His statement about a Church that was “smaller but purer” was chilling. </p>
<p>
</p>
<p>By this token, I would expect many Republicans to move to Belarus if Hillary Clinton becomes President.</p>
<p>One of my influential catechumenists went to great lengths to distinguish between Church-as-hierarchy, Church-as-institution, Church-as-faith-community. One can be in determined opposition to the first while being firmly committed to the second two.</p>
<p>Those who grumbled about John XXIII and Paul VI and Vatican II are exulting at the moment. Some people want the Tridentine Mass back, just as some want to repeal the New Deal. I don’t think either is going to happen, though both impulses are similar in nature, a longing for “pure” “good old days” that were never either.</p>
<p>the new pope seems pretty cool. we were all making fun of his eyes today though in my class. i dont know why. i didnt really get it.</p>
<p>I’m sure there are people wondering why they picked a former member of the Hitler Youth.</p>
<p>I am not a fan of the new Pope- but any youth of his age in Germany would have been forced to join that movement- he was 14- should have he joined the French resistance?</p>
<p>I understand that he was forced to join the Hitler Youth. My concern is whether or not he escaped the indoctrination, and I haven’t read anything about that.</p>
<p>The term “cafeteria Catholics” which has been used particularly to refer to American Catholics who want to pick and choose which of the church doctrines they follow (i.e., my conscience tells me that birth control is OK). I, like many others, am guilty of having been a cafeteria Catholic at various points in my life. However, the older I get the more I realize that if one really disagrees with the church rulings on things like priests marrying, gay rights, and birth control, probably the best thing to do is to find another church, stop calling yourself Catholic, and stop bashing the Church for not agreeing with your views. The Catholic church has always, since its start, seen itself as infailable. That isn’t going to change no matter how many times people protest. And, to me at least, there is a certain kind of beauty and power in that, even though I may struggle at times with it.</p>
<p>Wanted also to add the story of our parish priest. He was raised Lutheran but converted to Catholicism right after college. He then was called to the priesthood. His family was horrified by his decision. It is very interesting to talk to him about why he didn’t just stay a Lutheran and become a Lutheran minister. He said that, in the end, he felt (and feels) that the strictness of the Catholic church is part of its strength. He converted and became a priest BECAUSE of the Church’s strictness and conservatism, not in spite of it.
He has often told me that if being Catholic were easy, no one would ever question their faith and they would never know if they truly had faith or just found the church convenient. It makes sense to me.</p>
<p>Carolyn, the notion of Church doctine being rigid and unchanging is simply wrong. </p>
<p>As TheMom pointed out over dinner last night, the lending of money for interest used to be a mortal sin (usury). This is why through the Middle Ages the moneylenders were Jewish…one couldn’t be a good Christian and do it. Then doctrine changed and it became a sin only to lend money at exorbitant interest. What had been mortal sin the year before was now perfectly okay. TheMom paid attention in her Church history classes.</p>
<p>It was more than 1,800 years before the Church condemned slavery.</p>
<p>It was nearly 400 years before the Church could grudgingly admit its error in trying Galileo.</p>
<p>Moreover, via serendipity of today’s LOS ANGLES TIMES, thus saving me having to Google and research:</p>
<p>In 1832, Pope Gregory XVI issued an encyclical condemning freedom of conscience in society as an “absurd and erroneous teaching or rather madness.” </p>
<p>Pope Leo XIII in the 19th century condemned “the modern liberties” and opposed the equality and participation of citizens in civic and political life. The people, he wrote, are “the untutored multitude” that must be “controlled by the authority of law.”</p>
<p>Note that these strains of belief–on issues of the time that were as salient and controversial as issues before the Church today–informed much of the Church’s attitudes through the 20th century, with support of the Falangist regime of Franco, tacit acquiescence to the Fascist rule in Italy, and support of brutal dictatorships in Latin America.</p>
<p>It is worth noting that Cardinal Ratzinger, in his office as head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, silenced roughly 100 theologians from teaching, including Hans Kung and Charles Curran. If a faith can not tolerate inquiry, questioning, and dissent, it’s a pretty weak faith. </p>
<p>The Church has evolved in the past. It can continue to evolve or it can be stagnant. </p>
<p>Carolyn, you can’t have it both ways: if Ratzinger is right, then Paul VI and the Vatican Council were wrong. You may say that Paul VI was wrong…but in this case you’re merely exercising a cafeteria approach to which Pope you choose to believe is more correct.</p>
<p>Finally, I’ll add this link, which comes to me from a very Catholic sister in-law who got it from the alumni e-mail list of her Catholic girls high school. The American Church, in particular, has to reconcile itself with women in the Church. More than half the members of the Church are women. In our parish, all the sacristans, 90 percent of the eucharistic ministers, and 3/4 of the altar servers are female…you will not get them to meekly submit to subordination.</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.suntimes.com/output/marin/cst-nws-marin20.html[/url]”>http://www.suntimes.com/output/marin/cst-nws-marin20.html</a></p>
<p>In the words of Galileo, “But it does move.”</p>
<p>It occurs to me to add, stories about people attracted to the Church because of its strictness says more about their psychological make-up than it does about the verity of the Church’s positions, one way or the other.</p>
<p><a href=“mailto:benedictxvi@vatican.va”>benedictxvi@vatican.va</a></p>
<p>Pope has an email address. :P</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>I think I’d understand this better if you could give an example of disagreement between Paul VI and Benedict XVI/Cdl. Ratzinger over a point of doctrine. </p>
<p>As I recall–and I stand to be corrected, as I am not particularly steeped in Catholic history, having had no Catholic upbringing nor Catholic schooling-- Paul VI and Charles Curran were on opposite sides of the contraceptive issue.</p>
<p>Actually the definition of usury IS “the lending of money at an exorbitant rate”…i think it’s always been considered sinful…
The lending of money itself & charging interest for it I don’t think has been considered sinful…it was when the moneylenders were exploiting others with outrageous rates of interest.</p>
<p>However, I believe that in the Muslim faith, you are not supposed to charge interest at all.</p>
<p>Non Roman Catholic here with a question. Are Cardinals required to be priests these days? I seem to remember in times pasts that this was not a requirement.</p>