Posted on 09/06/2009 3:50:15 PM PDT by NYer
And in a big way. A lot of you have seen the great ads produced by a group called Catholics Come Home. The ads, evidently, are working. And spreading.
From the Los Angeles Times:
The Roman Catholic Diocese of Sacramento is home to nearly 1 million Catholics. On a typical Sunday, less than 137,000 can be found in church.Curious to see what all the fuss is about? Check out the videos below. And you can find more at the Catholics Come Home link.
Now, using a strategy straight from the secular playbook, its leaders hope to lure back those who have drifted.
The diocese and nearly a dozen others across the country are preparing to air several thousand prime-time TV commercials in English and Spanish, inviting inactive Catholics to return to their religious roots.
In addition to Sacramento, dioceses in Chicago, Omaha, Providence, R.I., and four other cities will launch the “Catholics Come Home” advertising blitz during Advent, the period before Christmas.
Four more dioceses will follow during Lent next spring. Los Angeles is not among the initial group but could be part of a nationwide campaign slated for December 2010.
"I'm hoping that a significant number of people will give us another look," Sacramento Bishop Jaime Soto said of the campaign. "Many Catholics have a sense of believing but not always a sense of belonging."
The potential audience is huge.
Only about one-quarter of U.S. Catholics say they attend Mass every week, and a majority go to religious services a few times a year or less, according to the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate at Georgetown University, which conducts social science research about the Catholic church.
Researchers there also found that two-thirds of Catholics believe they can be good members of their faith without attending Mass regularly.
Inactive Catholics cite a number of reasons for their absence. Many do not believe that missing Mass is a sin, the center reported. Others say they are too busy with family or work, or, as other analysts point out, are more interested in material happiness than spiritual fulfillment.
"There is a strange pattern of people who aren't practicing but still have beliefs and pick up parts of the faith," said Mark Gray, a research associate with the center. "They may give up meat on Fridays during Lent or attend Ash Wednesday services."
Apparently so. What other reason would ANY institution have for allowing so many pro abortionists to be members? They are afraid of all the northeast money going away if they started excommunicating everyone that deserved it.
I had not noticed this earlier post of yours. Please pardon my oversight.
I have seen precious little "disagreement" about literalism among Catholics on this forum.
Why is Catholicism so much more understanding of moslems than of creationists?
And when this claim has been proven to be untrue, continuing to make it constitutes BEARING FALSE WITNESS.
As Peter, the first Pope, said “Where can we go”, it’s still true today. Following truth leads to Rome. “That we all be one.”
Where are the specific examples of the Catholic Church changing its teaching on abortion, birth control or women priests?
You wrote:
“Welcome back!”
Thank you!
“Take this in fraternal charity: when every single Catholic poster stands by evolution and “modern science” while simultaneously “having the faith of a little child” with regard to the gospels, it drives anyone with a sense of consistency batty.”
It might. Most people, however, have no great difficulty with it. They simply assume - whether right or wrong - that Genesis 1-11 is not to be taken in the most literal manner. Even though I disagree with that view, I can see why someone whould hold it and realize most people would not bat an eye at it.
“When the only other Catholic on this forum besides you and wideawake who interprets Genesis literally absolutely refuses to publicly disagree with his co-religionists, and when “ultra-traditionalist” Catholics (who shall remain nameless) ignore the whole inerrancy debate altogether, it sends a very clear message: a refusal to see the Bible as absolutely free of all errors of any kind whatsoever is part of the Catholic identity.”
No. The use of an allegorical story does not imply error. Jesus told the parable of Lazarus and the Rich Man in Luke 16. Now, am I to believe that the story actually happened or is scripture in error? Neither. It never happened, but Jesus used it as a teaching device. Like I said, beware of tunnel vision.
“No wonder the Kolbe Center and Scripture Catholic can’t make any headway. They’re regarded as “nor really Catholic.””
No, they’re regarded as troglodye, anti-scientific throwbacks. So am I. :) Throw in Robert Sungenis in that group too. By the way, they are making headway. I personally know a handful of people who have become much more literal in their interpretation of Genesis 1-11 in just the last two years. I had a small role to play in that too.
Does that irritate you?
This is your personal opinion.
Catholicism understands that ALL love comes from God regardless if they creationalists or ANYONE else.
I don't understand why it's so important for you to place God within the human concept of time,dear friend.
If a belief causes someone to treat others with disdain than the person is not doing what God wants them to do anyway
The answer is the same as it was for Peter, where can we go but to Jesus not Rome. We are one in Christ, not one in Rome.
This is a verrry long thread and I may make general remarks but it is a task to enter late in the game and answer others post by post.
In his August, 1907 encyclical Pascendi Domenici Gregis, and its July 2007 accompanying syllabus of errors Lamentabile Sane, Pope St, Pius X (the only pope of the last 300 or so years to be canonized so far), denied the theory of evolution and declared the Old and New Testaments to be the inerrant word of God. I don't claim to be a theologian but I figure it is safe for any Catholic (or anyone else if they so choose) to depend on Pascendi Domenici Gregis and Lamentabile Sane.
I will look and see if I find anything else worthy of response.
The Catholic Church was the Church, is the Church and will always be the Church until the end. We have that on the Authority of our Founder, Jesus Christ. If He is not a high enough Authority for you to trust, soooo long!
You know, it’s truly remarkable how many non-Catholics have honed in on this thread as if they felt threatened by the notion of Catholics returning to their faith.
“To say, “Mary has no role in salvation,” is to engage in Mariology.”
No one holding that belief is engaging in Mariology. One sentence does not make a study - and Mariology is “The body of belief or dogma or the systematic study of the Virgin Mary and her role in the Incarnation.”
If you feel the need to make a systematic study of the Virgin Mary, then you have already lost the focus Jesus demanded.
“27 As Jesus was saying these things, a woman in the crowd called out, “Blessed is the mother who gave you birth and nursed you.” 28 He replied, “Blessed rather are those who hear the word of God and obey it.”
It isn’t that Mary is a bad person - far from it. But to pay serious attention to Mary is to miss the boat on what makes her important - Jesus!
Jesus doesn’t even call her “Mother” in scripture. Not once. He calls her, “Woman”. I don’t believe for a moment that he was being disrespectful of her. I think he is guarding against the heathen tendency to make more of her than God wanted.
Now look at the incredible statement I posted by the Pope:
“Let all, therefore, try to approach with greater trust the throne of grace and mercy of our Queen and Mother, and beg for strength in adversity, light in darkness, consolation in sorrow; above all let them strive to free themselves from the slavery of sin and offer an unceasing homage, filled with filial loyalty, to their Queenly Mother. Let her churches be thronged by the faithful, her feast-days honored; may the beads of the Rosary be in the hands of all; may Christians gather, in small numbers and large, to sing her praises in churches, in homes...”
Mary doesn’t give grace or mercy - God does. You cannot free yourself from the slavery of sin - God does that. Offer unceasing homage? Let HER churches be thronged? May Christians gather to sing her praises?
That is blasphemy, and is obscene to anyone who worships God.
ONLY within, as some one else has already posted, certain limited sphere. For example, She can speak reliably on what a just war is in principle. She cannot with as much reliability say whether this or that war is just. She can say reliably whether or not or in what respects one might say everyone is due some kind of medical care. She does not say that the only or even the best way to try to give everyone his due is through the actions of a central government. There is PLENTY of room for debate.
Thus to argue against the Church would be to commit heresy.
Wrong again. To argue against her might be a good thing to do. It might help clarify teaching. However once she has spoken definitively on a matter of faith or morals to persist advisedly in holding an opinion contrary to what she teaches might qualify as heresy.
To make false blanket assertions about her without taking reasonable care to see if they are accurate is not heresy. It's not heretical to be irresponsible, to despise the truth, or to be imprudent. Wrong, yes; heretical, no.
I will quote for you John 3:16-18:
16 For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.
17 For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved.
18 He that believeth on him is not condemned: but he that believeth not is condemned already, because he hath not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God.
The Word of God is quite explicit, especially in John 3:18.
So my answer would be God says she will go to hell. Anyone who does not believe in Jesus as the Savior and Son of God will be condemned. There's little equivocation, no exceptions in those verses.
Jesus claimed He is the SOLE path to salvation when He stated "I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life; no one comes to the Father except through Me". You can only reach Heaven, reach God through Jesus.
Is this not the teaching of the Catholic Church?
Rome is where Christ is now and the gates of hell will not prevail against Peter the Rock, the Church. The Real Presence makes it so.
I have no idea who Donal Anthony Foley may be or have been but I suspect I should not encourage anyone to educate me on that subject. Papal documents tend to be replete with Scriptural references. We do, BTW, accept the entire body of Scriptures and do not reject those books inconvenient to Luther's ideology such as Maccabees which includes praying for the souls of disobedient Jewish soldiers killed in battle and sending money to the Temple for sacrifices to that end.
That as to which Catholics have always experienced grave suspicion and toward which we have exercised outright rejection is reformation notions of every person his or her own interpreter of Scripture and the thousands of errors that have arisen from the rejection by reformationists of the granting to Peter of the keys of the Kingdom and the power to bind and loose. It is understandable that those outside the Church reject this Scriptural delegation since no other Church of any apostolic succession has a pope or successor to Peter. What fun is adherence to the reformation if one cannot make it up as one goes along without all those inconvenient truths of the Magisterium.
It is not G-d's Word that is full of errors. That cannot be. It is the distortion of G-d's Word by those who claim to rest solely on the authority of G-d's Word (as they see it). Many claim to resist the "traditions of men" as they call it while believing this week's erroneous interpretation of the Rev. Mr. Whazzisname who has no more authority than anyone in his pews.
What opens the Church or any other institution to evolutionism and a lot of other sins is the sin of Adam and Eve by which all of us became fallen creatures. The papacy enjoys infallibility not impeccability (sinlessness). There may well be many popes in hell where they are joined with many who thought that they were "saved" by merely speaking a rote formula as a teenager regardless of future behavior. Catholics believe that salvation is impossible without the one-time sacrifice of Christ on the cross, but that, like Ohio State, we must grind our way to the end with endless repetition of three yards and a cloud of dust until death.
If G-d wants to make anyone an authority on Scripture or in charge of the keys, He can arrange for that person to be pope. God is wonderful. He can do anything.
Oh, reading Scripture, praying to God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit; under certain circumstances caring forr the widow and orphan, and so forth.
It is possible to say and to think quite extravagantly nice things about somebody without thinking that he is God. A well done portrait in, say, oils resembles the subject, but only a fool would confuse the portrait with the subject. And one might praise the portrait and it's magnificence, one might even go on at length about the excellences of the portrait. And then somebody who came to the situation more eager to condemn than to know what he was condemning, more ready to disparage than to determine whether he understood the ting he was disparaging would speedily accuse me of loving the portrait as much as its subject.
In response to which, of course, one makes a gentle effort to clarify things. And if that effort is rebuffed, then one laughs. I know whom I worship. I don't pretend to know whom others worship, even when they eagerly tell me what they cannot and most obviously do not know.
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