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."
Then how do you fight for the Church?
And since you were divorced, did you get an annulment before remarrying? Otherwise many here would say you cannot be a Catholic.
Nope. I wasn't married in the Church in my first marriage. So I guess I was a fornicator. So be it. I was young, and we all screw up.
Why would you miss Mass knowing that Jesus is there??? Right there in the building that you go to worship in and that He is waiting for you to consume Him???
If I believed that stuff, I wouldn't miss a single Mass...Ever...
“48. 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, in hospitals, in prisons. May Mary’s name be held in highest reverence, a name sweeter than honey and more precious than jewels; may none utter blasphemous words, the sign of a defiled soul, against that name graced with such dignity and revered for its motherly goodness; let no one be so bold as to speak a syllable which lacks the respect due to her name.
49. All, according to their state, should strive to bring alive the wondrous virtues of our heavenly Queen and most loving Mother through constant effort of mind and manner. Thus will it come about that all Christians, in honoring and imitating their sublime Queen and Mother, will realize they are truly brothers, and with all envy and avarice thrust aside, will promote love among classes, respect the rights of the weak, cherish peace. No one should think himself a son of Mary, worthy of being received under her powerful protection, unless, like her, he is just, gentle and pure, and shows a sincere desire for true brotherhood, not harming or injuring but rather helping and comforting others.”
If that doesn’t qualify as worship, what does?
Someone who is excommunicated (whether latae sententiae or ferendae sententiae) is still a Catholic. They aren't Catholics in good standing, however.
But why do you think someone who has been missing Mass is latae sententiae excommunicated?
This is completely and absolutely false -- both in terms of a suicide bomber being somehow assured of going to heaven, and a Protestant of going to hell -- and is a fine example of what Archbishop Sheen meant when he said that people hate what they mistakenly believe the Catholic Church teaches.
Making restitution for sins is obscene?
The majority of Catholics who actually attend a Catholic church on a weekly basis voted for McCain.
I don't think it's fair to blame the church for the misdeeds of people who don't obey her in the first place. It's kind of like blaming a mother for the crimes committed by a son who ran away long ago.
Explain Catechism 841, then.
And is it your contention that the Catholic Church assumes all Protestants are saved? That you can be saved outside the Church?
That may be. Of course, then we have a situation where the actual "real Catholics" are about 1/5th the number claimed by the Church.
I don't think it's fair to blame the church for the misdeeds of people who don't obey her in the first place. It's kind of like blaming a mother for the crimes committed by a son who ran away long ago.
Fair enough.
Good question. Here's the answer: what you quoted is not worship at all. A priest offering a sacrifice on an altar is worship.
We offer the one sacrifice of the Son to the Father through the Spirit. What sacrifice do you offer? If your answer is that you don't offer any, then I suggest that the problem is not that we honor Mary too much, but that you honor God too little.
Saying someone will burn in Purgatory for a sin God has forgiven him is obscene. It means either God doesn’t know how to forgive, or He only forgives part-way.
The idea that if you do XYZ, God will fully forgive you means we can exchange good works for bad - the accounting approach to acceptance by God, which is in violation of practically every page of scripture.
While we are saved to do good works, no good works can save us. Making restitution to humans after forgiveness from God is fine. Making restitution to God for forgiveness is not.
“4But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, 5even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ— by grace you have been saved— 6and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, 7so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. 8For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, 9 not a result of works, so that no one may boast. 10For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.” - Ephesians 2
Please notice the verb tenses in verse 6: raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus.
You error in limiting worship to “A priest offering a sacrifice on an altar...”
And if that is how Catholics worship - by offering a sacrifice on an altar - then perhaps Catholics ought to consider:
“He has no need, like those high priests, to offer sacrifices daily, first for his own sins and then for those of the people, since he did this once for all when he offered up himself.” and “For Christ has entered, not into holy places made with hands, which are copies of the true things, but into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God on our behalf. Nor was it to offer himself repeatedly, as the high priest enters the holy places every year with blood not his own, for then he would have had to suffer repeatedly since the foundation of the world. But as it is, he has appeared once for all at the end of the ages to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself.”
Again - please notice the verb tenses, and the duration - once for all.
The sacrifice for my sins WAS offered - once for all. No priest can redo it, or re-enact it. It isn’t an ongoing sacrifice, ever present before God. Past tense.
“But when Christ had offered for all time a single sacrifice for sins, he sat down at the right hand of God, waiting from that time until his enemies should be made a footstool for his feet. For by a single offering he has perfected for all time those who are being sanctified.”
Perhaps less time honoring Mary, and more reading the Word?
Okay: The plan of salvation also includes those who acknowledge the Creator, in the first place amongst whom are the Muslims
You need to interpret this according to Catholic teaching dating back to Aquinas and before, not according to anyone else's understanding.
It amounts to saying: "It's very nice that Muslims 'acknowledge the Creator'. We cannot say with certainty that God, who wills all men to be saved and come to knowledge of the truth, will not save some Muslims -- in spite of the errors they hold."
It is in no sense a claim that all Muslims are going to heaven. Don't you think we'd first have to decide that all Catholics are going to heaven ... yet we don't; the only Catholics the church teaches infallibly are saved are canonized saints.
And is it your contention that the Catholic Church assumes all Protestants are saved?
As I just explained, we don't assume that all Catholics are saved. (Haven't you ever read Dante's "Inferno," which depicts hell filled with wicked Popes and bishops?)
That you can be saved outside the Church?
Absolutely, positively, nobody will be saved outside the Catholic Church. Not Muslims, not Protestants, nobody.
That is not the same as saying that only people who profess Catholicism on earth will be saved.
It is the same as saying that there will not be a Muslim heaven, not a Baptist heaven, not a Jewish heaven. All religious disunity on earth is the consequence of sin. There is one "church" in heaven only, and it is universal ... the Greek word is "catholic".
First off, the church has never defined anything about the nature of purgatory, so the concept of someone "burning in purgatory" is not de fide dogma. (I'll grant you that a case can be made for it from Catholic theological speculation or popular piety.)
But I think you need to go back to your Bible, and reflect on what Paul meant when he spoke of someone being "saved, but only as through fire," what Hebrews means when it says "Our God is a consuming fire," and what Revelation means when it says "nothing unclean shall enter" heaven.
Sounds like the dross has to be removed in order to enter the presence of an utterly holy God.
It means either God doesn’t know how to forgive, or He only forgives part-way.
Quite to the contrary. It means he forgives completely, so completely he's going to cleanse every bit of the stain of sin from your soul. Not merely the juridical guilt, but even the damage sin did to your soul and the attachment you may have to it.
And that might hurt a little.
You ought to consider that that is the Epistle to the Hebrews, not the Epistle to the Catholics. It's critiquing Jewish sacrifice under the Mosaic law.
I also should point out that we are offering precisely that same "once for all" sacrifice of which you speak. Not a new sacrifice, not a different sacrifice.
The same, eternal sacrifice.
That is why Hebrews can say -- in a verse that Protestant commentaries, to their discredit, have to explain away -- "we have an altar from which those who serve the [Jewish] tabernacle have no right to eat".
An altar is precisely a table for sacrifice. If you don't have an altar from which you eat a sacrifice, you don't follow the religion of the author of Hebrews.
If I believed that stuff, I wouldn't miss a single Mass...Ever...
This will cause the pictures to fall from the walls, but for the first (and maybe last) time, I have to heartily applaud an Iscool post. :-)
You refer to 1 Cor 3...which reads:
” 10 According to the grace of God given to me, like a skilled master builder I laid a foundation, and someone else is building upon it. Let each one take care how he builds upon it. 11For no one can lay a foundation other than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ. 12Now if anyone builds on the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw— 13 each one’s work will become manifest, for the Day will disclose it, because it will be revealed by fire, and the fire will test what sort of work each one has done. 14If the work that anyone has built on the foundation survives, he will receive a reward. 15If anyone’s work is burned up, he will suffer loss, though he himself will be saved, but only as through fire.
16 Do you not know that you are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in you? 17If anyone destroys God’s temple, God will destroy him. For God’s temple is holy, and you are that temple.”
Pretty tough to pull Purgatory out of that!
“I also should point out that we are offering precisely that same “once for all” sacrifice of which you speak. Not a new sacrifice, not a different sacrifice.”
Yes, you ARE offering a sacrifice that WAS made. Guess God didn’t know how to write - he meant an ongoing sacrifice, always before him - but didn’t know how to say it. So instead he used the past tense, and said “once for all’.
As for your ‘altar’, in a sense we do, as the writer of Hebrews noted. Here is the passage:
“9 Do not be led away by diverse and strange teachings, for it is good for the heart to be strengthened by grace, not by foods, which have not benefited those devoted to them. 10 We have an altar from which those who serve the tent have no right to eat. 11 For the bodies of those animals whose blood is brought into the holy places by the high priest as a sacrifice for sin are burned outside the camp. 12 So Jesus also suffered outside the gate in order to sanctify the people through his own blood. 13 Therefore let us go to him outside the camp and bear the reproach he endured. 14 For here we have no lasting city, but we seek the city that is to come. 15 Through him then let us continually offer up a sacrifice of praise to God, that is, the fruit of lips that acknowledge his name. 16 Do not neglect to do good and to share what you have, for such sacrifices are pleasing to God.”
In this analogy, Jesus is the altar. When blood was offered as a sacrifice for sin, the body of the animal was burnt outside the camp.(v 11) Jesus, likewise, suffered outside the gate (v 12). Therefor, lets go to Him outside the gate, and offer...what? Jesus again?
No! “Through him then let us continually offer up a sacrifice of praise to God, that is, the fruit of lips that acknowledge his name. 16 Do not neglect to do good and to share what you have, for such sacrifices are pleasing to God.”
Those who haven’t come to Christ cannot offer such a sacrifice, but we can - of PRAISE and DOING GOOD!
It helps to read chapters instead of partial verses.
My pictures fell already. :-)
But...Iscool doesn’t believe “that stuff”, anyway, so his post was more like damning with faint praise. So I don’t give him any points for it.
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