The faithful rattled by planned closing of three Catholic churches in Bridgeport

Connecticut Post ^ | October 8, 2011 | John Burgeson

[Cronos]

Which seems quite a common occurence for knee-jerk anti-Catholicism. Some groups just see what they want to see.

[Cronos]

Oh, even more "Onion" Articles just like TV Evangelists Unite to Beam Gospel to the Stars”

The articles you post are bad fiction.

[Quix]

Avoid the bother, smvoice.

Someone would just come along and say:

YOU SURE ARE--YOU SORRY PRODDY!

LOL.

However, using left and right carets vs brackets, the following would do. I don't want to take up the time to refresh my memory about how to do the text in a box.

[b]
[font color=009999]
[font face=broadway]
[font size=+5]
[center]


results in:

!SORRY!

add to close: [/b][/font][/font][/font][/center]

[smvoice]

And some groups just eat kielbasa and sit in judgement. Those are the groups that apologies are wasted on.

[smvoice]

THANKS, Quix! It can just wear a person out, apologizing to one when a thousand were pinged...;)

[Undecided 2012]

I went to Catholic school in the Northeast. Neighborhoods changed from Irish Catholic or Italian Catholic & like a poster posted earlier, they were packed on Sunday’s, standing room only. Plus all the kids went to Catholic school. The jobs left and neighbors moved out.
It’s not unsimilar to ethnic cleaning. Over the course of a decade, one neighborhood after another fell.
Section 8 housing put the ethnic cleansing on the fast course.
Most of these neighborhoods now are complete cesspools. Make no mistake many elderly black and white are prisoners in their own homes. It’s really pitiful.

[Quix]

I know that feeling! LOL.

[Cronos]

False apologies are false apologies. To persistently mis-read anything so that it fits in with their anti-Christian agenda as your group does is hypocritical

[Cronos]

Furthermore, why not come out straight and admit that your group does not believe in the Trinity, eh?

[smvoice]

I’ll pray for you. Wisdom is a gift. May God bless you richly.

[Clemenza]

1. Bridgeport had a huge population of Poles and Slovaks at one time.

2. Those of us of Italian ancestry don't like being lumped in with the Irish, who came before we did, and were not very nice to my ancestors.

3. The fastest growing populations in Bridgeport for the past 20 years have been the Hispanics and Brazilians, who are as much cafeteria Catholics as the white "Catholics" who live in suburban Fairfield County.

The northeast in general has become rapidly secularized, which has become more pronounced as the pre-boomers die off and their parochial allegiances with them.

[Cronos]

Thanks, but I believe in our Christian God — your group does not. If your cult wishes to worship whatever, go ahead. We Christians (Catholics, Orthodox, Lutherans, Anglicans, Methodists, etc. etc) will continue worshipping our Lord God and Savior Jesus Christ.

[Alex Murphy]

Alex, you posted a thread last week about the Catholic Church..part of the article talked about the $200 million a week the Vatican receives from the U.S. Do you know which thread that was?

That would be this one - Veteran reporter debunks myths surrounding the Vatican. Per author John Allen:

The annual operating budget of the Vatican City State is $270 million, he said, comparing that with the annual operating budget of the University of Notre Dame in South Bend, Ind., which is $1.2 billion. The Catholic Church in the United States collects $200 million a week, almost enough to fund the Vatican for a year, he said.

[smvoice]

Thanks! Although, if you read the rest of this thread...

[BlackElk]

Ahhh, but at least the Vatican, unlike Notre Shame, is actually Catholic.

[Mad Dawg]

I would love if it worked out that we could go waste money at Starbucks together.

And MANY thanks for the prayers. I sort of want to (win the lottery and then) lay on a huge party (and holy hour, of course) if they actually let me make the promises.

I REALLY have to work on the whole mortification thing. :-)

[netmilsmom]

>>Our parish is SRO on what we call the “last chance Mass” 5:15 Sunday PM<<

*snicker* Last chance?
Our last Mass on Sunday is 8:30 pm.

[netmilsmom]

>>I’ll pray for you. Wisdom is a gift. May God bless you richly.<<

That was actually a very nice thing to say. May God bless you as well.

Although we seem to stand on either side of a proverbial line, when one of us is big enough to say, “Ooops, pardon me.” that should be recognized.

Lord love you!

[Mad Dawg]

YOU SURE ARE--YOU SORRY PRODDY!

My favorite retort is:

Well (harrumph, harrumph) you've certainly got a lot to be sorry about!

---

For a moment's seriousness:

I think one of the most difficult chores of the adult Christian is to apple "[Charity] rejoiceth not in iniquity but rejoiceth in the truth,...." (Paul, under the guidance of the Spirit, really was a remarkably insightful guy!)

In my (mostly failing) efforts to live as though I Cor 13 actually mattered, it's helpful to me to remember the saying, "If it's too good to be true, it's probably not true." I guess a corollary is "If it's about my opponents and it's too deliciously wicked to be true ...."

But the real spiritual opportunity, in my view, is to notice that there's a part of me that really wants terrible things to be true about my opponents, that is disappointed when they are better people than I thought.

Children of the Lord, THAT is messed up!

[Quix]

INDEED. And well put.

I greatly agree. Thankfully, God is not finished with me yet.

John Wimber quoted in

EVERYONE GETS TO PLAY talks a lot about such issues.

He really was a very humble man. More so now, I’d bet. LOL.

Folks kept trying to give him titles and he always refused. “Just call me John.”