Posted on 05/31/2013 2:44:05 PM PDT by NYer
Do our Catholic children and most adults know what these images teach?
All of us know one of the elephants in the room of the Catholic Church. Our religious education programs are not handing on the essence of our Catholic Faith, our parents are befuddled about their role in handing on the faith and the materials we use are vapid or if good do not make an impression on young minds. We are afraid of asking for memorization and thus most don't remember anything they've learned about God and Church other than some niceties and feel good emotions.
I teach each class of our grades 1-6 (we don't have 7th or 8th) each Thursday, rotating classes from week to week. For the last two years I have used Baltimore Catechism #1 as my text book. It is wonderful to use with children and it is so simple yet has so much content. If Catholics, all Catholics, simply studied Baltimore Catechism #1, we would have very knowledgeable Catholics.
These past two years I've used Baltimore Catechism #2 with our adult religious program which we call Coffee and Conversation following our 9:30 AM Sunday Mass, which coincides with our CCD program which we call PREP (Parish Religious Education Program).
This #2 book has more content and is for middle school, but upper elementary school children must have been more capable of more serious content back when this book was formulated and used through the mid 1960's because it is a great book to use with adults and not childish at all. We all use this same book as a supplemental book for the RCIA because it is so clear, nobly simple and chocked full of content!
Yes, there are some adjustments that need to be made to some chapters, but not that many, in light of Vatican II and the new emphasis we have on certain aspects of Church that are not present in the Baltimore Catechism. But these are really minor.
What is more important though is that when the Baltimore Catechism was used through the mid 1960's it was basically the only book that was used for children in elementary and junior high school. It was used across the board in the USA thus uniting all Catholics in learning the same content. There was not, in other words, a cottage industry of competing publishing houses selling new books and different content each year.
The same thing has occurred with liturgical music, a cottage industry of big bucks has developed around the sale of new hymnals, missalettes and new music put on the open market for parishes to purchase. It is a money making scheme.
Why do our bishop allow this to happen in both liturgical music and parish catechesis? The business of selling stuff to parishes and making mega bucks off of it is a scandal that has not be addressed.
In the meantime, our liturgies suffer and become fragmented because every parish uses a different resource for liturgical music and the same is true of religious formation, everyone uses something different of differing quality or no quality at all.
Isn't it time to wake up and move forward with tried and true practices that were tossed out in favor of a consumerist's approach to our faith that has weakened our liturgies, our parishes and our individual Catholics?
It is cannot be an excuse. I am neither asking to be forgiven or seeking to remove blame. It was an elucidation. Were the plain words of Scripture not so plain when they support the Church?
Peace be with you.
Absolutely not. The Holy Spirit (the Paraclete) guides today exactly like it did in Acts 15.
Peace be to you
Eve was not named until after the fall (Genesis 3:20) at which Adam claimed dominion over her. Adam and Eve were of one flesh (Genesis 2:24) so the sin was shared equally. Just as it is a linguist convention to refer to all of humanity as man or mankind so was it when St. Paul was humanity that caused sin to enter the world. Were this not so death would not have spread to women, but only to all men (Romans 5:12).
Peace be with you.
That was an excellent and well reasoned response.
Golly!
That is SWELL!
O...
K...
Pope Stephen VI (896–897), who had his predecessor Pope Formosus exhumed, tried, de-fingered, briefly reburied, and thrown in the Tiber.[1]
Pope John XII (955–964), who gave land to a mistress, murdered several people, and was killed by a man who caught him in bed with his wife.
Pope Benedict IX (1032–1044, 1045, 1047–1048), who "sold" the Papacy
Pope Boniface VIII (1294–1303), who is lampooned in Dante's Divine Comedy
Pope Urban VI (1378–1389), who complained that he did not hear enough screaming when Cardinals who had conspired against him were tortured.[2]
Pope Alexander VI (1492–1503), a Borgia, who was guilty of nepotism and whose unattended corpse swelled until it could barely fit in a coffin.[3]
Pope Leo X (1513–1521), a spendthrift member of the Medici family who once spent 1/7 of his predecessors' reserves on a single ceremony[4]
Pope Clement VII (1523–1534), also a Medici, whose power-politicking with France, Spain, and Germany got Rome sacked.
WHAT!!??
PROGRESS??
Why??
Shouldn't your church be the SAME as it was when JESUS started it?
Why are you 'progressing'?
Sigh...
Romans 5:12
Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man...
From such fraudulent foundations are built the doctrines of the assumption of Mary, her sinlessness, her having just one child. False history, false gospel, false doctrine.
Are the convoluted words of the Church not so plain when they twist the plainly written Bible?
And if a con-joined set of twins are separated, and one then kills someone; do they BOTH go to jail?
There are none so blind as those who WILL not see.
Dear Megan ... there is nothing prideful about responding to someone's statement, with a question. You posted this statement: Maybe you might want to ask Catholic kids to read the Bible. It’s a radical idea, I know, but still..., and in a sarcastic manner.
Another freeper picked up the theme with his statement: Studying the Bible instead of dull text books would probably work out better. Of course, they’d probably come out not being Catholic though, but that’s fine with Christ., also in a sarcastic manner.
I agreed with you both on the value of children learning the Bible but scripture alone does not address all the contemporary issues that we face in life - or does it? For that reason, I posed this question:
You may have a point! Please show me what the Bible says about in-vitro fertilization, contraception and divorce ... what does it say about two people living together outside of marriage. I'll grant you the graphics in the Baltimore Catechism are dated but the material is current, all of it based on scripture.
You posted your statement at comment #3 and I posed the question on comment #54. It has taken until comment #1118 for you to respond, not with a direct response but as a personal attack. If you don't know where scripture addresses these issues, all you have to do is say so.
Pax et Bonum
Sin didn't come through mankind. It clearly teaches ONE MAN.
Romans 5 could not be written more plainly. Paul even names that one man whose transgression brought the sin in verse 14.
Romans 5:14 Yet death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over those whose sinning was not like the transgression of Adam, who was a type of the one who was to come.
The depths of brainwashing that exists in Catholicism that keeps one from being able to read and understand the clear meaning of simply everyday words to communicate something is staggering.
Satan is still getting mileage out of that line of "Did God really say..... "?
...and death through sin, and so death spread to all men, because all sinned."
Unless "men" means all humanity you have you proof that all women are without sin and will never die. You sure you want to got here?
Peace be to you
Of course it does.
God put in there everything we need to make correct moral decisions.
The proof to the contrary is that there is not complete unanimity on interpretation and without an authority other that what it means to the individual your interpretation is no more valid than mine or Pol Pots.
"Now I exhort you, brethren, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that you all agree and that there be no divisions among you, but that you be made complete in the same mind and in the same judgment." - 1 Corinthians 1:10
Should we take a vote?
“God put in (the Bible) everything we need to make correct moral decisions.”
Exactly.
Ping for later
Please show me what the Bible says about in-vitro fertilization, contraception and divorce ... what does it say about two people living together outside of marriage. I really would like to know.
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