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?
Pffft. Those fools and their demands for some sort of canonical teaching of scripture.
Well, I'm off to my local Westboro Baptist Church. Gonna be a great sermon today on how the Bible says God hates fags.
So now we know where the Church got its "burn the heretics at the stake" authority. That is claiming a Power that belongs not to any manmade institution but to God alone. Ever hear "Judge not lest ye be judged"? Well, it's not telling us NOT to judge but if we do judge, judge righteously. House arrest over heliocentricity was not just. It was brutality and don't quote any Catholic writings saying he was well cared for.
“Well if you are citing him as authoritative source shouldn’t he be? Doh those pesky facts.”
I’m not even sure what you’re talking about. I wasn’t citing anyone as an authority. I was just pointing out that your “interpretation” consists of removing words from the verse. And then I gave two different points of view (my own, and someone else’s) on what the verse does mean, when the word you omitted is returned.
I’m guessing it’s a Catholic thing that makes you assume nobody else thinks for themselves.
"But the Paraclete, the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in My name, He will teach you all things, and bring all things to your mind, whatsoever I shall have said to you." John 14:26
Yes that would be Jesus that gave His Church that authority:
Mat 16:19 I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven."
Yes, I specifically studied these things in my classes. I’m a history major but I studied History of Science.
One of the primary arguments against heliocentrism wasn’t actually proven until very late in the game. The argument being, that if we are travelling through space, we should expect to see effects of it in the sky called stellar aberration. The problem isn’t that heliocentrism was wrong, it is just that stars are far, far away.
James Bradley first observed stellar aberration in 1725. Look it up - it’s a fascinating process. It was finally evidence, but it wasn’t the evidence they were looking for. Periodic oscillation didn’t fit the theories... and certainly didn’t fit Galileo’s theories.
It’s a really simple question - why does ‘random person you cited’ have any credibility on interpreting scripture?
I won’t be telling God much of anything. I’ll be humbly accepting His judgment as He’ll render the decision as to where I’ll be spending eternity.
I'm Catholic after traveling the same path and thank God every day the grace that lead me to His Church.
Keep on reading, madame.
"And account the longsuffering of our Lord, salvation; as also our most dear brother Paul, according to the wisdom given him, hath written to you: As also in all his epistles, speaking in them of these things; in which are certain things hard to be understood, which the unlearned and unstable wrest, as they do also the other scriptures, to their own destruction." 2 Peter 3:15-16
Why did Jesus establish the Church?
Or you could go the route of Bro. Cosomo in Brother Astronomer who, as a Jesuit, proudly points out the Jesuits always supported Galileo and blames the whole debacle on the Dominicans if I have it right in my memory...... :-)
How do you understand the scriptures Rome has not officially interpreted for you?
Actually he did.
"And account the longsuffering of our Lord, salvation; as also our most dear brother Paul, according to the wisdom given him, hath written to you: As also in all his epistles, speaking in them of these things; in which are certain things hard to be understood, which the unlearned and unstable wrest, as they do also the other scriptures, to their own destruction." 2 Peter 3:15-16
It must have been at least a decade ago when I was visiting a European Catholic country, I forget its name, it doesn’t matter, and there, in front of a historic Catholic Cathedral was a raving American snake handler preacher preaching his depraved version of the Holy Book in the local native language which he mispronounced, misgrammarized, and the native passers-by just ignored him or mocked him, he gained no converts, that’s for sure. I mentioned this recently in an e-mail to a friend who lives there, and he replied: “Oh yes, that’s the guy who later secured the local rights to the translations of JK Rowlings’ Hairy Potty magic books and made a fortune”. So, as you can see, that it’s all about one thing: the moolah!
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