Posted on 03/30/2002 7:53:37 PM PST by malakhi
| Statesmen may plan and speculate for liberty, but it is religion and morality alone which can establish the principles upon which freedom can securely stand. The only foundation of a free constitution is pure virtue. - John Adams |
-Kevin
What would be a record is Silence from you more than once when you could otherwise be trying to provoke someone. Imagine silence - and emulate it.
Love.
I don't know if your married, but if you are, do you give your wife flowers or gifts out of your duty as a husband or out of love for her??
Twenty years, love.
Do you do things for your wife out of duty or out of love??
Love.
Can you define this love for your wife???
Yes, my actions and thoughts toward her are as consistent with the last 5 commandments as I can humanly be. Since I"m not a perfect man, I can't do it perfectly but my love grows daily for her as my love for God grows.
1 Cor 13 states that if we have all faith so as to move mountains, but not love, then we are nothing. If we keep all the commandments of God, but do not have love, we are nothing.
I agree, because then it's just works without really knowing God.
You must be born anew. (John 3:7).
| Tuesday, April 9, 2002 Easter Tuesday |
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Nicodemus was clearly puzzled. He had no idea why Jesus would say that someone has to be born again to enter the kingdom of heaven. Though Jesus seemed to be speaking in riddles, he meant exactly what he was saying. As Catholics, we too may feel wary of this phrase because we think it sounds too "Protestant." Maybe we have had the experience of someone asking us if we are born again--and not being exactly sure what to say.
Well, if you are a baptized Catholic, you are born again! That's exactly what baptism is: rebirth in Christ. Through the waters of baptism we die with Jesus and then rise with him into a new life filled with the Spirit. The old life that we inherited as children of Adam and Eve ends, and a new life with Jesus begins.
We may ask, "If I am born again and my old life is dead, why is sin still so active in me? Why do I still struggle with anger, guilt, and envy, if this part of me died at baptism?" The answer is that our new life in Christ doesn't work automatically. It becomes real in our experience as we exercise faith in the life we have received.
If someone treats you badly today and you start to feel rage rising up, stop right there and pray. Ask the Holy Spirit for strength to forgive. Speak to this old life trying to reassert itself inside you: "You have no power over me anymore. I am filled with the Spirit of God, and his grace to help me now is greater than your desire to bring me down." As you do this, the new life of Jesus in you will become more evident, both to you and others. At the same time, the power of the old life will get weaker. It will never go away completely in this lifetime, but you will see significant victories, if you put faith in Christ's life within you.
"Jesus, I give you thanks today for making me a new creation. Release your Holy Spirit in me in a powerful way, so that I may live your new life, and turn away from the old life of sin. Lord, give me an opportunity to share this new life with someone I meet today."
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Have a great day, everyone!
AC
Unlike most of the Catholics on FR, the Catholics I've heard from around here don't seem to be too concerned about this. In recent weeks, there have been accusations against a priest in the Green Bay diocese who served for some years in my hometown back in the mid 1980s. The local paper did an article on the story, and the Catholic parishioners they interviewed were standing by the priest and accusing the alleged victim of making false accusations to try to get money out of the church.
My wife does some volunteer things with her church, and was talking with one of the volunteer coordinators last night. mrs. angelo brought up the scandals and the other lady just blew it off. She was more concerned about how this might affect the priests than how it affects the victims. My wife was taken aback by her reaction. In talking with my Catholic friends, I've also gotten a mixed reaction. Some take the stance that the church has to deal with this immediately; others think that this is just an excuse for people and the media to attack the church. Of course, the church opens itself to these attacks when it allows these men to remain priests.
Frankly, I don't know what to make of the complacency I've seen by some Catholics on this issue.
Obedience out of love is better than obedience out of duty. Although "duty" gets a bad rap in this comparison. There is no ignobility in doing something simply because its the right thing to do. In any case, obedience out of duty is better than disobedience.
With "catholic" used as an adjective, not as a proper noun.
Good point Angelo...
Can you cite when the word "catholic" was used with a "C" and provide a specific reference? Thanks!
Our local paper has been running with a story how the church paid a $500,000 settlement to three sisters (not nuns) who were serially sexually abused, including raped, by a priest in the Grand Rapids Michigan diocese in the 90's....
Everyone is coming forward at once it seems.
Funny, I asked that same question of Dr. Brian Kopp on another thread recently. Here is his reply:
| To: angelo Please see "Catholic" from the Catholic Encyclopedia at New Advent.org for entire entry, from which the following excerpt is taken. The word Catholic (katholikos from katholou -- throughout the whole, i.e., universal) occurs in the Greek classics, e.g., in Aristotle and Polybius, and was freely used by the earlier Christian writers in what we may call its primitive and non-ecclesiastical sense. Thus we meet such phrases as the "the catholic resurrection" (Justin Martyr), "the catholic goodness of God" (Tertullian), "the four catholic winds" (Irenaeus), where we should now speak of "the general resurrection", "the absolute or universal goodness of God", "the four principal winds", etc. The word seems in this usage to be opposed to merikos (partial) or idios (particular), and one familiar example of this conception still survives in the ancient phrase "Catholic Epistles" as applied to those of St. Peter, St. Jude, etc., which were so called as being addressed not to particular local communities, but to the Church at large. The combination "the Catholic Church" (he katholike ekklesia) is found for the first time in the letter of St. Ignatius to the Smyrnaeans, written about the year 110. The words run: "Wheresoever the bishop shall appear, there let the people be, even as where Jesus may be, there is the universal [katholike] Church." However, in view of the context, some difference of opinion prevails as to the precise connotation of the italicized word, and Kattenbusch, the Protestant professor of theology at Giessen, is prepared to interpret this earliest appearance of the phrase in the sense of mia mone, the "one and only" Church [Das apostolische Symbolum (1900), II, 922]. From this time forward the technical signification of the word Catholic meets us with increasing frequency both East and West, until by the beginning of the fourth century it seems to have almost entirely supplanted the primitive and more general meaning. The earlier examples have been collected by Caspari (Quellen zur Geschichte des Taufsymbols, etc., III, 149 sqq.). Many of them still admit the meaning "universal". The reference (c. 155) to "the bishop of the catholic church in Smyrna" (Letter on the Martyrdom of St. Polycarp, xvi), a phrase which necessarily presupposes a more technical use of the word, is due, some critics think, to interpolation. On the other hand this sense undoubtedly occurs more than once in the Muratorian Fragment (c. 180), where, for example, it is said of certain heretical writings that they "cannot be received in the Catholic Church". A little later, Clement of Alexandria speaks very clearly. "We say", he declares, "that both in substance and in seeming, both in origin and in development, the primitive and Catholic Church is the only one, agreeing as it does in the unity of one faith" (Stromata, VII, xvii; P. G., IX, 552). From this and other passages which might be quoted, the technical use seems to have been clearly established by the beginning of the third century. In this sense of the word it implies sound doctrine as opposed to heresy, and unity of organization as opposed to schism (Lightfoot, Apostolic Fathers, Part II, vol. I, 414 sqq. and 621 sqq.; II, 310-312). In fact Catholic soon became in many cases a mere appellative--the proper name, in other words, of the true Church founded by Christ, just as we now frequently speak of the Orthodox Church, when referring to the established religion of the Russian Empire, without adverting to the etymology of the title so used. It was probably in this sense that the Spaniard Pacian (Ep. i ad Sempron.) writes, about 370: "Christianus mihi nonem est, catholicus cognomen", and it is noteworthy that in various early Latin expositions of the Creed, notably that of Nicetas of Remesiana, which dates from about 375 (ed. Burn, 1905, p. lxx), the word Catholic in the Creed, though undoubtedly coupled at that date with the words Holy Church, suggests no special comment. Even in St. Cyprian (c. 252) it is difficult to determine how far he uses the word Catholic significantly, and how far as a mere name. The title, for instance, of his longest work is "On the Unity of the Catholic Church", and we frequently meet in his writings such phrases as catholica fides (Ep. xxv; ed. Hartel, II, 538); catholica unitas (Ep. xxv, p. 600); catholica regula (Ep. lxx, p. 767), etc. The one clear idea underlying all is orthodox as opposed to heretical, and Kattenbusch does not hesitate to admit that in Cyprian we first see how Catholic and Roman came eventually to be regarded as interchangeable terms. (Cf. Harnack, Dogmengeschichte, II, 149- 168.) Moreover it should be noted that the word Catholica was sometimes used substantively as the equivalent of ecclesia Catholica. An example is to be found in the Muratorian Fragment, another seemingly in Tertullian (De Praescrip, xxx), and many more appear at a later date, particularly among African Writers. Among the Greeks it was natural that while Catholic served as the distinctive description of the one Church, the etymological significance of the word was never quite lost sight of. Thus in the "Catechetical Discourses" of St. Cyril of Jerusalem (c. 347) he insists on the one hand (sect. 26): "And if ever thou art sojourning in any city, inquire not simply where the Lord's house is--for the sects of the profane also attempt to call their own dens, houses of the Lord--nor merely where the church is, but where is the Catholic Church. For this is the peculiar name of the holy body the mother of us all." On the other hand when discussing the word Catholic, which already appears in his form of the baptismal creed, St. Cyril remarks: (sect. 23) "Now it [the Church] is called Catholic because it is throughout the world, from one end of the earth to the other." But we shall have occasion to quote this passage more at length later on. There can be no doubt, however, that it was the struggle with the Donatists which first drew out the full theological significance of the epithet Catholic and passed it on to the schoolmen as an abiding possession. When the Donatists claimed to represent the one true Church of Christ, and formulated certain marks of the Church, which they professed to find in their own body, it could not fail to strike their orthodox opponents that the title Catholic, by which the Church of Christ was universally known, afforded a far surer test, and that this was wholly inapplicable to a sect which was confined to one small corner of the world. The Donatists, unlike all previous heretics, had not gone wrong upon any Christological question. It was their conception of Church discipline and organization which was faulty. Hence, in refuting them, a more or less definite theory of the Church and its marks was gradually evolved by St. Optatus (c. 370) and St. Augustine (c. 400). These doctors particularly insisted upon the note of Catholicity, and they pointed out that both the Old and the New Testament represented the Church as spread over all the earth. (See Turmel, "Histoire de la theologie positive, 1904, I, 162-166, with references there given.) Moreover, St. Augustine insists upon the consensus of Christians in the use of the name Catholic. "Whether they wish or no", he says, "heretics have to call the Catholic Church Catholic" ("De vera religione", xii). "Although all heretics wish to be styled Catholic, yet if any one ask where is the Catholic place of worship none of them would venture to point out his own conventicle" (Contra Epistolam quam vocant Fundamenti, iv). Of later exponents of this same thesis the most famous Vincent of Lerins (c. 434). His canon of Catholicity is "That which has been believed everywhere, always, and by all." "This", he adds, "is what is truly and properly Catholic" (Commonitorium, I, ii). 60 posted on 4/1/02 12:59 AM Central by Dr. Brian Kopp [ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 55 | View Replies | Report Abuse ] |
Agree. In fact, I would take it a step further and say that obedience out of duty can lead to obedience out of love and, in that sense, is (or can be) efficacious. An acquired taste, so to speak.
Hey that must be where we get that saying about a particular substance that hits the fan. These threads are amazingly educational. ;-)
Who are you kidding? Scripture, bud, is the benchmark. If you can't at least stick to it..
And, your reply to Colleen about praying to some St. Ethos was childish and didn`t do much to advance your position. What we Catholics believe in is Intercessory Prayer. Not alot different from my asking for a friend or loved one to intercede on my behalf. I`m off to work now, but will attempt to further explain intercessory prayer later.
I know what intercessory prayer is. I also know what talking to the dead is - and that it is a sin. I also know that thou shalt not make an imaga nor bow to it was written by Gods finger into stone. One of the things that God himself wrote and you've no fear or respect for it. Instead you tempt God as a religion by doing exactly what you're forbidden to do and calling it righteous by way of philosophy. Now, you tell me who's denigrating what. I'm offended at your great offence to god. I can care less if you're bothered by my pointing it out.
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