Christianity

[Tom Iron]

Walnut237,

Christianity has it's uses. Christian morality can't be beat. Even without the idea of the resurrection Christian morality stands as a beacon of light to the world.

screamingeagle,

I like that.

Tom Iron...

 

[Carolina Speed]

Screamingeagle, I'm I guess what you would call a Protestant. I'm a Christian( a follower of Jesus Christ). I attend a Baptist Church, but I am a Christian.I got the joke. I thought it to be funny. If you don't understand "Born Again", you don't understand what Jesus was talking about, Protestants didn't invent Born Again. It's pretty clear in The Bible, (John 3:3) Jesus said, "Except a man be "Born Again", he cannot see the kingdom of God". Do you not have the book of John in your Bible? If you do, you must have missed reading that part ofit. The Bible has many mentions of Spiritual Rebirth, it's not a Catholic or Protestant thing, it's a Christian thing. Born Again is what Jesus said you have to be, not what Protestants say you have to be. If you truly confess Jesus as your lord and saviorand ask him to save you, you will become Born Again. (Romans10: 9-10). If your Bible doesn't have these scriptures, you have a different Bible, I thought there was only one, let me know if there's a different one out there.



As far as the signsend of the world, I really don't know how you lump that in with all Protestants, exactly, God is in control.

 

[Observer]

screamingeagle, you're giving scandal to moose!

And now you've just done the same thing to Carolina Speed...

screamingeagle makes those obtuse and ironic one-liners all the time, and probably only jaxvid is clever enough to catch all of them.

CS, I'm sure that old cantankerous screamingeagle knows about "born again". It is, of course, a new life in Christ; a spiritual re-birth. But the alien and invented understanding of this in many forms of protestantism is in the imputation of a supernatural spiritual rebirth to the very natural stage in life when an individual reaches the point of self-reflection -- an examination of conscience of who we are before God. The point of self-reflection is indeed a spiritual process, but it is entirely a process that is a natural state of man -- basically, it is reaching the age of the "use of reason". This is man's natural process, and not specifically that of God.

A re-birth by "water" AND "spirit" is what screamingeagle has in his Bible. And it is also in mine. That is what we [Catholics] understand as the supernatural act of God in Baptism -- and not specifically the will or desire of man (although the will and desire do play a role in this, just as fuel and an engine work together).

 

[Carolina Speed]

Oh Man! You got me! My compliments. I thought I was doing good. Ha Ha! It's nice to have some fun on this forum.

 

[SchaafC]

As I posted it in the Wildcard thread incorrectly. I will restate it here for anyone interested in contacting me to talk about anything to do with Christianity or religion in general; I am open to it please feel free to PM me if I have offended you let me explain the nature of my offence. I think it's rather obvious that I am an atheist, just so there is no ambiguity or misconceptions about my intentions. If you are open to logic and sound reasoning you may be interested.

Despite my attack on Carolina Speed he has been more then gentlemanly during our private discussions and in dealing with this publicly earlier on the wildcard thread, and I would like to say publicly that I respect and appreciate that immensely.

 

[Don Wassall]

SchaafC, we don't need all the bold and underlined phrases, sentences and paragraphs. It's the equivalent of using all caps (shouting). We know you're passionate about the subject, let your points stand by themselves without all the embellishment.

 

[SchaafC]

SchaafC, we don't need all the bold and underlined phrases, sentences and paragraphs. It's the equivalent of using all caps (shouting). We know you're passionate about the subject, let your points stand by themselves without all the embellishment.

I am slightly confused, why are they there if not to be used in the manner I have used them?
It is not meant to embellish anything; rather to put emphasis on key parts of what I am trying to say.
If this is unacceptable then I will gladly stop.

 

[Don Wassall]

I'm not saying it's unacceptable; post any way you want, other than all caps. It's clear in a well-written opinion what the points of emphasis are, there's no need to point them out with lots of bold and underlined stuff as if we wouldn't pick up on them otherwise.

 

[Carolina Speed]

As I posted it in the Wildcard thread incorrectly. I will restate it here for anyone interested in contacting me to talk about anything to do with Christianity or religion in general; I am open to it please feel free to PM me if I have offended you let me explain the nature of my offence. I think it's rather obvious that I am an atheist, just so there is no ambiguity or misconceptions about my intentions. If you are open to logic and sound reasoning you may be interested.

Despite my attack on Carolina Speed he has been more then gentlemanly during our private discussions and in dealing with this publicly earlier on the wildcard thread, and I would like to say publicly that I respect and appreciate that immensely.

I will also clear up a post I made earlier on the wildcard thread. SchaffC did respond to my PM earlier. I had misstated that he did not. There was a miscommunication. I apparently did not give him enough time to respond; my error.

We are having a cordial discussion by PM each other.

As always I appreciate the patience of all on CF with my outspoken faith! It is never my intention to divide anyone on CF, we all share a common interest; to promote and make aware the efforts and the accomplishments of the white athlete.

 

[Charles Martel]

Growing Jewish anti-Christian attacks in Israel

http://wakeupfromyourslumber.com/video/sullivan/growing-jewish-anti-christian-attacks-israel

It is becoming a common occurrence in Israel to hear about Jews burning churches, spitting on Christian clerics, burning Christian Bibles and intimidating and harassing other Jews who believe in Jesus.

Unfortunately this is almost unheard of from the Western media. If it was not for the internet this would be unknown to millions of people around the world.

 

[Tom Iron]

Gentlemen,

A question for you. What do you think of your clergymen? In the case of Catholocism, the parishoners don't pick at the local level. We get what the diocese sends us. But if the priest is awful, the parishoners can and did in one case tell the bishop and he was sent away. As I'm only a believer in Christian morality and not an actual believer in Christs divinity, I never say anything about the priests within the parish. I'm only there because my wife is a good Catholic and is active in some of the functions of the church. Most of the men are old and infirm and that leaves me to actually put my hands on work within the parish. People overlook my unholiness, in that I do hands on work for the different groups.

But as far as the priest go, I'm very disappointed. They don't seem to be very good material. They are completely averse to doing any hands on work and to me, that's a sin. By not presenting themselves well, they make a very bad impression on the young people in the parish. They're far too bookish.

Tom Iron...

 

[dwid]

yeah, Ive encountered some bad priests. We found an area with great priests, before we were in a smaller parish, the priests were old, lazy and the people that went there were very rude, kind of like "we don't know you so we aren't going to talk to you". The Knights of Columbus did most of the hands on work for them.

They should all be putting work in. Faith + Works is a main part of Catholicism. What do you mean by hands on work? Because priests do other stuff that may not be seen. I know in some parishes Deacons get stuck with a lot of grunt work with annulments, setting up events etc. The one we go to now, the main priest is like 100 years old and very active.

It takes 20 minutes to get there instead of 5, but it is worth it, but this could be a problem in other areas of the country because in New Orleans area there is a Catholic church almost every other block, so you are bound to find something that fits your personality.

 

[jaxvid]

The problem with the Catholic church is that the priest hood has been decimated by the requirements of celebecy which has trimmed the ranks to only the most devout and the most in the closet. The fall of in popularity of the priesthood has created a vacuum that is either filled by very old priests living in another era or hispanic priests with their own rash of issues. Many Catholic Churchs don't have things like websites or local outreach.

However to me the problem is I feel that God has deserted his followers. The world of today is a complete cesspool of sin and moral filth. What goes on in an average city would put Sodom and Gomorrah to shame. Yes the people are to blame but shouldn't God have some support for his followers? Are they to be left to the mercy of sinners, jews, muslims, atheists, and faux Christians? Is there no debasement of mankind that the creater of life feels worthy of intervening in? Does every step that takes humanity farther and farther into a society of evil have to be enabled at every turn?

 

[Don Wassall]

I've never understood the celibacy requirement. It drives away many qualified would-be priests while attracting poofters, many of whom are far from celibate. It's a self-defeating, dysgenic requirement, but then again Protestantism has also become dominated by homosexuals and feminists. Every single Western institution, whether religious or secular, has been subverted and perverted from within.

 

[Europe]

I've never understood the celibacy requirement. It drives away many qualified would-be priests while attracting poofters, many of whom are far from celibate. It's a self-defeating, dysgenic requirement, but then again Protestantism has also become dominated by homosexuals and feminists. Every single Western institution, whether religious or secular, has been subverted and perverted from within.

This is from Sexual Utopia in Power and it explains celibacy. See the 2nd paragraph.

How Monogamy WorksTraditionally, a man has been expected to marry. Bachelorhood was positively forbidden in some ancient European societies, including the early Roman republic. Others offered higher social status for husbands and relative disgrace for bachelors. There seems to have been a fear that the sexual instinct alone was inadequate to insure a sufficient number of offspring. Another seldom mentioned motive for the expectation of marriage was husbands’ envy of bachelors: “Why should that fellow be free and happy when I am stuck working my life away to support an ungrateful creature who nags me?â€

Strange as it sounds to modern ears, the Christian endorsement of celibacy was a liberalization of sexual morality; it recognized there could be legitimate motives for remaining unmarried. One social function of the celibate religious orders was to give that minority of men and women unsuited for or disinclined to marriage a socially acceptable way of avoiding it.Obviously, an obligation of marrying implies the possibility of doing so. It was not difficult for an ordinary man to get a wife in times past. One reason is what I call the grandmother effect.Civilization has been defined as the partial victory of age over youth. After several decades of married life, a woman looks back and finds it inconceivable that she once considered a man’s facial features an important factor in mate selection. She tries to talk some sense into her granddaughter before it is too late. “Don’t worry about what he looks like; don’t worry about how he makes you feel; that isn’t important.†If the girl had a not especially glamorous but otherwise unexceptionable suitor (the sort who would be charged with harassment today), she might take the young man’s part: “If you don’t catch this fellow while you can, some smarter girl will.†So it went, generation after generation. This created a healthy sense of competition for decent, as opposed to merely sexually attractive, men. Husbands often never suspected the grandmother effect, living out their lives in the comforting delusion that their wives married them solely from recognition of their outstanding merits. But today grandma has been replaced by Cosmopolitan, and the results are there for all to see.​

 

[Carolina Speed]

I've never understood the celibacy requirement. It drives away many qualified would-be priests while attracting poofters, many of whom are far from celibate. It's a self-defeating, dysgenic requirement, but then again Protestantism has also become dominated by homosexuals and feminists. Every single Western institution, whether religious or secular, has been subverted and perverted from within.

Yeah, Don I don't know where or why Catholics get why Priests can't marry either?

I Timothy 3:1-2, If a man desire the office of BISHOP, he desireth a good work. A bishop then must be blameless, THE HUSBAND OF ONE WIFE, vigilant SOBER, of good behavior,.....

There's nothing in the Bible forbidding anyone to marry that I'm aware of. In fact there's numerous verses recommending marriage and verses that warn against FALSE TEACHINGS, such as forbidding to marry.

I Timothy 4:1-3 says, "In latter times some will abandon the faith and follow deceiving spirits and things taught by demons. Such teachings come from hypocritical liars, whose consciences have been seared with a hot iron. THEY FORBID PEOPLE TO MARRY and order them to abstain from certain foods, which God created.....

The Bible warns against trying to look self-disciplined and righteous for the wrong reasons!

 

[Tom Iron]

dwid,

Good question. what I mean by hands on work is work around the church, such as cleaning and setting up the altar, plus work having to do with the different groups within the church. There's the Altar Rosary society, and St. Vincent de Paul group who do many different things. Recently, I set up all the tables for an event while the young priest stood around making small talk with the women. He has to put his paws on work. Same with the older priest, who's not as old as I am. The days of just sitting around looking holy must end. There's nothing holier than work.

Tom Iron...

 

[Anak]

Yeah, Don I don't know where or why Catholics get why Priests can't marry either?

I Timothy 3:1-2, If a man desire the office of BISHOP, he desireth a good work. A bishop then must be blameless, THE HUSBAND OF ONE WIFE, vigilant SOBER, of good behavior,.....

There's nothing in the Bible forbidding anyone to marry that I'm aware of. In fact there's numerous verses recommending marriage and verses that warn against FALSE TEACHINGS, such as forbidding to marry.

I Timothy 4:1-3 says, "In latter times some will abandon the faith and follow deceiving spirits and things taught by demons. Such teachings come from hypocritical liars, whose consciences have been seared with a hot iron. THEY FORBID PEOPLE TO MARRY and order them to abstain from certain foods, which God created.....

The Bible warns against trying to look self-disciplined and righteous for the wrong reasons!

I'm pretty sure the chief reason the Catholic Church advocated celibacy was because the wives/mistresses of priests were abusing the power of their husbands and lovers.

 

[dwid]

I'm pretty sure the chief reason the Catholic Church advocated celibacy was because the wives/mistresses of priests were abusing the power of their husbands and lovers.

I think it had to do with the sons, if they had sons they would wind up abusing the power and giving them land. The church hands out pamphlets at the Catholic church by my school now about becoming a priest , it basically states "if you don't envision yourself having a wife and a big family, we don't want you", basically you are supposed to replace your family with the church, and the church becomes your family and you are supposed to dedicate everything to God. However, that could backfire and could just wind up giving information to perverts to tell the church what they want to hear. Its not the teaching of Jesus but its in the Bible, St Paul recommends it and the church adopted it, its not set in stone, the church can change it if they wanted. Maybe they should start thinking about it. Things have gotten better though. We have a really cool young priest. Sad story, he was set to get married, was engaged and the woman died in a car accident. He always pictured himself with a big family and felt like she was the only one and didn't know what to do with his life. Said he prayed on it for a long time and became a priest, now all of the parishoners are his family.
" One who is unmarried is concerned about the things of the Lord, how he may please the Lord; 33 but one who is married is concerned about the things of the world, how he may please his wife, 34 and his interests are divided. The woman who is unmarried, and the virgin, is concerned about the things of the Lord, that she may be holy both in body and spirit; but one who is married is concerned about the things of the world, how she may please her husband. 35 This I say for your own benefit; not to put a restraint upon you, but to promote what is appropriate and to secure undistracted devotion to the Lord"

But this is the opinion of St Paul, not from the teachings of Jesus, so yeah the Catholic Church could change canon law if they wanted to.
There are Catholic priests who are married, if you are a Protestant priest and decide to switch over to Catholicism you can become a Catholic priest and stay with your wife. And it doesn't matter how much sex you had before priesthood, you could have had a ton, as long as you don't have any dependents.

 

[Carolina Speed]

I'm pretty sure the chief reason the Catholic Church advocated celibacy was because the wives/mistresses of priests were abusing the power of their husbands and lovers.

So The Catholic Church overrides the teachings of the Bible?

 

[DixieDestroyer]

So The Catholic Church overrides the teachings of the Bible?

CS, as you know....there's NO church or religion that trumps God's Holy Word. ray2:

It's not about denomination...but all about Christ, the Cross, the cleansing blood and the Word.

 

[Woody]

@Carolina Speed
dwid gave a good summary of the Catholic Church's position. Last I checked, St. Paul is in the Bible so no, the Catholic Church is not "overriding" the Bible.

It is interesting to note, and Don alluded to this (though surprisingly without seeing the obvious conclusion), that the (not celibate) protestant clergy, and indeed ALL men http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2010/04/07/mean-men.html are just as likely to commit pedophilia as Catholic priests. Surprising given the public perception and media coverage, but it shouldn't be surprising to members of this board..."Wait the media is lying?"

So why do you have a problem with them being celibate if it's proven that there is NO chance of reducing pedophilia by having them not celibate?

dwid is right that it is not Church dogma that priests be celibate, but I disagree with him that they should consider changing it. The Church, and St. Paul, wanted men who could give their whole lives to ministry. If celibacy drives some young men away from the priesthood then God doesn't want them to be priests. And that's fine, there's nothing wrong with them for not wanting that for the rest of their lives. Interestingly, I have heard that Anglican-use priests who are married and converted to Catholicism have a hard time of it. Balancing your family and your church family is pretty tough, apparently. I think it's fitting and makes sound sense to have a celibate clergy.

 

[Tom Iron]

I was reading the Catholic newspaper and read a piece about the Bishop setting up a commission to study Catholic education. In the piece, the Bishop says he wants to educate children in the Catholic schools to be citizens of the "world." What's that? Isn't that what people said about us Catholics when we first started coming to America in large numbers, that we'd never be good Americans because our loyalty would be to Rome, the Pope? I'm going to write a letter to the Moniter about that. I doubt they'll print it, but I'll write it anyway.

Yesterday, the young priest took off like a bat out of hell once he perceived work had to be done on the altar. No hands on work for that guy. He's going to study at Catholic University in DC next month. Good ridence to bad rubbish. I'm very sure the top echelon have got their eye on him as an upandcomer in the church. He fits the mold - good for nothing just like them. I wonder who we'll get a a replacement?

Tom Iron...

 

[Carolina Speed]

@Carolina Speed
dwid gave a good summary of the Catholic Church's position. Last I checked, St. Paul is in the Bible so no, the Catholic Church is not "overriding" the Bible.

It is interesting to note, and Don alluded to this (though surprisingly without seeing the obvious conclusion), that the (not celibate) protestant clergy, and indeed ALL men http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2010/04/07/mean-men.html are just as likely to commit pedophilia as Catholic priests. Surprising given the public perception and media coverage, but it shouldn't be surprising to members of this board..."Wait the media is lying?"

So why do you have a problem with them being celibate if it's proven that there is NO chance of reducing pedophilia by having them not celibate?

dwid is right that it is not Church dogma that priests be celibate, but I disagree with him that they should consider changing it. The Church, and St. Paul, wanted men who could give their whole lives to ministry. If celibacy drives some young men away from the priesthood then God doesn't want them to be priests. And that's fine, there's nothing wrong with them for not wanting that for the rest of their lives. Interestingly, I have heard that Anglican-use priests who are married and converted to Catholicism have a hard time of it. Balancing your family and your church family is pretty tough, apparently. I think it's fitting and makes sound sense to have a celibate clergy.

Woody, I don't have a problem with priests being celibate, but it really doesn't matter what I think. I was just asking why is it a demand that you have to be celibate to be a priest?

Obviously I'm not Catholic! I just don't understand?

I was just citing Biblical verses saying that you could be a priest and be married?

My apologies if it came out the wrong way.

 

[Mischling3rdDegree]

The Catholic Church managed to go 1900 years without any celibacy-caused priest shortage...