Yes, the Franciscans of the Immaculate in particular appeal to me.
Are you a sedevacantist?
How, as a 15 y/o young lady from a secular Jewish upbringing, did you even discover traditional Catholicism and pursue that as your faith? Did you have any prolonged exposure to other forms of the Christian faith, such as Evangelical Protestantism or Messianic Judaism or mainstream Protestantism?
What modern Catholic writers do you find most helpful? What version of the Bible do you read?
What are your political convictions and what are your family’s?
I learned about traditional Catholicism on the internet. I also used the internet to find a church. I have been exposed to other forms of Christianity, but they did not make sense to me.
Saint Maximilian Maria Kolbe, the Franciscans of the Immaculate, and Dietrich and Alice von Hildebrand are my favorite modern Catholic writers. I read the Douay-Rheims-Challoner translation of the Bible.
My political convictions are basically the same as Ron Paul’s: the government should have laws about murder, rape, theft, but not much else, and the federal government should not do anything that is unconstitutional. My parents, on the other hand, are fervent Obama supporters.
I’m going to quote myself because I don’t think you saw this.
I don’t have the site handy, but I recommend the Msgr Ronald Knox translation of the Bible also. I hear it is also coming back into print.
And as a political libertarian, have you read anything by Ayn Rand?
This is just the New Testament of the Knox Bible. It’s good but his translation of the OT really rocks.
The Knox Bible is slated for reprinting by Baronius Press, a British Catholic publishing house.
No One believed in Christianity until Jesus Christ came along.
I know Catholics like to assert that this passage founds the catholic church, but that’s an awfully thin peg on which to hang such a heavy coat. How does that passage grant authority to Popes? Why doesn’t it just mean “I like you, Peter, and you’ll be instumental in keeping this new faith going after I’m gone.”
Again, Christianity did not exist until Jesus cam along. In fact it didn’t exist in any recognizable form until quite some time after his death.
I guess I’ll have to take your word for that.
Surely even at your age you’re aware that there are explanations for the universe which don’t require a supernatural cause. Frankly I think it’s pointless to speculate about what happened “before” the creation of the universe, as even that phrase is meaningless, “before” and “after” only have meaning if we assume the existence of time, a feature of the universe which doesn’t exist outside of the universe.
Even if we assert some eternal cause–which no one has yet to convincingly show–to the Universe, why assume it’s a person? Why should it be comprehensible to humans at all? And what allowed that eternal cause to exist? If it always existed why is reality such that such a cause does exist? what’s the cause of that?
Frankly, I don’t see how you’ve presented anything that makes Catholicism any more compelling than any other religion, or atheism for that matter.
Do they take you to services every week? How does that work out? I’m assuming that they probably just drop you off if you’re not within walking distance of a Catholic church. Through what methods are you learning about your new religion? Are you actively going to classes at church, or are you doing this on your own? Do you plan to take communion?
Oh, also: are you unaware that there are religions outside of the Abrahamic three? You haven’t mentioned them at all, which is quite interesting.
I was wondering when someone was going to chime in with the specific dates for the Councils of Rome and Carthage, as there was quite a bit of work on organizing the church itself before the emergence of the current hierarchy with the Pope at the top. From what I remembered from [Missouri Synod Lutheran] Sunday school history, a good portion of the decisions regarding what went into the versions of the bible that we had today were decided before a Pope was established.
Back to Traditional Catholic: As a convert, do you feel that you are more religious than Catholics that have not converted to Catholicism? Do you look down on their relative lack of religious fervor or view them as “lacking” or “bad Catholics”? What makes you so sure about all the scripture that you have encountered? After all, you did discover Catholicism on the internet, and there’s a lot of bad information out there on all sorts of religions.
What’s the religious make-up of the area you’re in? Are you a lone Catholic in a sea of other religions? Are you exposed to people of other religions beyond Christianity and Judaism?
If it’s of any help, you may also take my word for it.
Time number three, I believe: How do you define traditional Catholicism?
It’s not just that, although that passage is a solid rock (pardon the analogy) more than a thin peg.
In I Cor 1:10, we see that unity of doctrine and belief amongst all Christ’s faithful is necessary. In Acts 15:7, Peter exercises his authority by making a final decision regarding the issue of circumcision. This shows that the universal Church must have unity of word and of action, and in order to exercise that unity, ultimately one person must be able to rule definitively on issues. And Peter was that person.
Longevity is not my only issue; I also look at the logicalness of the religion’s claims. Hinduism’s beliefs, including incarnation, do not make sense to me.
Why is having a soul that is reincarnated into another body on earth any less sensible than having a soul that goes to some Good or Bad place after you die? Both presuppose having a soul and presuppose that what happens to that soul after death is based on your behaviour before death.
What is your take on the vows of celibacy that priests take?
I personally think this is one area that the Church should give way on, since it’s become abundantly clear as of late that many (many only being a quai-large number because the Church itself is so big, I don’t believe ar assert that a large percentage of priests sin in this way) priests are molesters or homosexuals, possibly due to the fact that their sexual access is restricted to only other males.
Why can’t priests marry and have children as they and the Pope tell the rest of us to do? I cannot believe that God confers any special powers to a priest just because he gives up sex (especially when in fact many don’t, they just have it with altar boys, gay members of the parish or other priests).
I can’t recall anything in the Bible that decrees that priests have to be celibate, IIRC this is strictly a Catholic doctrine thing.
And in keeping with this, what do you think about the Catholic Church’s attempts to sweep this sexual issue under the rug (for example, by simply moving a molester priest to a different parish rather than defrocking him…or whatever firing a priest is called)?
You’ll forgive me if I ruffle a few feathers here; what exactly is logical about Catholicism, or any faith for that matter?
Traditional Catholic, are you sure your not confusing logic with faith? Faith is a perfectly acceptable reason to believe Catholic doctrine. Sometimes things seem logical because there’s something in our guts (the Holy Spirit would be my guess) that tells us that the RCC makes sense. It seems logical. That’s faith and, I believe, that’s a perfect reason to give in threads like this. Something inside of you says that Catholicism makes sense.
While no one was, strictly speaking, a Christian until Jesus came along, Jews did believe that a messiah was coming and that he would be the king of the Jews.
Catholics believe that the verse in question says that Saint Peter was the first pope because Peter was not a particularly good apostle, but he was singled out as “the rock”. His name was even changed to rock!
Please tell me about these non-supernatural theories of the origin of the Universe. How could something that is outside the universe but not divine exist? How did that thing come about?
Logical does not mean scientifically provable. The Catholic Encyclopedia defines logic as “the science and art which so directs the mind in the process of reasoning and subsidiary processes as to enable it to attain clearness (or order), consistency, and validity in those processes.”
When Traditional Catholic says she looks at the “logicalness of the religion’s claims”, I suspect she means exactly that.