You haven’t answered my question. I asked you to tell us how you determined that the universe was created by “someone.” If it’s simply your gut feeling that something as immense as the universe requires a sentient creator, I’ll accept that as an honest answer. However, “I know it in my gut” is not the same as “I have determined it to be so.”
Christianity, by definition, did not exist before Christ; Jewish messianism in pre-rabbinic times was not Christianity as we know it. How do you know that any form of Christianity (Catholic or non-Catholic) is the true religion?
In Catholic tradition, there are two components to confession and penance. The first component is God, through the priest, who confers forgiveness. The second is the penitent, who must be sincerely sorry for his/her sins and dedicated to not repeating them or else the penance is not effected.
So the people mentioned before, who had a vasectomy and then went to confession and thought it was all taken care of, are not covered. They are obviously not really penitent.
If there is no actual sorrow/penitence/shame involved, there is no actual forgiveness conferred.
One is only forgiven in the Sacrament of Confession if one does not intend to commit the sin again. In the case of your uncle, since he did not have a firm purpose of amendment, had he gone to Confession he would not have been forgiven.
On the other hand, if you lied twice, confessed that you lied twice with a firm intention to not lie again, but afterwards you told another lie, the first two lies would still be forgiven, but you would have to confess the last lie with a firm purpose of amendment.
What do you think about people’s tendency to put religious on a pedestal? Also, why wouldn’t you want orders to stick with their founders’ ideas on dress?
Once again, you haven’t answered my question. In any case, “prove it” has been already been addressed by jayjay.
Perhaps I should rephrase my own question: Can you demonstrate that the religion(s) we know as Christianity existed before the existence of Christ? If you cannot demonstrate this, how do you know that any form of Christianity is the true religion?
You started the “Ask a traditional Catholic” thread. The onus is on you to provide answers.
One last thing, Traditional Catholic…I’m a believer, protestant.
I applaud you for saying what you think. I enjoy reading SDMB messages from athiests/agnostics & trying to untangle their logics. It makes for interesting thinking sometimes.
What’s the rationale for accepting and believing in ALL the doctrines and dogma taught by the Church? I mean, isn’t it a little hard to swallow that you need a priest around?
I’m speaking as a guy raised more or less Methodist, with Baptists in the family, and who went to a Jesuit high school, and took 4 years of theology there.
That was my main beef with the Church; the Church’s party line was that there isn’t any room for me to interpret the Bible and the teachings of various theologians/Church Fathers myself.
The Jesuits weren’t quite so dogmatic though; apparently there was a raging debate among the priests that ran the school and the lay faculty about distributing condoms- the Jesuits were on the side of distributing, and the lay faculty was against it!
Do you believe as an American in freedom of religion as protected by the constitution? in direct opposition to “The Syllabus of Errors” which forbids such a concept.
There is no proof of this so you in a great sense are believing what another human told what God is( or has has said). Who created the place for God to be? Or is God also place? It is only a matter of what or who one believes.
Why would a supreme being create othere beings that he knew he was going to destroy? Doesn’t make sense to me. I am only a human with limits and if I knew one of my children would turn evil, I would not conceive them at all.
I remember reading that Frederick Hart converted to Catholicism late in life. His creation sculptures at the National Cathedral were created by him fairly early on in his career. I guess I kind of wonder how much working on these sculptures, which are to say the least breath taking and worth a trip to the Cathedral alone to see, led him to convert. Also, as a little sidenote, the National Cathedral is an Episcopal Cathedral and is officially known as the Cathedral Church of Saint Peter and Saint Paul. The “National Cathedral” name is due in large part to Congress having designated it as the “National House of Prayer.”
Ok, this has nothing whatsoever to do with this thread and I’m sorry for the hijack Traditional_Catholic. I guess I just had to show off that I have learned some things Episcopal. My folks would be proud to know all their work was not in vain.
Traditional_Catholic, I just wanted to tell you that you’ve inspired me to go to Mass for the first time in several years. I’m leaving in an hour. Thank you.
Truly I say to you: Everything you have bound on earth, shall be bound in heaven, and everything you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven. (Matthew 16:19)
I am assuming that by “Latin Mass” that you mean the 2008 missal (the 1962 missal with the revised Good Friday prayer for the conversion of the Jews), as opposed to the 2002 missal (the Novus Ordo Missae), though technically the ordinary language of the 2002 missal is Latin.
I prefer the Extraordinary Form of the Roman Rite (the 2008 missal) over the Ordinary form of the Roman Rite (the 2002 missal) for two reasons.
The first is that the EF is more clear doctrinally in its prayers than the OF. While no outright heresy is proclaimed in the OF (the Holy Ghost would not allow it), many prayers in the OF are easily interpreted in a heretical way. The chief example of this is the 2002 Good Friday prayer for the Jews. While the prayer used in the EF clearly calls for non-Catholic Jews to convert to Catholicism, the 2002 prayer merely calls for them to be faithful to their covenant with God, i.e. the old covenant, ignoring the fact that no one comes to the Father except through Christ.
The second is that the EF is more beautiful and poetic than the OF. This lifts people to God instead of bringing Him to our level.
Umm, that’d be great if Dignitatis Humanae had never been promulgated:
It’d be great if Pacem in Terris were never promulgated either.
…but they were.
While I agree with our esteemed guest on very few things so far, I do think it unfair to present him with issues that have been quite famously clarified.
Not to say that you are baiting him, of course, but if you are familiar with Pius IX, you should have enough background to have heard of some of the more famous work of his successors.
