No. Even in the bad old days of excessive legalism, that would not have been the rule. If you deliberately withheld confessing something, you would have been guilty of an invalid confession and you would have had to own up to it, but forgetting something is just a human activity. The whole point of the confession of any sins is to reflect on one’s sinful nature and to ask God for the grace to resist temptation in the future. It is not the presentation of a list of specific acts for which one wishes to be forgiven. If you are truly repentent, missing a particular event is irrelevant. (I’m assuming you didn’t “forget” that you knocked off a liquor store and murdered the sales clerk.)
Heh. No, I didn’t rob or murder anyone. 
I did once send the url of a site with some (clearly marked) explicit stuff on it (not a porn site, I’m not that bad – it was a fanfic site) to someone who was underage, after she asked for it. Which I suppose counts as corrupting the youth. I did feel bad about it afterwards, though…
I’m also wired for anxiety, apparently. Runs in the family.
I can understand that individual priests might erroneously dictate which specific candidate to vote for…(the spectrum of priests in the U.S. runs the gamut from liberation theologists to Opus Dei apologists). I can understand that individual organizations like the K of C, or other groups might do a similar thing.
I have a harder time believing that a diocesan newspaper (especially a large metropolitan one) would do the same thing. In point of fact, our local diocesan newspaper always specifically states at election time, that Catholics are called to inform their consciences on a spectrum of issues…
The bishops are quite clear in the Faithful Citizenship document about the role of the faithful in the democratic electoral process.
My experience of the diocesan papers are that they, too, run the gamut from the quality of the London Times to the quality of the Globe (well, maybe only as bad as the National Enquirer).
True. I checked out the website for the Pittsburgh Catholic. I wasn’t able to search issues from before 2001 to try and check out their election coverage. I do note that the front page of the current issue covers the bishops reponse to a local death penalty verdict. So, I’m guessing that they cover other social justice issues besides abortion.
Another article on abortion had this bit…
“When asked if it is a sin to vote for someone who is
pro-choice, he responded by pointing out it is a
complex issue.
“Every person has to follow his or her conscience,” he
said. “Our job is to inform your conscience.” He added,
however, that there is a sin of omission for those who
are not informed”
While the Pittsburgh Catholic does seem to cover the abortion issue extensively…I still have a hard time believing that they are blatantly saying that people in their diocese may only vote for a self identified pro life candidate.
They didn’t come right out and say so, but the message was-vote for LIFE, etc etc, pay attention to this, blah blah blah.
The thing is, as my father told one priest at a funeral-that single issue voting isn’t such a hot idea. FWIW, the guy agreed with him but said he felt he had to do what what the church taught. (and my dad is pro-life, btw).
That was the IMPRESSION, I got-that it was your duty to NOT vote for anyone not pro-life.
I have the time to let you (and Tom~ and Rick) go into it! I’d actually planned on asking about this before I read your post.
On what does the RCC base the claim that the Bishop of Rome is the only direct successor of St. Peter? Paul also founded a church in Rome, and Peter founded churches elsewhere. The orderly, three-tiered system of deacon, priest, and bishop seems to have developed too late to ensure any specific lineage of Apostolic succession. (So even assuming AS, the Pope could be the successor of Paul, or any other apostle whose followers gathered in Rome.) I seem to remember learning that many of the traditional arguments for Papal supremacy are based on church teachings and documents which themselves relied (innocently at the time) on the now infamous “Donation of Constatine”, but that may have been another issue.
Beagle:
You are quite correct with your comment about “erroneusly dictate which candidate.” Too bad Cardinal Sin in Manila doesn’t have the cojones to actually follow that concept. I’m still fuming over his assertion that it was wrong for the people there to vote for Ramos because the dude’s not Catholic!
This gave me the best laugh I’d had all night. Thanks, Embra!
I am glad to be back. I am very happy with this Ask the Catholic Guy thread, though i think the name might stop some dopers from entering. maybe it should be changed.
Anyway, to clarify, When I said that my ACQUAINTENCE had started quoting Jack Chick, I meant he was saying things that appear in Chick Tracts, like the Pope being the antichrist or whatnot. Thankfully he did not actually SAY “According to Jack Chick, in Revelations 18:4 Jesus called the RCC a ‘Great Whore,’” but he was still really argh. Personally, I believe that Jack Chick is a Fundie who’s only difference from other fundies is he actually SAIS wht everyone else think. To know that other seemingly normal people believe him is not nice to know.
Istara, my real problem was not that he objected to my wearing the Cross, but that he objected to it because “only Christians have the right to wear a cross.”
I do not worhsip a cross, it is just a cross, but If i want to wear one, then dammit, i am going to wear one, and if anyone doesn’t like it, then they can go **** themselves.
My ear hurts again… I KNEW that Falwell hexed an ear infection on me!
[Moderator Hat ON]
Thread title changed at the request of the OP. (Formerly “All Catholics Please Read!”)
[Moderator Hat OFF]
Well, the reason I stopped calling myself a Catholic was because my Cardinal (O’Connor) explicitly said that you cannot be a “cafeteria Catholic”, meaning you cannot pick and choose the tennents that you like and discard the others at your convienence. Since I don’t believe that masterbation is a mortal sin and stillborns don’t get to heaven and contraception is evil, I concluded that I wasn’t Catholic. The Cardinal told me so.
Dear Catholic Guy:
My dad met several Catholic guys when he was in the Air Force in the late 1950s. He brought back several tidbits relating to Sainthood. However, he has been known to be wrong in the past (gasp!), and I was wondering if any of the following were true:[ul][li]A “Saint” is a person who absolutely, positively, definitely went to Heaven after (s)he died.[/li][li]To determine whether a recently-deceased person qualified for Sainthood, the Church would hold a “trial”.[/li]In order to make the trial fair, there was a person whose job it was to argue against the Sainthood of the recently-deceased person. This guy was called the Devil’s Advocate.[/ul]Are any of these even remotely true?
And we would know this…how?
Sainthood (with a capital “S”) is about what one does on earth…not about what happens after death
[li]To determine whether a recently-deceased person qualified for Sainthood, the Church would hold a “trial”.[/li][li]In order to make the trial fair, there was a person whose job it was to argue against the Sainthood of the recently-deceased person. This guy was called the Devil’s Advocate.[/ul]Are any of these even remotely true? **[/li][/QUOTE]
The process of canonization has changed a bit since J2P2 was selected…an overview of the changes can be found here.
The notion of a formal “trial” with a “Devil’s Advocate” is not part of the process these days.
See here for a historical overview of the process that used to include the “Advocatus Diaboli”
Hello! I noticed the new thread title and thought I’d put up a question.
I was raised Protestant (Methodist, actually). I do not currently consider myself Christian due to lack of belief in the uniqueness or specialness of the divinity of Jesus of Nazareth, the literal resurrection of the individual, or the distinction between the natural and the miraculous. These things that I do not believe in were not markedly stressed when I was a kid growing up, and I was curious to know what things one learns about Christianity growing up Catholic.
€ How old were you when you first heard the doctrine that the death of Jesus of Nazareth was necessary in order to atone for original sin? Had you previously thought of Jesus and the crucifixion more or less as a conventional martyrdom story? (e.g., “He was the son of God and then the bad guys killed him”) Or was this part stressed from the beginning?
€ Were you exposed to the contents of the primary sermons (the Sermon on the Plains and the Sermon on the Mount) much as a child? If so, did the messages (such as “share, forgive, trust, turn the other cheek”, etc) seem AS important, MORE important, or LESS important than things like walking on water, raising the dead, curing the sick, being borne of a virgin, or coming back from his own crucifixion? In other words, what was THE reason we worship him, as you understood it as a child?
€ Were you encouraged to ask religious and theological questions as a kid? In church and/or church-run school? How about at home, or in informal (but Catholic) contexts? Did you sit around and ask questions like “Where did God come from?” or “Why didn’t God just make everyone good?” and have interesting discussions, or was it considered “wrong” or “evil” to ask them in the first place?
€ Same question, but regarding questions that explicity contradicted teachings, like “Do you think there is really life after death?” – was it considered “wrong” or “evil” to imply that the doctrinal answers weren’t necessarily correct, or did your teachers and parents and so forth talk about how they had reconciled their own questions and so forth?
(FWIW, incidentally: Among Protestants, there is a very inconsistent and self-contradictory notion about Catholicism being somehow more rigid in content and at the same time more laid-back in the extent to which they made sure you believed the right things, in comparison with conservative Protestantisms.)
Hmm good un…I’m not sure how to answer that…I’m reminded of how I feel when some of my protestant friends refer to the exact day that they accepted Jesus Christ as their Lord and personal savior…it’s a language and approach that is not, for the most part, part of the “Catholic Experience” (at least my American Catholic Experience…YMMV). That part was stressed from the beginning, I suppose, in the homilies at Mass…but I think it’s easier for young kids to latch on to the conventional martyr story, than the redemptive salvation story.
Yes…early on from the bible story books (ya know, the kind you see promoted at doctor’s offices? ) and CCD classes. I remember the “message” and the “messenger” as somehow being intertwined.
In my own home, yes…I was one of those pesky kids who bugged his parents about questions, until I got a good answer…I don’t remember ever feeling that those kinds of things were “wrong”,although I don’t think I got very sophisticated answers to them…
I went to public schools through high school, so can’t speak to the Catholic school experience. I note that for me, like for many teens and young adults, my faith was challenged, but then grew by leaps and bounds when I went off to college and found the local Newman Center
Hmmm not sure. My parents were/are fairly traditional Catholics…I guess knowing that, I probably searched for those kinds of answers on my own.
I think that’s a pretty broad stroke to paint Protestants with. Lutherans, (well the ELCA variety) for example, are not too far removed, theologically and liturgically from Roman Catholics.
OTOH, If RCers are from Mars , Southern Baptists are from Venus…theologically and liturgically speaking. ;).
Can someone please explain to me the Biblical basis behind purgatory and the infallibility of the pope.
thanks, JDIt’s been done in previous threads by tomndebb (among others), buit for a quick sop…
and
purgatory and here for a further discussion of 2 Maccabees 12 etc…
Jersey: it is not the that the Pope himself is infallible. But when he is speaking on dogma, on church doctrine, he is considered to be THE end all and be all of sources. No questions asked.
(Of course, the first pope to institute this was Gregory VII, if I remember correctly).
So wait. You say that the pope is infallible when speaking on matters of doctrine. You also say that Peter was the pope. Yet Paul rebuked Peter publicly, on a matter of doctrine where Peter was clearly wrong (Galatians 2) and acting in direct disobedience to what God told him in Acts 11.
One of the tenets of the Christian faith is a personal relationship with Jesus. Yet your so-called first pope, vehemently and with cursing, denied even knowing Jesus three times in one night. What more profound statement on doctrine can you possibly make? And clearly, Peter knew Jesus quite well. So either a) Peter was no pope, or b) the pope is not infallible. [Personally I take c) neither]
I forget the exact references (I’ll find it and post again later), but on the matter of infallibility: It didn’t become church doctrine until several centuries after Jesus’s death and resurrection. Additionally, the very next pope following the one who pushed it through (whichever council it was that made it official) issued a bull denouncing the doctrine as heresy. So… Pope A issues an ex cathedra statement on doctrine (therefore infallible by your definition) calling himself infallible when speaking ex cathedra. And pope B issues an ex cathedra statement on doctrine (therefore infallible by your definition) calling the doctrine of papal infallibility Heresy.
Regarding purgatory, there is no further cleansing needed. To claim that there is, is to claim that Jesus didn’t do enough and there is another way to be cleansed from sins. That means that he sacrificed himself FOR NOTHING. My Bible says “…we are sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.” (Hebrews 10:10 - bolding mine)
Please resolve these paradoxes for me.
Oh, one last thing: Somebody earlier in the thread said that Peter had special authority over the other apostles, including Paul. In that light, please explain Paul’s rebuking him face to face. Also, please explain the salutations in his letters: “Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ…” and “Simon Peter, a servant and an apostle of Jesus Christ, to them that have obtained like precious faith with us through the righteousness of God and our Savior Jesus Christ.” In both letters, he writes as a fellow apostle and a fellow servant, not as one possessing special authority or as the pope. Finally, in 1 Peter 5:1, he writes, “The elders which are among you I exhort, who am also an elder, and a witness of the sufferings of Christ, and also a partaker of the glory that shall be revealed…” in the KJV or “To the elders among you, I appeal as a fellow elder, a witness of Christ’s sufferings and one who also will share in the glory to be revealed”, if you prefer the NIV. He clearly did not consider himself to be the “supreme pontiff” or claim any such title.
When Jesus told Peter “on this rock I will build my church” the rock he spoke of was a play on words. It was twofold: 1) Peter’s confession of faith, where he declared that Jesus was the Christ, the Son of God; and 2) Jesus or the Father. Throughout scripture, God is symbolized by rock. For example see Exodus 17:6, Numbers 20:8, Daniel 2:34-45, Deuteronomy 32:4-15, 2 Samuel 22:47, Psalm 18:2, Psalm 42:9, and Luke 6:48, just for starters. I could go on, but do you really want me to? Renaming Simon to Peter was a play on words, and nothing more.
Sheesh, it’s easy to understand if you just read the Bible instead of a catechism.