All following quotes are from the Catechism of the Catholic Church:
It is the Chruch who gives the Eucharist its importance. Not only that, the Church makes Communion obligatory. How then, can they call a member a person to whom it has been denied? A person denied communion is a person denied membership of the Church, as I see it. Why then is this person encouraged to continue in attendance of what is, for that person, an empty ritual?
Not that I challenge your evaluation, but I would prefer it if the discussion focused on the issue of why the Church would consider someone to be still a member but deny them Eucharistic Communion.
I am sorry, but you lost me there. Could you please clarify?
Incidently, the focus on Communion as Symbol rather than Sacrament is largely mine and not universal to United Methodism (my chosen church). I just spent a few minutes checking outUnited Methodists and Communion: Some Questions and Answers on the official United Methodist Church website. While I don’t see the word “miracle”, the tone of the responses does make Communion seem weightier than the words I used in the post you objected to.
See my response to gigi in post 104–I’m oversimplifying, overselling the symbolic part of the whole deal, making taking Communion more casual than it should be.
For the rest, I can’t answer because my beliefs are not your beliefs. I’m not going to try to defend the Catholic church’s traditional stance, because I don’t get it. I will remind you that the Catholic Church is not the only church out there, and other churches have different approaches to divorce, Communion, women in Ministry, etc. If you still have your belief in God, but feel frustrated by the Catholic Church, I would encourage you to keep looking for a community of believers that can encourage your spiritual growth.
Thanks. After a few years of discernment, I have come to believe in God more than I ever had. I have also come to reject religion as a whole. Although I believe that my current belief set is what I call “Christian compatible”, the reality is that I find most Christian churches really scarey (although I have not seen them all, of course). My business with God is now personal.
My suddenly renewed interest in this topic came as a consequence of a discussion with my MIL, who is very churchy and keeps nagging me for not going (my wife is not churchy at all, but has no objections to sitting there just to avoid confrontation)
It works as simply as this:
For sacramentalists of all stripes (not just Catholics), Baptism is something that God does, through the agency of the priest/minister, to impart grace to the individual. It’s therefore quite effective as a way of granting grace to a baby, of incorporating him/her in God’s family the Church and giving him new life and growth in Christ. (This is not intended as objective fact, which Kal or Der Trihs ought to buy, but as a factual assertion about the beliefs of sacramental theology.)
In contradistinction, those who hold to “Believers’ Baptism” – including but not limited to the Baptists – see it as an ordinance, something God, for His own reasons, ordained should be done by the person in response to his/her accepting God/Christ into his/her life. It is therefore appropriate only to be done by persons who have in fact accepted Christ, adult (and adolescent) believers. In the view of Baptists, what the priest did when you were a baby is no more spiritually efficacious than your mother giving you a bath at the same age.
Polycarp,
Thank you for the explanation of points of view on baptism.
The term for the things God does through the Eucharist is ex opere operato, or “from the very actions having been performed”. I believe it’s understood that all the Sacraments work that way- through invoking God’s power, and without reference to our own abilities and sins.
You can’t? I can. It can certainly look like giving an unbending, power-hungry and nosy bunch of people a ridiculous amount of control over things generally assumed to be private. I can understand that the trust I have that I will not be led wrong by those who have been appointed to guide me and correct me in my faith can look pretty blind and stupid. Maybe it’s easier for me to understand that point of view because Church obedience was one of my sticking points. :shrug:
Whether the Catholic Church actually speaks for God or not is a matter of opinion (and given that I’m an atheist, I tend to doubt it). However, it’s irrelevant. Kalhoun’s question was why adults would give an organization so much say in their marriage, and the reason that they do is, because, as far as they’re concerned, the RCC speaks for God. Obviously someone who believes that “That appalling moral wreck of a church speaks for nobody but itself and its own repressive desires” isn’t going to want to get married in a Catholic church.
How many priests have you actually talked to? No one is perfect, but I’ve never met one who was nosy, power-hungry, or even particularly unbending. You can’t perform confession or give a good confession without getting some lessons in humility. Not all of them do understand human sexuality very well, but they have a keener insight than you’d think.
Let’s put it this way: I think going to a marriage counselor after you get your marriage into trouble is stupid and less likely to succeed than going to a priest first. I don’t see hwo it’s any of the counselor’s business. But I can still see why people in trouble do go to them.
I’m not saying that’s what I think. I’m saying that that’s what it could easily look like from outside, without any convictions regarding the truth of Christianity, the authority of the Roman Catholic Church and its papacy and Magisterium.
I personally am a Catholic, received and confirmed at Easter 2007. I personally affirm the Church’s right to guide me in matters relating to sexuality- in fact, I affirmed my faith in all that the Church preaches, teaches and confesses.
In spite of that, I remember that before I became convicted about entering the RCC, it did seem weird to me, as an Anglican, to let someone who claimed direct divine authority interfere with what exactly you did in your own personal married sex life, instead of leaving it up to you, your spouse, and God. The church authority issue can be a huge divider between Protestants and Catholics.
By extension, since Kalhoun is an atheist, I can imagine that it looks even weirder to her that people let the Church dictate to them about what sex may or may not be. And yes, I bet that it can and does look creepy, nosy and controlling, even though I think it is none of those things.
I hope that has clarified my position.
“As far as they’re concerned.” Exactly. As long as you phrase it that way, I’m happy.
I had no idea you were an atheist; I just didn’t want someone saying that the RCC speaks for God, period, as opposed to the participants in a particular transaction believing that’s the case, which is all that needs to be assumed for purposes of this discussion. I (incorrectly) thought you were sticking up for the broader claim.
OK, I’m sure what you actually meant to type here was as far as you’re concerned, nobody in the RCC speaks for God, and in your opinion that appalling moral wreck of a church speaks for nobody but itself and its own repressive desires.
To have deliberately stated it without these qualifiers would have been an appalling misrepresentation, one worthy of an exchange of several posts, and that exchange would not have at all been perceived as petty and pedantic. I’m sure you didn’t intend that.
What do you not understand?
A RCC person is expected to follow the church’s teachings. But the RCC does not make rules for other religions. If person of lets say is a protestant, and marries that union is considered to be a valid marriage, unless the person involved was not mentally well,or forced into their marriage. If a RCC want’s to marry the person in the RCC they will let them marry if the person in question becaomes a Catholic.
If a RCC devorices and the church has investigated and found the first marriage was valid they will not let the Catholic marry again in the church.
The children born to a devoriced and remarried couple are not considered illegitimant because the marrige was a legal union although not a sacramental one. But the catholic was considered living in sin.
I have several friends and relatives that have gone through such a process one was a RC who married a devoriced non-catholic,they were married by a judge,but she was not able to take communion,her husband was not RC and did not want to convert, he wanted a devorice from her as she insisted on not using birth control and folowing RCC teachings,when their third child was born he move into a different bedroom and they lived that way until he died,she was allowed to take Communion because they were living as separated people. I thought this was a crazy way to live but she would not give him a devorice and he didn’t push it as he said he just wanted to make her lif miserable.
Monavis
Probably your entire post. It’s not exactly a coherent stream, sorry to say.
One thing I did glean from your last post is that you seem to think the Roman Catholic Church requires a non-Catholic party to a marriage performed by said Church to actually convert. That is not the case. The non-Catholic party must agree to raise any children from that union as Roman Catholics or that church will not sanction a marriage.
Precisely. I have been to a half dozen of these weddings. The non-Catholic so agreed wrt the kids, and carried out said agreement, and everyone lived happily ever after (in several cases the non-Catholic converted later, in several they did not).
You might consider the exchange as a whole, including the post immediately preceding yours. I’m moving on.
Personal experience- my husband was not Catholic (and non-Christian) when we married. I had to agree to do “all in my power” to raise the children Catholic, and he was informed that I made that promise, but was required to promise nothing himself.
As a minor note which people still get confused on: there is no such thing as illegitimate children within the bounds of the RCC. Children can be neither legit nor illegit, and the status of the marriage is completely and wholly irrelevant to their status. They exist, and that’s pretty much the end of the story.