Catholics! Who decided all of this?

Great Debates
61

I’m not Catholic, but I think I understand this. Those more educated than myself, please correct any errors.

Certain saints are associated with certain events and professions because of what occurred during their lives. They are assumed to be close to those events and professions, and paying attention to the living in those positions today. Catholics praying to those saints aren’t asking the saints to help them thmselves, they’re asking the saints to intercede with God on their behalf. I sort of picture it as a divine version of writing to your congressperson.

62

manhatten: Don’t have a blasted cow about it!
‘That’s what Catholics do’ is an insufficient answer. I want to know why.

Clarification here; When I use the name ‘Protestants’ I’m indicating every other form of the Christian religion aside from the Catholic sect. Apparently, somewhere along the time line, Christianity split with Catholicism on one side and everyone else on the other. To try to list all of the other forms of Christianity would be a pain.

SIGH! Since this thread is concerning the Christian religion, with others only mentioned by name as necessary, it had been assumed that those following it would have understood that I am talking about Christianity when I stated ‘most religious beliefs’. To my knowledge and understanding the Baptists, Lutherans, Protestants, Seventh Day Adventists, Mormons, Methodists, Christ Scientists, and so on, all believe that Jesus will not only answer prayers for help but interceded between them and God. They also believe that they can pray directly to God.

In this thread, I’m not interested in Buddhists or Moslems.

I think this is explained above.

With the Pope taking the blame for decisions concerning the Catholic Church, such as the always favorite birth control, then it is assumed that he has the major power. I am curious about safeguards so incidents like the one I mentioned in the evangelical church cannot happen – especially since the Pope has a lot more power than that guy did.

It’s kind of like safeguards around the President that keep him from pushing the button if he goes bonkers.

**By the way, are not moderators supposed to kind of just moderate instead of being somewhat hostile and attempting to incite a belligerent reply?[/]

What? Me worry?’

63

Rainbowcsr said:

“With the Pope taking the blame for decisions concerning the Catholic Church, such as
the always favorite birth control,”

News to me, and I listened to the “apology.”

As for praying to Saints, this is how it was explained to me wayback in Catholic school.

Saints are dead, and presumably in Heaven.

As such they are now a part of the greater glory of God.

When you ask a saint to intervene on your behalf your are actually praying to God, because now that Saint is with and a part of God’s glory.

You might say “Oh God, please grant me the strength to get this Flershluginer lug nut off this flat tire, so I can change it before a maniac stops and slits my throat. St. Christopher, remember how when you were travelling and God protected you in your journeys, please intervene with the big guy in my behalf and see if you can get him to loosen up this rust just a little bit. In Jesus’ name. Amen:”

You are actually praying to God in both parts, your just giving a little nudge to that part of God and Heaven that is now St. Christopher too. Kind of like double protection Aqua-fresh.

Your problem with this is?

64

Think of the saints as the moderators on the SDMB of Heaven… :wink:

65

SYLLA

Did I say I had a problem with it? I asked a question. You provided an answer. If you go on the defensive, that’s your problem. My opinions concerning your versrion of the Christian religion are not important here. Perhaps later, once I colate enough data to form a comprehensive opinion concerning the fragmented religion that goes under the name of Christianity, then I might express some.

I also find it to be archaic that the Jewish religion does not allow women to play a higher role in the temples. I find the Muslim religion to be very restrictive in that area also and many clinging to ancient ways in modern era, which has begun to cause some interesting problems. I know of no female Buddhist priestess or monk. I am aware of the combining of some pagan holidays during Roman times with Christianity that became incorporated into the religion.

I am also gaining an interesting view of how a very, very large portion of humanity have this need in their various religions to have much pomp and circumstance. Next I will be pestering people of the Jewish persuasion. I hope that they are not as defensive over discussing their religion as many Catholics are here.

As for the apology, I did not listen to nor read any of it and will not be interested in it until the powerful Catholic Church uses its influence to start forcing major banking institutions in Sweden and many museums in France to start returning the stolen gold, monies and treasures looted from the Jews during the Holocaust.

Later I will turn my attention to Japan, who still convinces its population that they did not commit the serious war crimes noted and recorded in history. I will also be looking into the unusual tendency of the Japanese male to be fixcated with very young females, apparently the only nation to overtly be so.
I find that curious concerning, especially, their exaggerated image of maleness.

What? Me worry?’

66

And then, once Rainbowcsr has fully educated all and sundry of the various failings of their belief systems, rituals and/or country, perhaps he will turn his attention to the beam in his own eye. :smiley:

67

You certainly have an ambitious plan worked out for your life. :wink:

Regarding prayers to saints:

All Christians agree that only Jesus mediates between God the Father and humanity.

Nearly all Christians believe in the idea of intercessory prayer, i.e., I can pray to God for you or intercede with God for you.

All those who believe in intercessory prayer would agree that it is a good idea to ask some devout person to pray for one. Catholics take that one step further and say that it is good to ask people who have already made it into heaven to pray for us as well.

The Protestant objections to this are many, of course, but they are not all the same. One group denies that a dead person can hear/see/know anything until the Final Judgment. One group simply claims that there is no mechanism for the prayers of a person on earth to be “heard” by a saint in heaven. Quite a few dwell on the point that one definition of prayer is worship (reserved for God), ignoring that another longstanding meaning of the word is petition or ask, regardless of the aspect of worship.

Catholics can point to the parable of Lazarus and the rich man for some of their interpretation. (Lazarus in the parable is not the man Jesus raised from the dead.) In the parable, after those two have died, Jesus describes the rich man and Abraham in conversation and part of the conversation turns on sending Lazarus back to earth to warn the rich man’s brothers of their potential fate. From this parable, we take the word of Jesus that the dead are not oblivious to everything until the Final Judgment and that there is the possibility of communication between those in Heaven and those on Earth. Obviously, many Protestant groups object to those conclusions.

So, based on the idea that it is good to have people intercede for us (pray to God on our behalf) and that those who have already died in God’s grace (the saints) can actually understand our petitions (prayers), the RCC believes that we can pray to the saints to intercede for us with God.

Burying statues of St. Joseph to sell a house, praying to Jude or Anthony to cure our cancer or help us find our car keys wander into the realm of superstition and polytheism and are not supported by the RCC. It is a really big group without a very tight control on its members, however, so a lot of silly stuff does go on.

I am not about to debate the points, here. You wanted to know the RCC position, and here it is.

Tom~

68

I think it’s archaic that you have formulated an opinion on something you clearly don’t know anything about. I thought we had gotten over that.

There are three main branches of Judaism: Orthodox (10% of American Jewry), Conservative, and Reform (together about 70%; Reform is a little larger). Only Orthodox Judaism doesn’t allow women to become rabbis. Women have absolute equal rights in Conservative and Reform Judaism. Incidentally, the word ‘temple’ refers specifically to Reform synagogues. Any woman in any Jewish temple has any right that a man has.

I know this is a hijack. I’m sorry. Go back to the Catholic discussion now.

69

KYLA
Thank you. I most certainly stand corrected. I was not aware of this.

Gaudere: Moderators are supposed to moderate, not become sarcastic idiots. The majority of my questions are for my own personal education and if I choose to express the final results, it will not be in the SDMB simply because it is not the appropriate place. Some of us actually do like to learn things simply for the fact of knowing them.

tomndebb: Where did I ask for a debate on your post? I asked a question, you explained it. I’m satisfied. If I wasn’t, I’d be asking more questions. Since when has this become a debate concerning my views verses everyone else’s? Whether I agree or disagree with what goes on in the Catholic religion is not to be debated here by myself.

Question here concerning an old legend:
It is rumored and written in at least one book – no, I don’t recall the title or author because I read it in the 1960s – that somewhere locked up in the Vatican is a great stone coffin with a hole in the center of the lid. The author did not know what was in the coffin, but stated that whatever it was, when it was dug up, papers put idly over the hole charred. It was felt that there was something very evil inside and apparently priests were called in, examined it, agreed with the finders opinions and it was taken for safe keeping to the Vatican, where it supposedly is watched over to this day. Anyone heard of anything like this? I’ve always been curious about that.

The Vatican, being the only actual central body for any form of the Christian religion, naturally has all sorts of rumors floating around about secreted texts, strange objects and so on, hidden away and guarded. The coffin one, for some reason, has remained in my memory. I just wondered if anyone else has heard the story?

What? Me worry?’

70

Thank you for informing me what moderators are supposed to do. I had no idea. FTR, I am often sarcastic, and sometimes an idiot; but when I am, I generally acknowledge it, which puts me several leagues ahead of some others. And moderators are indeed allowed to post their personal opinions on this MB.

[Moderator Hat ON]

Should you wish to call me or anyone else an “idiot”, the proper place to do so is the Pit; please refrain from such direct insults in GD. Thank you.

[Moderator Hat OFF]

71

No. But I’ve heard about the Vatican Pornography Collection, the Vatican Stolen Jewish Gold Collection, and the Vatican Angel Corpse Collection.

I’ve also heard that Elvis Presley is working at a Burger King in Des Moines, that Hitler’s brain is alive in a jar, and that the US Air Force shot down a UFO over Da Nang. Oh yes, and the Ark of the Covenant has been in a warehouse since its recovery in Egypt in 1936.
The Mystical Coffin o’ Doom™ seems to be fairly typical anti-Catholic propoganda and utter crap. Don’t believe it.

-andros-

72

Boy. Where do you get your rumors? Everyone knows that Elvis is in Kalamazoo (or is it Grand Rapids?) at a 7-Eleven.

73

I just said I’d heard that, not that
I believed it. :smiley:

74

If this is true, then why was this posted in Great Debates? It should have been put into General Questions.

PeeQueue

75

You’ve got to love a bigot who gets upset at people’s “defensiveness” over the bigot’s statements.

As a Jew, I eagerly await the kinds of questions that Rainbowscr might ask. Judging from the tenor of his questions to Catholics (Don’t the Catholics control the Mafia? Don’t Catholics worship graven images? etc, and his bold, sweeping statments about pedophillic tendencies of Japanese males, I suspect we’re going to get questions along the lines of:
“Hey, you Jews have really big noses. Why is that?”

“Why do you Jews control all the banks? Is it because you’re greedy money-lenders?”

“I’ve got a Jewish friend who uses the blood of Christian children to make Matzo. Why do you do that?”

“Keeping Kosher is really stupid, isn’t it?”

Regarding your view that my religion is “archaic”, please, feel free not to convert. Trust me, we won’t miss you.
Fenris

76

Rainbowcsr said:

!!! Have you checked this usage with the Eastern Orthodox, Coptic Christian, or other Eastern churches? There are millions of Christians who are not Roman Catholics who would be somewhat startled to hear themselves referred to as “Protestants”! I think you have the (very common, btw) vague notion that Christianity was some kind of RC monolith from antiquity till Martin Luther: widely believed but not really true.

And further remarked:

The female equivalent of a Buddhist monk is called (by Westerners) a Buddhist nun, and yes, there have been female Buddhist monastic communities from at least the early first millennium CE up to the present.

Rainbowcsr, I don’t think anybody here is unwilling to take the questions you raise seriously or to share their knowledge with you. The aggressiveness of some of the posts (some posters, of course, just enjoy being mordant and trenchant because it feels so good :slight_smile: is partly due to the fact that you seem to be strong in opinion but weak in information about the history and practices of the faiths you’re commenting on, even including your own. The SDMB tends to be quite rough on any ignorance except the very, very cautious and humble kind! Maybe a better place to start looking for some of the information you seek would be a book on comparative religion and/or the history of Christianity—I highly recommend a book called A World History of Christianity written in the mid-90’s by several joint authors, none of whose names I can remember now, of course. (Tom, who’s the patron saint of forgetful people again?—I can’t recall. :slight_smile: Even an encyclopedia article on Christianity or Roman Catholicism would be likely to have a lot of the answers to your questions. And it would provide a more solid background for your future researches into gender roles in medieval and modern Judaism, Islam, and Buddhism, and modern secular Japan (which as Tom notes is quite an ambitious course of exploration, but more power to you!).

Kimstu

77

First off, I usually stay way the heck out of GD because unlike Custer, I know when I’m out gunned.

However, the OP caught my attention. Me, the 12 years of Catholic Schooling. Daughter of an ex-nun, church twice a week until 16. And I just had to respond.

Someone wrote:

Al Haig.He’s in charge.
Another Quote by someone else:

The last line just about made me pee my pants. Where were you when I was in religion class suffering from a religious coma?

Lastly, I would like to thank the SDMD - GD for expanding my theological beliefs more than all the drumming into me that the nuns and my family strived so hard to do. I’ve learned more about religion HERE than elsewhere.

Thirdly ( Yeah, I’m bad at math) I’d like to add this. The Pope is on my Dead List. ( Yes, I failed religion classes repeatedly. Why do you ask?)

78

Ladies and gentlemen, I believe we have the first winner of the International Phaedrus Trophy in Pretension and Grandiose Pseudo-Scholarship. The trophy – a gold-plated braying ass – is in the mail.

Up, up and away!

79

When Rainbowcsr’s enquiring mind wants to know if black people really like watermelon, are Asian woman “built” differently and what about that use of Christian children’s blood in medieval Jewish ceremonies, who is stepping up to that plate? In Dallas there is a large billboard that says “If man evolved from monkeys, there wouldn’t be any monkeys left, right?” I feel no need to enlighten whoever paid for that sign. I make a valid assumption as to his intelligence and motivations and move on.

80

Guys! I think Rainbowcsr could use some help on his writing style, (and should really do a better job of proof-reading to make sure that his posts are saying to us what he thinks he wants to say, but I am not convinced that he is actively bigoted (or even stupid).

Every one of those questions could have been posted in a more neutral voice and been accepted as the legitimate promptings of curiosity.

Rainbow, I would suggest that you take note of how you asked each question and what sort of responses you got. Several questions seemed more hostile than curious (and the fact that you asked questions a second time after they had been answered–in the Great Debates Forum–led me to believe that you were looking for a debate).

Let me give you an example from your OP:

Now look at the same question with less attitude:

I still looked for the reasons behind the Catholic practices, but note the differences:

  • I did not insist that the Catholics did worship saints and idols, I pointed to known practices of the RCC and the fact that some outsiders view those activities in that light.
  • I did not include “who decided” in the question (which carries a pretty strong implication that someone went out and made a decision to violate the commandments).

If you take the time to see how your audience might read your question, you might be able to ask the question without raising their hackles.

Tom~