Moving thread from IMHO to Great Debates.
One thing that I wouldn’t correct is the notion that some non-Catholics have that their denominations date back to the time of Jesus. They read the Gospels and the writings of Paul and other early Christians and base their beliefs on what is written there. So I can understand what they are saying. They may think of themselves as those who kept “the truth” alive (or something like that) when there was only Catholicism.
I am also a Protestant and of course I know about the Reformation. But I consider Protestantism a “splitting off” – not something entirely new with Martin Luther. It’s the Reformation – not the Formation. In the Episcopal Church, for example, the line of the priesthood is also directly back to Saint Peter if I am not mistaken.
The denomination that I now belong to was founded in the early part of the 19th Century. (On Christmas Eve, I returned to membership in the denomination of my childhood.) But I still feel that my roots go back through the Reformation and through the Catholic Church to the Incarnation.
As for Mary, I have always held her in great reverence. That was encouraged when I was growing up. It’s a shame that we don’t hear much about Mary in Protestant churches these days. I liked her so much that I learned to say the “Hail Mary” when I was in high school and it is still a comfort to me.
“When I find myself in times of trouble Mother Mary comes to me, speaking words of wisdom, ‘Let it be.’” – Lennon and McCartney
We–I mean, they–DON’T? Somebody better tell all the little ol’ Italian and Polish ladies I grew up around. :eek:
Anyway, I figure we’re all gonna find a way to come to the Goddess in our own way. She was big tens of thousands of years before yer Yahweh was a two-bit Canaanite storm god. Seen the cave paintings of someone with an owl on her shoulder? (knowing ;))
Dropzone: It’s the old “what some members of a group do does not define the official stated views of the group” problem all over again. The Catholics have been at great pains to distinguish the honor due your average run-of-the-shrine saint from the putatively exaggerated respect they pay to Mary, and both from the worship due to God alone. “Pious opinion” is the fifth and lowest form of Catholic teaching, and is not binding on anyone. If Mrs. O’Flaherty prayed novenas to the Virgin beseeching her for a son, and was “rewarded” by conceiving a boy, and is convinced this was Mary’s doing alone, God not having taken a hand in it, the proper thing is to smile indulgently and go about one’s business – but it does not bind the Catholic Church into believing that that was in fact the case.
Hang on, if there is so much ‘Free Will’ floating around, how did god determine that JC got nailed up ?
A sane bunch would have split his tongue, ensured that he was doubly (and permanently) incontinent, and let him free to gabble and polute the environment.
Either god rigged the deck, in which case there ain’t no ‘free will’, or he simply took a gamble.
If any of you have not read Florence King, then you have a delight in store.
Flo’s grandmother’s take on the VB was: ‘Well girls do get into trouble in occupied countries’
You’ve heard of this omniscience thing, right? It goes right to the whole heart of the whole free will debate–i.e., can there be such a thing as free will within a context created by a God who has foreseen every act and action that will ever take place? A tough question of course. But in any event, it’s no more problematical here than for every other exercise of free will (or non-exercise, depending upon your perspective), IMO.
I long ago came to the conclusion that there is no such thing as ‘Free Will’
- but it is not a good idea to behave as if there is not
Actually you don’t need god for determinism - just the odd butterfly 
I always have to laugh to myself when people say Catholics aren’t Christian when almost all Christian religions came out of Catholic teachings.The Orthodox split in the year(I believe) it was around the year 1,000. After 400 years most non orthodox got their start with Martin Luther when he broke away from the Catholic church. They used the Catholic form of the Bible as their religious basis.
My understanding is that the Roman Catholic church practices prayer to the saints and Mary like when person would ask a friend or neighbor to pray for them. I have been to Catholic services and Protestant ones and the priest or minister aske the congregation to pray for certian people.If it is wrong to pray to Mary or the saints I think it would be just as wrong for a person to pray for others
I am not Christian but if some one tells me they pray to Mary it doesn’t mean they worship her, they ask her to pray for them.
Monavis
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If God knows all things why does anyone have to pray to Him. To me it would mean that there is a lack of trust in God. Like if a child has to beg for some food from a good father,he provides without begging. If one doesn’t get something it would be because a good father would not with hold any thing that was for a childs good, and would give with out asking all he knew was for the child’s good!
Huh. I was always under the impression the Catholic church (working from the playbook of Augustine) developed the doctrine because at root there was a bizarre hatred and mistrust of all things female, hence the need to divorce Jesus (hey, a Catholic divorce!) from anything remotely ickily female with the water breaking and the afterbirth and all that stuff which seems normal and mundane to your average farmhand who sees cows and sheep dropping their over-gooed young all the time but far far inadequate for toe-tapping star-spangled Magi-attracting debut of the Son of God. That stuff about the manger is just clever P.R., like when you see a millionaire trimming hedges and whatnot. “Sure, I’m one of the common folk (wink-wink).”
Thus, Mary’s conception was immaculate (separating her from the ickiness of her mother as much as possible) and Jesus’s own birth is some kinda miraculously clean procedure that makes a Star Trek transporter look like a six-mile slog through an Irish sewer on the morning of March 18th.
Of course, I could be wrong. Fortunately, being a Jewish atheist, it’s not something I get hit with on a daily or even weekly basis.
You are understanding the concept of “praying to the saints” perfectly, from a Catholic perspective. Technically, you are not supposed to ask Mary or the other saints directly for things, but instead to ask them to pray for you for those things. (Not that this is necessarily well-understood or adhered to by your average Catholic.)
I wouldn’t necessarily argue with your premise, but I don’t think the accounts of Jesus’ birth necessarily reflect this misogyny. We hear all the time about Jesus being “born of woman,” and just because the scripture doesn’t give a graphic account of the birth, doesn’t mean that we aren’t supposed to realize that this is how it happened.
While it is not correct word usage, I don’t see anything wrong in terms of faith to name the conception of our lord the I.C. If both of you know what each other is talking about, we have communication. If the intention and message delivered is based in faith and scripture then there is no ‘sin’ so to speak, just words used which are technically incorrect.
One possibility.
Makes you sound like you are not aware of this common usage, and sounds snooty
- Do I say, that’s not what that means, it means…<explanation>
I like this one, Christ calls us to go forth and spread the word, and this gives the person to opportunity to ask questions and learn.
I might be misunderstanding you, but Mary was conceived through her parents’ normal sexual activity and born like any other baby. She was conceived without original sin but that didn’t affect the birth. Jesus of course was conceived through the grace of God and then born like any other baby. He was born in a mucky stable with the animals. But, yeah, I guess the gospels don’t go into all the detail!
IIRC, I don’t think the gospels actually say it’s a stable, either. Not much detail indeed.
Has anyone been to Bethlehem ?
A great hoot - some sort of cellar.
Nazareth, where JC supposedly grew up, has a sort of sewer (I jest not) where the lad spent his formative years.
The major problem with the Palestine/Israeli conflict is that it prevents the rest of us having a good laugh at the so called Biblical sites.
Certain places are awesome, the souks in Jerusalem and the old Jaffa port.
The religious places are good for a quick glance, but I strongly recommend mooching around the rest of the place.
When leaving Israel, there is an old Arab town next to the airport, it is supposedly the drugs capital, but it is a great place to eat.
No way – it was totally the Catholics who split from the Orthodox.
Yes, the version of Jesus’ birth that Bryan mentions, where Baby Jesus sort of neatly teleports out of Mary, is more a folk belief held by quite a number of people, who kinda get to that conclusion after taking some parts of the teachings about the degeneracy of things carnal and sort of running away with the idea. (I guess someone could argue that if painful, dangerous labor is part of Eve’s legacy, Mary could have been spared that, and delivered pleasantly – but that still would not preclude it happening naturally!)
But yes, there ARE a considerable number of Christians who believe that version of events – every religion has members of the “that does not mean what you think it means” school among its followers. (This is in part why the Catholic/Orthodox tradition has been that you should leave the interpreting of what does Scripture mean, up to trained professionals. The other part being, of course, their nefarious plot to control people’s minds 
)
FRDE - What can I say, I have the nagging suspicion about when the Grotto of the Nativity and the Holy Sepulcher were “identified”, that they may have just coincidentally happened to be on the property of some in-laws of whoever was doing the identifying
It’s pretty far from reality but Revelation does mention the woman groaning with birthing pains, before the baby is delivered and swept up.
To believe something first requires that it make coherent sense. I can’t believe in a square circle, no matter how much I try or claim to do so. It isn’t possible. You can say “when you say this, I respond with this jumble of words that I think sort of implies something or other to me”, but you can’t say that Christians believe that, because even they can’t explain what it is they believe.