I would love to post some earthly postings but after I posted the one on Oprah I now hesitate. I shall post some earthly things from time to time, I promise! Also I count one you my earthly friend in Christ! I wish all of you would post and talk and chat also! I would love to hear from you! I know you are reading. About 200 are reading daily!
Now to answer you!
I do know that we have 610 commandments in the Old Testament. And the Orthodox tradition of Judiasm they practice them well! Two-thirds of those commandments are for and of the land on which the Israelites lived! One third are generally practiced. If ther are any Jewish people out there please add to the information here please! We would love to hear from you. I took Judiasm for the 2 years I studied sacred theology and loved it! I learned so much about our roots!
n
Don't worry about posting anything, anywhere, you want, nancyann - timber's gotchyer back. Anybody wants to play with you, they gotta play fair - not nice, per se, or gentle, but fair ... go on out there and hold your own. It gets rough; its sometimes a full-contact sport out there on the boards, but there are rules to protect the players from injury - with it being understood, of course, that the players provide and use their own protective gear :wink:
You are so good Timber! I am so glad you are out there! Thanks for your words! Tomorrow I have an extra hour so I will read all of your writing on the S&R forum. Bobsmythhawk and I had breakfast together the other day and we spoke of you and Neo in glowing terms. He said he read both of your stuff all of the time also! He said both of you are very bright men! So tomorrow is timbeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeer hour!
I will post from time to time some left thinking things in the Church but there is so much of it in the forum that I will keep this forum somewhat peaceful, loving, full of friendship and quiet! When I post controvertial things I will give my opinion on the topic, but I tend to be trained as a conservative Catholic and live as a devout one! But thanks for your words! You are good to me! Neo too! All of the readers in fact. Thanks for being there!
n
Is Christianity the One true Religion?
Taken from google!
Is Christianity the One True Religion?
Yes, Christianity is the one true religion. That may sound awfully dogmatic and narrow-minded, but the simple truth is that Christianity is the only true religion. Jesus said that He alone was the way to the Father (John 14:6), that He alone revealed the Father (Matt. 11:27; Luke 10:22). Christians do not go around saying Christianity is the only way because they are arrogant, narrow-minded, stupid, and judgmental. They do so because they believe what Jesus said. They believe in Jesus, who claimed to be God (John 8:58; Exodus 3:14), who forgave sins (Mark 2:5; Luke 5:20; 7:48), and who rose from the dead (Luke 24:24-29; John 2:19f). Jesus said that He was the only way. Jesus is unique. He was either telling the truth, He was crazy, or He was a liar. But since everyone agrees that Jesus was a good man, how then could He be both good and crazy, or good and a liar? He had to be telling the truth. He is the only way.
Christianity is not just a religion; it is a relationship with God. It is a trusting in Jesus and what He did on the cross (1 Cor. 15:1-4), not on what you can do for yourself (Ephesians 2:8-9).
Buddha didn't rise from the dead, nor did Confucius or Zoroaster. Muhammad didn't fulfill detailed prophecy. Alexander the Great didn't raise the dead or heal the sick. And though there is far less reliable information written about them, they are believed in.
The scripture is right when it says in 1 Pet. 2:7-8, "This precious value, then, is for you who believe. But for those who disbelieve, 'The stone which the builders rejected, this became the very corner stone,' and, 'A stone of stumbling and a rock of offense'; for they stumble because they are disobedient to the word, and to this doom they were also.
_____________________________________________________________
Since I was a little girl I always felt that my faith was a gift and that the Catholic faith was for me. I do believe though that there is salvation for everyone and that is also a teaching of the Catholic Church! Thank God! So is it the one tru religion. Is is the one true one FOR ME but it may not be the noe true one for you and that is okay! God loves everyone and everyone can be saved and in heaven.
What do you think?
Nancyann
Mother Angelica
About two years ago, I just packed up on a Friday nght and flew to Alabama and beforehand put my dog in the kennel for the weekend. I booked a weekend retreat at Mother Angelica's beautiful 13th Century Chapel with her cloistered nuns. I had a little room on the outside of the convent. It was a silent weekent for me but a beautiful one.
Here is an update on Mother Angelica's health as of today. I thought you would like to have it!
n
Mother Angelica Update: Wednesday, January 04, 2006
Christmas Eve, December 24, 2001 marks four years since Mother Angelica suffered a severe stroke that left her with a speech impediment and partial paralysis.
These past few years we have hoped and prayed for Mother's full recovery. With grateful hearts, we have seen Mother slowly regain her strength, though she still struggles with her ability to communicate. She continues to be a source of joy to all of us.
The Nuns at Our Lady of the Angels Monastery share stories of her childlike love, her continued zeal for souls, and her smile that never quits! As we approach Christmas, let us ask the Divine Child Jesus to continue to heal our beloved Mother and to bring comfort to all those who suffer.
Pray for Mother Angelica
Mother Angelica is so grateful to you all for the love and prayers offered on her behalf.
Click here to join with others around the world who pray for Mother's full recovery.
Dorothy Day
This group has done lots of good work for people! It has been in the news of late! I must find out why! If anyone else knows why let me know! But Dorothy Day has done lots of good Catholic work for people!
A BIOGRAPHY OF DOROTHY DAY
This essay by Jim Forest on Dorothy Day was prepared for The Encyclopedia of American Catholic History to be published by the Liturgical Press. Jim Forest, once a managing editor of The Catholic Worker, is the author of Love is the Measure: a Biography of Dorothy Day; and Living With Wisdom: a Biography of Thomas Merton. Both are published by Orbis.
Photo of Dorothy Day courtesy of the Dorothy Day-Catholic Worker
Collection at Marquette University.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dorothy Day, founder of the Catholic Worker movement, was born in Brooklyn, New York, November 8, 1897. After surviving the San Francisco earthquake in 1906, the Day family moved into a tenement flat in Chicago's South Side. It was a big step down in the world made necessary because John Day was out of work. Day's understanding of the shame people feel when they fail in their efforts dated from this time.
It was in Chicago that Day began to form positive impressions of Catholicism. Later in life she would recall her discovery of a friend's mother, a devout Catholic, praying at the side of her bed. Without embarrassment, she looked up at Day, told her where to find her daughter, and returned to her prayers. "I felt a burst of love toward [her] that I have never forgotten," Day recalled.
When John Day was appointed sports editor of a Chicago newspaper, the Day family moved into a comfortable house on the North Side. Here Dorothy began to read books that stirred her conscience. Upton Sinclair's novel, The Jungle, inspired Day to take long walks in poor neighborhoods in Chicago's South Side. It was the start of a life-long attraction to areas many people avoid.
Day had a gift for finding beauty in the midst of urban desolation. Drab streets were transformed by pungent odors: geranium and tomato plants, garlic, olive oil, roasting coffee, bread and rolls in bakery ovens. "Here," she said, "was enough beauty to satisfy me."
Day won a scholarship that brought her to the University of Illinois campus at Urbana in the fall of 1914. But she was a reluctant scholar. Her reading was chiefly in a radical social direction. She avoided campus social life and insisted on supporting herself rather than live on money from her father.
Dropping out of college two years later, she moved to New York where she found a job as a reporter for The Call, the city's only socialist daily. She covered rallies and demonstrations and interviewed people ranging from butlers and butlers to labor organizers and revolutionaries.
She next worked for The Masses, a magazine that opposed American involvement in the European war. In September, the Post Office rescinded the magazine's mailing permit. Federal officers seized back issues, manuscripts, subscriber lists and correspondence. Five editors were charged with sedition.
In November 1917 Day went to prison for being one of forty women in front of the White House protesting women's exclusion from the electorate. Arriving at a rural workhouse, the women were roughly handled. The women responded with a hunger strike. Finally they were freed by presidential order.
Returning to New York, Day felt that journalism was a meager response to a world at war. In the spring of 1918, she signed up for a nurse's training program in Brooklyn.
Her conviction that the social order was unjust changed in no substantial way from her adolescence until her death, though she never identified herself with any political party.
Her religious development was a slower process. As a child she had attended services at an Episcopal Church. As a young journalist in New York, she would sometimes make late-at-night visits to St. Joseph's Catholic Church on Sixth Avenue.
The Catholic climate of worship appealed to her. While she knew little about Catholic belief, Catholic spiritual discipline fascinated her. She saw the Catholic Church as "the church of the immigrants, the church of the poor."
In 1922, in Chicago working as a reporter, she roomed with three young women who went to Mass every Sunday and holy day and set aside time each day for prayer. It was clear to her that "worship, adoration, thanksgiving, supplication ... were the noblest acts of which we are capable in this life."
Her next job was with a newspaper in New Orleans. Living near St. Louis Cathedral, Day often attended evening Benediction services.
Back in New York in 1924, Day bought a beach cottage on Staten Island using money from the sale of movie rights for a novel. She also began a four-year common-law marriage with Forster Batterham, an English botanist she had met through friends in Manhattan. Batterham was an anarchist opposed to marriage and religion. In a world of such cruelty, he found it impossible to believe in a God. By this time Day's belief in God was unshakable. It grieved her that Batterham didn't sense God's presence within the natural world. "How can there be no God," she asked, "when there are all these beautiful things?" His irritation with her "absorption in the supernatural" would lead them to quarrel.
What moved everything to a different plane for her was pregnancy. She had been pregnant once before, years earlier, as the result of a love affair with a journalist. This resulted in the great tragedy of her life, an abortion. The affair and its awful aftermath had been the subject of her novel, The Eleventh Virgin. The abortion, Day concluded in the years following, had left her barren. "For a long time I had thought I could not bear a child, and the longing in my heart for a baby had been growing,"she confided in her autobiography, The Long Loneliness. "My home, I felt, was not a home without one."
Her pregnancy with Batterham seemed to Day nothing less than a miracle. But Batterham didn't believe in bringing children into such a violent world.
On March 3, 1927, Tamar Theresa Day was born. Day could think of nothing better to do with the gratitude that overwhelmed her than arrange Tamar's baptism in the Catholic Church. "I did not want my child to flounder as I had often floundered. I wanted to believe, and I wanted my child to believe, and if belonging to a Church would give her so inestimable a grace as faith in God, and the companionable love of the Saints, then the thing to do was to have her baptized a Catholic."
After Tamar's baptism, there was a permanent break with Batterham. On December 28, Day was received into the Catholic Church. A period commenced in her life as she tried to find a way to bring together her religious faith and her radical social values.
In the winter of 1932 Day travelled to Washington, D.C., to report for Commonweal and America magazines on the Hunger March. Day watched the protesters parade down the streets of Washington carrying signs calling for jobs, unemployment insurance, old age pensions, relief for mothers and children, health care and housing. What kept Day in the sidelines was that she was a Catholic and the march had been organized by Communists, a party at war with not only with capitalism but religion.
It was December 8, the Feast of the Immaculate Conception. After witnessing the march, Day went to the Shrine of the Immaculate Conception where she expressed her torment in prayer: "I offered up a special prayer, a prayer which came with tears and anguish, that some way would open up for me to use what talents I possessed for my fellow workers, for the poor."
Back in her apartment in New York the next day, Day met Peter Maurin, a French immigrant 20 years her senior.
Maurin, a former Christian Brother, had left France for Canada in 1908 and later made his way to the United States. When he met Day, he was handyman at a Catholic boys' camp in upstate New York, receiving meals, use of the chaplain's library, living space in the barn and occasional pocket money.
During his years of wandering, Maurin had come to a Franciscan attitude, embracing poverty as a vocation. His celibate, unencumbered life offered time for study and prayer, out of which a vision had taken form of a social order instilled with basic values of the Gospel "in which it would be easier for men to be good." A born teacher, he found willing listeners, among them George Shuster, editor of Commonweal magazine, who gave him Day's address.
As remarkable as the providence of their meeting was Day's willingness to listen. It seemed to her he was an answer to her prayers, someone who could help her discover what she was supposed to do.
What Day should do, Maurin said, was start a paper to publicize Catholic social teaching and promote steps to bring about the peaceful transformation of society. Day readily embraced the idea. If family past, work experience and religious faith had prepared her for anything, it was this.
Day found that the Paulist Press was willing to print 2,500 copies of an eight-page tabloid paper for $57. Her kitchen was the new paper's editorial office. She decided to sell the paper for a penny a copy, "so cheap that anyone could afford to buy it."
On May 1, the first copies of The Catholic Worker were handed out on Union Square.
Few publishing ventures meet with such immediate success. By December, 100,000 copies were being printed each month. Readers found a unique voice in The Catholic Worker. It expressed dissatisfaction with the social order and took the side of labor unions, but its vision of the ideal future challenged both urbanization and industrialism. It wasn't only radical but religious. The paper didn't merely complain but called on its readers to make personal responses.
For the first half year The Catholic Worker was only a newspaper, but as winter approached, homeless people began to knock on the door. Maurin's essays in the paper were calling for renewal of the ancient Christian practice of hospitality to those who were homeless. In this way followers of Christ could respond to Jesus' words: "I was a stranger and you took me in." Maurin opposed the idea that Christians should take care only of their friends and leave care of strangers to impersonal charitable agencies. Every home should have its "Christ Room" and every parish a house of hospitality ready to receive the "ambassadors of God."
Surrounded by people in need and attracting volunteers excited about ideas they discovered in The Catholic Worker, it was inevitable that the editors would soon be given the chance to put their principles into practice. Day's apartment was the seed of many houses of hospitality to come.
By the wintertime, an apartment was rented with space for ten women, soon after a place for men. Next came a house in Greenwich Village. In 1936 the community moved into two buildings in Chinatown, but no enlargement could possibly find room for all those in need. Mainly they were men, Day wrote, "grey men, the color of lifeless trees and bushes and winter soil, who had in them as yet none of the green of hope, the rising sap of faith."
Many were surprised that, in contrast with most charitable centers, no one at the Catholic Worker set about reforming them. A crucifix on the wall was the only unmistakable evidence of the faith of those welcoming them. The staff received only food, board and occasional pocket money.
The Catholic Worker became a national movement. By 1936 there were 33 Catholic Worker houses spread across the country. Due to the Depression, there were plenty of people needing them.
The Catholic Worker attitude toward those who were welcomed wasn't always appreciated. These weren't the "deserving poor," it was sometimes objected, but drunkards and good-for-nothings. A visiting social worker asked Day how long the "clients" were permitted to stay. "We let them stay forever," Day answered with a fierce look in her eye. "They live with us, they die with us, and we give them a Christian burial. We pray for them after they are dead. Once they are taken in, they become members of the family. Or rather they always were members of the family. They are our brothers and sisters in Christ."
Some justified their objections with biblical quotations. Didn't Jesus say that the poor would be with us always? "Yes," Day once replied, "but we are not content that there should be so many of them. The class structure is our making and by our consent, not God's, and we must do what we can to change it. We are urging revolutionary change."
The Catholic Worker also experimented with farming communes. In 1935 a house with a garden was rented on Staten Island. Soon after came Mary Farm in Easton, Pennsylvania, a property finally given up because of strife within the community. Another farm was purchased in upstate New York near Newburgh. Called the Maryfarm Retreat House, it was destined for a longer life. Later came the Maurin Peter Farm on Staten Island, which later moved to Tivoli and then to Marlborough, both in the Hudson Valley. Day came to see the vocation of the Catholic Worker was not so much to found model agricultural communities as rural houses of hospitality.
What got Day into the most trouble was pacifism. A nonviolent way of life, as she saw it, was at the heart of the Gospel. She took as seriously as the early Church the command of Jesus to Maurin: "Put away your sword, for whoever lives by the sword shall perish by the sword."
For many centuries the Catholic Church had accommodated itself to war. Popes had blessed armies and preached Crusades. In the thirteenth century St. Francis of Assisi had revived the pacifist way, but by the twentieth century, it was unknown for Catholics to take such a position.
The Catholic Worker's first expression of pacifism, published in 1935, was a dialogue between a patriot and Christ, the patriot dismissing Christ's teaching as a noble but impractical doctrine. Few readers were troubled by such articles until the Spanish Civil War in 1936. The fascist side, led by Franco, presented itself as defender of the Catholic faith. Nearly every Catholic bishop and publication rallied behind Franco. The Catholic Worker, refusing to support either side in the war, lost two-thirds of its readers.
Those backing Franco, Day warned early in the war, ought to "take another look at recent events in [Nazi] Germany." She expressed anxiety for the Jews and later was among the founders of the Committee of Catholics to Fight Anti-Semitism.
Following Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor and America's declaration of war, Dorothy announced that the paper would maintain its pacifist stand. "We will print the words of Christ who is with us always," Day wrote. "Our manifesto is the Sermon on the Mount." Opposition to the war, she added, had nothing to do with sympathy for America's enemies. "We love our country.... We have been the only country in the world where men and women of all nations have taken refuge from oppression." But the means of action the Catholic Worker movement supported were the works of mercy rather than the works of war. She urged "our friends and associates to care for the sick and the wounded, to the growing of food for the hungry, to the continuance of all our works of mercy in our houses and on our farms."
Not all members of Catholic Worker communities agreed. Fifteen houses of hospitality closed in the months following the U.S. entry into the war. But Day's view prevailed. Every issue of TheCatholic Worker reaffirmed her understanding of the Christian life. The young men who identified with the Catholic Worker movement during the war generally spent much of the war years either in prison, or in rural work camps. Some did unarmed military service as medics.
The world war ended in 1945, but out of it emerged the Cold war, the nuclear-armed "warfare state," and a series of smaller wars in which America was often involved.
One of the rituals of life for the New York Catholic Worker community beginning in the late 1950s was the refusal to participate in the state's annual civil defense drill. Such preparation for attack seemed to Day part of an attempt to promote nuclear war as survivable and winnable and to justify spending billions on the military. When the sirens sounded June 15, 1955, Day was among a small group of people sitting in front of City Hall. "In the name of Jesus, who is God, who is Love, we will not obey this order to pretend, to evacuate, to hide. We will not be drilled into fear. We do not have faith in God if we depend upon the Atom Bomb," a Catholic Worker leaflet explained. Day described her civil disobedience as an act of penance for America's use of nuclear weapons on Japanese cities.
The first year the dissidents were reprimanded. The next year Day and others were sent to jail for five days. Arrested again the next year, the judge jailed her for thirty days. In 1958, a different judge suspended sentence. In 1959, Day was back in prison, but only for five days. Then came 1960, when instead of a handful of people coming to City Hall Park, 500 turned up. The police arrested only a few, Day conspicuously not among those singled out. In 1961 the crowd swelled to 2,000. This time 40 were arrested, but again Day was exempted. It proved to be the last year of dress rehearsals for nuclear war in New York.
Another Catholic Worker stress was the civil rights movement. As usual Day wanted to visit people who were setting an example and therefore went to Koinonia, a Christian agricultural community in rural Georgia where blacks and whites lived peacefully together. The community was under attack when Day visited in 1957. One of the community houses had been hit by machine-gun fire and Ku Klux Klan members had burned crosses on community land. Day insisted on taking a turn at the sentry post. Noticing an approaching car had reduced its speed, she ducked just as a bullet struck the steering column in front of her face. Concern with the Church's response to war led Day to Rome during the Second Vatican Council, an event Pope John XXIII hoped would restore "the simple and pure lines that the face of the Church of Jesus had at its birth." In 1963 Day was one 50 "Mothers for Peace" who went to Rome to thank Pope John for his encyclical Pacem in Terris. Close to death, the pope couldn't meet them privately, but at one of his last public audiences blessed the pilgrims, asking them to continue their labors.
In 1965, Day returned to Rome to take part in a fast expressing "our prayer and our hope" that the Council would issue "a clear statement, `Put away thy sword.'" Day saw the unpublicized fast as a "widow's mite" in support of the bishops' effort to speak with a pure voice to the modern world.
The fasters had reason to rejoice in December when the Constitution on the Church in the Modern World was approved by the bishops. The Council's described as "a crime against God and humanity" any act of war "directed to the indiscriminate destruction of whole cities or vast areas with their inhabitants." The Council called on states to make legal provision for conscientious objectors while describing as "criminal" those who obey commands which condemn the innocent and defenseless.
Acts of war causing "the indiscriminate destruction of ... vast areas with their inhabitants" were the order of the day in regions of Vietnam under intense U.S. bombardment in 1965 and the years following. Many young Catholic Workers went to prison for refusing to cooperate with conscription, while others did alternative service. Nearly everyone in Catholic Worker communities took part in protests. Many went to prison for acts of civil disobedience.
Probably there has never been a newspaper so many of whose editors have been jailed for acts of conscience. Day herself was last jailed in 1973 for taking part in a banned picket line in support of farmworkers. She was 75.
Day lived long enough to see her achievements honored. In 1967, when she made her last visit to Rome to take part in the International Congress of the Laity, she found she was one of two Americans -- the other an astronaut -- invited to receive Communion from the hands of Pope Paul VI. On her 75th birthday the Jesuit magazine America devoted a special issue to her, finding in her the individual who best exemplified "the aspiration and action of the American Catholic community during the past forty years." Notre Dame University presented her with its Laetare Medal, thanking her for "comforting the afflicted and afflicting the comfortable."
Among those who came to visit her when she was no longer able to travel was Mother Theresa of Calcutta, who had once pinned on Day's dress the cross worn only by fully professed members of the Missionary Sisters of Charity.
Long before her death November 29, 1980, Day found herself regarded by many as a saint. No words of hers are better known than her brusque response, "Don't call me a saint. I don't want to be dismissed so easily." Nonetheless, having herself treasured the memory and witness of many saints, she is a candidate for inclusion in the calendar of saints. The Claretians have launched an effort to have her canonized.
"If I have achieved anything in my life," she once remarked, "it is because I have not been embarrassed to talk about God."
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Bibliography:
Robert Coles, Dorothy Day: A Radical Devotion (Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1987)
Tom Cornell, Robert Ellsberg and Jim Forest, editors, A Penny a Copy: Writings from The Catholic Worker (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1995)
Dorothy Day, The Long Loneliness. (Chicago: Saint Thomas More Press, 1993)
Robert Ellsberg, editor, Dorothy Day: Selected Writings (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1992)
Jim Forest, Love is the Measure: a biography of Dorothy Day (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1994)
Willam Miller, Dorothy Day: A Biography (New York: Harper & Row, 1982)
Other Web Resources About Dorothy Day:
What I learned about justice from Dorothy Day by Jim Forest
The living legacy of Dorothy Day by Jim Forest
Illuminating Lives: Dorothy Day by Beth Randall
Dorothy Day's Lessons for the Transformation of Work by David L. Gregory
Special issue of Fellowship magazine devoted to the Dorothy Day centenary:
Dorothy Day: Wondering at Her Simplicity by Patrick Coy
Mystery and Myth: Dorothy Day, the Catholic Worker, and the Peace Movement by Rosalie G. Riegle
Dorothy Day, the Catholic Worker, and American Pacifism by Charles Chatfield
No Moratorium on the Sermon on the Mount: A Remembrance of Dorothy Day and Muriel Lester by Eileen Egan
There Goes the Neighborhood! Catholic Worker Houses of Hospitality by Jo Clare Hartsig and Walter Wink
Polar Opposites? Remembering the Kindred Spirits of Dorothy Day and Mother Theresa by Eileen Egan
The Incarnational Spirituality of Dorothy Day by Patrick Coy, Spirituality Today, Summer 1987, Vol. 39, pp. 114-125.
Dorothy Day: Lecture on Centenary by Robert Ellsberg at the New York University Symposium, November 8, 1997
An Inspired Complainer: Celebrating Dorothy Day's 100th by Jim Forest
An Introduction to the Life and Spirituality of Dorothy Day by James Allaire and Rosemary Broughton
Remembering Dorothy Day in Words and Deeds by James Allaire
Memories of Dorothy Day excerpted from Voices from the Catholic Worker, by Rosalie Riegle Troester
Driven By Love: A Sermon By Fr. Hugo Following the Death of Dorothy Day
Dorothy Day, by Helen Caldwell Day
Dorothy Day - Writings
For the most comprehensive repository of Dorothy Day's writings on the Internet, see Dorothy Day Library on the Web
Dorothy Day - Canonization
Dorothy Day -- A Saint for Our Age? by Jim Forest
'Don't Call Me a Saint!' Can we canonize Dorothy Day and serve the poor too? by Rose Marie Berger
Homily On November 9, 1997, On the Idea of Sainthood and Dorothy Day by Cardinal John O'Connor
Dorothy Day's Sainthood Cause Begins by Cardinal John O'Connor
(An extensive bibliography on Dorothy Day and the Catholic Worker movement is available at this Web site.)
nancyann, hope you aren't too dsimayed by my writings pertinent to the religionist proposition in general and in more specefic the Abrahamic Mythopaeia and its dependent subsets. Just FYI, if you did not know, some fairly rigorous and in-depth "Catholic Training" factors in my background as well - I'm an escapee from The Jesuits :wink:
nancy - don't be afraid to post, as timber sez, more earthly subjects.
As a matter of fact, if you have a separate subject, religious or otherwise you'd like to discuss on A2K, just start a new thread, just like you started this one.
Here you cover a broad range, and a lot of material to read.
Perhaps starting a thread on a particular question would draw more people into a discussion.
Caveat though, there will be posters who will disagree with you. You have to be thick skinned sometimes.
I've gotten quite angry myself at times when I don't think people are using the brains God gave them.
I know, I know, everyone, you're all going to come on and disagree with that last one. "No Chai, I've NEVER seen you get mad!"
I too used to head off to 'church' only to find a quiet spot to read.
'Ite, missa est.' were words music to my ears.
Thank you all for your sharings. I shall post openly. Don't you worry! And yesTimber I had a hunch you came from somewher very smart, I wasn't sure where! Now I know! You are a doll! Chai Tea, I shall Post and talk more don't worry! You are all good! Sometimes when at my VISIT for an hour I read also! I so love to read sacred theology and patrology books! My passion!
Doktor S, thanks for your insight also!
n
Okay here goes.................
I took this article from "The National Catholic Reporter" a very liberal Catholic Newspaper in America. I shall find one on the right side also then post my own views! Tell me what you are thinking!
Nancyann
Posted Friday Dec. 16, 2005 at 3:58 p.m. CST
Italian Gay Priests Criticize
New Vatican Guidelines
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By STACY MEICHTRY
Religion News Service, Vatican City
Defending the role of gay priests as an asset to the Roman Catholic church, a group of gay Italian clergy has issued an open letter that criticizes the recent Vatican instruction on admitting homosexuals to the seminary.
Signed by 39 priests, the letter is a rare demonstration of open dissent in the heart of Roman Catholicism, where public debate over the new Vatican guidelines has been relatively muted.
The letter was posted late Wednesday (Dec. 14) on the Web sites of Gaynews.it, an Italian gay rights news outlet, and Adista, a leftist Catholic news agency that leaked the guidelines days before their official publication in late November.
According to Ludovica Eugenio, an Adista staffer, the identities of those who signed, 26 diocesan priests and 13 others from religious orders, were not made public out of concern that doing so would jeopardize their standing in the church.
In their letter, the priests said the guidelines on homosexual candidates to the priesthood undermine the status of active priests with homosexual orientation.
"We feel like children abandoned and unloved by a church that we promised our fidelity and love," the group wrote.
"Our struggles to live in chastity are no greater than those of heterosexuals, because homosexuality is not a synonym for inconstancy or of uncontrollable instincts," the letter stated.
The Vatican guidelines, known as an Instruction, says that "unjust discrimination" against gays "should be avoided."
But the document bars candidates for the priesthood with "deep-seated homosexual tendencies," a term drawn from decades of church teaching that regards homosexuality as a condition akin to a mental disorder. Candidates with "deep-seated homosexual tendencies" are "objectively disordered" and "in a situation that gravely hinders them from relating correctly to men and women," the guidelines state.
"As men and priests we feel wounded by this absolutely gratuitous affirmation," the group wrote. "We are not sexually sick, and the homosexual tendency has not made a dent in our mental health or our moral and human gifts."
In Italy, where open homosexuality is rare, the question of gays in the Catholic priesthood has been largely perceived as a phenomenon unique to the United States clergy.
But observers note that the new guidelines could have the unintended effect of energizing members of the Italian clergy who previously played down their homosexual orientation.
"In raising the issue, the Holy See has probably energized a reaction among gay priests who have lived a good celibate life," said Alberto Melloni, a church historian with the University of Modena.
The number of gay priests in Italy is unknown. But Sandro Magister, a Vatican analyst for the Italian newsweekly L'espresso, notes that the number of gays of the Italian clergy is probably similar to that of the U.S.
"There are church officials that are known to have such orientation who are under the eyes of the public," he said. "They are not clandestinely part of the church. They are public figures with fairly high profile roles."
The letter also accused the Vatican of scapegoating gay priests for the clerical sex abuse scandal in the United States and elsewhere.
"One has the sensation that this document was born as a reaction to the recent cases of pedophilia that have occurred in churches of the United States and Brazil," the group wrote.
Some churchmen have linked the sex abuse scandal to the perceived spread of homosexuality in the priesthood. A study commissioned by the U.S. Bishops Conference found that most sex abuse victims since 1950 were adolescent boys.
"The homosexual tendency is absolutely not synonymous with pedophilia and the mere idea of being seen as pedophiles is intolerable for us," the group wrote. "Instead, we consider our homosexuality an asset, because it helps us to share in the alienation and suffering of so many people."
The letter also stated that many in the group became aware of their homosexuality following their ordination. That claim challenges a key premise of the guidelines, which instruct church authorities to screen for homosexuality in seminaries. It also warns candidates against making "gravely dishonest" attempts to hide their homosexuality.
December 16, 2005, National Catholic Reporter
Dear Folks:
I am not gay but I have a younger brother who is. Some family members do not speak to him because of it. I speak to him weekly! He and I are good friends! I put these articles in to show you some points of vies of people! I am certain you have your own. I live in the Boston area and when the huge crisis was in its fulll fling in 2003, it was a royal nightmare! Friends who were priests one day were swooped away and not seen again on the altar!
About homosexuality! I am always a supporter of holy Church all the way! That said my heart is always with all people with love and respect! There is room for all in heaven and with God! I do believe this! Sometimes when the Church comes down so strongly, I cringe! I accept 100% but I sometimes do not know why I do! But I do know this I open my heart to all! When my brother sent out a letter to the family this year saying he was with his partner for 20 years now, some family cut him off! I called him off and told him, "never stop loving in your heart.!
I may be condemned for writing this but all I know is to love all people and to accept all IN LOVE!
Nancyann
from americancatholic.com
Official Prayer to St. Maria Goretti
Oh Saint Maria Goretti who, strengthened by God's grace, did not hesitate even at the age of twelve to shed your blood and sacrifice life itself to defend your virginal purity, look graciously on the unhappy human race which has strayed far from the path of eternal salvation. Teach us all, and especially youth,with what courage and promptitude we should flee for the love of Jesus anything that could offend Him or stain our souls with sin. Obtain for us from our Lord victory in temptation, comfort in the sorrows of life, and the grace which we earnestly beg of thee (here insert intention), and may we one day enjoy with thee the imperishable glory of Heaven. Amen.
from google
The Bible describes three emotionally close relationships between two people of the same gender. They appear to have progressed well beyond a casual friendship. There is, however, no unmistakable evidence that they were sexually active relationships. The individuals are:
bullet Ruth and Naomi
bullet David and Jonathan
bullet Daniel and Ashpenaz
Here is Today's Saint of the day! from Americancatholic.org
January 5, 2006
St. John Neumann
(1811-1860)
Perhaps because the United States got a later start in the history of the world, it has relatively few canonized saints, but their number is increasing.
John Neumann was born in what is now the Czech Republic. After studying in Prague, he came to New York at 25 and was ordained a priest. He did missionary work in New York until he was 29, when he joined the Redemptorists and became its first member to profess vows in the United States. He continued missionary work in Maryland, Virginia and Ohio, where he became popular with the Germans.
At 41, as bishop of Philadelphia, he organized the parochial school system into a diocesan one, increasing the number of pupils almost twentyfold within a short time.
Gifted with outstanding organizing ability, he drew into the city many teaching communities of sisters and the Christian Brothers. During his brief assignment as vice provincial for the Redemptorists, he placed them in the forefront of the parochial movement.
Well-known for his holiness and learning, spiritual writing and preaching, on October 13, 1963, he became the first American bishop to be beatified. Canonized in 1977, he is buried in St. Peter the Apostle Church in Philadelphia.
Comment:
Neumann took seriously our Lord's words, "Go and teach all nations." From Christ he received his instructions and the power to carry them out. For Christ does not give a mission without supplying the means to accomplish it. The Father's gift in Christ to John Neumann was his exceptional organizing ability, which he used to spread the Good News.
Today the Church is in dire need of men and women to continue in our times the teaching of the Good News. The obstacles and inconveniences are real and costly. Yet when Christians approach Christ, he supplies the necessary talents to answer today's needs. The Spirit of Christ continues his work through the instrumentality of generous Christians.
Quote:
"All people of whatever race, condition or age, in virtue of their dignity as human persons, have an inalienable right to education. This education should be suitable to the particular destiny of the individuals, adapted to their ability, sex and national cultural traditions, and should be conducive to amicable relations with other nations in order to promote true unity and peace in the world. True education aims to give people a formation which is directed towards their final end and the good of that society to which they belong and in which, as adults, they will have their share of duties to perform." (Declaration on Christian Education, 1, Austin Flannery translation).
(This entry appears in the print edition of Saint of the Day.)
George Welcome and post sometime if you wish!