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Arsenic Lupin
Apr 12, 2012

This particularly rapid💨 unintelligible 😖patter💁 isn't generally heard🧏‍♂️, and if it is🤔, it doesn't matter💁.


Hey, friends, I could use your prayers.

My husband started a job in January that was a disastrous fit. They wouldn't take advantage of the professional skills they hired him for, and then they got mad at him for saying "If you do X now, you will be unable to handle task Y later." He wound up with anxiety so severe he would sit in a chair shaking, and unable to do anything.

Today he came home and they'd fired him. I'm profoundly relieved, because I was worried he was heading for a nervous breakdown. (No longer a diagnosis, but hey, it explains what was going on.) The part that really bothers me is that he took this job so fast because I'm disabled and I can't contribute to the family income the way I used to. He worries because he has to support the household alone; I worry because he's carrying a burden I used to be able to help him carry. I'm so worried about my husband. We've been married 36 years, we're the best of friends, and he's wearing himself to a thread doing the single-provider parent thing we never, in a million years, expected to wind up doing. He needs to jobhunt again, and I fear that he'll take another bad job because he needs to support the family.

tl;dr: If you could pray for my husband and for our family, I'd be grateful.

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JcDent
May 13, 2013

Give me a rifle, one round, and point me at Berlin!
I will try!

God-drat knowitall bosses that don't understand that they're hiring people who know more than they do, because that's how experts work.

Tias
May 25, 2008

Pictured: the patron saint of internet political arguments (probably)

This avatar made possible by a gift from the Religionthread Posters Relief Fund

JcDent posted:

Not having a boner can be a terrifying thing in certain situations! :v:

Yeah, this is definitely my least preferred boner problem.

Thirteen Orphans posted:

If this was about my post I feel the need to let you know that my post about gettin' boners while doing Wing Chun was a joke.

More about the BDSM thing, though I would in fact encourage you to develop a boner-centric kung fu, if nothing else to please your spouse!

Mo Tzu posted:

She isn't, because when informed of the reality she doesn't try to convince me it didn't happen but instead goes, "oh. oh god."

Also you really don't realize how hosed up your childhood was until you mention things like this and people go, "oh my god that's horrible." Oops.

My parents are alcoholic too, and so am I. It's basically a cycle of poo poo, and I doubt I would ever have moved on if I didn't forgive them.

SirPhoebos
Dec 10, 2007

WELL THAT JUST HAPPENED!

How many saints are there? Do saints have unique "domains" or is there overlap? Do non-Catholic and -Orthodox denominations recognize saints? How does one become a saint? I heard some people joking that Theo Epstein would be qualified because ending two historic title droughts could be interpreted as miracles.

And what's the deal with the Virgin Mary? (I say in my best Seinfeld voice) Obviously she isn't part of the Trinity-well not unless you count being a part of the Holy Spirit-but she (does Mary get capitalized pronouns like Jesus?) seems to hold a greater level of significance than any saint?

SirPhoebos
Dec 10, 2007

WELL THAT JUST HAPPENED!

JcDent posted:

I'm not happy that masturbation is still frowned upon. Sure, it's because sex is supposed o be an act between two loving people, but if the girlfriend doesn't mind and I sent her dick pics once or twice...

OTOH, the notion did lead to the very Catholic J.J.R. Tolkein to say that the Elves of Middle Earth never masturbate...and in turn led to one of the most wonderful posts in the history of Something Awful

Ceciltron
Jan 11, 2007

Text BEEP to 43527 for the dancing robot!
Pillbug

SirPhoebos posted:

OTOH, the notion did lead to the very Catholic J.J.R. Tolkein to say that the Elves of Middle Earth never masturbate...and in turn led to one of the most wonderful posts in the history of Something Awful

Holy poo poo this is amazing

StashAugustine
Mar 24, 2013

Do not trust in hope- it will betray you! Only faith and hatred sustain.

SirPhoebos posted:

OTOH, the notion did lead to the very Catholic J.J.R. Tolkein to say that the Elves of Middle Earth never masturbate...and in turn led to one of the most wonderful posts in the history of Something Awful

tali_sweat.jpg

System Metternich
Feb 28, 2010

But what did he mean by that?

SirPhoebos posted:

How many saints are there?


Literally tens of thousands, but nobody can give you a precise number. For about the first thousand years of its existence, granting sainthood in the Catholic Church was something that developed organically, i.e. the people started to venerate somebody and the church officials would eventually write their name down in the list of saints. Many of these were/are venerated only within a very localised context. Also there are many canonisations where entire groups of peope are proclaimed saints, like the 117 martyrs of Vietnam, the martyrs of the French revolution or the 11,000 virginal handmaidens of St Ursula (who never existed, but that's beside the point :v:)

quote:

Do saints have unique "domains" or is there overlap?


There is a lot of overlap, because domains aren't (with some exceptions) given out by decree, but instead develop organically and locally instead. So one of the most important farmers' saints in Bavaria and Austria would be St Leonard, whereas his cult is mostly unknown in Switzerland (with the exception of its north-eastern border); the same goes for the Austro-Bavarian cult of St Florian as patron saint of firefighters - this job is done by St Agatha instead as far as Rhinelanders are concerned. Then there are the exceptions of how domains are assigned I mentioned: when it comes to places or specific institutions (like army brigades, or dioceses, or countries), their respective patron saints are often proclaimed with great pomp by the local elites together with the Pope. Proclaiming a saint is a big thing for your propaganda, so over the centuries many places got assigned several saints, either because of politics or because they are a local saint who started to get venerated a lot by the populace.

quote:

Do non-Catholic and -Orthodox denominations recognize saints?

Some Protestant denominations do (the various Anglican/Episcopalian Churches for one, and some Lutheran Churches too iirc). They do have a different understanding of saints and sainthood, though: they're not venerated and asked for intercession, but instead seen as highly virtuous individuals worthy being remembered. Martin Luther King is a saint for Episcopalians, if I'm not mistaken.

quote:

How does one become a saint? I heard some people joking that Theo Epstein would be qualified because ending two historic title droughts could be interpreted as miracles.

Befor ~1100 AD (in the Catholic Church): organically, or the bishop/Pope proclaims a new saint locally/for the entire Church. Sometimes local cults spring up and spread like wildfire for saints that haven't been officially canonised even afterwards, and the Pope makes him/her a saint after that. The first person to be subject to the canonisation procedure we still have today (i.e. his virtue being researched and miracles happening in his name being confirmed, and him being officially proclaimed a saint by the Pope afterwards) was St Ulrich of Augsburg in 993; the last saint to be proclaimed by someone else than the Pope was St Walter of Pontoise in 1153 (by the Archbishop of Rouen).

As to the how: you have to have lived a virtous and Christian life worthy of being emulated, and (and that's the hard part) there must have been at least two scientifically recognised miracles (as in, doctors and scientists unable to find a non-supernatural explanation for it) that happened after people asked for your intercession. The road to sainthood consists of four steps: First, a bishop (normally the one where the potential saint lived) gives the order to open an investigation into this person's life and their virtues; this gains the investigated person the title of "Servant of God" and mustn't happen earlier than five years after the candidate's death. When the local bishops thinks that enough material has been gathered, he formally presents his findings to the Congregation for the Causes of the Saints in Rome. There, a number of priest-bureaucrats start gathering everything they can find about the candidate in addition to the material they've been given by the local diocesan investigators, and I mean everything. Sometimes there have been cases where the local authorites left out information that didn't present their candidate in the best possible light, but eventually it'll come out. The candidates' files can reach massive proportions, filling thousands of pages. The Congregation works at the normal office hours (i.e. 8-12 and again 17-20 o'clock I believe, six days a week), by the way :v: It must be a super fascinating place, where worldly bureaucracy meets the supernatural. Let me translate a part of a German article about it real quick:

quote:

Through a door that's halfway ajar you can see a man wearing clercial garb, sitting at his desk and reading a file. This is one of the five relators, busy getting on with a saint's procedure or burying it in a drawer, sine die, to defer indefinitely.
Someone is talking on the phone, you can hardly not hear it in the quiet corridor: "He's accepted all my arguments for martydrom... Yes, yes, he told me: If it hadn't been for me, the entire case would have been blown to pieces..."
And in another room you can hear: "I wouldn't get my hopes up, if I were you. The case is stuck because the journalists have discovered this book of his, they won't forget that and would remind everybody of it if it came to canonisation..."
Everyday office life in the Congregation for the Causes of the Saints.

When enough information has been gathered, the Congregation recommends the candidate to the Pope, who will then declare them "heroic in virtue", conferring upon them the title of "Venerable". A venerable person still doesn't have a feast day of his/her own, and churches can't be dedicated to them.

When someone has been declared venerable and happens to be a martyr, then the Pope can declare him "Blessed" (this is called beatification) just like that. Being beatified gives you a feast day, but your cult will be restricted to your home diocese and/or your order.
What if you aren't a martyr? Then you better start working on your miracles, because without them you'll never advance beyond Venerable. When a miracle has occurred and been accepted by the Congregation and their experts (and those aren't just some quacks, but highly renowned doctors and scientists who have to agree that whatever happened can't be explained by modern medicine/science), only then a non-martyr candidate can be beatified.

Now the last step is being canonised. This is almost easy: all you need is a second miracle. When that has been accepted, the Pope probably will declare you a Saint. Your feast day either continues to be observed only within a local context, or it is declared for all of the Church. Parished and churches can freely be named after you, and a number of prayers will enter the official liturgy for your feast day (I think that already happens at the Blessed stage, though). Being declared a saint means that the Church is absolutely certain that you are in Heaven.

All of this may be waived by the Holy Father at any time, though, like in the cases of St John Paul II (the procedure started almost immediately after his death instead of the prescribed five years) or St John XXIII (where Pope Francis decided to skip the second miracle). As of now there are about a thousand current candidacies, with maybe two hundred of them having any sort of chance of every reaching sainthood. Normally, such a procedure lasts ages, in some cases even centuries (when the politics concerning the candidate are somewhat delicate, for example, or when the miracles won't come). Pope John Paul II declared hundreds of people saints during his reign, more than all the Pope before him combined, but afaik Benedict and Francis have considerably slowed that down again.

In theory, some of the Eastern Catholic Churches are still allowed to declare saints by themselves. I'm pretty sure that that hasn't happened in a long time, though.

As to the non-Catholic Churches, I'll let others explain who know more than me.

quote:

And what's the deal with the Virgin Mary? (I say in my best Seinfeld voice) Obviously she isn't part of the Trinity-well not unless you count being a part of the Holy Spirit-but she (does Mary get capitalized pronouns like Jesus?) seems to hold a greater level of significance than any saint?

Mary is the Queen of Heaven and the most important saint of all. My ramblings already have gone on for long enough and I gotta go, but let me just say that she is a biiiig deal. "The Church's devotion to the Blessed Virgin is intrinsic to Christian worship." (Catechism of the Catholic Church). As any other saint, she is venerated though and not worshipped, though she gets the special honour of hyperdulia, which is an exalted form of the veneration accorded to saints (dulia), but still below the worship that may only be directed toward God (latria).

System Metternich fucked around with this message at 17:49 on Nov 16, 2016

HEY GUNS
Oct 11, 2012

FOPTIMUS PRIME
everything i know about elise leads me to believe she owns

SirPhoebos
Dec 10, 2007

WELL THAT JUST HAPPENED!


Thanks for your answers. Two follow up questions.

First, how does a miracle get attributed to a specific saint or saint candidate?

Second, if a miracle requires a reputable scientist to examine it and give an official "idk", if later science advances and the examiner says "Oh so that's how it happened!" does that cancel the miracle?

zonohedron
Aug 14, 2006


SirPhoebos posted:

Thanks for your answers. Two follow up questions.

First, how does a miracle get attributed to a specific saint or saint candidate?

Second, if a miracle requires a reputable scientist to examine it and give an official "idk", if later science advances and the examiner says "Oh so that's how it happened!" does that cancel the miracle?

A miracle is attributed to a specific individual if that individual's intercession was requested. For example, in the case of St. Juan Diego, he was beatified without a second miracle because he had been revered as the man to whom Our Lady of Guadalupe appeared for centuries, and at the same time as the beatification ceremony (and in the same country, though not the same city), a man leapt off a balcony and landed on his head. His mother, aware that Juan Diego was at that moment being beatified, asked him to save her son. The man recovered, which on its own was at least unusual given the eyewitness accounts of his fall, so five 'medical consultors' (to quote wikipedia) were, ah, consulted, and they agreed that the recovery was inexplicable. It was thus attributed to Juan Diego's intercession.

People promoting the cause of a given venerable will often instruct people praying for that venerable's intercession not to request the intercession of every saint they can think of, but only that specific individual, to make it clearer whose intercession was involved.

As for "does that cancel the miracle", no - there's probably attested miracles where we'd say today "oh, yes, that person did have blahblahosis of the whatever gland, but in 10% of cases that resolves without treatment," but that doesn't mean that in the specific historical case it wasn't miraculous - perhaps if it happened today there'd be some other element to the case that made the recovery inexplicable. (Or maybe not, and if it had happened today the people directly involved would still consider it a miracle but the Vatican would keep looking for something more definite, so that we're not going around telling scientists, "Oh yes, this person's really bad headache went away, and thus so-and-so is a saint," which would make us look not just credulous but stupid.)

SirPhoebos
Dec 10, 2007

WELL THAT JUST HAPPENED!

Are miracles always health-related? Or can something like The Bloop be proclaimed to be a miraculous intervention?

EDIT: Also, what's the distinction between veneration and worship?

Bel_Canto
Apr 23, 2007

"Pedicabo ego vos et irrumabo."

SirPhoebos posted:

Are miracles always health-related? Or can something like The Bloop be proclaimed to be a miraculous intervention?

EDIT: Also, what's the distinction between veneration and worship?

There's a huge bias toward healings, firstly because those get asked for by tons of people, and secondly because they're easy to consult doctors about and verify. I happen to think that Bl. John Henry Newman's second miracle already happened, but it wouldn't be accepted by ecclesiastical authorities because it's super :gay:

Veneration means you honor them and ask them to pray for you. Worship means you pray to them.

pidan
Nov 6, 2012


SirPhoebos posted:

Are miracles always health-related? Or can something like The Bloop be proclaimed to be a miraculous intervention?

EDIT: Also, what's the distinction between veneration and worship?

It's most often health related, because that's something people tend to pray about. And with a health issue, it's relatively easy to tell whether there's an obvious non miraculous explanation - either the patient was expected to recover based on his treatments, or he wasn't. And it's more measurable than other issues people also pray about. When somebody says "I prayed to saint X that my boat should safely come to shore and it did", there's no easy to find out how unlikely that may have been. But with sick people, you have a lot of data to go on.

However, there are also other kinds of miracle, such as the sun miracle of Fatima. Which was an unusual celestial phenomenon. I'm not sure how common this kind of thing is. Being incorruptible, i.e. not rotting after death, is also considered a sign of sainthood.

Veneration is for saints, worship is only for God, the difference is hard to explain.

Tuxedo Catfish
Mar 17, 2007

You've got guts! Come to my village, I'll buy you lunch.
Well, what distinguishes a saint from an angel, from Mary, or from the human person of Christ?

HEY GUNS
Oct 11, 2012

FOPTIMUS PRIME

Tuxedo Catfish posted:

Well, what distinguishes a saint from an angel, from Mary, or from the human person of Christ?
a saint is an extremely holy human being
an angel is a good non-physical entity that serves God and existed before humans did
mary is the holiest possible human, and the mother of God
and Christ is both fully divine and fully human

P-Mack
Nov 10, 2007

You don't ask saints to help you, you ask them to put in a good word for you with God who is the only one who can help you.

Praying to Mary is super effective because the nice young Jewish man who lived at home until he was thirty isn't going to say no to his mother.

StashAugustine
Mar 24, 2013

Do not trust in hope- it will betray you! Only faith and hatred sustain.

Technically 'saint' refers to anyone in Heaven, the title applies to people the Church has declared are in Heaven

Tuxedo Catfish
Mar 17, 2007

You've got guts! Come to my village, I'll buy you lunch.

HEY GAL posted:

a saint is an extremely holy human being
an angel is a good non-physical entity that serves God and existed before humans did
mary is the holiest possible human, and the mother of God
and Christ is both fully divine and fully human

What is the human relationship to holiness? Is it something you are, something you do, something bestowed on you? Is it the same as goodness?

pidan
Nov 6, 2012


Tuxedo Catfish posted:

Well, what distinguishes a saint from an angel, from Mary, or from the human person of Christ?

Well, Mary and (some?) angels are saints. Maybe even Jesus, he can certainly be called holy.
Saints are basically those people (and angels / pagan gods / mythical characters) that the church teaches are on heaven and can be called upon to intercede for us. Christ doesn't need to intercede with anyone because he's God.

Tuxedo Catfish
Mar 17, 2007

You've got guts! Come to my village, I'll buy you lunch.
So the difference between worship and veneration is just a matter of acknowledging a difference in power?

pidan
Nov 6, 2012


Tuxedo Catfish posted:

What is the human relationship to holiness? Is it something you are, something you do, something bestowed on you? Is it the same as goodness?

I'd say holiness is more than goodness. The word holy tends to be related to words for "whole" and "wholesome", though this is less obvious in English than e.g. in German or French. It means being totally in tune with God's will on the scale of your whole personality. So it's probably "something you are", but you become it by storming towards it.


Tuxedo Catfish posted:

So the difference between worship and veneration is just a matter of acknowledging a difference in power?

It doesn't really have a parallel outside of religion.


Edit: "storming" was supposed to be "working", but I like it. Phone posting!

Worthleast
Nov 25, 2012

Possibly the only speedboat jumps I've planned

Tuxedo Catfish posted:

So the difference between worship and veneration is just a matter of acknowledging a difference in power?

Difference in nature. Worship is due to God alone. Veneration is of those things that reflect the goodness of God, and so we honor God through them.

pidan posted:

It doesn't really have a parallel outside of religion.

Let's try this one: Each work of an artist shows the artist's talent and genius, but you (should) respect the artist more than the artwork, because they are completely different orders of nature.

Senju Kannon
Apr 9, 2011

by Nyc_Tattoo
what if the artist raped a 12 year old girl, or turned a curious bitch into a pillar of salt

Tuxedo Catfish
Mar 17, 2007

You've got guts! Come to my village, I'll buy you lunch.

Worthleast posted:

Let's try this one: Each work of an artist shows the artist's talent and genius, but you (should) respect the artist more than the artwork, because they are completely different orders of nature.

you have no idea the willpower it takes not to respond to this with an edgy atheist joke about Derrida

notwithstanding the fact that it is actually a pretty helpful analogy (thank you)

Arsenic Lupin
Apr 12, 2012

This particularly rapid💨 unintelligible 😖patter💁 isn't generally heard🧏‍♂️, and if it is🤔, it doesn't matter💁.


Bel_Canto posted:

I happen to think that Bl. John Henry Newman's second miracle already happened, but it wouldn't be accepted by ecclesiastical authorities because it's super :gay:

:justpost:

Worthleast
Nov 25, 2012

Possibly the only speedboat jumps I've planned

Mo Tzu posted:

what if the artist raped a 12 year old girl, or turned a curious bitch into a pillar of salt

Or committed genocide?

Mr Enderby
Mar 28, 2015

Bel_Canto posted:

There's a huge bias toward healings, firstly because those get asked for by tons of people, and secondly because they're easy to consult doctors about and verify. I happen to think that Bl. John Henry Newman's second miracle already happened, but it wouldn't be accepted by ecclesiastical authorities because it's super :gay:

If you're talking about the fact his body melted away, to prevent it from being disinterred from next to the man he loved, I agree it really sounds like a medieval saint story.

HEY GUNS
Oct 11, 2012

FOPTIMUS PRIME

Mr Enderby posted:

If you're talking about the fact his body melted away, to prevent it from being disinterred from next to the man he loved, I agree it really sounds like a medieval saint story.
both of their bodies melted away together, which means their earthly remains joined each other and will never be separated

zonohedron
Aug 14, 2006


Tuxedo Catfish posted:

Well, what distinguishes a saint from an angel, from Mary, or from the human person of Christ?

Saint from Mary: only Mary is the mother of God and thus the Queen of Heaven (think Queen Mum, not Queen of England)
Saint or Mary from angel: the saints and Mary have bodies (some of them, and Mary, even have their bodies with them in Heaven), were born, grew up, and had their whole lives to choose God or self, instead of one single choice
Saint, Mary, or angel from Jesus Christ: have one nature instead of two (either human or angelic, respectively); not God

Jesus wasn't a human person *and* God, he is the second Person of the Trinity who is both human and God. (This is why Mary is the mother of God even though she only has a human nature: my mother is not the mother of my nature, she's the mother of me-the-person, and Mary isn't the mother of Jesus's human nature (despite being its sole source), she's the mother of Jesus-the-person, who is God.)

Because Mary, the saints, and the angels aren't God, they can have extraordinary knowledge (the saints that could know a reluctant penitent's unspoken sins while on Earth; any of the above hearing the prayers of those on Earth or those in Purgatory) or extraordinary powers (multiplying scarce food, healing the sick by their touch, surviving attempts to execute them, etc, while on Earth; or directly appearing to those on Earth), but they just have that knowledge or power, and only as a gift from God; God is his knowledge and is his power (and is his justness and is his mercifulness).

Tuxedo Catfish posted:

What is the human relationship to holiness? Is it something you are, something you do, something bestowed on you? Is it the same as goodness?

Holiness is closeness to God, yes, and yes, respectively.

Bel_Canto posted:

There's a huge bias toward healings, firstly because those get asked for by tons of people, and secondly because they're easy to consult doctors about and verify. I happen to think that Bl. John Henry Newman's second miracle already happened, but it wouldn't be accepted by ecclesiastical authorities because it's super :gay:

I agree with you that there are at least two miracles attributable to him (if a saint's body's incorruptibility can count, I think a saint's body inseparability from his beloved's body should certainly count!), but it's not just whose body from which his can't be separated that keeps it from being credited as his second miracle; if someone falls from a fifth-story window and doesn't die, that may be due to the intercession of a saint but it's not inexplicable, since people survive falls from that height, sometimes. (Not just that. I am not going to pretend that that isn't part of it.)

Senju Kannon
Apr 9, 2011

by Nyc_Tattoo
hey guys, i just found out an old friend of mine from freshman year has been diagnosed with terminal cancer, and his prognosis is two years. if you guys could pray for him i would greatly appreciate it.

CountFosco
Jan 9, 2012

Welcome back to the Liturgigoon thread, friend.

System Metternich posted:

While the Bible doesn't say much, don't forget that the most prominent suicide in there is by none other than Judas Iscariot, who isn't exactly presented as a role model. The sect you're speaking of would be the Donatists (and their more radical offshoot, the Circumcellions); maybe it's their attitude towards suicide that moved St Augustine to wholly denounce suicide as a sin in the early 5th century. The case wasn't entirely clear-cut before; Jewish religious law was always uneasy with suicide, and they were/are, in theory at least, buried in a separated part of the graveyard. There are examples of Jews who chose suicide to escape dishonour, though, with Samson or King Saul being prominent examples. Romans and Greeks were pretty relaxed concerning suicide, though Aristotle and possibly Plato as well opposed it. I've also read that in Athens, suicide without the explicit permission of the state was disallowed as well; the victims would be buried outside of the city in this case. Greco-Roman stories abound with honourable soldiers and officers falling on their own sword than conceding defeat to the enemy, though. Early Christianity too regarded suicide as a possibly virtuous act - Eusebius writes of two young Christian women in Antioch who killed themselves to avoid being raped by a roving band of soldiers. Augustine comes back to this example and says that they should rather have suffered the rape than kill themselves. For Augustine, purity is a state of mind which may survive even a horrible experience like rape, whereas suicide is a direct violation of the fifth Commandment; a sin that, by design, cannot be confessed and repented and which consequently cannot be forgiven (though Augustine makes an exception: when God personally orders you to commit suicide, then it's cool :shepface:) Augustine was super important in this regard (as in virtually everything else), and by the sixth century suicide starts to become a secular crime as well.

17. Of suicide committed through fear of punishment or dishonour.

And consequently, even if some of these virgins killed themselves to avoid such disgrace, who that has any human feeling would refuse to forgive them?

Cythereal
Nov 8, 2009

I love the potoo,
and the potoo loves you.
For those unfamiliar with the Protestant take on the saints and Mary, the general Protestant line is that there are only two levels of existence: Man and God. All humans - including Mary - are equal before God. They do not hear prayers, intercede with God, and miracles are God's will and not the mark of a saint or any such thing.

Worthleast
Nov 25, 2012

Possibly the only speedboat jumps I've planned

Mo Tzu posted:

hey guys, i just found out an old friend of mine from freshman year has been diagnosed with terminal cancer, and his prognosis is two years. if you guys could pray for him i would greatly appreciate it.

Will pray. The little girl with kidney cancer I asked for prayers for last year is just about to finish her final month of treatment :yayclod: Many thanks to all who prayed!

Unrelated:

http://twitter.com/ArchbishopBlase/status/798505110636822528/photo/1

Cupich looks like a cardboard cutout.

System Metternich
Feb 28, 2010

But what did he mean by that?

A flight to Rome is expensive, don't judge

The Phlegmatist
Nov 24, 2003

Mr Enderby posted:

Have you read Private Memoirs and Confessions? Seems like some people are using it as a theological primer.

No, but it sounds interesting. I'll add it to my reading list.

Calvinism and the denominations that came from it have always had these weird flare-ups of antinomianism. Anne Hutchinson (16th cen. Puritan spiritual advisor in the Massachusetts Bay Colony) was one of my favorites. At one point she said that sinning was actually good, since if you felt guilt from sinning that meant you were regenerated by the Holy Spirit, and if you were regenerated by the Holy Spirit that meant you were one of the elect and were predestined to heaven. So sinning reminded you that you were heaven-bound so actually was in some ways preferable to not sinning. That's one of those "well, this is technically correct, but..." soteriological loophole things that I enjoy.

I guess this kinda dovetails into the fact that it's interesting how scrupulosity manifests itself differently between Catholics and Protestants. Catholics will be looking up obscure papal encyclicals to determine if French kissing jeopardizes the fate of their eternal souls, while Protestants tend to question if they truly believe enough to have a saving faith.

SirPhoebos
Dec 10, 2007

WELL THAT JUST HAPPENED!

My favorite part of all these explanations is if you replaced Jesus with any other name I would swear you were talking about Mage: the Ascension or the mythology of the Elder Scrolls series.

I had no idea Christianity could be so weird, and I love it. :allears:

P-Mack
Nov 10, 2007

Keep Christianity Weird

HEY GUNS
Oct 11, 2012

FOPTIMUS PRIME

SirPhoebos posted:

My favorite part of all these explanations is if you replaced Jesus with any other name I would swear you were talking about Mage: the Ascension or the mythology of the Elder Scrolls series.

I had no idea Christianity could be so weird, and I love it. :allears:
https://russianicons.wordpress.com/tag/christopher-dog-head/

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Lutha Mahtin
Oct 10, 2010

Your brokebrain sin is absolved...go and shitpost no more!


ya seriously, whats this big gay miracle

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