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thechosenone posted:So is fulfilling our potential good because god said so, or because it is irrespective of gods desires? Fulfilling our potential isn't the right thing to do for some reason - good actions are good because they fulfill our potential. It's like asking, "Is deliciousness delicious because some foods taste good, or for some other reason?" Tasting good is what it means for a food to be delicious. Fulfilling our potential (acting in accordance with our natures, cooperating with our ultimate purpose) is what it means for an action to be good. Everything that exists does so because God wills it to exist, so in a sense everything is anything because God says so. That does not mean that school buses are yellow because God says so, or that cider is delicious because God says so, or that it's good for a pancreas to secrete insulin (and bad for a pancreas to be unable to secrete insulin), just that school buses, apples, cider presses, bottles, and pancreases all have existence, and everything that has existence has it because God is existence. quote:What if god made birds because it thought they were pretty, and not for any grandiose reason? quote:Are there not other pretty things other than birds god could have created instead of them? Also, for clarification: I say "God" but also "the Greek gods" because the word 'god' works like the word 'mom'. "My mom makes cookies," "Some moms don't make cookies," "These cookies were made by Mom," but not "That box was mailed by mom."
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Nov 30, 2016 23:20
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thechosenone posted:Though I'm not so sure why people would have that big of a deal with marriage if they aren't homophobic, not to throw anyone under the bus. Just seems like if you figure they can be cool people, they can be cool couples. It's not like they have to breed with each other to raise children or anything. It's assumptive, yes, and also kinda gross to talk about people 'breeding'. The Catholic Church teaches (though not all Catholics believe, by any means) that it's impossible for two people of the same sex to have a sacramental marriage. Some Christians believe that secular marriage is so important to society that it's a religious issue which non-religious marriages are recognized by the government; this is true whether they think same-sex marriage is impossible, that it's possible but just shouldn't be permitted, or that it's possible and should be permitted.
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Dec 1, 2016 02:21
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thechosenone posted:I might bother you again in a few weeks, next time with less awkward questions like, 'how did the idea of Santa Claus combine with christian Christmas stuff, if it did at all?' (that isn't like actually really weird to ask about is it cause holy poo poo does it seem like I've been on a roll with that lately the past couple days). Not weird at all! Santa Claus hit a heretic in the face and revived boys who were being pickled to be sold as meat. He's pretty awesome.
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Dec 1, 2016 02:59
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Worthleast posted:Double posting, but the best part about this is that her visions were written down and edited by her confessor, who was later revealed to be a freemason. That really messes with the ultra rad trads. These are the visions where Christ supposedly told the disciples how to make chrism during the dinner conversation, right? Or am I remembering a different bizarre visionary? In non-visionary but also weird news: Apparently measuring instruments malfunction around the Holy Sepulcher.
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Dec 2, 2016 19:23
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Deteriorata posted:I'm having trouble connecting how an "electromagnetic disturbance" that made instruments malfunction at the Edicule has anything to do with the Shroud of Turin. I don't know how it connects with the Shroud of Turin, either, unless someone's suggesting an alien shroud-image-creating-device is still there or something...
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Dec 2, 2016 19:53
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Arsenic Lupin posted:Note that there's a separate issue, one churches differ on, of whether the death penalty itself constitutes justice. I'm pretty sure that official Catholic doctrine is anti-death-penalty? Myself, I incline to believing that the death sentence is irrevocable, and that life imprisonment allows people the chance to repent, and allows the system to backtrack from false convictions. Official Catholic doctrine is that the death penalty is permissible, but if there's a way to keep society safe from a violent individual that doesn't involve chopping off that individual's head, non-fatal punishments are better. Some Catholics have criticized this for focusing too much on society and not at all mentioning a state's right to retributive punishment, but I think the implication is intended to be "whether or not you have a right to hang cattle thieves, a just society would forego that right", not "oops we forgot to mention that the government is still entitled to electrocute folks".
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Dec 7, 2016 19:22
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Bel_Canto posted:Kreeft is, from everything I can tell, a perfectly decent dude, but his fanboys think they're doing theology when what they're really doing is apologetics, which is theology with all the training wheels on. They're the Catholic equivalent of Reddit logic-bros who'll talk your ear off for an hour about necessary and contingent truth-claims, but won't take even one minute to silently contemplate the mystery and majesty of the Divine Logos. You get the feeling that there's some serious "forest for the trees" business going on with those types. I think I object to your "apologetics is theology with all the training wheels on" characterization. I agree with you that a lot of folks think they're doing theology when they're just doing apologetics, but that's not because apologetics is (necessarily) easier; it's like the difference between writing code and documenting it, in my mind. Kreeft does an amazing job of explaining how various parts of doctrine fit together, or how some theological statements could be or should be obvious even without faith, from what I've read of his writing; he's not really breaking new theological ground any more than a technical writer is breaking new ground in the field of cryptography or linear programming, but (to his credit) I don't think he ever claims to be. (Fanboys are, as always, a different issue.) Bel_Canto posted:just ban everyone, convert or not, from writing or teaching about the faith in any public authoritative context for a minimum of 20 years after their confirmation, with every exception to be reviewed personally by a bishop. private faith talks with your friends? go ahead. but no teaching or publishing on catholic theology until you've lived a couple decades as a normal catholic Or we could just ban everyone, convert or not, confirmed 20 years ago or not, from teaching about the faith in any authoritative context without being personally reviewed by a bishop, especially since in some parts of the US that'd mean 27-year-olds were okay to go about without an imprimatur tattooed on their tongues, and in others 35-year-olds would still be waiting!
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Dec 8, 2016 22:04
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Tias posted:Can we talk about the angel Raphael? I've just become interested in him/it, but I only have the wikipedia and don't really know where else to find legit info.. He shows up in the book of Tobit, which is canonical for Catholics (and (most?) Eastern Orthodox?), but not for (most?) Protestants. Tobit is a weird book of the Bible - one commentary I read said that, to contemporary readers, it may as well have started with "Once upon a time," - and it involves two people who really need help. Tobiah's wife helps another family and gets a goat as a gift, but Tobiah accuses her of stealing it, and then goes to sleep outside, at which point a bird craps in his eyes and renders him blind. Meanwhile, Sarah keeps getting married - and has been married six times so far - but a jealous demon is stalking her and kills her husbands on her wedding night. So she prays that God will just kill her already. Enter Raphael, who tells Tobiah that he's a kinsman of Sarah, and conveniently he has an unmarried son, Tobit, and wouldn't it be great if Tobit and Sarah got married, because then they could take care of blind wife-slandering Tobiah himself? And Raphael just happens to live in the city Sarah lives in, and will happily take Tobit there and then Tobit and Sarah back for no fee! Off Raphael and Tobit go, when suddenly a giant fish attacks Tobit. Raphael kills it and tells Tobit to save the organs for medicine. Tobit and Sarah get married, and Raphael tells Tobit to use the (presumably now several days old) organs as incense to keep the demon away. It works; the smell is so bad that the demon flees to the desert, where Raphael ties him up and leaves him. Then they return to Tobiah's house, where Raphael smears fish guts on Tobiah's eyes and the bird crap peels away like fish scales. Success! Tobiah can see, and Sarah's not cursed by a demon stalker! Raphael reveals that he's an angel and tootles off back to Heaven. The end.
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Dec 12, 2016 20:03
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Josef bugman posted:Is it any more unsound than "you have an affair, get an STI and wreck your family". Remember that "stop suffering" might entail "stop free will" - if I hit you in the face, it's going to hurt your face, unless God prevents me from hitting you; or God could prevent my hand making contact with your face from causing pain, but then that interferes with causes having their normal effect. Also, what, for you, is evil? I mean, normally I think of the evil/bad distinction being "if I do something that is wrong, knowing that it is wrong, without being coerced into it" is evil (if, perhaps, a tiny evil if it's something like "having one drink more than I should because what I'm drinking tastes good" rather than, say, "shooting nine people at a Bible study"), whereas bad being things like "spending all weekend staggering between toilet and bed because of food poisoning" or "a friend of mine can't get pregnant despite trying for three years".
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Dec 13, 2016 02:21
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Bel_Canto posted:I mean the thing that most disturbed me was in the first episode when redacted That kind of made me sick to my stomach, and I imagine it'll do the same for a lot of Catholics. That, to me, cements that this character is Really Not A Good Dude. Yeah, whatever a non-Catholic or ex-Catholic (i.e. the kind of Protestant who was Saved From Rome) may think of that spoiler, I'm with Bel Canto: that makes him (and the priest in question) Not One Of The Good Guys. I can't think of any action (short of confessing having done the redacted thing and doing public penance) that would make me change my opinion of him. Brrr.
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Dec 14, 2016 02:29
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Lutha Mahtin posted:if you want to say "yeah, well, that's just, like, my opinion, man" sure. great. go ahead. but if that opinion is "it's fine and correct to cut out a few verses from the gospel that is just crammed to the gills with symbolism and claim that those verses clearly refer to this issue that i struggle with in my personal life", i'm not sure if i'd call that exegesis. i don't know what i would call it instead of that, but i would definitely say that you should take care not to become like the guy who melted down on the silent hill fan wiki and edited everything to say that the symbolism of silent hill 4 is one big critique about the psychological horrors of circumcision Eisegesis?
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Dec 14, 2016 03:20
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The Phlegmatist posted:"Theology on Tap" is a thing for both Catholics and the Reformed. Don't accidentally go to the wrong one though or someone will shank you with a broken beer bottle while screaming objections to theological doctrines you've never even heard of. A bit of googling makes it sound really good!  theopedia posted:Union with the (visible) church automatically implies union with Christ in the Federal Vision teaching. This over-objective view of the covenant fails to distinguish between covenantal union in the visible church from the saving union of the invisible church. quote:The FV perspective involves incipient sacramentalism. Critics see the FV imputing the efficacy of the thing signified to the sign itself, whether in regard to baptism or the Lord's Supper. The sacraments can communicate blessings apart from faith, and baptism appears to be a converting ordinance. http://www.theopedia.com/federal-vision doesn't seem to like the idea that covenantal union could be saving, or agree that an invisible church is silly or that sacramentalism is awesome, though. 
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Dec 23, 2016 16:44
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The Phlegmatist posted:Yeah it's basically Calvinists playing around with Catholicism, as far as I understand it. HEY GAL posted:it's bad, because the guy who introduced the idea is super culty and horrible. Possibly the lack of swimming (Tiber or Bosphoros) is due to the super-culty-horribleness. Edit: Ew. "He stated for example that: "slavery produced in the South a genuine affection between the races that we believe we can say has never existed in any nation before the War or since."" 
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Dec 23, 2016 16:55
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Tuxedo Catfish posted:In my undergrad I literally took too many English courses for them to allow me to take any more, so I had to substitute an American history class on the 1860s for an American lit class. StashAugustine posted:the story goes that lots of irish/german immigrants were all for Prohibition because a) they'd seen the toll super heavy drinking creates and b) they didn't think they were going to ban beer too Even the Word of Wisdom was not initially nterpreted to include beer; there were even problems in Salt Lake City with bad smells from breweries. So I think it's reasonable that a lot of Americans may have not considered beer to be "alcohol". Ceciltron posted:Any of y'alls traditions include celebrating Christmas at midnight rather than the morning? I have been living away from my parents (and thus not visiting to see my grandparents) for ten years now, and I still find it weird to think about opening presents on Christmas Day. For me Christmas 'should be' a table full of meatless food for supper on Christmas Eve, then opening presents, washing dishes, taking a nap, going to midnight Mass, coming home and having a ham sandwich, and finally going to bed and sleeping until at least noon. Maybe this year I can convince Mr. Zonohedron we should take the kids to midnight Mass so I can at least get the 'sleeping all morning' part? 
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Dec 23, 2016 20:12
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hailthefish posted:poo poo, translation my rear end. "Consubstantial" is barely English. Well, "consubstantialis" was barely Latin, too! Greek had a noun for "be-ing", the process of the verb "to be" (like "capturing" from "to capture"), but Latin didn't, so when the Nicene Creed became Latin, "homoousios", "of the same be-ing", got rendered together-substance. "One in being" has to be explained too, so why not go for an unambiguous term? I mean I guess they could do something horrible like "Begotten, not made, together with the Father he is being. Through him all things were made," but that doesn't really sound better than "consubstantial", does it?
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Dec 25, 2016 22:51
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Valiantman posted:Yeah, I meant to ask but forgot: what is bad in intinction? Why couldn't you mix the bread and wine before your mouth, theologically? It's not a very rare practice. Tossing out used disposable cups is nothing special either, since the belief in real presence that us Lutherans have means that while Jesus is truly and secretly present in the bread and wine during the communion, they don't actually change so after the communion is received, it's (again) just bread and wine. Yeah, you handle it with reverence and respect but sure, you can reuse them if there are lot of leftovers and using the aforementioned disposable cups isn't any way more problematic than washing the fancy goblets. There's nothing wrong with a priest or deacon dipping it for the communicant and then putting it directly on the communicant's tongue. The reason "self-intinction" is forbidden is because of the risk of spilling the Precious Blood. We don't even take our chalices directly to be washed - we rinse them out with holy water first, and then the priest (or someone else) consumes that water. So the concept of handing people a little plastic cup is horrifying enough without contemplating a trash can full of dregs of wine or grape juice - even though I know that it's only wine or grape juice, because Catholics and Eastern Orthodox don't do that.
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Dec 27, 2016 00:53
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Worthleast posted:Once the jesuit is placed into the crockpot, he undergoes substantial change to hotdish and ceases to be a jesuit. Therefore I have never boiled any jesuits. So when you say you haven't boiled a protestant in weeks...
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Dec 30, 2016 03:26
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Last year i bought a Fisher-Price nativity set for my older son, and this year my younger son is mobile enough to get at it, so my older son hid all the figures as soon as I put them out. Then he spotted the Fisher-Price robot and said, "You can come too, robot! I have information about the baby Jesus for you!" (I kept putting the nativity set together every single morning; I still don't know what information the robot received while hiding with Mary, Joseph, the shepherd, three sheep, a donkey, a cow, and a peacock and peahen.)
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Jan 6, 2017 19:25
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Mr Enderby posted:While we're all arguing, can we settle the filioque issue? Also is the Immaculate Conception real, and are good works are necessary for salvation? I reckon Jesus had two natures, but both of them were an indistinguishable mixture of divine and human. /me takes bait If Jesus did not have an unmixed human nature, he wasn't 'like us in all things but sin'; if Jesus did not have an unmixed divine nature, he wasn't God and thus did not have the authority to forgive sins that weren't committed against him as a man, but he forgave total strangers who hadn't done anything to him. (And to preempt the next argument, sin does not make someone human; sinning diminishes someone's humanity.) syscall girl posted:
Even expressing the reason behind one's opinion on That Topic is super-duper against the rules because it just doesn't go well. I love me a good "no, you're the one whose position is hateful and abhorrent!!!1eleven" argument, but I would rather it not happen to this thread.
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Jan 7, 2017 04:28
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So, on a completely different note, has anyone else been reading what seems like an increasing number of opinion pieces about Pope Francis causing dissatisfaction / acting autocratically / furthering cronyism / etc? I will admit that I was linked to this one by Fr. Z, but - take note, those of you who are pre-emptively rolling your eyes - he closed his comments on it, suggesting he wasn't just posting it so he could get his requisite sixty "rargh rargh Vatican II worst ever" comments for the day. In fact, he didn't even comment on it himself. "Why more and more priests can't stand Pope Francis" Right after Pope Francis was elected I did a bunch of explaining "no, he didn't actually mean THAT, he meant THIS", and then when my non-Catholic friends stopped paying much attention just confined my "here we go again" grumbles to Spacewolf, because my sons are now old enough to get annoyed when I yell at the radio while I'm driving. But it seems like the pace of things I feel the impulse to explain (so as to make them fit into what the Catholic Church teaches) or can't help but wince about (when it's church-politics-mismanagement stuff) is picking up. Just me?
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Jan 14, 2017 20:23
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Josef bugman posted:Is there a difference between setting up the best people for the job and people who are going to follow your particular brand of holiness in order to keep your faith around going into the next century? "Cronyism" can sometimes simply be used as an excuse to complain about why you might not be getting a promotion even though its actually because your bad at your job. "But it seems like the pace of things I feel the impulse to explain (so as to make them fit into what the Catholic Church teaches) or can't help but wince about (when it's church-politics-mismanagement stuff) is picking up. Just me?" "I've been doing this since Pope Francis was elected, but it feels like the number of stories that make me yell at the radio have gone up. Some of them are things I feel like I should be explaining to non-Catholics, so they understand that Catholic doctrines aren't changing; some of them are just things that make me make angry faces, because they're about Pope Francis playing politics in ways I don't like." The Phlegmatist posted:On the other hand he's elevated cardinals from untraditional archbishoprics just because they agree with him ideologically, which a little bit disconcerting in that he's setting a nasty precedent. It's not just a nasty precedent (though it is) - it can be an unpleasant surprise for dioceses that don't have a lot of money.
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Jan 15, 2017 00:54
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VoteTedJameson posted:I do struggle with the idea of such a highly dogmatic way of worshipping, when the whole point of your religion is humility, simplicity and service to others What does "highly dogmatic" mean to you? What is it about the Catholic way of worshipping that causes you to struggle? These aren't gotcha questions; I just don't know if you're objecting to "having a specific way of doing public worship", "doing public worship with beautiful things", or "thinking that the way we worship matters to God". Because Lutha Martin is right - you'll find Catholic parishes using acoustic guitars and tambourines while the Lutheran church up the road has a pipe organ from 1899.
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Jan 15, 2017 23:53
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Caufman posted:It's considerable that fasting is undertaken by people of all sorts of traditions and no traditions. Beyond the Abrahamic religions, the discipline is diversely practiced. On the other hand, a spiritual life that never involves fasting is probably lacking, too; Catholics and Orthodox have prescribed fast days (and feast days!) in part to make sure that doesn't happen. I abstain from meat on Fridays not just for the (little-t) tradition aspect, but because it makes me remember - oh, right, it's Friday, I'm giving something up today. (I also use it as a pretext for talking about saints with my sons - "Hey, we're having meat today, and we don't usually, right? That's because it's the feast day of St. Elmindreda of Ipsidipsy!" If the US bishops mandated that US Catholics abstain from meat on Fridays, only solemnities ("first class feasts", if you're Worthleast) would exempt us, but since they don't, I do what helps me and my kids.) I fast from all food before Mass, because it's helpful to me to have a grumbling tummy when I'm thinking about my need for Christ. (I make sure to put food right down my 5-year-old's gullet right before church, because it's helpful to me not to have him wailing about hunger when I'm thinking about &c.)
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Jan 16, 2017 23:49
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Worthleast posted:
Yes, but even if I attended a parish that exclusively used the Extraordinary Form (and thus the Super Extra Special feastdays were called "first class feasts" and not "solemnities"), and even if my bishop required me to abstain from meat, not "abstain from meat or perform some other penance", I still wouldn't be living under the 1917 code because this is not 1917 
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Jan 16, 2017 23:59
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Under the old code, only Holy Days of Obligation in the Universal Church would be exempt. And the abstinence would bind under pain of mortal sin!
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So, tangentially related to politics... apparently there are socks with Our Lady of Guadalupe on them?
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Jan 19, 2017 22:13
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The Phlegmatist posted:Why do the Eastern Orthodox have such cool titles. is that pray-per-view or pay-per-vespers, one inquires?
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Jan 20, 2017 23:01
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The Phlegmatist posted:To answer your question, yeah. When Jesus was a baby He probably didn't know anything about what was going to happen. When He starts his public ministry though, He knows what's up. For example, the Wedding at Cana, where Jesus is like "yo mom calm it down a bit, yeah I'm like the only begotten Son of God and everything but this miracle is gonna launch my ministry smdh." We see in the Gospel of Luke that at Gethsemane that He's kinda like "gently caress this crucifixion poo poo, I bet that hurts, drat, but 'Father, if you are willing, take this cup away from me. Yet not my will but yours be done.'" The only worthwhile scene in Mel Gibson's movie about those things is when Mary sees Jesus fall and remembers Jesus falling as a toddler, because it recalls the icon of Our Lady of Perpetual Help. (Though Wikipedia suggests the icon suggests toddler-Jesus saw his sufferings in a dream whereas I remember it being explained to me as toddler-Jesus falling and angels helpfully explaining, "so that falling thing? yeah you're going to get to do that again and it's going to be extra bad.")
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Jan 24, 2017 13:38
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Methanar posted:Serious question: How is it morally justifiable to impress your beliefs, faith, religion, etc onto your children when they see you as an the ultimate authority on everything. How is it not morally justifiable to impress one's beliefs on one's children? It's bad to hurt people. It's good to apologize if you do hurt someone anyway. It's bad to take things that aren't yours. It's good to share. The Earth is (vaguely-)spherical and orbits the Sun (which is a mass of incandescent gas, a gigantic nuclear furnace). God created us to know him, love him, and serve him in this life, and be happy with him forever in the next. Some people disagree with me about each of those things, but that doesn't make it not morally obligatory for me to teach them to my children. Out of curiosity, why did your parents send you to a Catholic school if all you knew about prayer was that some people were great at pretending they believed it? That is to say, it wasn't to reinforce what they were teaching at home, and it wasn't because they wanted those beliefs impressed onto you, but it seems like you're annoyed at the whole idea of a religious school.
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Jan 25, 2017 14:00
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Mr Enderby posted:Hi thread, I'm interested in your thoughts on this story: Yes, for Catholics, denying the perpetual virginity of Mary is a really big problem. Not deserving of death threats, no, but if instead her superior had gotten 183,000 angry letters asking her to take away her twitter account, that would have been perfectly proportionate, in my mind. Mary's virginity is important because it explains why Mary asked how she was going to become the mother of God; it's important because Mary was the new Ark of the Covenant and so only bore God within her womb, just like the Ark only held holy things; it's important because Mary is a model for religious who've given up marriage (a good thing) to single-heartedly serve God (an even better thing). Too, saying "well they had to have had a normal marriage" seems awfully close to "well Jesus had to be married, he just had to", which is something else Catholics may not believe happened
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Feb 3, 2017 02:51
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Mr Enderby posted:Thank you for the response. I hope you don't mind if I split apart the clauses. Yes, the angel's message came before Mary was married, but Gabriel didn't say "in ten minutes", so it's quite reasonable she could have assumed "nine months after the wedding", right? Sarah laughs at the idea she'll have a child in a year because she knows she's past menopause and she didn't have any children before that either, but Mary's young, and we have no reason to think she suspected infertility on her part or Joseph's. (There's other supporting evidence to suggest that Mary had no children besides Jesus, but those verses don't say anything specifically about sexual abstinence within marriage.) And yes, the various important exegetic readings don't prove anything; they're more "things that depend on this" than "why this is true". Catholics think that we teach Mary's perpetual virginity because that's actually what was the case - that it's important that, when we know a fact about a historical figure, doctrines that involve that person correspond to that fact. It'd be wrong to say "well Popes don't marry so I think Peter probably didn't either", because Peter was married, and so it's also wrong (especially for someone who might seem like a reliable source) to say "well usually marriages involve sex, so I think Mary's did too". Cythereal posted:Certainly isn't for Protestants. It's not a question Protestants tend to spend any amount of time on to begin with, and my pastor growing up occasionally discussed it - in his opinion there's no info one way or another but he saw no reason to not think Mary and Joseph had a happy, loving marriage and had children after Jesus. I don't see any reason not to think that Mary and Joseph had a happy, loving marriage either, and as far as I know (...it probably exists, don't enlighten me) there's nobody saying that they were unhappily married or that they didn't love each other. (There is plenty of reason to think they didn't have children after Jesus, but I think we've had this argument in one of the previous iterations of this thread.)
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Feb 3, 2017 04:37
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Dr. Video Games 0081 posted:Thats very clear that they had sex. It seems unconscionable to me to push the notion of "perpetual virginity" with its obvious misogynistic and unhealthy implications. 2 Samuel 6:23 says that Michal had no children until the day of her death, but it's very clear that the writer didn't mean "but she had children afterwards", because we know that dead people don't have kids. Matthew 1:24-25 is only "very clear" that they had sex if it's important to you that they did, I think; all it says is that Joseph definitely did not cause Jesus to be conceived and did not do anything with Mary that could have caused Jesus to be conceived. Besides, is it still pushing a notion if it's simply stating the truth? Catholics insist on Mary's perpetual virginity because she was perpetually a virgin. Catholics insist on Jesus's bodily resurrection from the dead because he rose with a physical body that could fold burial cloths, eat fish, and be touched. Catholics insist that the miracle of the loaves and fishes was not merely sharing, because food really was multiplied in a supernatural way. Part of the problem that people have with Catholic Tradition (big T, "revealed truths that are not explicitly stated in Sacred Scripture") about this, I think, is that modern society tends to distrust self-denial if it's for religious reasons. "I'm not eating meat because it's environmentally unsustainable" is okay; "I'm not eating meat for religious reasons" is not. "I'm only drinking water tomorrow to purge toxins" is okay; "I'm fasting from everything but water tomorrow" is not. It's true with hair - "Whoa, that guy didn't cut his hair for a whole year? neat!" vs "WTF, Sikh men don't cut their hair? gross!" - and it's especially true with sexuality.
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Feb 3, 2017 14:28
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Deteriorata posted:In this case, it being "the truth" is sketchy. The Bible does say that Joseph held off "until she had given birth," implying he didn't afterward. Why would they state it that way? It was no more ink to say Joseph left her alone forever, but the writers didn't phrase it that way. If Mary remaining perpetually a virgin were a real and important thing, the Gospel writers sure could have mentioned it. "Ockham's Razor suggests it's not a good addition to the theory" implies that it's added; that the writers of the Gospel were thinking "okay, what's a good backstory for Our Lord? oh I know, how about a stable?" and all the early Christians that Worthleast quoted Aquinas quoting were adding to that. The Bible never explicitly says, "Jesus wasn't married," but I believe it to be both important doctrinally and factually true that Jesus did not have a wedding, did not have sex (marital or otherwise), and does not have a spouse other than the Church. The Bible does not have Joseph rebuking Jesus after finding him in the Temple, "How could you do this to your mother? You're her only child and she loves you!" but I believe it to be both important doctrinally and factually true that Mary had no other children. The Bible also never says, "Jesus is God from God, Light from Light, True God from True God, begotten, not made, consubstantial with the Father"; if it did, Jehovah's Witnesses wouldn't insist that they had proof from the Bible that Jesus was really the Archangel Michael! (As for "but what about brothers"; half-brothers and step-brothers are generally called "brothers", in modern American English, unless there's some particular need to clarify. Abraham called Lot his brother even though Lot was his nephew. Many cultures consider some cousins 'brothers', at least unless there's a particular need to clarify whose parents are whose. Jesus's brothers speak to him in a way that'd be extremely rude for younger brothers, and any children Mary had besides Jesus would necessarily be younger. Jesus tells Mary that John is now her son, as if there were not already sons to take care of her. James is never called the son of Mary.) It's entirely possible that the author of the Gospel of Matthew didn't know whether or not Mary remained perpetually a virgin, or didn't consider it important. Tuxedo Catfish posted:Is "it's none of our business" an appropriate theological conclusion Catholics historically have tried to find every possible implication of every possible revealed statement; we don't really do "none of our business" except for "who, if anyone, is in Hell" and "who is in Heaven that we don't know about".
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Feb 3, 2017 19:55
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Worthleast posted:Sorry, I'm totally agreeing with you. I think a lot of rad-trads started out as $generic_American_Protestant and became Catholic because their denomination wasn't <something> enough, only to discover that non-rad-Catholicism, plus or minus the traddiness, is also not that thing enough. If they don't become rad-trads, they become weird other things: Rod Dreher became Orthodox instead (sorry HEY GAIL) but is probably closer to rad-thodoxy, Robert Sungenis is still technically one of ours but he's a geocentrist, or for a third example of not-that-thing-enough, the Catholic priest who had a radio show and who would tell about how he personally witnessed drug dealers consecrating drugs to Satan, whose name escapes me. zonohedron fucked around with this message at 03:57 on Feb 5, 2017 |
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Feb 5, 2017 03:54
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Cythereal posted:I'd be more forgiving to the bakers in this case if they'd done any of the usual runaround bullshit "Oh sorry we're all booked, we can help you find another bakery that will make a cake for you." In one case the baker did say "Oh, I'm sorry, we can't do that cake for you, how about So-and-So's Substitutionary Sweets?" and the couple who'd asked for the cake didn't consider that sufficient. I (very reluctantly) have to agree that that's not legally sufficient - it means a town with one $business that does $thing can completely exclude $protected_class, and certainly a town with two equally-unwilling $businesses could collaborate ("I just got an e-mail from $protected_class and I'm going to refer them to you, so that you know you're totally booked"). [Edit: It may not have been a bakery, but a florist? Google isn't turning up the case, though the bakery in Oregon that shut down after paying the court-ordered damages is 90% of the results and that makes it hard for me to tell if I'm misremembering or not searching correctly.) zonohedron fucked around with this message at 16:48 on Feb 7, 2017 |
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Feb 7, 2017 16:42
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Bel_Canto posted:so apparently steve bannon is plotting inside the vatican with the current pope's enemies. i mean on the one hand i find this horrifying but on the other hand, i feel like trying to out-scheme a jesuit pope in the heart of vatican city is not going to end well for him quote:In one of the cardinal’s antechambers, amid religious statues and book-lined walls, Cardinal Burke and Mr. Bannon — who is now President Trump’s anti-establishment eminence — bonded over their shared worldview. They saw Islam as threatening to overrun a prostrate West weakened by the erosion of traditional Christian values, and viewed themselves as unjustly ostracized by out-of-touch political elites. Oh Raymond Cardinal Burke No.  quote:And another person with knowledge of Mr. Bannon’s current outreach said the White House official is personally calling his contacts in Rome for thoughts on who should be the Trump administration’s ambassador to the Holy See.  quote:João Braz de Aviz, a powerful cardinal close to the pope, walked around in simple cleric clothes, the equivalent of civilian dress among all the flowing cassocks. what? no no it isn't or maybe it is and then he's out of uniform at a formal event? isn't that bad, if you're in the military?
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Feb 7, 2017 21:46
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I LIKE COOKIE posted:ugh you guys are making me upset. I guess a mentally ill persons opinion will never be treated as equal here. of all places, The Christianity thread. I'm gunna take a break for tonight and go do something else I love for a while because this isnt making me happy anymore. People are pointing out that what you're sincerely describing does not sound like how anyone in the Bible describes their experience with divine revelation, but it does sound like how people describe manic episodes. If what you're experiencing is of God, medication and therapy won't make it go away. If not, you should want it to go away; God is truth, and so if we want to know God we should want to know the truth, even if the truth doesn't make us happy, even if a delusion is harmless and enjoyable. That said, whatever ends up being the source of your experiences, I do want to thank you: all of the discussion has led me to recall, and reflect on, a moment when I believe God spoke to me in actual words; it shaped what I've done with my life for the fifteen years since, and I don't often enough spend time remembering what that moment was like. I've been having a rough few months - it seems like at least one person in my house has been sick every day since November, politics are gloomy, and the next time I see my own psychiatrist I probably need to get my meds adjusted - and spending time with that memory has helped me put one foot in front of the other, the past few days.
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Feb 13, 2017 22:16
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Hello Sailor posted:What about the idea that a particular one of several apocalyptic Jewish preachers in Roman-occupied Judea was actually a deity? This question is a fantastic example of how difficult it is for Christian denominations with centuries of history to discuss theology with those from very recent denominations or atheists raised in said recent denominations. I mean, I could very honestly say, "I do not believe that there was a Jewish preacher in Roman-occupied Judea who was actually a deity," but that would sound like saying, "I do not believe that Jesus of Nazareth was God," which, of course, is something I do believe. Reasons I can't say I believe the idea Hello Sailor suggests: "actually" and "a deity". "Actually" implies that this preacher wasn't really a human preacher (wasn't really Jewish), but was instead another thing, while "a deity" implies something like Zeus, Mars, or Asherah, one entity among many. The deity I worship is not a being but is Being; does not have existence, but is Existence; does not have love, but is Love. I had a similar reaction a while back to an article by a Protestant writer. The title was provocative: "Relax Christian, You Don't Have To Go To Church", but the reason within the article was "The idea that we need to travel to sit in a space with strangers and consume religious entertainment is not at all Biblical." I could honestly say I don't think that's necessary either, while at the same time saying that I think that for Christians, it is essential to go to church at least weekly if possible. But I would have a very hard time actually arguing my point against someone who agreed with the author, because our underlying assumptions and even our use of words are so different.
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Feb 19, 2017 21:39
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HEY GAIL posted:athanasius contra nazis "This crozier kills fascists"? WerrWaaa posted:I mean, clearly I love internet communities. So how does a virtual space become a holy space? There are hard righters meeting in physical space too. So space, right, its a thing that means things I guess? I think the stripped down and no-church aesthetic is missing a lot; does that mean their discipleship is missing an equal amount? Obviously Cythereal isn't going to agree with me (I say, affectionately), but yeah, I think Christians are deprived of something that they need in order to be better disciples if their religious experience is "go sit in a stadium, hear an inspirational speech, sing a song that repeats itself twenty times, have donuts, go home." Catholic churches that look like barns inside, where instead of a crucifix there's a risen Jesus statue looming over the altar, where the priest uses Eucharistic Prayer II and says it AsFastAsHeCan MassInThirtyMinutes OrYourMoneyBack, don't nourish worshippers to the same degree as ones that are full of meaningful art and where prayers aren't curtailed to save time. It's better for my sons that they attend a church where a dozen elderly Hispanic ladies stop them every Sunday to tell me how big, handsome, quiet, good, etc they are, instead of a church where they're just sitting amongst strangers, or instead of being dropped off in the nursery with the other kids while I go off to a small-group Bible study. It's better for them that I can take them up to the stained glass windows and know that this one depicts Zaccheus and that one depicts That Guy Whose Friends Dropped Him In Through The Roof, because then they can learn just by being by the windows (and, as they get older, asking for the stories again).
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Feb 20, 2017 05:28
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HEY GAIL posted:yesterday i learned that clement of alexandria thought that jesus did not have automatic bodily functions My favorite of the miracles attributed to Pope Pius X happened while he was still alive. He had already been reputed for bringing about the healing of those he prayed for, so his secretary stole his socks and gave them to his sister, who had a malformed foot. (I think sister - sibling, anyway.) Her foot immediately corrected itself when she put the stolen sock on, which terrified the secretary, so he raced back to the Pope and admitted what he had done. The Pope's response was to laugh and say, "I wish my socks would do that for my arthritis."  ...uh, my other fav liturgifact, as long-time readers of the thread will know, is that if a spider falls into the chalice after consecration (i.e. when the chalice contains the Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity of Jesus), the priest's two options are to fish it out and burn it, or consume it. In both cases it's the physicality of it - to Catholics, we aren't souls trapped in meat, we're people with bodies and souls, both of which must be involved in our religious practices. Socks, spiders, holy water, sitting and standing and kneeling, going to actual buildings with altars that have been anointed with oil, not just any-old-place-anywhere, that kind of thing.
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Feb 24, 2017 23:05
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Samuel Clemens posted:Is that rule restricted specifically to spiders, or does it apply to all small animals? I think it's bugs/insects/arachnids. I know it's not true for mice, so I assume not for rodents. OwlFancier posted:My complete ignorance of how Communion works would lead me to believe that if the priest does not do one of those two things the spider will gain the power to heal the sick and become immortal. And possibly start its own religion. And that's why you have to do that. I think the concern is that if you scoop it out and let it run away it will spill droplets of Jesus everywhere and it'll be impossible to find them all. Catholics are kind of weird about remnants of communion, from a non-Catholic viewpoint; Lutherans might pour consecrated wine down the drain, but Catholics not only don't do that, after all the wine is consumed holy water is poured into the chalice and then that is consumed too. So unless the priest (or someone) were to scoop the spider out, something would have to be done with it.
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Feb 24, 2017 23:53
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