Aggiornamento update

[Mornac]

Well that is the dumbest statistic I've read today so far.. geez, there's so many Catholic churches built over the last 1000 years there, and so few people who go there any more they are being turned into coffee shops and night clubs..

--That's exactly why it's part of the Aggiornamento update, Pepsi.

[ivanm]

--That's exactly why it's part of the Aggiornamento update, Pepsi.

I am betting that a lot of the ancient structures have become unusable for services and are in need of major repairs, something a congregation might not be able to afford.  Newer churches are probably not as monumental as the ancient Gothic cathedrals.

The mosque growth is probably fueled by the rapid increase of the Muslim population, and I think this policy will bite  France in the ass someday, if not already.

[Mornac]

I am betting that a lot of the ancient structures have become unusable for services and are in need of major repairs, something a congregation might not be able to afford.

--No doubt about it.

Newer churches are probably not as monumental as the ancient Gothic cathedrals.

--You can say that again:

New Cathedral at Evry

The mosque growth is probably fueled by the rapid increase of the Muslim population, and I think this policy will bite  France in the ass someday, if not already.

--It’s biting it every day.  

[makesenseplease]

July 22, 2010

Who cares what the Church teaches?
Poll shows 62% of Catholics want to keep California’s liberal abortion laws -- or make getting abortions even easier

Forty-eight percent of self-identified Catholics oppose any changes to California’s liberal abortion laws, and 14% say the law should make it even easier for women to get abortions, a Field Poll released yesterday revealed.

Just 34% of poll respondents who identified themselves as Catholics said state law should be changed to make getting an abortion more difficult, while 4% had no opinion one way or the other, according to the Field Poll results.

The results were part of an overall portrait of California residents, painting them as one of the most pro-abortion electorates in the U.S. “There has been no change in California voters long-standing support for allowing women the right to a legal abortion,” said a summary of the results released yesterday by the Field Poll. “About seven in ten voters (71%) favor making no change to the state’s current abortion laws or making abortion easier to obtain. In addition, a similar 71% endorse the U.S. Supreme Court’s historic 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that granted women a constitutional right to abortion.”

The California results buck a national trend, where polls taken in recent years show that, overall, Americans have become increasingly pro-life.

The Field Poll did turn up some slivers of anti-abortion sentiment in the state. “The largest proportions of voters who take a contrary view and advocate making abortion harder to obtain exist among strong conservatives (52%), those who identify strongly with the Tea Party protest movement (48%), Vietnamese-Americans (45%), Republicans (40%), supporters of Carly Fiorina for U.S. Senate (39%), supporters of Meg Whitman for Governor (38%), moderate conservatives (37%) and Latinos (36%),” according to the Field Poll.

The poll was conducted between June 22 and July 5, and queried 1,390 registered voters across the state.

http://calcatholic.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?id=05b92f5e-f3ac-42f1-8606-8abdb64ac133

Christ cares what the churches teach:


http://bible.cc/matthew/15-9.htm

[ivanm]

--No doubt about it.
--You can say that again:

New Cathedral at Evry

--It’s biting it every day.  

Why does the French govenment let so many of them into the country?   I fear we also will be sold out by some idiot like Wonder Boy.

France was once a very proud and nationalistic country, and the US was also once very proud and nationalistic.  It is as if someone wants to make a cesspool out of us like Somalia is. 
 
Who provides hope, inspiration, and leadership to the world when the top tier countries become cesspools?

[ivanm]

"You go on about how God only exists in the minds of men as some conceptual thing, yet you’re going to tell me about how many ways there are to get to heaven?"

I am speaking rhetorically from my previous experience of going to church and studying the bible.  One does not have to believe in God to understand what the bible is saying.

When I say there is more than one way to get to Heaven I am speakng of the different ways the Gospel is presented by the various sects.  The end game, however, is to influence people to commit themselves to Christ being their savior. In Judaism there is even another path to salvation, and who is to knock it as the whole thing is a figment of man's creative mind.

Jesus saw the abuses of the Judaic leaders and designed his way of salvation. So yes, it differs from that of Judaism and was the main selling point back then. Who in their right mind would promote Judaism when he was peddling Christianity?

However, there is a fallacy in the Christian argument as much of the philosopy or creed is based on ancient Judaic concepts, and much of the customs and ceremony, such as sacrifices at the altar, can be found in Judaism. Yes, in time the actual sacrifice of a living creature was discontinued but the idea is the same, just a symbolic one rather than an actual blood letting.  So Chrisitianity is little different than Judaism in spite of what the Apostles wanted the people to hear and believe.  IMO it was a matter of one religious movement competing with another religious movement, with Judaism being challenged by the new Christian ways and beliefs.

I see you are back on the truth thing.  If you find your Catholic teachings to be the truth, then power to you, but if the nature of your beliefs were not religious people would classify you as some sort of a deluded paranoid.   The bottom line is this Mornac, there is no factual basis for God's existence in the corporeal sense and there is scanty evidence that Christ ever  walked the earth. So the truth you seek is very nebulous.

So the premises of your beliefs are as fragile as a house of cards.  I like to talk to you about your beliefs until you start bashing protestants, and then you just make yourself look ignorant.  It is a simple fact that joining anything, be it a church or the local Elks club, is on the wane. People aren't joiners like they used to be and prefer casual social relationships with no committment required of them. The point being that folks are pulling away from organized religion even though many still are believers.
There is a fear that if a person does not to to church on a regular basis then his faith will wane, and I can see that.  The trick is for organized religion to find ways to bring folks back into the fold, and brow beating just won't do the job on an intelligent person.  In ancient times many folks were not well educated and were fraught with superstition, which presented fertile ground for religious teachings to explain away their doubts and fears. Times have changed so the modern sinner is a tougher nut to crack. In other words he is no dummy and is less apt to fall for the promises of religious belief.
 
Much of  this has come about because of TV and other forms of home entertainment such as the PC and the internet?  I think that in the past folks went to church and to its social functions in order to meet their friends as well as worship.  Over time the worship part of church going became a mere background for the social part of church going.

Sadly, because of this phenomenon, our moral fabric is tattered and frayed, and the country is losing its moral rudder.  In spite of the fact that I am not much of a believer, I am essentially a product of my Christian upbringing, so my knocking the bigoted ways of church goers does not mean I place no value in Christian principles.  It is like I once told an atheist when we were debating the value of religion to a society. I said you have a choice of learning right from wrong in a Sunday school or in a lawyer's office.

[Mornac]

Why does the French govenment let so many of them into the country?

--They need an ever-growing tax base to prop up their Ponzi scheme social programs. Their own self-centered, hedonistic ethnic base has trashed its family-based Catholic society in favor of serial shack-ups leaving a few scattered children in their wake. Maman et Papa have been replaced by thick-headed, overpaid, lazy bureaucrats who don’t give a crotte de chien about anything accept what they're going to do on their next state mandated five week paid vacation.
   

I fear we also will be sold out by some idiot like Wonder Boy.

--Could happen.
 

France was once a very proud and nationalistic country, and the US was also once very proud and nationalistic.  It is as if someone wants to make a cesspool out of us like Somalia is.

--This wasn’t my idea.
 

Who provides hope, inspiration, and leadership to the world when the top tier countries become cesspools?

--Some of us will always have the Church. At least we know that isn’t going away.

[ivanm]

--They need an ever-growing tax base to prop up their Ponzi scheme social programs. Their own self-centered, hedonistic ethnic base has trashed its family-based Catholic society in favor of serial shack-ups leaving a few scattered children in their wake. Maman et Papa have been replaced by thick-headed, overpaid, lazy bureaucrats who don’t give a crotte de chien about anything accept what they're going to do on their next state mandated five week paid vacation.
   --Could happen.
 --This wasn’t my idea.
  --Some of us will always have the Church. At least we know that isn’t going away.

Hopefully the Church can survive but it can become very difficult for Chrisitians to openly gather for services.  And just the other day a pastor was on trial for heresy in an Islamic country, maybe Iran.  One possible punishment was death. So much for the religion of love.

For decades the Christians in parts of the former USSR had to slip around to worship together because belief in a higher power was forbidden by the commies.  I see that happening here in the states if we don't get a handle on the runaway ragheads that are coming here to usrurp our social order with their sadistic and asinine faith.

Who is letting these parasites into the country anyway? I'll bet the quotas for Euros is nearly zero while we fill up on these jokers. At least the Mexicans are not anti-American and aren't wanting to destroy us.   Why kill the geese that lay the golden eggs?  Only mental midget socialists do that sort of dumb assed thing.

[johnhp]

  --Some of us will always have the Church. At least we know that isn’t going away.

Some of us will.  You have abandoned it.

--That’s something different from the Catholic God then. Ours has no shape, form, or substance. That is why He cannot be depicted.  He exists everywhere.

For Catholics God has no shape or form?  Heresy.  Someone has forgotten the Nicene Creed.  There is this fellow you may have heard of.  We call him Jesus the Christ.  Here is what the Nicene creed says about Him:

We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ,
    the only Son of God,
    eternally begotten of the Father,
    God from God, Light from Light,
    true God from true God,
    begotten, not made, one in Being with the Father.
    Through him all things were made.
    For us men and for our salvation,
        he came down from heaven:
by the power of the Holy Spirit
    he was born of the Virgin Mary, and became man.

Canons of Constantinople (553)

3. If anyone says that God the Word who performed miracles is one and Christ

who suffered is another, or says that God the Word was together with Christ

who came from woman, or that the Word was in him as one person is in

another, but is not one and the same, our Lord Jesus Christ, the Word of

God, incarnate and become human, and that the wonders and the suffering

which he voluntarily endured in flesh were not of the same person, let him

be anathema.

4. If anyone says that the union of the Word of God with man was only

according to grace or function or dignity or equality of honor or authority

or relation or effect or power or according to his good pleasure, as though

God the Word was pleased with man, or approved of him, as the raving

Theodosius says; or that the union exists according to similarity of name,

by which the Nestorians call God the Word Jesus and Christ, designating the

man separately as Christ and as Son, speaking thus clearly of two persons,

but when it comes to his honor, dignity, and worship, pretend to say that

there is one person, one Son and one Christ, by a single designation; and

if he does not acknowledge, as the holy Fathers have taught, that the union

of God is made with the flesh animated by a reasonable and intelligent

soul, and that such union is according to synthesis or hypostasis, and that

therefore there is only one person, the Lord Jesus Christ one of the holy

Trinity -- let him be anathema. As the word "union" has many meanings, the

followers of the impiety of Apollinaris and Eutyches, assuming the

disappearance of the natures, affirm a union by confusion. On the other

hand the followers of Theodore and of Nestorius rejoicing in the division

of the natures, introduce only a union of relation. But the holy Church of

God, rejecting equally the impiety of both heresies, recognizes the union

of God the Word with the flesh according to synthesis, that is according to

hypostasis. For in the mystery of Christ the union according to synthesis

preserves the two natures which have combined without confusion and

without separation.

http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/basis/const2.txt

Council of Ephesus (431)

111. For we do not say that the nature of the Word was changed and made flesh, nor yet that it was changed into the whole man (composed) of soul and body but rather (we say) that the Word, in an ineffable and inconceivable manner, having hypostatically united to Himself flesh animated by a rational soul, became Man and was called the Son of Man, not according to the will alone or by the assumption of a person alone, and that the different natures were brought together in a real union, but that out of both in one Christ and Son, not because the distinction of natures was destroyed by the union, but rather because the divine nature and the human nature formed one Lord and Christ and Son for us, through a marvelous and mystical concurrence in unity. . . . For it was no ordinary man who was first born of the Holy Virgin and upon whom the Word afterwards descended; but being united from the womb itself He is said to have undergone flesh birth, claiming as His own the birth of His own flesh. Thus [the holy Fathers] did not hesitate to speak of the holy Virgin as the Theotokos (Mother of God).

113    Canon. 1.  If anyone does not confess that God is truly Emmanuel, and that on this account the Holy Virgin is the Mother of God (for according to the flesh she gave birth to the Word of God become flesh by birth), let him be anathema (condemned, i.e. excommunicated).

114    Can. 2. If anyone does not confess that the Word of God the Father was united to a body by hypostasis [union in a single Person] and that one is Christ with his own body, the same one evidently both God and man, let him be anathema.

115    Can. 3. If anyone in the one Christ divides the subsistences [divine and human natures] after the union, connecting them by a junction only according to worth, that is to say absolute sway or power, and not rather by a joining according to physical union [union in the one Christ], let him be anathema.

116    Can. 4. If anyone portions out to two persons, that is to say subsistences, the words in the Gospels and the apostolic writings, whether said about Christ by the saints, or by Him concerning Himself, and attributes some as it to a man specially understood beside the Word of God, others as befitting God alone, to the Word of God the Father, let him be anathema.

117    Can. 5. If anyone ventures to say that Christ is a man inspired by God, and not rather that He is truly God, as a son by nature, as the Word was made flesh and has shared similarly with us in blood and flesh, let him be anathema.

http://www.ewtn.com/expert/answers/mother.htm

We Catholics have an Image of God.

[ivanm]

Some of us will.  You have abandoned it.


For Catholics God has no shape or form?  Heresy.  Someone has forgotten the Nicene Creed.  There is this fellow you may have heard of.  We call him Jesus the Christ.  Here is what the Nicene creed says about Him:



Canons of Constantinople (553)


Council of Ephesus (431)



We Catholics have an Image of God.

John that was a cheap shot to say that Mornac has abandoned the Church.  I realize that to a Catholic the word "Church" may refer to a specific denomination but to me the church is the body of believers. What would the Church be without believers, just rhetoric on a piece of paper? His hope that the schism in the Catholic Church might be resolved someday may be wishful but I still think he is a sincere believer.

IMO the Catholic way would be confusing as I prefer to get it right from the horse's mouth, and then I will make my own decisions as to its veracity.  The bible is about all we have that is even close to the horses's mouth, so that would be my reference point.

Saying that Christ is God incarnate may be the answer for some, but my bible implies that God the Father and Christ the Son are two different beings.  God's traits are embodied in Christ but does that make him God? 

Some of the fundamentalist Protestant denominations teach that Christ and God are one and the same, and I don't fully understand the motivation to do so. To me it is an insult to God to call him Christ or to think that Christ is indeed God the Father. Hell the next thing you know the thumpers will claim that Christ created the earth.  Some are already claiming that he was present during the time of the creation.

Granted, I am not as schooled on the meaning of the bible as either of you are, but isn't it any wonder that I have rejected organized religion as pure bullshit, given this type of misinterpretation. Things usually have to add up and make sense to me or I won't buy into them.

Is it asking too much to say that Christ is endowed with the traits of God the Father and that Christ is dependent on the power of his father as the source of his divinity?
Is it asking too much for me not to believe that Christ had a number of conversations with God the Father in the book of John, or was he talking to himself? Can anyone see the idiocy of their confused thinking that Christ and God are one and the same being?

On the other hand, the whole ball of wax is just a fairy tale, so who really gives a shit what it is supposed to mean?

[SufferedMoreThanJesus]

Saying that Christ is God incarnate may be the answer for some, but my bible implies that God the Father and Christ the Son are two different beings.  God's traits are embodied in Christ but does that make him God? 

Mormon?

[ivanm]

I do find it odd that people of faith do not have a mental concept of what God is or repesents.

Consider this example.  Suppose someone prays that God save him and his people from drowning due to a terrible storm.  Do they plead with Mother Nature to stop the wind and the rain?  If the rain and the wind should stop it is possible they see that as the work of God, but is he merely the natural forces that make wind and rain?

Does anyone see my point?  How can a "nothing" do anything? It might have an influence on people's thinking, but hallucinations can also do that, as well as superstitions, which have no basis in fact.

[SufferedMoreThanJesus]

Fibonacci numbers - The Fingerprint of God (part 2)

[johnhp]

John that was a cheap shot to say that Mornac has abandoned the Church. 

Hardly.  It is an accurate and theological statement.  If you think i am wrong you are more than welcome to address the underlying theological issue: Catholics believe as a matter of doctrine that Jesus the Christ is fully God.  Unless Mornac is making the ridiculous argument that Jesus is invisible, then his claim that for Catholics God "cannot be depicted" is a rejection of the doctrine that Jesus the Christ is fully God.

Furthermore, he is in a pretty bad place here: he knows he made an error in his post but his arrogance will not let him admit the error and thank me for pointing it out to him.  Malone is absolutely correct when it comes to Mornac's attitude.

IMO the Catholic way would be confusing as I prefer to get it right from the horse's mouth, and then I will make my own decisions as to its veracity.  The bible is about all we have that is even close to the horses's mouth, so that would be my reference point.

Unless you read Greek, Syriac, Georgian, Coptic, etc.  You are directly at the hands of interpreters and translators who have edited and reconstructed texts.  But even as you begin your defense of Mornac you admit that he has no defense inside the Doctrine of the Catholic Church.

Saying that Christ is God incarnate may be the answer for some, but my bible implies that God the Father and Christ the Son are two different beings.  God's traits are embodied in Christ but does that make him God? 

i have no idea what your Bible is telling you.  What i do know is that the doctrine of the Incarnation and the doctrine of the Trinity do not claim that God the Father and God the Son are the same "being" (as you are mistakenly using the term).  The share the same ousia (translated as substance or being) but are not the same prosopon.  As a matter of doctrine for the Catholic Church, my point remains: at no time was Jesus the Christ not fully God.

Some of the fundamentalist Protestant denominations teach...

i could not care less, that is not the issue insofar as it concerns Mornac the Apostate.

Granted, I am not as schooled on the meaning of the bible as either of you are, but isn't it any wonder that I have rejected organized religion as pure bullshit, given this type of misinterpretation. Things usually have to add up and make sense to me or I won't buy into them.

If you are not schooled in the Bible, how would you know a misinterpretation?  ANd let's be clear if by you two you are referring to myself and Mornac the Apostate, i think you may be wrong as far as his schooling in the Bible is concerned.  If it is as poor as his misunderstanding of Catholic Doctrine, i am sure your understanding is as good as his.

Is it asking too much to say that Christ is endowed with the traits of God the Father and that Christ is dependent on the power of his father as the source of his divinity?

No.  It is too little.

Is it asking too much for me not to believe that Christ had a number of conversations with God the Father in the book of John, or was he talking to himself? Can anyone see the idiocy of their confused thinking that Christ and God are one and the same being?

Or the idiocy of someone thinkiing that was what i had posted?

On the other hand, the whole ball of wax is just a fairy tale, so who really gives a shit what it is supposed to mean?

Well, you seem pretty concerned.  i am certain Mornac is very upset.

[SufferedMoreThanJesus]

i am certain Mornac is very upset.

Well, isn't that your goal, to upset, harass, vexate and annoy people on an internet board?

You win 1 Internets.