Ask A Catholic

Petrine Succession, boyos.

is this a big departure?

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/22/pope-francis-good-atheists_n_3320757.html

as I understand it it's not a big departure historically but in the present age of fundamentalist revival, yes

seems pretty awesome.

Catholic guilt is tradition. It does make intuitive sense to my indwelling Catholic: the Holy Family suffered as they did for me, but how grateful am I really, in my daily life? Not very. I'm more interested in myself. That's my nature, and I don't do much to overcome it or transcend it. But the saints show me that I could, if I really cared. Hence, guilt!

I just realized that I'm a Catholic about practising music

huge props to francis for that

as I understand it it's not a big departure historically but in the present age of fundamentalist revival, yes

Oh, that's interesting. I've pretty much always understood that it was belief in Christianity, not goodness of deeds or character, that was the determinant. So this seemed pretty radical to me.

dude!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protestantism

Ah.

you know, those ppl who think they're Christians.

Adopting for a moment the xtian worldview, it seems apparent to me from the bible that the xtian god is allowed to do whatever he wants to do, whenever he wants, and this includes redeeming whoever he wants to redeem, without having to follow the rules he has previously announced, because he makes the rules as he goes along and is not required to post prior notice before making a rule change; that would be purely optional for him, as he is bound neither by precedent, nor by any purely human standard of fairness or justice. This seems pretty self-evident to me.

In our daily lives, god usually acts through she-bears

23 Then [Elisha] went up from there to Bethel; and as he was going up by the way, young lads came out from the city and mocked him and said to him, “Go up, you baldhead; go up, you baldhead!” 24 When he looked behind him and saw them, he cursed them in the name of the LORD. Then two female bears came out of the woods and tore up forty-two lads of their number. 25 And he went from there to Mount Carmel, and from there he returned to Samaria.

I only know that story because of Weeds.

I kinda think the Curia is getting ready to kill the pope (again).

The Vatican issued an “explanatory note on the meaning of “salvation,” on Thursday, May 23, after media reports circulated indicating that Pope Francis” promised heaven for everyone engaged in good works, including atheists.

In response to the media attention, the Rev. Thomas Rosica, a Vatican spokesman, said that people who know about the Catholic church “cannot be saved” if they “refuse to enter her or remain in her.”

(Translation: Atheists are going to Hell if they don’t accept Jesus Christ as Lord and Saviour.)

http://www.examiner.com/article/vatican-corrects-pope-atheists-are-still-going-to-hell

Does the Church still believe in the existence of Hell, or does it define Hell ambiguously, as "total separation from God." If the former that seems pretty gauche.

Sorry i see now that my question has been dealt with earlier. Anyway, i'm not a fan of this Vatican retraction.

heh heh heh enter her or remain in her heh heh etc

when to withdraw is a p big deal for us

Saints Sergius and Bacchus were Roman soldiers, Christian martyrs and gay men who loved each other. They were killed around 303 in present-day Syria. Their feast day is observed on Oct. 7. The couple was openly gay, but secretly Christian — the opposite of today’s closeted Christians.

The close bond between the two men has been emphasized since the earliest accounts, and recent scholarship has revealed their homosexuality. The oldest record of their martyrdom describes them as erastai (Greek for “lovers”). Scholars believe that they may have been united in the rite of adelphopoiesis (brother-making), a kind of early Christian same-sex marriage.

http://blog.gaycatholicpriests.org/2011/10/gay-saints-and-lovers-sergius-and-bacchus/

Still no HBO miniseries on pornocracy :(

My priest relative-by-marriage concelebrated a Vatican Mass with Francis a few weeks ago. I guess he might be a bishop someday if he wants that.

Junipero Serra as a saint, si o no?

I leave such matters to my lawyers.

it was bound to happen despite most evidence being that he's a shit. disappointed that Francis did that but if I agreed with absolutely everything Francis said and did it would be wrong.

https://twitter.com/mcmoynihan/status/646686363732066304

The Rev. John McNeill, an openly gay Roman Catholic priest who, from the 1970s onward, publicly pressed the church to welcome gay men and lesbians — and who was expelled from his order as a result — died on Tuesday in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. He was 90.

His death was announced by DignityUSA, an organization that supports gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender Catholics. Father McNeill had helped found its New York chapter in 1972.

A Jesuit who was ordained in 1959, Father McNeill was known in the decades that followed as an author, activist and psychotherapist specializing in the needs of gay clients. He first came to wide, explosive attention in 1976 with the publication of his book “The Church and the Homosexual.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/26/nyregion/john-mcneill-priest-who-pushed-catholic-church-to-welcome-gays-dies-at-90.html

RIP

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/08/us/pope-francis-archbishop-joseph-tobin-newark-archdiocese.html

this seems like a positive development

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yd54HzNI_Rk

As always, the main cultural signifier here isn't religion so much as nationality, class and coming from a family that shoves you in front of a set that resembles a tidied up Rosemary's baby in order to answer questions about your sexual lack of history

haven't seen rosemary's baby

but yes, catholicism is definitely tied to local culture (i'm not sure i'd say nationality)

Family first, then social circle then community then school then nationality

Church can fit in p much anywhere there depending on the severity of the infectiom

true

was talking catholicism with an acquaintance the other night. we were remarking how we were still pretty earnest and believing, if with plenty of doubts, when we made our confirmations and had chosen confirmation names accordingly. i chose san martin de porres (mixed-race peruvian saint a sort of patron saint on anti-racism and the poor), and he chose st anthony - because his mother was always telling him to pray to st anthony as he was always losing things. he had a friend who chose zeno, because it was the funniest name of a saint other than homobonus that he could find and he knew he'd get in trouble if he said he was choosing homobonus

haha

man having two confirmation saints is hard work lemme tell u

to answer questions about your sexual lack of history

I thought we were talking about Catholic girls?

Saint Dorkus is another classic

what was it like backing frank black?

please help me understand the de Auxiliis controversy. the question is that god grants grace to man without man having to do anything but this doesn't sit right with jesuits bc man should participate in his own redemption or am i completely misunderstanding the point of contention?

From a quick read in Wikipedia, it appears to be more of a question of how the doctrine of free will affects a person's ability to accept or reject grace and hinges upon the intricacies of how god's omnipotence and omniscience would work in a system where god is trying to bestow grace, knowing ahead of time it will be rejected. It is the usual tying oneself in knots to overcome inherent flaws in the logic of church dogma and doctrine.

and determinism

kind of thing which i find too boring to get into too much - no disrespect to theology in general but this particular dispute has me yawning. seems like both sides kind of viewed causation as a zero sum game. the more god does the less the individual does and vice cersa. bañez and the dominicans believed in physical premotion, the influence of god on the will of the person who acts on that will, jesuits found this overly deterministic, though they did believe in god knowing everything that could happen including counterfactuals, and creating the world as it is while knowing all the options so that always seemed kind of deterministic to me also

determinism vs free will obviously a very old question and lots of great apologetics out there reconciling omniscience and free will etc but this seems to be specifically be about the efficaciousness of grace specifically, and aiui specifically as relates to its conveyance automatically iow without the actual participation of the sinner but maybe w/ some level of his participation acc to jesuits? this is precisely the point i am trying to understand.

a quick google tells me this is "one of theologies most exciting debates"

theology's. fuck.

i feel like this is something that you can't just make a pithy summation of that will explain too much. although if it were i would not be in such a position to do so

especially because earlier debates in the church precede and inform it (the dominicans are augustinian thomists)

i thought augustinianism and thomism were different?

where are some underrated aerosmith bootlegs to enlighten me

Xp.Yeah they are. Thomas Aquinas both draws from and disagrees with Augustine, I guess I should've said that Dominican theological position on grace and predestination draws from aquinas and thomas