Religion - a respectful discussion, for those interested

You know what, if this is so ridiculous then please DON'T COME BACK!!!! I'm sure there are a lot of reasonable people on here who have left this thread because they are sick of your TROLLING. You just keep making up lies, and repeat them over and over, in big bold letters thinking that will somehow make them true. Or fool people. Just stop already, I'm going to ignore your nonsense and post about what the Catholic Church is really all about! And discuss religion with anyone interested.

You have hijacked this thread for long enough!

 

I did numerous times about 40 pages ago. The waterboy, on the other hand, never posts any links. He just makes up numbers.

I'm done with him and the 2 or 3 other trolls on here who have hijacked this thread with their lies. I'm not discussing the scandal, from 10-15 years ago, of falsely-accused Priests anymore! It's old news anyway, and most of those accusations were bogus and thrown out anyway. Who knows, maybe those 2 or 3 convictions were bogus too, maybe I shouldn't just concede those given the thousands of bogus accusations! You know, people get falsely accused of crimes all the time!

But I'm not going to waste my time with something nobody is talking about anymore. It's old news, and it's off topic for this thread anyway.

 

"Nigerian Catholics risk violence, lives to attend Mass"

Catholics in a northern Nigerian city are risking their lives to attend Sunday Mass, as their community has fallen prey to violence from radical extremists.

“There were a lot of bomb explosions, but that did not seem to deter people from coming to church,” said Fr. John Bakeni, the celebrant of a March 14 Mass in St. Patrick’s Cathedral in Maiduguri.

“It was a very humbling and edifying experience to see so many people at Mass. The place was packed,” he told Aid to the Church in Need in a March 18 interview.

Fr. Bakeni said more than 2,000 people packed the cathedral, saying to him later that “if the attacks would worsen they would rather die in church than anywhere else.”
http://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/nigerian-catholics-risk-violence-lives-to-attend-mass/


People risk their lives for something we take for granted in this country.

 

"The New Exodus: Christians Flee ISIS in the Middle East


Before jihadists overran this mountain town in 2013, Maaloula was one of the oldest Christian communities in Syria, where Western Aramaic—the language of Jesus Christ—is still spoken. It was also a place of profound peace, where Sunni and Shiite Muslim residents, along with their Christian neighbors, forged a pact early in the war to avoid the sectarian conflict ripping their country apart. “We decided that even if the mountains around us were exploding with fighting, we would not go to war,” Mahmoud Diab, a Sunni imam, toldNewsweek in 2012. “It’s a sectarian war, but the fact is, there is no war here in Maaloula. In this town, we are not defined by religion. We all know each other. Everyone is a Christian, and everyone is Muslim.”

Tolerance had been a tradition in Maaloula since St. Takla—the daughter of a pagan prince and an early disciple (and possibly wife) of St. Paul—fled to these mountains in the first century. She was escaping soldiers sent by her father, who was threatening to kill her for her ardent faith in her adopted religion. St. Takla was exhausted and, finding her way blocked by the sharp, rocky sides of a mountain, fell on her knees in desperate prayer. Legend has it the mountains parted, and she escaped. Maaloula means entrance in Aramaic. For centuries, Christians and Muslims have come here to pray for miracles, but the residents of Maaloula weren’t blind to the dangers that swirled around them when I visited on several occasions in 2012 and 2013. “I am afraid of the kind of people who will come here,” said Antoinette Nasrallah, a Syrian-American, originally from Miami, who owned a café in the center of town. “I am afraid of Salafists.”


Still, an ancient way of life prevailed in the convents and monasteries of Maaloula, set amid apricot trees that attracted songbirds.


The idyll was shattered on September 4, 2013, when a Jordanian suicide bomber exploded a truck at a Syrian army checkpoint at the entrance of the town. Eight soldiers were killed. Rebel opposition soldiers and jihadists fighting against Syrian President Bashar Assad attacked, and the battle of Maaloula, a UNESCO-protected town, had begun. The Syrian army led a counterattack two days later, regaining control, but the fighting continued. The rebels again took the town and this time burned down churches and began to drive out Christian residents.

At that point, nearly the entire population of Maaloula fled. Some went to Beirut, an unfortunate reminder of the gruesome slogan chanted by opposition members at rallies from the beginning of the conflict: “Christians to Beirut, Alawites to the coffin.”

The Syrian government eventually took back Maaloula, but in November 2013 more opposition forces—including the jihadist Jabhat al-Nusra (the Al-Qaeda franchise in Syria)—attacked. They kidnapped 12 nuns from the monastery to exchange for their captured fighters.

A soldier loyal to Syria's president Bashar Al-Assad stand beside a damaged church in Maaloula, Syria, August 21, 2014. OMAR SANADIKI/REUTERS

For nearly six months, the ancient town was again under siege until April 14, 2014, when the Syrian army—with the help of Iranian-backed Hezbollah militia—once more took control of Maaloula.

What the U.S. Can Do to Help Christians in the Middle East



http://www.newsweek.com/2015/04/03/new-exodus-christians-flee-isis-middle-east-316785.html

 

"Nigerian Catholics risk violence, lives to attend Mass"

Catholics in a northern Nigerian city are risking their lives to attend Sunday Mass, as their community has fallen prey to violence from radical extremists.

“There were a lot of bomb explosions, but that did not seem to deter people from coming to church,” said Fr. John Bakeni, the celebrant of a March 14 Mass in St. Patrick’s Cathedral in Maiduguri.

“It was a very humbling and edifying experience to see so many people at Mass. The place was packed,” he told Aid to the Church in Need in a March 18 interview.

Fr. Bakeni said more than 2,000 people packed the cathedral, saying to him later that “if the attacks would worsen they would rather die in church than anywhere else.”
http://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/nigerian-catholics-risk-violence-lives-to-attend-mass/


People risk their lives for something we take for granted in this country.

 

Bishops Cite ‘Significant Gains’ Against Death Penalty

The Catholic faith tradition "offers a unique perspective on crime and punishment, one grounded in mercy and healing, not punishment for its own sake," two bishops said in a statement renewing the U.S. Catholic Church's push to end the death penalty.

"No matter how heinous the crime, if society can protect itself without ending a human life, it should do so. Today, we have this capability," wrote Cardinal Sean P. O'Malley of Boston and Archbishop Thomas G. Wenski of Miami.

The two prelates are the chairmen, respectively, of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops' Committee on Pro-Life Activities and the Committee on Domestic Justice and Human Development.

The message, dated July 16, commemorated the 10th anniversary of the bishops' Catholic Campaign to End the Use of the Death Penalty and their message "A Culture of Life and the Penalty of Death," which accompanied the campaign.

The U.S. bishops, who have long advocated against capital punishment, began the campaign in 2005. It asks people to pray for victims of crime and their families and to reach out to support them. It also calls for educating people about church teaching on the death penalty and criminal justice; working for legislation to end capital punishment; and changing the debate in favor of defending life.

In November 2005, the bishops approved the statement on the death penalty calling on society to "reject the tragic illusion that we can demonstrate respect for life by taking life." It built on the 1980 statement by the bishops that called for the abolition of capital punishment.

"We urged a prudential examination of the use of the death penalty, with the aim of helping to build 'a culture of life in which our nation will no longer try to teach that killing is wrong by killing those who kill. This cycle of violence diminishes all of us,'" Cardinal O'Malley and Archbishop Wenski said in their joint statement.

The two prelates cited "significant gains" made on the issue over the past decade.

Several states, including New York, New Jersey, New Mexico, Illinois, Connecticut, Maryland and most recently Nebraska, have ended the use of the death penalty, and other states have enacted a moratorium. Death sentences are at their lowest level since the reinstatement of the death penalty in 1976.

—CNS

 

"In a July 23 filing with the U.S. Supreme Court, the Little Sisters of the Poor have asked the court for relief from being forced to comply with the federal contraceptive mandate or face heavy fines.

The sisters are being asked to choose between adhering to their Catholic faith—which prohibits them from providing contraceptives—and continuing to pursue their religious mission of serving the elderly poor, according to Sister Loraine Marie Maguire, mother provincial of the order.

“As Little Sisters of the Poor we dedicate our lives to serving the neediest in society, with love and dignity,” she said in a statement.

“We perform this loving ministry because of our faith and simply cannot choose between our care for the elderly poor and our faith, and we shouldn't have to,” Sister Loraine Marie said. “We hope the Supreme Court will hear our case and ensure that people from diverse faiths can freely follow God's calling in their lives.”

http://cny.org/stories/Nuns-Ask-Court-for-Protection-From-HHS-Mandate-Fines,12912

A sad sign of the times. .... at least we can still worship in peace without being threatened or killed, as Christians are in the Middle East. And yet they still risk their lives on a regular basis to attend Mass and receive the Body and Blood of Christ. Something we take for granted in this country.
http://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/nigerian-catholics-risk-violence-lives-to-attend-mass/

 

....but back to the Catechism, which is what the Catholic Church actually teaches:

"The Common Good
1905 In keeping with the social nature of man, the good of each individual is necessarily related to the common good, which in turn can be defined only in reference to the human person:

Do not live entirely isolated, having retreated into yourselves, as if you were already justified, but gather instead to seek the common good together.25

1906 By common good is to be understood “the sum total of social conditions which allow people, either as groups or as individuals, to reach their fulfillment more fully and more easily.”26The common good concerns the life of all. It calls for prudence from each, and even more from those who exercise the office of authority. It consists ofthree essential elements:

1907 First, the common good presupposes respect for the person as such. In the name of the common good, public authorities are bound to respect the fundamental and inalienable rights of the human person. Society should permit each of its members to fulfill his vocation. In particular, the common good resides in the conditions for the exercise of the natural freedoms indispensable for the development of the human vocation, such as “the right to act according to a sound norm of conscience and to safeguard... privacy, and rightful freedom also in matters of religion.”27

1908 Second, the common good requires the social well-being and development of the group itself. Development is the epitome of all social duties. Certainly, it is the proper function of authority to arbitrate, in the name of the common good, between various particular interests; but it should make accessible to each what is needed to lead a truly human life: food, clothing, health, work, education and culture, suitable information, the right to establish a family, and so on.28

1909 Finally, the common good requires peace, that is, the stability and security of a just order. It presupposes that authority should ensure by morally acceptable means the security of society and its members. It is the basis of the right to legitimate personal and collective defence.

1910 Each human community possesses a common good which permits it to be recognized as such; it is in the political community that its most complete realization is found. It is the role of the state to defend and promote the common good of civil society, its citizens, and intermediate bodies.

1911 Human interdependence is increasing and gradually spreading throughout the world. The unity of the human family, embracing people who enjoy equal natural dignity, implies a universal common good. This good calls for an organization of the community of nations able to “provide for the different needs of men; this will involve the sphere of social life to which belong questions of food, hygiene, education,... and certain situations arising here and there, as for example... alleviating the miseries of refugees dispersed throughout the world, and assisting migrants and their families.”29

1912 The common good is always oriented towards the progress of persons: “The order of things must be subordinate to the order of persons, and not the other way around.”30 This order is founded on truth, built up in justice, and animated by love.

III. Responsibility and Participation
1913 “Participation” is the voluntary and generous engagement of a person in social interchange. It is necessary that all participate, each according to his position and role, in promoting the common good. This obligation is inherent in the dignity of the human person.

1914 Participation is achieved first of all by taking charge of the areas for which one assumespersonal responsibility: by the care taken for the education of his family, by conscientious work, and so forth, man participates in the good of others and of society.31

1915 As far as possible citizens should take an active part in public life. The manner of this participation may vary from one country or culture to another. “One must pay tribute to those nations whose systems permit the largest possible number of the citizens to take part in public life in a climate of genuine freedom.”32

1916 As with any ethical obligation, the participation of all in realizing the common good calls for a continually renewed conversion of the social partners. Fraud and other subterfuges, by which some people evade the constraints of the law and the prescriptions of societal obligation, must be firmly condemned because they are incompatible with the requirements of justice. Much care should be taken to promote institutions that improve the conditions of human life.33

1917 It is incumbent on those who exercise authority to strengthen the values that inspire the confidence of the members of the group and encourage them to put themselves at the service of others. Participation begins with education and culture. “One is entitled to think that the future of humanity is in the hands of those who are capable of providing the generations to come with reasons for life and optimism.”34"

http://www.usccb.org/beliefs-and-te...techism-of-the-catholic-church/epub/index.cfm

 

Lies, Lies, and more lies.

 

Now you're mis-quoting articles I posted ..... you just noticed you can change the text of an article to make it say what you want it to say, in a "quote" .... nice! smh.

 

"Catholic Ways to Combat Anger"

http://cny.org/stories/Catholic-Ways-to-Combat-Anger,12914


Maybe the angry trolls on here should try this!