Archive for the ‘catholic’ Category

How about that, the pope acting like…The Pope

Posted: February 18, 2009 by datechguy in catholic, opinion/news
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(Update 4: Major update here.)

People seemed to have their knickers in twist over the Nancy Pelosi’s meeting with the pope. It reminds me of Christopher Hitchens over Mother Teresa’s willingness to meet less than fully savory characters. So the result from the meeting produces no surprise to me:

Pope Benedict XVI on Wednesday told U.S. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, a Catholic who supports abortion rights, that Catholic politicians have a duty to protect life “at all stages of its development,” the Vatican said.

Pelosi is the first top Democrat to meet with Benedict since the election of Barack Obama, who won a majority of the Catholic vote despite differences with the Vatican on abortion.

The Vatican released remarks by the pope to Pelosi, saying Benedict spoke of the church’s teaching “on the dignity of human life from conception to natural death.” That is an expression often used by the pope when expressing opposition to abortion.

Benedict said all Catholics—especially legislators, jurists and political leaders—should work to create “a just system of laws capable of protecting human life at all stages of its development.”

Part of the job description of any Catholic Priest is to welcome but correct sinners. This is what the pope has done and don’t underestimate the effect even a gentle in person correction by the pope can have if there is any spark of Catholic left in the system. (more…)

Chapter 3 Christ

Posted: February 17, 2009 by datechguy in catholic
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My religious series continues. Previous chapters are here, here, here and here.

Having decided the parameters for belief we now come to Jesus Christ.

When discussing Christ there are two big questions to deal with, his existence and if he is or is not a divine being.

When dealing with this question one mistake that our Protestant friends tend to make is using the Bible as proof of both. The Book can’t be proof of itself, that is: One can’t argue that a book is true because the book itself says so.

We can however in this step of our inquiry take the bible as a collection of ancient text that actually holds up quite well in many details.

There is dispute about the date of the authorship of the various New Testament books We can establish that what we would call Christians existed during the reign of Claudius and Nero in the 1st Century AD we also note that there no Roman record of Christians existing at the time of the reign of Augustus Caesar or before, nor any roman historical record stating this.

This tends to support the biblical time line which specifically mentions both Augustus Caesar and Tiberius Caesar. Mind you at this point we are only trying to establish the existence of Christ not the divinity thereof. (more…)

A good time to explain Conditional Absolution

Posted: February 13, 2009 by datechguy in catholic
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With today’s air disaster this is an appropriate time to explain something called conditional absolution:

There are several ways to be absolved of sin. Baptism removes ALL previous sin but is done only once. The Sacrament of Confession removes sin. Outside of confession perfect contrition can also remove sin (perfect contrition: sorrow for sin due to love of God, Imperfect contrition is due to fear of hell) Absolution is given near the time of death, however when a plane is crashing its kinda hard for people to line up in front of a priest to get confession or absolution one at a time.

The priest can give conditional absolution to everyone on the plane on his own, it would apply to any person on the plane who would have if conscious of mortal sin sought absolution.

I wouldn’t suggest betting my soul on that situation.

Update 11/18/23: Noticed this post was getting some traffic lately and realized that I left out one thing. The sacrament of the sick (formally called the last rites) also give full absolution of sins which is why Priests can do it and not deacons.

Always available yourself of this sacrament during times of illness.

A voice of sanity in the wilderness

Posted: February 13, 2009 by datechguy in catholic
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Rabbi Yehuda Levin is about to become hated twice by the media, once for being a conservative Jew and once for saying this:

“I understand that it is very important to fill the pews of the Catholic Church not with cultural Catholics and left-wingers who are helping to destroy the Catholic Church and corrupt the values of the Catholic Church.” This corruption, he said, “has a trickle-down effect to every single religious community in the world.”

“What’s the Pope doing? He’s trying to bring the traditionalists back in because they have a lot of very important things to contribute the commonweal of Catholicism.

“Now, if in the process, he inadvertently includes someone who is prominent in the traditionalist movement who happens to say very strange things about the Holocaust, is that a reason to throw out the baby with the bathwater and start to condemn Pope Benedict? Absolutely not.”

Thompson points out that this isn’t the norm:

Rabbi Irwin Kula – a less conservative figure than Levin (not difficult) – also thinks that the reaction to the Williamson business was “outrageously over the top”. I’m not suggesting that Rabbis Levin and Kula represent the majority opinion among Jews; but nor, I suspect, do the professional offence-takers of the ADL et al.

I’ll say what I’ve said before, do you think that Williamson would have lost his seminary if the St. Pius X excommunications hadn’t been lifted? I think not. The media reporting on this outside of Thompson’s site has been atrocious and error ridden; almost as if the motive was to do damage to the Church instead of reporting the news. How about that!

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