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Passing On Your Faith; to your own children
Topic Started: Tuesday, 13. November 2007, 01:40 (1,457 Views)
Gerard

:wh:
"The institutional and charismatic aspects are quasi coessential to the Church's constitution" (Pope John Paul II, 1998).
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KatyA

At a “Faith in the Public Square” seminar sponsored by the Diocese of Victoria, Archbishop Charles Chaput of Denver said that Catholics today have failed to transmit the faith to the next generation
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“We need to confess that, and we need to fix it,” he asserted. “For too many of us, Christianity is not a filial relationship with the living God, but a habit and an inheritance. We’ve become tepid in our beliefs and naive about the world. We’ve lost our evangelical zeal. And we’ve failed in passing on our faith to the next generation.”
Renewing Catholic catechesis then, Archbishop Chaput added, “has little to do with techniques, or theories, or programs, or resources.”
“The central issue is whether we ourselves really do believe. Catechesis is not a profession. It’s a dimension of discipleship. If we’re Christians, we’re each of us called to be teachers and missionaries.”
However, the Denver prelate noted, “we can’t share what we don’t have.”
“If we’re embarrassed about Church teachings, or if we disagree with them, or if we’ve decided that they’re just too hard to live by, or too hard to explain, then we’ve already defeated ourselves.”
“We need to really believe what we claim to believe,” he stressed. “We need to stop calling ourselves ‘Catholic’ if we don’t stand with the Church in her teachings – all of them.”
In his concluding remarks, Archbishop Chaput added that “if we really are Catholic, or at least if we want to be, then we need to act like it with obedience and zeal and a fire for Jesus Christ in our hearts.”
“God gave us the faith in order to share it. This takes courage. It takes a deliberate dismantling of our own vanity. When we do that, the Church is strong. When we don’t, she grows weak. It’s that simple.”

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Angus Toanimo
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“We need to really believe what we claim to believe,” he stressed. “We need to stop calling ourselves ‘Catholic’ if we don’t stand with the Church in her teachings – all of them.”

Hear, hear!!
Edited by Angus Toanimo, Sunday, 17. October 2010, 10:18.
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OsullivanB

Patrick
Sunday, 17. October 2010, 10:16
“We need to really believe what we claim to believe,” he stressed. “We need to stop calling ourselves ‘Catholic’ if we don’t stand with the Church in her teachings – all of them.”

Hear, hear!!
I think that that approach has already had considerable success (if that is the right word), and is one of the most important reasons for the reduced numbers of practising Catholics.
"There is a principle which is a bar against all information, which is proof against all arguments and which cannot fail to keep a man in everlasting ignorance - that principle is contempt prior to investigation." Herbert Spencer
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garfield

I think that is a dangerous route to go down, implying that you can only call yourself Catholic if you are perfect (or at least think you are)
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Angus Toanimo
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garfield
Sunday, 17. October 2010, 10:28
I think that is a dangerous route to go down, implying that you can only call yourself Catholic if you are perfect (or at least think you are)
Even if one adheres to all the teachings of the Catholic Church, it does not (on its own) make one perfect.
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Angus Toanimo
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OsullivanB
Sunday, 17. October 2010, 10:23
Patrick
Sunday, 17. October 2010, 10:16
“We need to really believe what we claim to believe,” he stressed. “We need to stop calling ourselves ‘Catholic’ if we don’t stand with the Church in her teachings – all of them.”

Hear, hear!!
I think that that approach has already had considerable success (if that is the right word), and is one of the most important reasons for the reduced numbers of practising Catholics.
I disagree. I think that much of the reduction in practising Catholics is due to what has happened within the Church and Catholic homes since the sixties.
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Anne-Marie

Patrick
Sunday, 17. October 2010, 10:44
I think that much of the reduction in practising Catholics is due to what has happened within the Church and Catholic homes since the sixties.
Yes, Patrick. I agree.

Rightly or wrong, when people perceive the Catholic Church (or its leaders/Magisterium) to be talking nonsense, they will start questioning everything about it...
and rightly or wrongly that is exactly what has happened.

We had a missionary priest this weekend.
I had chosen (through God's guidance or otherwise) Sweet Heart of Jesus as the processional hymn... and before the priest would start Mass, he gave us a lengthy sermon about whether we really meant what we had just sung...
because words and prayers come easy...
and unless we practice what we say, then we really don't believe or mean a word of it.
Powerful way to start Mass... being told that we must really obey Jesus' instructions about "That which you do (or don't) to even the least of these, you do also to Me".
Whilst continuing to live our own smugly comfortable lives.
And the missionary priest kept ramming the point home for a full five minutes before starting Mass.

If you think the Church (and its Teaching) is nonsense, you may well stop practicing any of it.
Which is odd, when so many of those very people are the ones who DO practice real Christianity outside the church!

I could go much further, and be more specific:
I have just experienced first-hand the destructive spite of a 'senior' Catholic priest elsewhere, when I had been asked by one of his parishioners to bring the community to life. Within two weeks, I was being praised for what I was doing by Catholics there - and the priest made clear he was going to retain control and required my removal and even ensured I was denied access to any newsletters or information about Catholic events in his area, to make certain I could not encourage a more active Faith there.
In this day and age, I can barely credit any Catholic priest with such a self-destructive attitude, when his own workers were failing to do promote and encourage people and were admitting they wanted me to help as they didn't feel up to it.
At no point did I challenge that priest, yet I am now being thanked by many for what I tried to do.

Carry that specific to the wider Church, and you quickly see that for many of our leaders, the Church is more about their authority than serving God.
And THAT is your problem.
Anne-Marie
FIAT VOLUNTAS DEI
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Clare
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Putting the "Fun Dame" into Fundamentalist
garfield
Sunday, 17. October 2010, 10:28
I think that is a dangerous route to go down, implying that you can only call yourself Catholic if you are perfect (or at least think you are)
You don't need to be perfect.

You just need to believe and accept what the Church teaches.

We will often fail to live up to what the Church asks of us, but that is no reason to decide that the Church is therefore wrong.
S.A.G.

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Gerard

I read the speach.
Much of it it I agreed with - indeed was inspired by.
However he spoiled it all by that silly statement. Its exclusive, excluding, and I agree with Anne Marie self serving of his and the hierarchy's power.

Whatever happened to the hierarchy of truths? Every teaching is not equally important.

Gerry
"The institutional and charismatic aspects are quasi coessential to the Church's constitution" (Pope John Paul II, 1998).
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Gerard

His speech would allow me to get to a question that I had intended asking in the "do we live out out faith" thread.

Is the good Bishop blaming the laity?

Gerry
"The institutional and charismatic aspects are quasi coessential to the Church's constitution" (Pope John Paul II, 1998).
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Clare
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Putting the "Fun Dame" into Fundamentalist
Gerard
Sunday, 17. October 2010, 12:06
Is the good Bishop blaming the laity?
I know what I blame, and it isn't the laity! :wh:
S.A.G.

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Mairtin
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Patrick
Sunday, 17. October 2010, 10:44
I think that much of the reduction in practising Catholics is due to what has happened within the Church and Catholic homes since the sixties.
Do you really feel that we would have been better off holding on to people who were only paying lip service to their Catholic Faith?
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Rose of York
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Patrick
Sunday, 17. October 2010, 10:44
OsullivanB
Sunday, 17. October 2010, 10:23
Patrick
Sunday, 17. October 2010, 10:16
“We need to really believe what we claim to believe,” he stressed. “We need to stop calling ourselves ‘Catholic’ if we don’t stand with the Church in her teachings – all of them.”

Hear, hear!!
I think that that approach has already had considerable success (if that is the right word), and is one of the most important reasons for the reduced numbers of practising Catholics.
I disagree. I think that much of the reduction in practising Catholics is due to what has happened within the Church and Catholic homes since the sixties.
There was significant reduction in attendance at churches of all mainstream denominations, in parallel with reduction in the Catholic Church. Prior to the sixties, it was the done thing to attend church or chapel, it applied particularly to Methodists, who were not affected by changes in the Catholic Church.
Keep the Faith!

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Rose of York
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Mairtin
Sunday, 17. October 2010, 15:30
Patrick
Sunday, 17. October 2010, 10:44
I think that much of the reduction in practising Catholics is due to what has happened within the Church and Catholic homes since the sixties.
Do you really feel that we would have been better off holding on to people who were only paying lip service to their Catholic Faith?
Yes we should, it is our responsibility to reach out to people who are only paying lip service to their Catholic Faith. Somebody, somewhere, has let them down. It is about them, not us, being better off. Christ came to heal the sick. Jesus would have held on to them. It is not for us to write them off.
Keep the Faith!

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