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Different Ways of thinking and praying
Topic Started: Tuesday, 6. January 2009, 15:47 (1,347 Views)
Rose of York
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Katie B
Wednesday, 7. January 2009, 11:13
Tell you what, I really don't like the labels "traditionalist","modernist", "charismatic" etc. when applied to Catholics. Isn't the term "Catholic" enough?
Don't forget the Green Cardigans, Katie B.
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Rose of York
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Katie B
Wednesday, 7. January 2009, 11:13
Could we not describe ourselves as "Catholics who prefer the older form of the Mass and traditional pieties", or "Catholics who find charismatic style worship a helpful path to God", it's a bit of a mouthful, but it means we move away from these unhelful, divisive stereotypes. Most Catholics in the Church I know are somewhere in the middle, like Rose's trad-mod or mod-trad and would probably just describe themselves as "practising".

I know these terms are used in jest on this thread but I wanted to get it off my chest. :bl:
Categorisation of Catholics can get complicated.

Catholics who find charismatic style worship a helpful path to God, attend Stations of the Cross, say the Rosary and appreciate a variety of traditional pieties are far from unsual. There must be people who prefer traditional liturgies to modern, and attend charismatic prayer groups.

a attends Novus Ordo Mass, goes to the charismatic renewal prayer meetings, likes Gregorian Chantand and says the Rosary.
b attends Tridentine Mass, is a member of an ecumenical Gospel choir and prays the Daily Office.
c attends Novus Ordo and Tridentine Masses, has a broad taste in church music, says the rosary, prays the Divine Office and chats informally to God.

Which of the three is a traditionalist? They are all Catholics.

Has the time come for classification of Catholics into into genus, species and sub species?
:wh:



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Clare
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Putting the "Fun Dame" into Fundamentalist
I attend the Trad Mass with the SSPX, pray at least 5 decades of the rosary each day. I enjoy watching Blake's 7 DVDs, listening to some pop and classical music. I've a GSOH, and I WLTM.... oh hang on, getting a bit carried away!
S.A.G.

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Rose of York
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Clare, this is not a lonely hearts column.

:rofl:
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SeanJ
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Clare
Wednesday, 7. January 2009, 13:44
Mairtin
Wednesday, 7. January 2009, 13:37
Clare
Wednesday, 7. January 2009, 13:25
Mairtin
 
I'm getting tired of having to keep saying this it but I regard the spiritual fulfilment I get from the way I practise my religion - which happens to be centred around the Novus Ordo
Not around God?
Oh, that's right ... I keep forgetting that God isn't part of the Novus Ordo.
:nono:
God is not synonymous with the Novus Ordo.
(Nor is He synonymous with the Tridentine Rite, before you ask!)

Clare,
Mairtin said that the way he practices his religion is centered around the Mass. He did not say that his religion was centered around the Mass.
I conclude that his religion is centered around God, but the way he practices his religion is centered around the Mass.

Now for starting up again, I want both of you to say 5 decades ot the rosary for your penance. And then close this thread.

Sean
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K.T.B.

Rose of York
Wednesday, 7. January 2009, 14:40
Has the time come for classification of Catholics into into genus, species and sub species?
:wh:
Or perhaps we should define ourselves by the media's classification of us, being either "staunch", "lapsed", "devout" and the latest one, "recovering". :wh:







Edited by K.T.B., Wednesday, 7. January 2009, 18:33.
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Ned

Rose of York
Tuesday, 6. January 2009, 16:06
do we have S.E.P.s, Spiritually Enlightened Personaltiy Types A and B?

If so which is which?

Hi Rose,

My blood-group is type AB positive. And my prayers, hopefully positive, seem to be type AB too.

These days I spend a lot of time in bed, and when I pray in bed I find it easier to concentrate if I use a set of beads. But I pray the old-style paters, and with no regard to the style of the Rosary.

What I do is: more-or-less pray the Our Fathers but each time using the set prayer only as a Template - so I will leave most of it out, but then what I leave in I expand according to what it is that I want to say.

Well, it works for me. And I think it does say in the Gospel that when Our Lord Jesus Christ gave his disciples the Our Father it was in response to their question 'How should we pray?' and not 'What do we pray?'

Regards

Ned
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SeanJ
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Clare,
What is/are a GSOH, and I WLTM...?
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Is no one going to admit they know GSOH (good sense of humour) and WLTM (would love to meet)
Not that I read the ads of course.

KatyA
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Rose of York
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Ned
Friday, 9. January 2009, 18:25
These days I spend a lot of time in bed, and when I pray in bed I find it easier to concentrate if I use a set of beads. But I pray the old-style paters, and with no regard to the style of the Rosary.

What I do is: more-or-less pray the Our Fathers but each time using the set prayer only as a Template - so I will leave most of it out, but then what I leave in I expand according to what it is that I want to say.

Well, it works for me. And I think it does say in the Gospel that when Our Lord Jesus Christ gave his disciples the Our Father it was in response to their question 'How should we pray?' and not 'What do we pray?'

Regards

Ned
I don't always stick to the standard one Our Father, ten Hail Mary's and one Glory be for the Rosary. My thoughts on a decade might go off on tangents, perhaps considering just one aspect of the mystery, so I just carry on, saying Hail Mary's. It may be ten, twenty or even thirty, it matters not.
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Rose of York
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Some postings from here are in a new thread called

It's all Greek to me.
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Clare
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Putting the "Fun Dame" into Fundamentalist
Mairtin
Tuesday, 6. January 2009, 15:47
A Traditionalist and a non-Traditionalist went into the church to pray.

The Traditionalist prostrated himself before the altar saying “O wonderful and majestic God in Heaven above, I thank thee for the bounteous gifts thou has bestowed upon me thy humble servant.

“I thank thee especially for giving me thy gift of the Catholic Faith which so far surpasses that held by those who falsely claim themselves to also be servants of thyself but who only turn themselves away from thy loving face.

“I thank thee for helping me avoid the errors fallen into by those who also claim to follow thy one true Catholic faith but succumb to the ways of the modern world. I thank thee in particular for the tremendous gift of the Latin language and giving me the ability to recognise its uniquely sublime characteristics even though I do not understand it nor was it neither thy first language nor the language thou chose to express your precious words in Holy Scripture.

“I thank thee for opening my eyes to see that arrogance involved in people who think that they can make a throne of their hands fit for thy precious body and do not recognise that it is much better to show other people their reverence by kneeling before you altar, closing your eyes and sticking out your tongue. I thank thee also for letting me see that a simple expressions of faith is far from enough when someone receives thy Blessed Body, that simple recognition of thy True Presence, is not sufficient and the priest must utter additional prayers to remind them us how much our souls are in peril.

“Our world and our Church are in a sorry state, O God, but I work hard to fight against this. Even our very churches and liturgy are contaminated where public sinners are made welcome. I thank thee, God, for the discernment thou hast given me to recognise their sins and the courage to call for those sinners to be spurned by thy priests and people.

“This is not made any easier, God, by the fact that even thy priests, thy bishops and even thy very popes have fallen from thy ways and are leading thy people astray. I thank thee God most of all for giving me thy overwhelming gift of Wisdom that allows me to see beyond their errors and revealing to me the True Faith that I know thou really wanteth me to profess.”
….

The non-Traditionalist sat down in his seat and said “Hi, God, sorry I haven’t had a chance to talk to you much this week but things have been hectic. I know that’s no excuse, God, but I’m a weak person and I really need your help so that I can try harder and try more often to do your holy will.

“Talking about a hectic week, there are a few things I need to talk to you about.

“First of all, my son and his girlfriend announce that they are getting married. Now you know well that despite my best efforts, my son doesn’t have much time for religion, in fact he hasn’t darkened the door of your church for about five years. His girlfriend, Anne, is very religious but she’s a Protestant so it looks like they will be married in a Protestant church and my grandchildren will be raised as Protestants. Now that’s not what I hoped for but I can’t help feeling a bit glad that at least they will be raised with belief in you and maybe some day they will even recognise the special gifts you have given the Catholic church; also, maybe Anne’s beliefs will rub off onto my son and encourage him to return to your fold.

“The second thing is that my friend Tom and his girlfriend Kate are moving in together. They’re both Catholics as you know but they don’t want to get married just yet. They intend to continue to practice their faith and go to Holy Communion. I know that is well outside the rules but it’s a bit awkward for me to lecture them about that when I regularly break so many of your rules myself. They’re a good couple, God, they really believe that what they are doing is okay so I’d as you not to get angry with them and don’t be too hard on them, hopefully they will eventually get married.

“Finally, the Pope gave a talk about morality this week and I’m struggling with some of the things he said, they don’t really seem to fit in with how I think about my faith. I know he’s the Pope and appointed by you so I’m definitely not going to disobey him but whatever kind of mind you gave me, I like to figure out the actual sense behind these things; I need you to open my mind a bit so that I can fully understand and come to terms with what he was saying.

“That’s all for now, God, I’ll see you later, please stay with me in the meantime so that my bumbling efforts to follow your path don’t do too much harm to other people.”
I was reminded of the above parable of Mairtin's today, when I read this blog post by a former SSPXer.

Quote:
 
On forgiveness and redemption

...
It always makes me chuckle on the inside when I read of random impressions of the Society of St. Pius X’s faithful, since these impressions are far from what I experienced first hand. First of all, they are just as morally complicated as everyone else, and in a lot of ways, just as normal. Indeed, it has been the “good Vatican II Catholics” that have always given me the creeps in terms of exuding cultish behavior. When I moved into an SSPX retreat center exactly ten years ago now, I was surprised to find there drunks, ex-womanizers, confused young converts, and people who were unable to function in “normal society”. Indeed, coming out of Berkeley and being ready to “clean myself up”, their behaviors and attitudes put me off at first. Sure, they went to daily Mass, but that was about it. They cursed about as much as everyone else, they had their own idiosyncracies, and a host of skeletons in the closet that only little by little were revealed to me. From the outside, turning their lives around for Jesus wasn’t reaping any benefits. They were the same old people, just with scapulars on now.

There was first and foremost “J.” This man was separated from his wife, and battling alcoholism. He was also the foreman of the rag tag crew of men who kept the retreat center going. One night, a few months after I arrived, someone had to go bail him out of jail after he was taken in for drunken driving. He came back, a little ashamed, but he got back on the horse and kept working. Later, I believe he did end up returning to his wife and giving it another go. There was also “R.” who I always thought was a bit anal and insensitive, and who also clearly had a drinking problem. He lived in a small hut on the grounds with empty beer bottles on the porch as decorations. Another man, married to the housekeeper, was an ex-Dominican novice who had run off with a woman, fathered a child, and later broke up with her due to the fact that she could not tolerate her husband’s newly recovered faith. And there was B., who was a Protestant convert who came into the Church after one broken marriage, and stayed occasionally in a small hut next to the chapel.

There were those people around the chapel who were living the “American dream” and having their traditionalist Catholicism too. But none of the people closest to me were experiencing this. They had to struggle to make it. Jesus didn’t make them happy; He didn’t shower them with “blessings”. He gave them crosses, and plenty of them. He gave them humiliations and sufferings, and the occasional reasons for laughter that helped the weary heart through the lonely nights up on that mountain. But from a purely human standpoint, getting religion did not grant them forgiveness and redemption; it didn’t give them the means to become or go on being successful people. It did make their lives look more like Christ’s, especially in its hiddenness and humility.

That is why perhaps I empathized so much with the Sebastian Flyte character in Waugh’s Brideshead Revisted; not just because I thought he was a well-written character, but also because I feel that I have met him at several times in my life. For like the character in the book, sometimes the greatest blessings don’t come according the world’s standards, but they do come. Grace doesn’t make life easier, but it does make it tolerable; it doesn’t make you better, but it does make you sorry. And that in the end is all we can hope for sometimes.

I lost one of my uncles in the past year. I barely knew him after the age of seven, but I do remember him vaguely. I only found out that he died when I saw a newly dug grave next to my grandmother’s in Gilroy. Later I learned that it was my father’s brother buried there according to his own request. He had gotten cancer just on the cusp of age 50, and though he had not been to church in decades, he asked to see a priest on his deathbed. Christianity perhaps did not make his life better; according to my father, he struggled with his own personal demons of alcoholism and broken marriages. But it did leave him at the gates of Paradise when he finally shed this passing mortal frame. If there is anything that we should hope for, it is indeed that.
S.A.G.

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Mrs.Pogle
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I hadn't come across this thread before, until Clare bumped it up.
The opening post is the worst and most judgemental I have ever seen on this forum. Of course it is easy to see that it is based on the parable of the tax collector and the Pharisee from Luke 18, albeit engineered to back up a particular point of view.
Jesus, of course, was entitled to judge how people pray. He knows our hearts.
Mere mortals do not, and it is not right to ever judge the interior prayer life of another Catholic from what is perceived on the outside, or how they choose to approach the faith.
Mrs.P
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Rose of York
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Mrs.Pogle
Friday, 15. January 2010, 13:05
Jesus, of course, was entitled to judge how people pray. He knows our hearts.
Mere mortals do not, and it is not right to ever judge the interior prayer life of another Catholic from what is perceived on the outside, or how they choose to approach the faith.
Mrs.P
Mrs P says in a couple of paragraphs what would take some intellectuals pages and pages.

One person follows a set routine, saying nothing but formal prayers. Another prays at different times each day, or perhaps not every day, chatting to God, thanking him for some things that have happened and telling him about problems. Who is to say which person's prayers are most pleasing to God? Answer: God.
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JRJ

We human beings compare. God knows.
Jennifer
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