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Crossing the Threshold
Topic Started: Tuesday, 15. November 2011, 02:57 (1,271 Views)
Mairtin
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Penfold
Thursday, 24. November 2011, 11:58
You have a particular dislike of the churches teaching on contraception but the churches teaching is based upon respect for human life and the dignity of all. It may seem to you that it is simply interfering with your, "Private life"
At 60 years of age and with a wife who has had a hysterectomy, I hardly think that the Church's position interferes with my "Private life" but if that is the level you wish to bring the debate to then I really do have no interest in continuing it.
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Penfold
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Mairtin
Thursday, 24. November 2011, 11:45
I am finding it increasingly tiresome that I have to keep stating that I am not making judgements about others - I would have thought that my track record on this forum would have made it clear that that is the last thing I would seek to do.
Then stop claiming you Know what the church would say on particular moral cases.
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Penfold
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Mairtin
Thursday, 24. November 2011, 12:03
Penfold
Thursday, 24. November 2011, 11:58
You have a particular dislike of the churches teaching on contraception but the churches teaching is based upon respect for human life and the dignity of all. It may seem to you that it is simply interfering with your, "Private life"
At 60 years of age and with a wife who has had a hysterectomy, I hardly think that the Church's position interferes with my "Private life" but if that is the level you wish to bring the debate to then I really do have no interest in continuing it.
You never were interested in a debate you just want me to say you are right well you are wrong. As for being tiered I am tiered of people telling me what the church teaches or does not based on articles and newspaper cuttings taken out of context. I am well aware that the church has its faults but I am sick and tiered of you the laity pretending that you are not a part of it. You blame the priests the hierarchy the pope but yet smugly think that it is OK for you to pronounce that "You Know what the churches answer will be" on moral issues. "Watch the film of the Magdalene sisters and remember most of those girls were in those institution's because their families put them there. Watch the reaction of the villagers to the girls at the Corpus Christie procession.
This is a cosy little forum but I work everyday with a group of people most of whom are under 30 and who have had little or no church exposure or teaching. We have a big book of rules but even the 18 year old LAC knows that the rules are their to guide and anyone who thinks that they should be applied without discretion is a fool. By claiming you "Know what the churches answers are" you revealed yourself to be such a fool.
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Mairtin
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It's been my lifelong experience that people who resort to rants and personalised attacks have little to offer in debate.

Anyway, it's irrelevant now, I'm gone from this particular one.
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PJD

Mairtin.

I would not argue with you about the existence of many ideas disputing/querying certain well-known doctrines officially promulgated by Holy Mother Church. But I would just to like to make a personal observation (admitting that my experience has been limited to a select number of parishes). And it is this:

That most (no I think all) finger pointing etc., making judgments on the state of another person's soul come - not from the priests/clergy - but from the pew dwellers. It is they - and fortunately ever increasingly getting less and less - nevertheless it is they who make retorts or inner thoughts about......so & so must be practising.....because of ......and should not be going to Communion.......and so on with regard to other things. Personally I have never experienced any priests making such judgements, especially regarding the reception of Communion (only one who said he would only refuse communion to someone drunk - and obviously in that exceptional case quite right too).

The real point I am making is not in this context for or against any of the Church Laws, but is directed to calling a spade a spade in this particular respect. The priests are very well aware of the spiritual harm to their souls should they dare to judge the state of the soul of another - and like the secrecy of the confessional they obey Jesus accordingly.

PJD
Edited by PJD, Thursday, 24. November 2011, 22:20.
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Rose of York
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PJD
Thursday, 24. November 2011, 22:18
Mairtin.

I would not argue with you about the existence of many ideas disputing/querying certain well-known doctrines officially promulgated by Holy Mother Church. But I would just to like to make a personal observation (admitting that my experience has been limited to a select number of parishes). And it is this:

That most (no I think all) finger pointing etc., making judgments on the state of another person's soul come - not from the priests/clergy - but from the pew dwellers. It is they - and fortunately ever increasingly getting less and less - nevertheless it is they who make retorts or inner thoughts about......so & so must be practising.....because of ......and should not be going to Communion.......and so on with regard to other things.
That has been my experience in more than one parish. I have heard pew dwellers putting into words their inner thoughts about the perceived sins of others.

Regarding the Crossing the Threshold programme, I wish to add that when people return to the fold following a long absence, we must be on the alert for pew dwellers criticising them for their lack of knowledge about our Faith, practises and traditions. My husband experienced that during the early days following his reception into the Church. Most people would answer his questions politely and kindly, a small minority did not. The problem is hurtful comments live on in the memory for a long time. They can drive some people away. They did not drive my husband away.
Keep the Faith!

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Mairtin
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PJD and Rose

Your points about people being judgemental are perfectly correct and very important but my own contribution to this debate had nothing whatsoever to do with the judgemental aspect - it was Penfold who seemed obsessed with turning it into that.

When I spoke about knowing the Church's answer, what I was talking about, for example, in the example of the young homosexual was not that they would be judged a sinner, it was that they must ultimately give up on the idea of making a life with the partner whom they love, certainly a life involving any form of sexual activity. I was trying to develop some debate on how this initiative could address issues like that but sadly it proved fruitless which is actually a good illustration of why I think the initiative is fundamentally flawed.
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Penfold
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Mairtin
Tuesday, 22. November 2011, 14:40

I know what the Church's answers are to those questions
What a short memory you have Mairtin, you made a judgment in this statement and in this statement you confirmed a veiw from the pews that I have been battling against most of my life, you assume you know the churches answer and you have proceeded to act accordingly, as your post demonstrated. You are like so many assume and all to often I and my collegues find ourselves picking up the peices of other peoples misfortunes because people like you tell them what they "Know the church's answers are" when in fact they do not and niether do you. Your statement is judgemental and betrays an attituted of contempt well you don't want to debate it but to bad, you not I made the judgment and it was the wrong one. You assumed it OK to make a general throw away statement knocking the church and its attitute to the moral dilemas people find themselves in. I and the majority of my collegues deal with individuals and apply the law with discression, compassion and good old fassioned common sence, as Our Lord and Saviour did, we do not bend or break the law we apply it as appropriate, people such as yourself apply it without discression and deny people the oppotunity to receicve the honest and compassionate answer they should receive if peoples such as yourself did not presume to "Know" the answer.
Mairtin I am not on a rant I am deaply offended by the idea you have expressed and find it indicative of so many other problems that place a Barrier that prevents people from crossing the threshold and receiving the benifit of the sacraments. If I wished to rant I could fo on to speek of the refusal of parents and layity to accept their responsability for complicity in the issue of Child abuse.... but I am not on a rant. I am offended and I believe your remarks while not intended in any way as malicious are just that, they misrepresnt the church and you mislead people.
I have no desire to debate with you but I will not remain silent while you continue to proclaim your falsehood. You made a judgment by your statement and your statement is indicative of the type of judgments made by people who happily pass on their "Knowlege" what the church's answers to particular moral dilemas will be and so prevent deny them the sacraments.
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Mairtin
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Sorry. Penfold, I have no interest whatsoever in debating with somebody who insists on continuing to misrepresent what I said after I have gone to great lengths to clarify what it actually was that I was saying.
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Penfold
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Mairtin
Friday, 25. November 2011, 10:47
Sorry. Penfold, I have no interest whatsoever in debating with somebody who insists on continuing to misrepresent what I said after I have gone to great lengths to clarify what it actually was that I was saying.
You have denied but failed to clarify. What you meant may be something completly different to what you said but the problem is you said it and in saying it exposed a problem which I and my collegues encounter every day. People who are missadvised in the pews by others who "Know what the church's answers are" to a problem. I am offended by this attitude and since they are your words I am offended by you.
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Anne-Marie

I think both of you have made your points very clear repeatedly, and I'm sure anyone looking at this thread will get that message.
Whatever disagreements/misunderstanding/hurts there may be, pursuing them can now only be counter-productive for the rest of us.
It might be more productive now to concentrate on other aspects of the subject that may arise....
Anne-Marie
FIAT VOLUNTAS DEI
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Mairtin
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I agree totally, Anne-Marie, I'm out of it now except if anybody else clearly misunderstands the point I was trying to make.
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James
James
I always liked a comment that was made somewhere in relation to two particular countries and viewpoints.

First was a people who saw the " standard of perfection " as the norm, and achievable, and were quite critical of those who fell below that standard of perfection - had sinned in other words. Judicial, shall I say. Punishments and all that - even excommunicated - God forbid.!!

The second people saw the " standard of perfection" as non achievable but, nontheless, accepted it as a goal towards which they could aspire.
They were where the were in the scale, below the ultimate standard, which they recognised. - call it sin again, if you wish
Some could move forward in some area and not in others and some ,for one reason or another, could not at that period in life
Then Christ came and he sat with the prostitutes and tax collectors and all manner of people who saw their place in the scale of perfection.

In a sense they all received the most perfect Holy Communion of all !!!


Woder why the Chuch cannot give the same genorosity.
It does not have to lower it's "standard of perfection" - Christ didn't.
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PJD

"I think both of you have made your points very clear repeatedly, and I'm sure anyone looking at this thread will get that message.
Whatever disagreements/misunderstanding/hurts there may be, pursuing them can now only be counter-productive for the rest of us.
It might be more productive now to concentrate on other aspects of the subject that may arise...."


I agree Anne-Marie.

As for other aspects......it might be profitable to discuss the nature of sin itself......e.g. where for one person bad language is seen as a sin; whereas for another it is just part of the language. That sort of thing. There seems to me to be a question of subjectivity there - worth considering??

PJD
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Deleted User
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Well, it would be nice to park this to cool things down but I must take issue with a view I have seen creeping in not just in this forum but elsewhere ie the implied responsibility of parents and the parish community for the sex abuse crimes. It may well be that parents and parishes should have been more vigilant but they had been lulled into a false sense of security by centuries of preaching from the pulpit about how special and holy our priests were. Let there be no mistake that the responsibility for the abuse of innocent children lies squarely with the evil priests who committed the crimes and that responsibility for the many and varied cover -ups rests with the Church authorities. This belated attempt at shifting blame seems organised to me and is despicable. It is relevant to this thread because it will stop people crossing the threshold
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