A tale of two churches

[Truthstalker]

Hmmmm.

A is nominally loyal to Rome but B rejects the pope? Seems to me B is more of a Protestant than A.

 

[Stephen_C]

Hmmmm.

A is nominally loyal to Rome but B rejects the pope? Seems to me B is more of a Protestant than A.

Priest A is teaching heresy. If not by his words, then by his actions. So yes by his actions he is rejecting te authority of the Pope and the Church. Again my opinion…don’t mean to sidetrack the point you may be or planning to make

 

[Stephen_C]

As to B. He is not rejecting the teachings or doctrine of the Church…He just thinks the Pope has been kidnapped…or…the seat of Peter is currently empty…the current Pope is not valid. In his case, he is waiting for JP2 to return to claim back his seat…or something like that…

 

[Eireann]

When stuck between the devil and the deep blue sea,…head for the sea.

 

[Tom]

I think I’d go with Church “B” the good father is right, John Paul II is still alive, he’s been abducted. Pray the mother ship returns him safely.

 

[ltbpoe43]

Where is 1ke when you need him/her? Always love his/her slant.

I’d go to church B, but I agree with others to do everything I could to help save the souls of A from floundering. Perhaps…

1. Write (certified return receipt mail with many folks testimonials), phone, visit and not leave the bishops office until seen by him or his staff (vicar general, administrator, etc.)
2. mobilize the parishioners - the collection plate should be empty until this pastor is removed, recanted, and reeducated
3. mobilize the deaconates and perhaps they can provide guidance
4. Are there any catholic schools in the same diocese that can provide testimony to these issues?
5. Is there a parish council or other body available to address the issue?
6. Activate the Knights of Columbus groups who are defenders of the faith
   Interesting proposition - make a good movie of the week.

 

[Rawb]

I would choose Church B.

As to saying Church A is “more loyal to Rome” well, loyalty to Rome includes loyalty to the teachings of the church. Oftentimes when a Catholic says “He’s loyal to Rome,” it doesn’t just mean that Father Pete aknowledges that Benedict is the Bishop of Rome, it means he aknowledges Pope Benedict’s authority as Bishop of Rome and therefor obeys the teachings that come from Rome (everything in the Catechism). So IMO, no, Father A is not loyal to Rome, and definitally not moreso than Father B, who is at least loyal to the teachings, if not to actual Vicar of Christ.

 

[Nita]

A sounds heretical;
B sounds schismatic.

Guess I’d go with B.

Nita

 

[Contarini]

That’s a tad bit of an overstatemetn don’t ya think?

I’ve got 4 Parish’s within 10 miles of my home. Frankly, I have no idea which one might “claim” my house.

How does me attending one or the other form an argument against Catholicism?

Granted the priest doesn’t “make the mass” so to speak, and in that regard it doesn’t matter which parish I would be required to attend.

But selecting one or the other out of convienience or preference. i.e. We go to the one where all my kids school friends go. Doesn’t argue against Catholicism.

Chuck

Picking churches is, as far as I’m concerned, the essence of heresy.

Edwin

 

[LilyM]

Picking churches is, as far as I’m concerned, the essence of heresy.

Edwin

Picking DENOMINATIONS is heresy. To jump from Catholic churches to Episcopalian (or the other way around in your POV). Within our denominations surely we should each be free to choose the individual parish that we find to be best.

Particularly in matters of what is being taught at each parish - surely we need to go where we’re taught correct beliefs? And wouldn’t this sometimes necessitate avoiding particular parishes?

Of course we should try to help those parishes that we know are wandering away, but isn’t our first duty to guard our own souls from the infection of wrong teaching?

Oftentimes if you see someone drowning the best course of action is to stay in the boat but throw them something to float on, not to dive in after them and drown yourself. This is the church version.

 

[Hellisreal]

I think as long as you keep sending your cash to your parish you are free to go elsewhere if needed.

I read that somewhere so please let me know if I got good info.

 

[mark_a]

This is one of those impossible choice threads. Bear with me, as they help me understand.

You, faithful, obedient, pious and conscientious practicing Catholic, have a choice of two churches to attend. In every regard except the things noted they are practically identical.

Church A has an at best indiifferent priest who says things like “it is high time the Mass is reinvented from scratch”, invited an abortion doctor to give the homily once last year, and has a stated goal of having at least one practicing homosexual as an Eucharistic minister at every Mass so “no one is excluded.” On it goes with things you have a great deal of difficulty tolerating.

Church B has a priest who believes and teaches from the Catechism, is extremely conscientious to submit to Catholic teaching in everything, and is basically a model priest. His only problem is that he believes that John Paul II is still alive, kidnapped by Benedict and hidden somewhere. Benedict has fooled everyone, he says, and trusts God to restore JPII to us. So he prays for John Paul our pope, not Benedict. In all other matters he is normal. He is not exactly open to reason on this, but will give long convoluted explanations of his belief if you let him. He does, however, have a great deal of respect for Cardinal Ratzinger, somehow in his mind not the same person as Benedict.

Letters and phone calls to the bishop have not been returned.

I would go with the teacher of correct faith and morals (that’s Father B).

 

[Truthstalker]

I think one point about not choosing Catholic churches is that we should not prefer one group of people above another: Church C is composed of people I know, we speak the same language, have the same income level, etc., while Church D is utterly foreign. C may be rich like me; D may be poor and I may be comfortable at C but look down at D. We have family, not selected guests, in the Body. You can pick your friends but you are stuck with your family. Parishes are supposed to be everyone in the parish, not just those with an affinity for the pastor or the church. “Voting with your feet” to find a church that “suits” you is a Protestant concept.

Another reason is that you should accept the lot you are given in life, including those you live closest to. It is easy to love someone who lives 50 miles away who you meet once a week; it is harder to love your neighbor who stays up all night playing “Gather Us in” and killed your roses with gasoline last summer accidentally (so he says). I may love a certain pastor, but is he the one God has put in this parish? Suffering seems to be something God is enthusiastic about. You can go find the perfect church. It is harder, sometimes, to accept God’s will.

People sometimes move into a parish because they like it, in a sense thwarting the sense of “everybody in the geographical area should come to St. X.” But if the people at St. X think a certain group should be at St. Y instead, because they don’t like “that kind of Catholic”, I think there may be cause for concern.

The world is divided into parishes for a reason. I agree with Edwin that we should not at all take that lightly, but I do not think it is absolute either. But it is something to consider with all due respect, and if you do choose a church, you must do it with a clear conscience, as, indeed, you will have to explain it to God. If you choose a church because the ladies wear blue, and you like blue, your explanation may well blow away.

Not that this issue really has anything to do with the thread. I also realize that we all choose what church we believe is correct, whether Catholic or Episcopalian, or which is the most correct. I think Edwin was speaking within the context of Catholic theology when he made his statement, and should not be jumped on for being an Episcopalian. You’ll be after me next. The argument you make is that since I am Presbyterian, I should stay that way.

I had hoped this thread would feel out what it means to be loyal to Rome. I think some light has been shed there, but there is more. At what point do you walk out of a parish because it is becoming a lot like A, for an unknown C church?

 

[Tom]

I think Edwin was speaking within the context of Catholic theology when he made his statement, and should not be jumped on for being an Episcopalian. You’ll be after me next. The argument you make is that since I am Presbyterian, I should stay that way.

You and Edwin can come to Church with me any time you like. I often choose a Mass because there is no singing. It distracts me to sing the “our Father” sorry, I just don’t like it. So I don’t go to that particular Mass. There is one particular Mass in our parish that sings absolutely everything! I find myself saying my prayers silently.

 

[Tom]

I had hoped this thread would feel out what it means to be loyal to Rome. I think some light has been shed there, but there is more. At what point do you walk out of a parish because it is becoming a lot like A, for an unknown C church?

The point where you’re uncomfortable. I live out in the country, there are three parishes I can go to, I mainly go to either of two, usually for timing or logistics. Point is all Catholic Churches should teach in harmony with the official Church. If you find one that isn’t you should bring it up with the priest, and proceed up the line with your complaint. I wouldn’t recommend changing Churches, better to improve than cut and run.

 

[Truthstalker]

better to improve than cut and run.

My understanding of canon law is that Catholics are obligated to stay in their parish and fight - cut and run is not an option. You are abandoning a church when you do that. I think the Church expects Catholics to resist compromise such as exemplified by Pastor A. It is all too easy to find a B - if A is your home parish.

I’m surpirsed to find myself writing that.

 

[Contarini]

Picking DENOMINATIONS is heresy. To jump from Catholic churches to Episcopalian (or the other way around in your POV). Within our denominations surely we should each be free to choose the individual parish that we find to be best.

Why? And how are you defining a “denomination”? What is so mystical about a denomination?

Catholics seem to think that denomination is a Magic Word of Evil. A denomination is simply a group of local churches. The term doesn’t really apply well to the Catholic context, but insofar as it does the Roman and Byzantine and Maronite churches would be best described as separate denominations in full communion (like, say, the Church of England and the Episcopal Church–at least so far!).

Why do you think I would consider it a bad thing to move from Anglicanism to Catholicism?

Particularly in matters of what is being taught at each parish - surely we need to go where we’re taught correct beliefs? And wouldn’t this sometimes necessitate avoiding particular parishes?

Why does that become OK just because you don’t use the word “denomination”?

Of course we should try to help those parishes that we know are wandering away, but isn’t our first duty to guard our own souls from the infection of wrong teaching?

No. It most emphatically is not.

Oftentimes if you see someone drowning the best course of action is to stay in the boat but throw them something to float on, not to dive in after them and drown yourself. This is the church version.

But I thought that in Catholic terms the “boat” was the Catholic Church–i.e., the communion of churches led by bishops in union with the bishop of Rome? You are postulating a true Church within the Catholic Church. I can’t see that this is any different from the sort of ultra-schismatic “invisible church” Protestantism I grew up in. You’re all tarred with the same brush of American individualism–i.e., heresy.

Edwin

 

[LilyM]

Why? And how are you defining a “denomination”? What is so mystical about a denomination?

Edwin

I’ll put it this way for you then - changing your formal belief system and faith structure matters. I should think even you acknowledge as much. And being that we believe in only one truth, deviating from that truth matters an awful lot.

Now changing parishes within that system and structure, once you’ve found it, is heck of a lot less important. If we are truly to be a catholic, or universal, church, then it is not supremely important in which geographical part of the world we choose to practice that faith.

Secondly - we’re not about saving individual limbs or organs of the Body of Christ at the expense of the whole body. Certainly, like any good physician, we make our utmost efforts, but there comes a point at which hands and feet need to be cut off to save the body.

Christ himself says the same - ‘if your eye causes you to sin pluck it out’ and in John 15 ‘any branch that does not bear fruit my father cuts off from the vine’. Certainly if my local parish is terribly heretical then it could well be an occasion of sin for me to stay there even!

 

[Contarini]

I’ll put it this way for you then - changing your formal belief system and faith structure matters. I should think even you acknowledge as much. And being that we believe in only one truth, deviating from that truth matters an awful lot.

I agree.

Now changing parishes within that system and structure, once you’ve found it, is heck of a lot less important.

I don’t agree. That makes the Church primarily an abstract system of belief rather than a living Body. This is, from my perspective, not worth believing in.

If we are truly to be a catholic, or universal, church, then it is not supremely important in which geographical part of the world we choose to practice that faith.

I am radical enough to think that in principle one should get the permission of one’s local congregation before moving to a new location (I’ve never formally done this, but both my moves since first joining an organized congregation were made with the blessing of my rector and the members of my parish in general, and I would have had some qualms of conscience about the moves if they had not been). However, the main point I was making was that given that one lives in a certain place one should attend the particular expression of the Unversal Church that exists in that place, rather than using the unnatural mobility given us by modern technology to pick a parish more to our liking.

William Langland (the 14th-century poet) thought that people should live, die, and be buried in the parish where they were baptized. Perhaps he pushed the principle too far, but I don’t think even this is quite as utterly ridiculous as it seems to modern people.

Our souls are dying because we accept no reality we have not chosen.

Secondly - we’re not about saving individual limbs or organs of the Body of Christ at the expense of the whole body. Certainly, like any good physician, we make our utmost efforts, but there comes a point at which hands and feet need to be cut off to save the body.

With all due respect, that is an extraordinarily arrogant and presumptuous statement to make. You are not the Pope–you aren’t even a bishop. It is not your painful duty to cut off local parishes from the unity of the Church. You are speaking as a modern Westerner rather than as an orthodox Catholic, it seems to me.

Edwin

 

[Trelow]

I’d go where my wife wants to. She can be mean.

I think it depends on if you have children, and if you have a strong faith. If you have children your obligation would be primarily to them and to chose a parish that will not warp their spiritual development, likewise for someone who is weak in their faith.

If one has a strong faith they they would be obligated to do their part to turn around the “soft” parish.

We have a home parish that isn’t or geographic parish. But when we moved to the area and my wife returned to her faith, and I joined the Church, that’s where it was done. It’s where everyone we have grown with for the last 3 years lives, and it’s where my KoC council and my wives PSR class is. Besides it’s as close as another parish in travel time.

In the summer, when we don’t have PSR classes, we parish hop and try a bit of all of them, there are some beautiful churches in the area. I try to hit the Latin mass as much as I can, because I love it, my wife not so much. We’ve got a Byzantine church in the area that we plan on visiting this sumer.