AA

[CopticChristian]

Because I like to help people. It’s a wonderful opportunity for me to share my hope and experience. And if I have a chance, to evangelize.

Do you get to evangelize your patients good doctor?

Mgray,

I evangelize with every breath I take…that is what I believe St. Francis says…

Preach the Gospel at times and if necessary use words…

 

[CopticChristian]

Doctor Coptic, are you able to look into your patients eyes and tell them that you know how it feels to suffer from leukemia or cancer?

Mgray,

Not experiencing death yet does not mean I cannot look into a dying man/woman eyes and know that they are reaching a pinnacle I do not understand.

 

[CopticChristian]

But Doctor Coptic do any of your medical books have the word “sin” or dare say the name “God” in them?

Mgray,

It depends on what you read…what is the purpose of this question?

 

[Luna_Lovecraft]

I’ve known several people, including one priest, who’ve gotten sober with AA. I suspect it was his influence that got the parish in my hometown to host AA meetings. So I say it’s a good thing.

 

[Andrew1980]

Good information here on 12 Step Recovery by a Dominican Preacher… www.12-step-review.org/

Great books and pamphlets for those wanting to learn more about various 12 Step programs.

 

[Bonnie]

My dd is now sober & off drugs thanks to AA. I think many of us need some kind of handholding to kick an addiction or bad habit. On my umpteenth attempt to quit smoking I joined a stop-smoking group. That was over 20 years ago - haven’t had a cigarette since!

 

[CopticChristian]

Good information here on 12 Step Recovery by a Dominican Preacher… www.12-step-review.org/

Great books and pamphlets for those wanting to learn more about various 12 Step programs.

Andrew,

Wow are you out of synch…this was posted in post #149…already…redundant…

However since the Big Book is talking about character defects and the Twelve and Twelve tells us character defects are sins and lists the 7 deadly sin…and Bill Wilson says he can have them removed…lets look to the Catechism…

vatican.va/archive/ccc_css/archive/catechism/p3s1c1a8.htm

I. MERCY AND SIN

1846 The Gospel is the revelation in Jesus Christ of God’s mercy to sinners.113 The angel announced to Joseph: "You shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins."114 The same is true of the Eucharist, the sacrament of redemption: "This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins."115

1847 "God created us without us: but he did not will to save us without us."116 To receive his mercy, we must admit our faults. "If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just, and will forgive our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness."117

1848 As St. Paul affirms, "Where sin increased, grace abounded all the more."118 But to do its work grace must uncover sin so as to convert our hearts and bestow on us "righteousness to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord."119 Like a physician who probes the wound before treating it, God, by his Word and by his Spirit, casts a living light on sin:

Conversion requires convincing of sin; it includes the interior judgment of conscience, and this, being a proof of the action of the Spirit of truth in man’s inmost being, becomes at the same time the start of a new grant of grace and love: “Receive the Holy Spirit.” Thus in this “convincing concerning sin” we discover a double gift: the gift of the truth of conscience and the gift of the certainty of redemption. The Spirit of truth is the Consoler.120

and this…

III. THE DIFFERENT KINDS OF SINS

1852 There are a great many kinds of sins. Scripture provides several lists of them. The Letter to the Galatians contrasts the works of the flesh with the fruit of the Spirit: "Now the works of the flesh are plain: fornication, impurity, licentiousness, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, anger, selfishness, dissension, factions, envy, drunkenness, carousing, and the like. I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things shall not inherit the Kingdom of God."127

So drunkenness is noted as sin that those that sin do not inherit the kingdom…Paul knew it, understood it and all sin is forgiven by who…the God of your understanding…is…according to this passage…in the Catechism…

1847 "God created us without us: but he did not will to save us without us."116 To receive his mercy, we must admit our faults. "If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just, and will forgive our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness."117

Do you go to the halls of AA for this, to a Sponsor, to the Twelve and Twelve, the Big Book…Rehab? Where do you have your sins forgiven…?

and then the 7 deadly

V. THE PROLIFERATION OF SIN

1865 Sin creates a proclivity to sin; it engenders vice by repetition of the same acts. This results in perverse inclinations which cloud conscience and corrupt the concrete judgment of good and evil. Thus sin tends to reproduce itself and reinforce itself, but it cannot destroy the moral sense at its root.

1866 Vices can be classified according to the virtues they oppose, or also be linked to the capital sins which Christian experience has distinguished, following St. John Cassian and St. Gregory the Great. They are called “capital” because they engender other sins, other vices.138 They are pride, avarice, envy, wrath, lust, gluttony, and sloth or acedia.

1867 The catechetical tradition also recalls that there are “sins that cry to heaven”: the blood of Abel,139 the sin of the Sodomites,140 the cry of the people oppressed in Egypt,141 the cry of the foreigner, the widow, and the orphan,142 injustice to the wage earner.143

1868 Sin is a personal act. Moreover, we have a responsibility for the sins committed by others when we cooperate in them:

• by participating directly and voluntarily in them;

• by ordering, advising, praising, or approving them;

Glutonny is excess of Food or Drink…get it…

While those that see this as a disease and an affliction want to see this as Addiction/Alcoholic…etc…it is pure and simple Gluttony and a Vice…

 

[Mgray82]

Andrew,

Wow are you out of synch…this was posted in post #149…already…redundant…

However since the Big Book is talking about character defects and the Twelve and Twelve tells us character defects are sins and lists the 7 deadly sin…and Bill Wilson says he can have them removed…lets look to the Catechism…

vatican.va/archive/ccc_css/archive/catechism/p3s1c1a8.htm

and this…

So drunkenness is noted as sin that those that sin do not inherit the kingdom…Paul knew it, understood it and all sin is forgiven by who…the God of your understanding…is…according to this passage…in the Catechism…

Do you go to the halls of AA for this, to a Sponsor, to the Twelve and Twelve, the Big Book…Rehab? Where do you have your sins forgiven…?

Until I’m baptized this Easter and make a confession, I’m praying that God will forgive my sins Coptic.

My sponsor nor anyone else or the program itself forgives what I’ve done in this life.

 

[CopticChristian]

Until I’m baptized this Easter and make a confession, I’m praying that God will forgive my sins Coptic.

My sponsor nor anyone else or the program itself forgives what I’ve done in this life.

Mgray,

I suggest you consider that your intention is heard. As your intention to confession following Baptism will be a completion of your intention that you now profess. Your prayers are contrite and the prayers of a contrite man are always heard.

Note that when you are Baptized you receive the Theologic Virtues and know that these virtues have purpose so that you may truly understand and know the God of our understanding as revealed in the deposit of Faith found within the pages of the Catechism…in the first Part…

We Believe in God, Father almighty and more…

Here you will find the virtues… and the Theologic Virtues are ordered so that they cooperate with the moral virtues…

vatican.va/archive/ccc_css/archive/catechism/p3s1c1a7.htm

II. THE THEOLOGICAL VIRTUES

1812 The human virtues are rooted in the theological virtues, which adapt man’s faculties for participation in the divine nature:76 for the theological virtues relate directly to God. They dispose Christians to live in a relationship with the Holy Trinity. They have the One and Triune God for their origin, motive, and object.

1813 The theological virtues are the foundation of Christian moral activity; they animate it and give it its special character. They inform and give life to all the moral virtues. They are infused by God into the souls of the faithful to make them capable of acting as his children and of meriting eternal life. They are the pledge of the presence and action of the Holy Spirit in the faculties of the human being. There are three theological virtues: faith, hope, and charity.77

You should also know that In Baptism all sins are forgiven…

vatican.va/archive/ccc_css/archive/catechism/p2s2c1a1.htm

VII. THE GRACE OF BAPTISM

1262 The different effects of Baptism are signified by the perceptible elements of the sacramental rite. Immersion in water symbolizes not only death and purification, but also regeneration and renewal. Thus the two principal effects are purification from sins and new birth in the Holy Spirit.65

For the forgiveness of sins . . .

1263 By Baptism all sins are forgiven, original sin and all personal sins, as well as all punishment for sin.66 In those who have been reborn nothing remains that would impede their entry into the Kingdom of God, neither Adam’s sin, nor personal sin, nor the consequences of sin, the gravest of which is separation from God.

 

[christofirst]

For a positive Catholic perspective on AA and the 12 steps, you might want to check out the work of Fr. Emmerich Vogt O.P.
www.12-step-review.org
As others have said here, I know many who owe their health and sobriety to AA.

 

[CopticChristian]

Is Alcoholics Anonymous a bad thing?

Mgray,

Alcoholics Anonymous is a bad way to treat a bad problem. It ranks 37/48 when compared to modalities that work to help people with a problem. It is archaic. There are better ways to take care of the problems that AA tries to address.

It is pseudoChristianity shrouded in a program and people that go into it have no idea that ultimately they are to confess their sins and ask for forgiveness…as seen in the Big Book…Bill Wilson says he never drank again after he asked for his sins to be forgiven which is the basis of AA…so why go to AA when the Church will do…

Page 13: open
…as I then understood Him, to do with me as He would. I placed myself unreservedly under His care and direction. I admitted for the first time that of myself I was nothing; that without Him I was lost. **I ruthlessly faced my sins and became willing to have my new-found Friend take them away, root and branch. I have not had a drink since. **My schoolmate visited me, and I fully acquainted him with my problems and deficiencies. We made a list of people…

Many do not know about what AA truly is…

so is it good?

Is it Bad?

It is not honest in what it professes to be…it is unfortunately shrouded in mystery as to what it does. Most people fail to realize that to accept AA=accept disease model=accept never to be cured…

The problem is that the disease model is faulty and there is a cure. The cure is don’t accept that it is a disease and work on your Vice or Bad Habit…

 

[silenced]

"Silenced,

As a former imbiber you would be interested to know that the original document of AA was Christian oriented and has been recently published…"

Don’t presume to tell me what will interest me. The discussions on these topics are stretched so thin that anyone could identify an amoeba through them at fifty yards, and that’s without a microscope. I have absolutely no interest in whether or not the Big Book is Christian in nature, or whether Bill Wilson ripped off his editors and kept all the royalties for himself, or whether or not you believe it is full of references to “sin” which, in your mind at least, somehow supersedes a character defect. The program is not designed to overtly convert people to a particular way of thinking; at least, it was not when I was actively going to meetings. If thinking is changed it is because the thinker himself allows new ideas to supplant old ones. It’s not due to anyone’s evangelizing or Big Book thumping or getting people to toe the line.

CopticGuy: have you ever experienced an overwhelming need for a substance, a person, a situation, a measure of relief to the point where you continued and continued and continued to pursue it no matter what your “logical” mind was telling you? If you’ve never been addicted to anything, I would say you’re just guessing at what all this means, and that perhaps you are experiencing that disconnect that the “clean and righteous” feel when confronted with the nasty little truths of God’s world. If you are just measuring success and failure by adherence to the Big Book or the Bible, the 12 & 12 or the Catechism of Christian Doctrine, you are not looking at your patient, you are looking at numbers and myths and ideas meant to be suggestive only. That kind of exercise will only bring you back to yourself. It will not allow you to understand anyone else. You’re not a judge. You are simply a fellow traveller.

 

[CopticChristian]

"Silenced,

As a former imbiber you would be interested to know that the original document of AA was Christian oriented and has been recently published…"

Don’t presume to tell me what will interest me. The discussions on these topics are stretched so thin that anyone could identify an amoeba through them at fifty yards, and that’s without a microscope. I have absolutely no interest in whether or not the Big Book is Christian in nature, or whether Bill Wilson ripped off his editors and kept all the royalties for himself, or whether or not you believe it is full of references to “sin” which, in your mind at least, somehow supersedes a character defect. The program is not designed to overtly convert people to a particular way of thinking; at least, it was not when I was actively going to meetings. If thinking is changed it is because the thinker himself allows new ideas to supplant old ones. It’s not due to anyone’s evangelizing or Big Book thumping or getting people to toe the line.

CopticGuy: have you ever experienced an overwhelming need for a substance, a person, a situation, a measure of relief to the point where you continued and continued and continued to pursue it no matter what your “logical” mind was telling you? If you’ve never been addicted to anything, I would say you’re just guessing at what all this means, and that perhaps you are experiencing that disconnect that the “clean and righteous” feel when confronted with the nasty little truths of God’s world. If you are just measuring success and failure by adherence to the Big Book or the Bible, the 12 & 12 or the Catechism of Christian Doctrine, you are not looking at your patient, you are looking at numbers and myths and ideas meant to be suggestive only. That kind of exercise will only bring you back to yourself. It will not allow you to understand anyone else.** You’re not a judge. You are simply a fellow traveller**.

Silence,

I like to think of myself as a guide and you are free to journey where you will. You do not have to experience AIDS to know you don’t want it, how to avoid it, and to recognize it. You don’t have to experience the world to know what you should and should not do. Your conclusion about what to think has been clouded by

Only an alcoholic can help an alcoholic…

Do you learn to swim from someone that drowned?

Do you learn Math from someone that cannot add or subtract?

You may want to venture into NLP where the basic tenet is this…

NLP modeling is the procedure of recreating or modeling excellence. It’s about achieving a goal or an outcome by studying and replicating how someone else performs a task. However, NLP modeling goes further than just copying what the other person does. It’s about actually duplicating their underlying beliefs and thoughts, not just the behavior.

Books have been written on this by Robert Dilts…

The Strategies of Genius…

So it would make more sense for a drunk/addict to find someone that never drank or used drugs and study them and find out how to model them rather than someone that failed just like they did…

 

[christofirst]

…so why go to AA when the Church will do…/QUOTE]

I have secular, non-religious friends who would never set foot in a church, but found sobriety through the support of their AA group.
On the other hand, my Catholic grandfather always made sure he found a parish with an active AA group whenever he moved, for the support of the 12 steps and the grace of the sacraments working in tandem. It worked for him.
Are there other ways, perhaps better ways to beat an addiction? No doubt there are. But I maintain AA and the 12 steps are not a bad thing.

 

[CopticChristian]

CopticChristian;10137999:

…so why go to AA when the Church will do…/QUOTE]

I have secular, non-religious friends who would never set foot in a church, but found sobriety through the support of their AA group.
On the other hand, my Catholic grandfather always made sure he found a parish with an active AA group whenever he moved, for the support of the 12 steps and the grace of the sacraments working in tandem. It worked for him.
Are there other ways, perhaps better ways to beat an addiction? No doubt there are. But I maintain AA and the 12 steps are not a bad thing.

Christ,

You may want to let your friends know that Courts have ruled that AA is a religion and so I would say AA is deceptive…your friends have found religion without knowing it.

 

[christofirst]

Point taken, Coptic.
Yes, from my experience too, my closest non-religious friend in particular has made AA his religion, in that he feels certain (has faith) that his sobriety depends on his staying with the program.
Those friends of mine who are Christian and members of AA, on the other hand (my grandpa included) know that their sobriety depends on the grace of God. For them, AA is a channel of that grace.
Would that every church be prepared to offer the social support that many people seem to need in overcoming addiction. Sadly, many churches are not able to offer this specific support.
Chris

 

[Edmundus1581]

Silence,

I like to think of myself as a guide and you are free to journey where you will. You do not have to experience AIDS to know you don’t want it, how to avoid it, and to recognize it. You don’t have to experience the world to know what you should and should not do. Your conclusion about what to think has been clouded by

Only an alcoholic can help an alcoholic…

Do you learn to swim from someone that drowned?
**
Do you learn Math from someone that cannot add or subtract?**

You may want to venture into NLP where the basic tenet is this…

Books have been written on this by Robert Dilts…

The Strategies of Genius…

So it would make more sense for a drunk/addict to find someone that never drank or used drugs and study them and find out how to model them rather than someone that failed just like they did….

This post demonstrates your ignorance of A.A and the 12 steps.

A.A recommends that one’s sponsor be a **recovered **alcoholic, ie. someone who has, in the past, failed as you did, and has now succeeded. The point is that they will understand the struggles that a person goes through in recovery and they will also be an inspiration and give the person confidence that it is possible.

I wouldn’t try to learn to swim from a dolphin
I wouldn’t try to learn high school algebra from someone with an IQ of 200 and a Phd in Astro-physics.

Most learning involves some form of sharing of the limitations of the teacher with the student. The teacher must always be someone who has, at some stage, experienced at least some of the student’s difficulties and struggles.

 

[CopticChristian]

This post demonstrates your ignorance of A.A and the 12 steps.

A.A recommends that one’s sponsor be a **recovered **alcoholic, ie. someone who has, in the past, failed as you did, and has now succeeded. The point is that they will understand the struggles that a person goes through in recovery and they will also be an inspiration and give the person confidence that it is possible.

I wouldn’t try to learn to swim from a dolphin
I wouldn’t try to learn high school algebra from someone with an IQ of 200 and a Phd in Astro-physics.

Most learning involves some form of sharing of the limitations of the teacher with the student. The teacher must always be someone who has, at some stage, experienced at least some of the student’s difficulties and struggles.

Ed,

Your post demonstrates you swallowed and believe AA.

 

[Edmundus1581]

You may want to let your friends know that Courts have ruled that AA is a religion and so I would say AA is deceptive…your friends have found religion without knowing it.

That is not true.

I have challenged you on this previously you just told me to go and read some court documents. How about you find the documents and show us where they say that AA IS A RELIGION. Not that it is “religous” (that is well known), but that it IS A RELIGION.

Please, exact quotes.

 

[CopticChristian]

That is not true.

I have challenged you on this previously you just told me to go and read some court documents. How about you find the documents and show us where they say that AA IS A RELIGION. Not that it is “religous” (that is well known), but that it IS A RELIGION.

Please, exact quotes.

Ed,

You are making the rounds. You have never challenged me on this. I always provide answers to questions.

Here is a sampling of courts that have ruled either that AA is a religion or that it is religious:

the Federal 7th Circuit Court in Wisconsin, 1984
the Federal District Court for Southern New York, 1994
the New York Court of Appeals, 1996
the New York State Supreme Court, 1996
the U.S. Supreme Court, 1997
the Tennessee State Supreme Court
the Federal 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals in New York, 1996
the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit.
the U.S. Court of Appeals, Seventh District, 1996
the Federal Appeals Court in Chicago, 1996
The Federal Appeals Court in Hawaii, 2007

and this…

the Griffin v. Coughlin decision, from the New York State Court of Appeals, 1996, was heard by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1997. In Griffin v. Coughlin, the prison inmate David Griffin complained that state prison officials in 1991 told David Griffin, a self-described atheist with a history of drug abuse, that in order to be eligible for expanded family visitation privileges, including conjugal visits, he would have to attend a prison rehabilitation program patterned after AA’s 12-Step model.2 Griffin, then a prisoner at the Shawangunk Correctional Facility in Ulster County, refused to attend the program, contending that the 12-Step approach requires participants to express a belief in a “power greater than ourselves” and to “turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood him.” These requirements, his lawsuit against the state contended, violate the First Amendment’s mandated separation of church and state. Griffin lost in two lower courts, but won in New York State’s highest court, the New York Court of Appeals. **In Griffin v. Coughlin, Judge Levine, writing for the court’s majority, concluded that the AA program is devoted to proselytizing for a religious belief. The court’s conclusion was based on its reading of several profiles of early AA members as they are set forth in the AA Big Book and the AA Twelve and Twelve. Judge Levine said “While it is of course true that the primary objective of A.A. is to enable its adherents to achieve sobriety, its doctrine unmistakably urges that the path to staying sober and to becoming happily and usefully whole is by wholeheartedly embracing traditional theistic beliefs.” **From its review of AA literature, the majority concluded that the AA Twelve Steps amount to a worship service and that the AA fellowship is dedicated to converting alcoholics to a belief in a traditional deity. Accordingly, the court found that, “The foregoing demonstrates beyond peradventure that doctrinally and as actually practiced in the 12-Step methodology, adherence to the A.A. fellowship entails engagement in religious activity and religious proselytization. Followers are urged to accept the existence of God as a Supreme Being, Creator, Father of Light and Spirit of the Universe.” When the U.S. Supreme Court heard the appeal, it sided with the atheist convict who said the New York Department of Corrections’ attempt to link extra privileges for inmates with attendance at meetings modeled after Alcoholics Anonymous violated the constitutionally **mandated separation of church and state.**3

Violation of Church and State, establishment clause, RELIGION…

The first clause in the First Amendment–“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of **religion”–**is generally referred to as the establishment clause. It is the establishment clause that grants “**separation of church and state,” **preventing–for example–a government-funded Church of the United States from coming into being.

That is not true.

That is true and what you have said that is not true is not true.