My main problem with your responses is that you make everything personal and vindictive and use bullyboy tactics to control discussions. There isn’t one thing that I find positive or intellectually interesting about your approach. I’m not interested in discussing anything further with you, but you can continue with Gary who is a gracious and patient contributor to this discussion.To those who read this: Please note that the person calling herself LongingSoul does not reply directly to direct questions. She quotes Aquinas and then interprets his writings to her own end. Kind of a like Protestants do with the bible. It is clear that Aquinas allows for self defense. LS goes on to allege that “it is not lawful for an individual person to intend to kill in self defense. Now I’m suggesting here, that owning an instrument that is guaranteed to kill, in anticipation that you may one day be attacked, constitutes intending to kill in self defense”. This is private interpretation. She (An Australian) goes further to denigrate the USA “I counter that with the overwhelming view of outside observers of US culture in saying that by flooding the community with guns and tolerating the inordinately high incidence of school and university gun massacres as well as the inordinately high murder rate in the country.” (BTW please note that New Zealand has a more lenient gun law but has not had any school shootings I told her this but she chooses to ignore it. Its inconvenient.)
When I have proven over and over and over again that her country is as violent as the US. So LS I looked up the violent crime rate in Brisbane and in the town that I live in. I have learned that Brisbane is one of the safer cities in AU but that isn’t saying a whole lot. Guess what? There were four home invasion robberies and one murder (a French woman) in Brisbane this year. In one of those home invasion robberies, right there in your very own city was perpetrated on an older man who had saved all of his life for his own funeral and the criminals stole it. There was Not ONE in my town in AZ of either crime. I have evidence that crime in Australia has exploded even after the gun ban. As most Americans can tell you Arizona is a right to carry state. Not only that it is a “shall issue” conceal carry state. My town, we are learning, (newly moved here from California) most people own guns. I don’t know yet how many conceal carry folks there are. This town for many years has been known as the safest or maybe the second safest in Arizona. It lost that distinction two or three years ago when a man killed his family and himself. Instead of listening to the liberal media about our country I recommend that you take the blinders off and concentrate on your own country. You are living in a safe city because the police decided to crack down on the bikers (bikies, dumb name) and drug gangs. Do you know what happens when one city cracks down on violent crimes?? The criminals go to another city. It’s like whack- a-mole; they pop down one place and jump up in another. (Sydney, Australia anyone?). Then they lay low and return when the “coast is clear”. So you need to concentrate on your own city/country.
As an aside hubby and I just checked out an outdoor shooting range in a nearby town. You should have seen all the fire power there. There were guns of every kind including several assault rifles. Not one person was shot at and I’m willing to bet that I was safer there than if I were in an establishment that had a sign in the window “no guns allowed”. If you wanted to rob a place and had only those two to choose from, which would you choose?
LS, Please reply directly to direct questions.
Annie
Annie39;11978476:
You are correct Gary. It was out of context. I agree that the Church does not mandate the killing and/or eating animals Please accept my apology.Hello Annie: As a reminder, the context of the remark was the in reference to the fact that I don’t believe in killing either animals or humans. Insofar as I am aware, there is no mandate from the Catholic Church that either requires or recommends that I kill animals or eat them, therefore, I do not understand your idea that I should stop calling myself a Catholic. You have many ideas that in my opinion seem rather counterintuitive to Christianity or even common morality, much less Catholicism, yet I have refrained from suggesting that you stop calling yourself whatever you like. Your arguments supporting the ownership of weapons while complaining about devices that admittedly can be used to take life, have many more common uses to save lives, seems rather dimly reasoned, yet I have not suggested that you call yourself something other than what you profess to be.
Thank you,
Gary
However this is the part that I find troubling “We covered this before. Jesus was not an ordinary Jew in a number of ways. Most significantly, an ordinary Jew living at the time of Christ would have been married for around 20 years by the time he was 33, yet we take it that Jesus wasn’t married, and there is no account of Him being married to the best of my knowledge. Likewise to the best of my knowledge, there is no inventory of what He ate.
I agree that Jesus was not an ordinary Jew. He was the perfect Jew. He perfectly fulfilled the Mosaic Covenant which mandated that Jews consume the lamb. The prescription of the Passover meal was detailed and clear from the Lord, as written in Exodus 12.
A lamb without blemish was to be slaughtered at twilight, eaten with unleavened bread, the lamb’s blood was to be sprinkled on the doorposts with hyssop, none of the lamb’s bones were to be broken, and this ordinance was to be celebrated perpetually.
christiananswers.net/bible/exo12.html
This Catholics believe.
You write: You have many ideas that in my opinion seem rather counterintuitive to Christianity or even common morality, much less Catholicism, yet I have refrained from suggesting that you stop calling yourself whatever you like. Your arguments supporting the ownership of weapons while complaining about devices that admittedly can be used to take life, have many more common uses to save lives, seems rather dimly reasoned, yet I have not suggested that you call yourself something other than what you profess to be.
Is there some doctrine, dogma or tradition that you can point to that I am going against in my support for the ownership of weapons?
I agree with LS that you are gracious and patient contributor to this discussion
LS. I guess this is my night for apologizing. I read a few earlier posts to see if I could get the context and I should have addressed my post to you rather than to others who are reading this thread. For that I am sorry.My main problem with your responses is that you make everything personal and vindictive and use bullyboy tactics to control discussions. There isn’t one thing that I find positive or intellectually interesting about your approach. I’m not interested in discussing anything further with you, but you can continue with Gary who is a gracious and patient contributor to this discussion.
Annie39
However this is the part that I find troubling “We covered this before. Jesus was not an ordinary Jew in a number of ways. Most significantly, an ordinary Jew living at the time of Christ would have been married for around 20 years by the time he was 33, yet we take it that Jesus wasn’t married, and there is no account of Him being married to the best of my knowledge. Likewise to the best of my knowledge, there is no inventory of what He ate.
I agree that Jesus was not an ordinary Jew. He was the perfect Jew. He perfectly fulfilled the Mosaic Covenant which mandated that Jews consume the lamb. The prescription of the Passover meal was detailed and clear from the Lord, as written in Exodus 12.
Good morning Annie: There are of course a number of ways in which Jesus was a Jew of His time, but as I have pointed out, there are a number of ways in which He wasn’t. You have pointed out the prescription for the Passover meal from Exodus, however, I contend there is no recorded evidence of Jesus practicing a good number of things prescribed in Exodus, among these are the laws that permit slavery and the execution of disobedient children. Things such these are laws that were to be followed carefully by all Jews of the time, but there are no records of Jesus trafficking in slaves or presiding over or participating in the execution of children (or anyone else for that matter). In fact, most modern day people consider such laws to be in conflict with the message of Christ. Such laws and prescribed actions from Exodus are also in conflict with modern standards of morality and decency, and therefore I find no reason to believe that certain things being prescribed in Exodus is cause to believe that Jesus practiced all of them.A lamb without blemish was to be slaughtered at twilight, eaten with unleavened bread, the lamb’s blood was to be sprinkled on the doorposts with hyssop, none of the lamb’s bones were to be broken, and this ordinance was to be celebrated perpetually.
christiananswers.net/bible/exo12.html
This Catholics believe.
Yes!I think that the active agent of God in the temporal world is us.