Apologists can defend anything...EXCEPT APOLOGETICS!

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Teflon93 said:
So why do you persist in comparing only the best of non-Catholics against only the worst Catholics?

Is this the theological equivalent of football’s “mercy rule”?
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It was small, but I did slip this into my sentence…
Laurence_of_PA said:
… and vise-versa.
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The actual point I am making though, is this…
If their respective world-views and theological stances had been that much different, do you think it would have made a heck of a lot of difference?
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Or in another words: Good people are good 🙂 ; bad people are bad :(; **and few other people in this entire world can devote as much time to discovering theological truth as you can :tsktsk:

You should be thanking God/Allah/Yahweh/Jehovah/Brahman for this.
 
Laurence_of_PA said:
**Or in another words: Good people are good 🙂 ; bad people are bad **:(; **and few other people in this entire world *can ***devote as much time to discovering theological truth as you can :tsktsk:

You should be thanking God/Allah/Yahweh/Jehovah/Brahman for this.
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Good people are good; bad people are bad. It sounds like you believe in a sort of pre-destination. It’s really not that way. Like the Russian author Alexander Solzhenitsyn said:
If only it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?
– The Gulag Archipelago
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All of us are created good, but we are weak and sometimes choose evil over good. Mother Teresa could have been an Adolph Hitler; Adolph Hitler could have been a Mother Teresa. Ultimately they decided the paths they would walk on.
 
Janet_S said:
Good people are good; bad people are bad. It sounds like you believe in a sort of pre-destination. It’s really not that way. Like the Russian author Alexander Solzhenitsyn said:
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You took what I said out of context :crying:. Of course it isn’t that simple! I was merely inisting that a person’s actions and behaviors don’t flow purely from their religion.

In essence, nearly everyone has a sense of morality and maybe even the free will to choose, even without God. Please refer to my previous posts.
All of us are created good, but we are weak and sometimes choose evil over good. Mother Teresa could have been an Adolph Hitler; Adolph Hitler could have been a Mother Teresa. Ultimately they decided the paths they would walk on.
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Yes of course, people do decide their paths, but how much did it matter that Mother Theresa was a Catholic for her to do the good works that she did do?
 
Laurence_of_PA said:
Yes of course, people do decide their paths, but how much did it matter that Mother Theresa was a Catholic for her to do the good works that she did do?
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And the non-Catholic Mother Theresa may be found where?

Check out the “Who are the atheist “saints”?” thread for more.
 
Laurence_of_PA said:
You took what I said out of context :crying:. Of course it isn’t that simple! I was merely inisting that a person’s actions and behaviors don’t flow purely from their religion.
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I didn’t take it out of context; there wasn’t much context to put it in. That was all you said.
Laurence_of_PA said:
In essence, nearly everyone has a sense of morality and maybe even the free will to choose, even without God. Please refer to my previous posts.
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I agree with this to some extent. We are all created in the image and likeness of God. God loves us all and gives us the gift of reason. By our ability to reason, we can discern the natural law. Many other religions as well as atheists have this in common with Catholics.

But where we disagree is when you imply that religion just isn’t an important factor in determining how a person behaves. I’m saying it is important, and as an example, I am holding up as evidence the lives of the saints. Where can we see the equal of a Mother Teresa or a St Francis of Assisi except in the Catholic faith?
Laurence_of_PA said:
Yes of course, people do decide their paths, but how much did it matter that Mother Theresa was a Catholic for her to do the good works that she did do?
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It mattered a lot, at least that’s what she said:
nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/laureates/1979/teresa-lecture.html
It is to God Almighty - how much we do it does not matter, because He is infinite, but how much love we put in that action. How much we do to Him in the person that we are serving. . .
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I believe that we are not real social workers. We may be doing social work in the eyes of the people, but we are really contemplatives in the heart of the world. For we are touching the Body of Christ 24 hours. . .
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To be able to do this, our Sisters, our lives have to be woven with prayer. They have to be woven with Christ to be able to understand, to be able to share. . .
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That we may remain faithful to the gift of God, to love Him and serve Him in the poor together with you. . .
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This is something that you and I - it is a gift of God to us to be able to share our love with others. And let it be as it was for Jesus. Let us love one another as he loved us. Let us love Him with undivided love. And the joy of loving Him and each other - let us give now - that Christmas is coming so close. Let us keep that joy of loving Jesus in our hearts. And share that joy with all that we come in touch with. And that radiating joy is real, for we have no reason not to be happy because we have no Christ with us. Christ in our hearts, Christ in the poor that we meet, Christ in the smile that we give and the smile that we receive. . .
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And then another one asked me: Are you married, and I said: Yes, and I find it sometimes very difficult to smile at Jesus because he can be very demanding sometimes. This is really something true, and there is where love comes - when it is demanding, and yet we can give it to Him with joy. Just as I have said today, I have said that if I don’t go to Heaven for anything else I will be going to Heaven for all the publicity because it has purified me and sacrificed me and made me really ready to go to Heaven. I think that this is something, that we must live life beautifully, we have Jesus with us and He loves us. If we could only remember that God loves me, and I have an opportunity to love others as he loves me, not in big things, but in small things with great love, then Norway becomes a nest of love. And how beautiful it will be that from here a centre for peace has been given. That from here the joy of life of the unborn child comes out. If you become a burning light in the world of peace, then really the Nobel Peace Prize is a gift of the Norwegian people. God bless you!.
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