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puzzleannie
Guest
yes the collage is important but to be saved you need to find your rock and paint something on it that has meaning for you.
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MrS
Guest
hang in there Mike, the answer(s) will come… some delays are being caused by the repairs being made to this site…
rules, you know
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VociMike
Guest
Indeed! Love God and do as you will.
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happygal
Guest
Well in fact it does not happen to Catholic churches, it happened to my church as well. Althought we are a protestant church, but we are more or less like a structure CC who have the Pastor/Cell leaders to minster the members, everything has to be conform to the church doing…blar…blar…saddest part was lots of members find my church too legalistic and left to search for others churches which are not so legalistic
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hoosierdaddy
Guest
The problem is not rules in and of themselves. The problem is the Catholic Church has too many extra-biblical (read: unbiblical) rules. And just one unbliblcal rule is one rule too many.
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awfulthings9
Guest
The way I always explain it to people is this - There aren’t too many rules, there are too many sins.
As an earlier poster mentioned, our primary “rules” are to love God and to love our neighbors. If we did this perfectly, we wouldn’t need any other rules, but our nature as creatures of the flesh mean that we keep straying and each rule of the Catholic Church is simply a way of addressing a new sin (or distraction from Christ) that we’ve invented.
Consider a marriage (which is appropriate considering who our bridegroom is). The one rule in a marriage is love your spouse. However, should the husband start failing in that duty, it might, over time, appear that the wife is too legalistic.
He starts sleeping in and missing work - she comes up with a rule that, if he loves her, he’ll start getting up at 6:30 to make sure to get to work so the paycheck keeps coming home.
He stops giving her attention, so she comes up with the “rule” that he needs to say “I love you” once in a while.
He starts letting his dirty clothes lay all over - so she comes up with a “rule” that he needs to put his clothes in the hamper.
After a while, that husband might complain that his “legalistic” wife has too many rules, but in reality, he has invited too many imperfections into his love for her.
Likewise, the rules of the church are there to address the thousands of ways we keep coming up with to show less love for Christ. We don’t respect the Eucharist, so the church asks for an hour fast. We start sleeping in on Sundays, so the rule is that mass is an obligation.
If we just loved Christ perfectly, all rules would go away. We just need to stop inventing sin.
As an earlier poster mentioned, our primary “rules” are to love God and to love our neighbors. If we did this perfectly, we wouldn’t need any other rules, but our nature as creatures of the flesh mean that we keep straying and each rule of the Catholic Church is simply a way of addressing a new sin (or distraction from Christ) that we’ve invented.
Consider a marriage (which is appropriate considering who our bridegroom is). The one rule in a marriage is love your spouse. However, should the husband start failing in that duty, it might, over time, appear that the wife is too legalistic.
He starts sleeping in and missing work - she comes up with a rule that, if he loves her, he’ll start getting up at 6:30 to make sure to get to work so the paycheck keeps coming home.
He stops giving her attention, so she comes up with the “rule” that he needs to say “I love you” once in a while.
He starts letting his dirty clothes lay all over - so she comes up with a “rule” that he needs to put his clothes in the hamper.
After a while, that husband might complain that his “legalistic” wife has too many rules, but in reality, he has invited too many imperfections into his love for her.
Likewise, the rules of the church are there to address the thousands of ways we keep coming up with to show less love for Christ. We don’t respect the Eucharist, so the church asks for an hour fast. We start sleeping in on Sundays, so the rule is that mass is an obligation.
If we just loved Christ perfectly, all rules would go away. We just need to stop inventing sin.
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kinderbueno
Guest
Well said!!! I like it. Thanks! Especially with rules to reinforce the importance of the Blessed Sacrament, occurences of abuse and heresy breed rules addressing them. That totally makes sense.
I’m sure, despite my ‘by whose authority’ arguments (i.e., the Apostolic succession/Papacy defense), I still have to get over her equating loving God and God loving her with feeling good. Moreover, she’ll say she’s able to do it without meaningless (to her) ritual. Feelings are a whole different issue altogether for a different thread…
Save blowing John 6 up on a huge bold print poster (which she’ll dismiss as figurative, anyway), this part-time junior apologist-wanna-be is often at a loss for an approach that gets through!
I think therein lies the key for me, the Truth of the Blessed Sacrament – I think I need a couple of hours in adoration!
Again, I love the “rules are just a response to deviation from the message” approach. I think I’ll use that with my 8th graders (CCD).
We must be careful to pass on what the rules mean to future generations, lest our rituals become empty. --Mike
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Sixtus
Guest
In an age where there are few constants in the social context, where everything seems in a permanent state of change. Where the old rules and certainties have given way to the flux of information growth and ever flowing data. Where rules are open to individual interpretation, it is good to have a definitive set of rules which never change, by which one can live and be ones guiding principles.
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