Does Church Militant represent a small % of Catholics?

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ProdglArchitect said:
It is not “nice” when I discipline my son, but it is the right thing to do.
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Yet again I disagree. Boy, we really have different views. 🙂

I believe you can discipline a child in a loving and stern and wise manner (a nice way,) or in a harsh, overly critical, mean spirited way.

I believe all interactions we have with people could be viewed in a binary manner, either relatively nice or relatively mean. Even war for example can be seen in a nice/mean binary paradigm. You can overcome an enemy and treat the POW’s with dignity and respect (in a nice way,) or you can overcome them with cruelty and harshness (mean.) You could kill an enemy combatant in a nice way - by shooting them and immediately killing them… Or you could be “mean” and get them down and slowly bayonet them to death.

Again, I believe being “nice” - by nice I mean fair, just, charitable, caring, loving, gentle, joyful, etc - is integral to the Gospel.

I guess you could say I’m a proponent of the much derided “church of nice.”
 
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RealisticCatholic said:
Most of what they produce is spot-on, albeit presented with hyperbole.
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Trust me on this, most Catholics I know to not adhere to their most of their strident and uncharitable views on Church matters. But a significant minority do. And some of the issues they bring up are important to discuss and resolve, but the way they approach the issues are not the way the majority of practicing Catholics would (otherwise we would have seen a lot more of these type of strident activists groups in the Church).
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0331 said:
take it you’re not going to explain the Pharisee thing.
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I already told you it’s ineffable. If you can’t see how CM behaves like pharisees, nothing I say will open your eyes. You’ve already closed them if you can’t see it.

Anyway, about the term “nice,” google gives it 3 definitions:

nice

/nīs/

adjective

adjective: nice ; comparative adjective: nicer ; superlative adjective: nicest
pleasant; agreeable; satisfactory.

“we had a nice time”

synonyms: enjoyable, pleasant, pleasurable, agreeable, delightful, satisfying, gratifying, acceptable, to one’s liking, entertaining, amusing, diverting, marvelous, good;

bonny, couthy;

irie;

informal lovely, great;

informal neat;

informal lekker, mooi

“have a nice time”

antonyms: unpleasant
  • (of a person) pleasant in manner; good-natured; kind.
“he’s a really nice guy”

synonyms: pleasant, likable, agreeable, personable, charming, delightful, amiable, affable, friendly, kindly, genial, congenial, good-natured, engaging, gracious, sympathetic, understanding, compassionate, good

“they were such nice people”

antonyms: nasty
fine or subtle.

“a nice distinction”

synonyms: subtle, fine, delicate, minute, precise, exact, accurate, strict, close, careful, meticulous, rigorous, scrupulous, ultra-fine

“that’s a rather nice distinction to make”

antonyms: rough, approximate
  • requiring careful thought or attention.
“a nice point”

I’m using definition #2 - “nice” is a synonym for “good natured, gracious, friendly, sympathetic, compassionate, good…” I believe those are integral aspects of the Gospel, so by extension being nice is a core aspect of the Gospel.
 
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ChristMyLife said:
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ProdglArchitect:
It is not “nice” when I discipline my son, but it is the right thing to do.
Click to expand...
Yet again I disagree. Boy, we really have different views. 🙂

I believe you can discipline a child in a loving and stern and wise manner (a nice way,) or in a harsh, overly critical, mean spirited way.

I believe all interactions we have with people could be viewed in a binary manner, either relatively nice or relatively mean. Even war for example can be seen in a nice/mean binary paradigm. You can overcome an enemy and treat the POW’s with dignity and respect (in a nice way,) or you can overcome them with cruelty and harshness (mean.) You could kill an enemy combatant in a nice way - by shooting them and immediately killing them… Or you could be “mean” and get them down and slowly bayonet them to death.

Again, I believe being “nice” - by nice I mean fair, just, charitable, caring, loving, gentle, joyful, etc - is integral to the Gospel.

I guess you could say I’m a proponent of the much derided “church of nice.”
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@christmylife @prodglarchitect – I think you two are using difference definitions of the word “nice.” Therefore, you are talking past one another.
 
Phil see my above post where I defined what I mean by “nice.”

I think he thinks I’m using definition #1 whereas I’m using definition #2.
 
0331 said:
Sounds a bit gnostic to me
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That’s not what gnosticism is… That’s not how it works. That’s not how any of this works.

Spiritual discernment is a fruit of Spirit, not secret knowledge.
 
LumineDiei said:
But ridicule, especially with omitting basic facts, seems to be on the menu.
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I am not sure what you mean by “omitting basic facts” and what it has to do with the gingerbread house building.

I am not good at going back and finding things in videos but there was a place in one of his recent videos where he talked about that tweet and how, (and this happens to the best of us) it wasn’t worded the best… I don’t remember exactly everything he said.

But this is what bothers me about social media and Twitter, it happens here too, people are typing, something is said, maybe it isn’t the best wording, it comes out in a way sometimes it shouldn’t, and then that is what you are known for, and what you are criticized for. It is what you are going to here about, for sure.

So, in all fairness, and I am pretty sure you would agree, just because he didn’t like making gingerbread houses, I don’t think that makes his Catholic theology incorrect.
 
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Just read over the gingerbread article.

So disgusting. He’s calling seminarians “gay” because of making gingerbread. I’m glad you brought this to my attention.

Even if it were “effeminate,” who cares? People have different personalities. Some are more creative. Were all the great Catholic artists of the Renaissance “gay”? I suppose we must not let any seminarian endeavor in the arts! Oh my!
 
A very small, fringe group. They are extremely active on the internet. In a parish of 1,000 families I would guess maybe 10 of them are avid Church Militant followers however they are an extremely vocal 10 families.
 
Beryllos said:
Part of the problem is that many of those websites and bloggers share stories without diligent fact checking.
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This is right on the money and is a huge problem with many parts of the Catholic blogosphere.

And yet, every time Church Militant comes up, there are always posts about how they are “spot on” even if admitting they use inflammatory language. They really aren’t “spot on.” Many of their critiques of current events (which are pretty much the only articles of theirs that I come across) are decidedly not spot on. They don’t seem to employ even rudimentary fact checking, nor does there seem much interest in actually tracking down any sort of alternative explanations before they start espousing worst case scenarios.

Church Militant isn’t the only one that does this, to be sure. Honestly, it’s my biggest beef with Catholic stuff online. We should strive for accuracy in reporting rather than sensationalism. While I’m sure that there are some who have come to deeper faith through such means, I think they cause more problems than they solve.
 
TheLittleLady said:
A very small, fringe group. They are extremely active on the internet. In a parish of 1,000 families I would guess maybe 10 of them are avid Church Militant followers however they are an extremely vocal 10 families.
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My parish has 1500 families, and I don’t think I’ve ever heard any mention of Church Militant at my parish at all. And my parish has a reputation as the “conservative” parish of the area.
 
Either way, if I wanted to learn more about Catholic theology, I would watch EWTN, talk to my parish priest, watch Bishop Barron or Father Spitzer, read Peter Kreeft or the Catechism.

I wouldn’t want to spend an iota of time on someone who gets wrapped around the axle when it comes to seminarians making gingerbread houses.
 
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THIS IS SO BIZARRE.

I just realized that Taylor Marshall was tweeting about a seminarian from MY OWN parish! That makes me even more frustrated!

Who does Mr. Marshall even think he is? To think such a thing is bad enough, but to TWEET it? Just WOW. Where has the charity gone?
 
LumineDiei said:
Anger, maybe not. But ridicule, especially with omitting basic facts, seems to be on the menu. He got all worked up over seminarians making gingerbread houses for the families and children of their professors at Christmastime. I mean, God forbid any of these seminarians are given a parish with a school that has Father interact with the kids during the holiday season with something everyone loves. But apparently, gingerbread is dangerous to masculinity. Who knew??

https://www.kansascity.com/news/nation-world/article222987975.html
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Dr. Marshall is a good guy. This tweet was taken way out of context, PLUS there is a lot of subtext in that article.

That particular seminary is viewed by SOME as not faithful and/or teaching waterdown theology. I’m NOT saying that it does and I’m NOT saying that Dr. Marshall says that.

However, there are many who say it does teach waterdown theology. That seminary also offers a “correspondence training” for Permanent Deacons, offered to dioceses without their own local seminary.

Once a month, the deacon candidates meet somewhere for class, and then they do the rest of their work from home. Personally, the deacons from the diocese I grew up in use that Seminary’s long distance program and I don’t feel those deacons are as well formed as the deacons I see in the Archdiocese of Philadelphia - which attend class at the seminary every week.

Notice, if you read that article, a deacon starts attacking Dr. Marshall about things Dr. Marshall never said. Being “effeminate” does NOT necessarily mean being gay. There are plenty of straight “girly men” in the world.

Also, Dr. Marshall enjoys camping, hunting, outdoor sports, etc. He’s very big on authentic masculinity and fatherhood. He founded the Troops of St. George, which is an alternative to the Boy Scouts which requires fathers to participate with their sons.

Also, this is a secular article, which I doubt reached out to Dr. Marshall to ask him to clarify.

God Bless
 
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RealisticCatholic said:
He’s calling seminarians “gay”
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He did not say “gay”, those replying said, “gay”. He used the word “effeminite” and personally after myself having raised a son, I will say, there are going to be times that men will not like doing things that they feel are not manly. That is just part of their character. Just as sometimes there will be women who do not like doing things they feel are manly. We can deny it all we want, but it is just the nature of who we are.

Should it have been tweeted. Probably not but IMHO and apparently in some very good priest’s eyes, he also is pretty spot on in his reporting and his theology.

We all have our choices of who we choose to listen to and follow and I don’t want to derail the thread.
LumineDiei said:
This wasn’t just a slip of the tongue in a press conference or the use of a wrong word. He wrote enough about it to know exactly what he was doing when he hit the “enter” button.
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It was a tweet. You only get so many words. It wasn’t meant to be a full scale article. I don’t know how many times I have hit the enter button here and then had to go back and change something because it came out wrong. I might have to go back here and correct something. Maybe I won’t even pick up on what is wrong here. It’s possible.

The article you linked also did not seem to have gone back and asked him personally about why he tweeted that.
LumineDiei said:
and not someone I would want to spend my time listening to.
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and that is your choice.
 
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In light of this and a previous post on this thread–if Fr. James Martin finally answered the question he refuses to answer (certainly his privilege) regarding his own sexual orientation, and answered that he is homosexual in orientation, how might that impact his credibility, one way or the other?
 
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That particular seminary is viewed by some as not faithful and/or teaching waterdown theology. I’m NOT saying that it does and I’m NOT saying that Dr. Marshall says that.
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And my pastor also teaches there, and I’m part of a group associated with St. Meinreid as well. Soooo. No. Nope, no sympathy here.

it doesn’t sound like Marshall is a good guy to me. He picked on someone he doesn’t know, first off, and goes on to label him and others as effeminate. And for an unjust reason.

All of this is so immature and perfectly dumb. Caught the Church Militant Syndome.
 
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