Does this make me a "cafeteria Catholic"?

[StevenFrancis]

I asked this in another thread yesterday, but it seems it got lost in the shuffle:

Am I a cafeteria Catholic if I have doubts about certain teachings, but keep my mouth shut about them, don’t do anything contrary to them myself, and keep my mind open to being brought around to full acceptance?

TIA.

It is my understanding that a “cafeteria Catholic” actually rejects specific doctrine, and retains those which “feel” right to them. This doesn’t appear to be your case. In fact, as a late in life convert myself, and even after RCIA, and a rather devoted personal study of Church doctrine and history, I accept much of the doctrine of the Church on faith, and out of obedience. I believe the Church, and in the rare instance where I find myself with a personal “opinion” which doesn’t seem to agree with the Church, (I can’t even think of any off hand anymore, but there were some a couple years ago), I defer to the Church out of respect and a belief that she is protected by God from teaching me error in the faith. I haven’t stopped reasoning or thinking. Quite the contrary. I’ve done more study, thinking, etc. than I even have before in my life. I just don’t trust my own politically and worldly tinged personal opinions against the deposit of the Christian faith.

But it’s not doubt which makes a person a “cafeteria Catholic”. I believe Cafeteria Catholicism involves an act of will to specifically toss out selected Catholic doctrine because it doesn’t conform to your worldly personal “opinion”, which is generally formed by contemporary politics and environment rather than from the actual deposit of the Christian faith carried forth by the Apostles, Saints, and Doctors of the Church, as well as the Popes, Chesterton, Belloc, Lewis and others from last century, and Kreeft, Hahn and others from more contemporary times.

Doubt happens. It’s rare, but it still happens to me. When it does, I pray about it. I talk it through with my wife, and study the scriptures and the Catechism to find where “I” have gotten off track, rather than thinking the Church has got off track somewhere, (as I would have not so long ago). But the difference is, cafeteria Catholics assume that when there is a disagreement between personal opinion, and the Church, that the Church must be the one who is wrong, so rather than investigate why the Church is perhaps right, they just assume the doctrine to be unacceptable, and toss it out.

Blessings,

Steven

 

[AlanFromWichita]

There isn’t a post on this thread that I disagree with more than this one.

We are called to love God with our entire heart, soul, strength and MIND, Alan.

We do not only attempt to apprehend God if we are the “brain”, and only to love if we are the “heart.”

'nuff said.

OK, I guess I’ve held back long enough. You want to know what you can do with your mind that is constructive? More constructive than spending untold hours studying ever being refined details of a complex behavior code?

Now this is the first time I’ve talked about this publicly. I had a vision in 2001, during the week of June11, whereby I perceived the oneness between animate and inanimate objects. Father Sherlock came to visit me there (I was locked in a psychiatric ward) and I told him of this vision. (I had been working long hours on the Synod, and Fr. Sherlock was in charge of it so we got pretty close.) Father enjoined me from speaking of it, and I was released from it yesterday so now I can talk about it.

A few days prior, June 8, I actually catlyzed a “miracle” by which a tongue tied woman was suddenly released and the staff was dumbfounded because after two minutes with me, she was talking English instead of the gibberish noise she’d been making for over a week. When they threw me in the ward, I heard her from the opposite end of the hall and went to talk to her. I saw exactly what happened, but to others it seemed a “miracle.”

Since then I have come up with scientific explanations as to why statues “come to life” when we kneel before them and pray. I have published these on these forums, and received an enthusiastic response.

About 20 years ago I went to a charismatic convention, my first. The bishop was there and said Mass at the end. I went up with a crowd near the stage and the woman on stage signaled to my wife to bring me, specifically, to the front. OMG. They wanted me to fall down and I felt silly. So this woman is going along, saying a few words and then praying in tongues, and then the person falls, slain in the spirit. This went on for maybe an hour, except for when she got to me. She came over to me and took three steps back, and said, “woah. I’ve never seen anything like this before. I don’t know what it is. I’ve been doing this for 32 years and I’ve never witnessed anything like this.”

Of course, all this made me feel like I had better come up with something pretty good for the Lord. You see, I take the Bible personally. I put myself in the place of its characters to try to feel what they felt, beyond just the words. Here is one of the things that has totally bothered me now for over 20 years, and I had been pondering it for nearly a year before that charismatic convention.

John 14:12
Amen, amen, I say to you, whoever believes in me will do the works that I do, and will do greater ones than these, because I am going to the Father.

So do you want something to do with your mind that actually brings you closer to God? Challenge yourself to live up to this claim of Jesus. How do you know if you believe in Jesus? Well, according to this, for one thing, you had better be doing greater works than Jesus did.

So I applied my engineering skills to the problem, designing memes and spiritual exercises to p(name removed by moderator)oint specific areas of improvement as well as using all the information I received from numerous spiritual directors. I identified what I had to work with, what specific spiritual goal I want to achieve, and designed memes based on all I knew, that eventually resulted in total healing of my mind and a sense of overwhelming peace freedom, and joy.

(continued in next post)

 

[AlanFromWichita]

There isn’t a post on this thread that I disagree with more than this one.

We are called to love God with our entire heart, soul, strength and MIND, Alan.

We do not only attempt to apprehend God if we are the “brain”, and only to love if we are the “heart.”

'nuff said.

OK, I guess I’ve held back long enough. You want to know what you can do with your mind that is constructive? More constructive than spending untold hours studying ever being refined details of a complex behavior code?

Now this is the first time I’ve talked about this publicly. I had a vision in 2001, during the week of June11, whereby I perceived the oneness between animate and inanimate objects. Father Sherlock came to visit me there (I was locked in a psychiatric ward) and I told him of this vision. (I had been working long hours on the Synod, and Fr. Sherlock was in charge of it so we got pretty close.) Father enjoined me from speaking of it, and I was released from it yesterday so now I can talk about it.

A few days prior, June 8, I actually catlyzed a “miracle” by which a tongue tied woman was suddenly released and the staff was dumbfounded because after two minutes with me, she was talking English instead of the gibberish noise she’d been making for over a week. When they threw me in the ward, I heard her from the opposite end of the hall and went to talk to her. I saw exactly what happened, but to others it seemed a “miracle.”

Since then I have come up with scientific explanations as to why statues “come to life” when we kneel before them and pray. I have published these on these forums, and received an enthusiastic response.

About 20 years ago I went to a charismatic convention, my first. The bishop was there and said Mass at the end. I went up with a crowd near the stage and the woman on stage signaled to my wife to bring me, specifically, to the front. OMG. They wanted me to fall down and I felt silly. So this woman is going along, saying a few words and then praying in tongues, and then the person falls, slain in the spirit. This went on for maybe an hour, except for when she got to me. She came over to me and took three steps back, and said, “woah. I’ve never seen anything like this before. I don’t know what it is. I’ve been doing this for 32 years and I’ve never witnessed anything like this.”

Of course, all this made me feel like I had better come up with something pretty good for the Lord. You see, I take the Bible personally. I put myself in the place of its characters to try to feel what they felt, beyond just the words. Here is one of the things that has totally bothered me now for over 20 years, and I had been pondering it for nearly a year before that charismatic convention.

John 14:12
Amen, amen, I say to you, whoever believes in me will do the works that I do, and will do greater ones than these, because I am going to the Father.

So do you want something to do with your mind that actually brings you closer to God? Challenge yourself to live up to this claim of Jesus. How do you know if you believe in Jesus? Well, according to this, for one thing, you had better be doing greater works than Jesus did.

So I applied my engineering skills to the problem, designing memes and spiritual exercises to p(name removed by moderator)oint specific areas of improvement as well as using all the information I received from numerous spiritual directors. I identified what I had to work with, what specific spiritual goal I want to achieve, and designed memes based on all I knew, that eventually resulted in total healing of my mind and a sense of overwhelming peace freedom, and joy.

I challenged myself to learn to radically obey Jesus in an absolute way. He says “love your enemies,” so I say “how can I learn to love Satan, he’s an enemy, right?”

He says “do not judge” and I have only found a handful of human beings ever that are willing to honestly delve into how to radically obey Him.

Figure out how it is the Jesus could save Mary before He was born, by an act He performed upon his death? Not just to say, “Oh the Lord works in mysterious ways” but to actually build a working intellectual model by which I can not only explain that, but conclude many many things from the same logic that it takes to figure this out. Want a small sample? Well, it turns out the what you are going to reply to my post here is actually influencing what I write right now. I have no idea why or how, just that it is. The Holy Spirit guides us all who are open enough for it, using resources we don’t have available … like operating in a system where time is negotiable or even avoidable.

Figure out how a person can actually move mountains.

If you want to put your mind to work, quit going around in circles studying minutiae all your life and set it to work at some of these bigger things. I did and it has paid of tremendously. And now within the last two days the Lord has seen fit to bring me into His kingdom, and I’m loving it. There. I said it. Want to know what it’s like? Ask. Don’t believe me? Test me. And guess how I got there? By teaching my heart and mind to work together seamlessly to open myself to follow the spirit, without having to disable my will or other faculties. So yeah, I am a believer in using one’s mind to improve oneself to achieve what Christ expects of us. But I’m not a believer in wasting one’s mind by spending one’s life as a series of cheap behavior contests.

This is what I’m trying to say. There are bigger fish to fry with the power of your mind than arguing about whether you should say “and also with you” or “and with your spirit,” or how many indulgences can you get from saying a novena.

Alan

 

[AlanFromWichita]

Oh yeah. One other thing.

Yesterday evening I finally came up with a mental platform from which I think I’m going to be able to accept “all” the teachings, even those I disagree with, don’t understand, or never heard of. I haven’t focused on it long enough to confirm, but it looks about 99% sure that I can profess that I am not in fact a cafeteria Catholic in substance – even if I still remain one in the accident of my body, mind, and soul.

Alan

 

[PRmerger]

This is a really interesting contrast.

The irony, of course, is that there really are so many books and manuals about how to love your spouse (self-help type books), and marriage counseling is big business. And, looking at changes in the family over the past few hundred years–during which period we’ve gone from virtually no how-to-love-your-spouse books and no marital counseling to a flooded market–we, on average, spend dreadfully little time with our spouses compared with 100, 200, 300 years ago. Only nowadays do we find ourselves trying to love our spouses with our minds–our hearts are made painfully irrelevant in a daily life where most things march to the beat of the market.

Interesting to contrast this with the church. 1,000 years ago, stained-glass windows and carvings of wood and stone and the examples provided by others served as the only “books and manuals” about “how to love” God, in part because of illiteracy, but also the lack of printed material. Furthermore, daily life was spent more in the company of God than it is now, since the pre-modern landscape and time were so deeply sacralized (no watches and clocks and cities to get in the way, and church bells and spires and holy days marked the passage of time and space). And, nowadays, so many of us find ourselves trying to love God with our minds–we read, read, read from another flooded segment of the market, and we read, read, read the Catechism and encyclicals, etc., and we come on CAF to “debate” and discuss.

And we’re concerned with being “cafeteria catholics”’ because we’ve forgotten how to, or have been impeded from, loving God with our hearts, and we resort to the modern human’s most celebrated asset–the mind–as an inadequate replacement.

Certainly, we’ve gained some things over the medieval marriage, but we’ve lost some things that we’ve yet to compensate for.

Just one little tweak, if I may. When Jesus offered us the command to love God with our entire heart, soul, strength and mind, this was way before the “stained glass” catechesis that you’re referring to. In fact, as it echoes the command made in the OT, it really is an injunction that’s millenia before “stained glass” catechesis.

God has been commanding us to love Him with our mind since, well, the beginning.

 

[PRmerger]

But the difference is, cafeteria Catholics assume that when there is a disagreement between personal opinion, and the Church, that the Church must be the one who is wrong, so rather than investigate why the Church is perhaps right, they just assume the doctrine to be unacceptable, and toss it out.

Blessings,

Steven

'zactly. Exactly. :sad_yes:

Let’s take the example of the Church’s imperative to attend Mass every Sunday. A cafeteria Catholic may dismiss this imperative with the rationale, “God is love, and He certainly wouldn’t care if I miss Mass on a Sunday or two. After all, isn’t God in nature? And isn’t God everywhere? So I can still be with God even if I’m not at Mass.”

So here’s the great irony: this particular Catholic has decided that the Church, oddly enough, got it right enough in saying that God is love, and that God is in nature, and that God is everywhere, but…gets it wrong in the command to attend Mass on Sundays.

The only way this Catholic knows that God is love is because, well, the CC told her this. She approves of this because it’s palatable. And yet, this Catholic has declared that the Church can’t always be right. :banghead:

 

[Jocko_VT]

Just one little tweak, if I may. When Jesus offered us the command to love God with our entire heart, soul, strength and mind, this was way before the “stained glass” catechesis that you’re referring to. In fact, as it echoes the command made in the OT, it really is an injunction that’s millenia before “stained glass” catechesis.

God has been commanding us to love Him with our mind since, well, the beginning.

You’ve really missed the point, PR. In our modern environment, we’ve been made into beings that have lost, to some extent, the ability to love with our hearts. To make up for the gap, we’re trying to love more with our minds. It’s a wonderful example of Weberian rationalization.

*What I described wasn’t a past where it was all heart and no mind, but a present where it’s all mind and no heart * (to be superlative).

The promotion in modern life of instrumental rationality and technical ways of knowing the world above all others–particularly in the extent to which it’s democratized–is historically unprecedented. There were no more “books and manuals” “on the shelves” of the pre-Christ Hebrews, or the first-century Christians, than there were on those of the Medieval peasants who received the literal stained-glass catechesis (which makes my point even stronger). Thus, the “mind” aspect of loving God was not promoted at the expense of the “heart” aspect of loving God.Today, it is. What we see in these forums–and in this thread, in particular–exemplifies that fact.

 

[AlanFromWichita]

But the difference is, cafeteria Catholics assume that when there is a disagreement between personal opinion, and the Church, that the Church must be the one who is wrong, so rather than investigate why the Church is perhaps right, they just assume the doctrine to be unacceptable, and toss it out.

Some of us are that shallow but not most of the honest CC’s I’ve met. And yes, there is such a thing. For myself, if it’s on a matter of faith and morals, the Church is welcome to say whatever. But if I find a discrepancy in the Church teachings, then I will investigate until I either resolve it or flag it as unresolved and move on down the road. Now, as an entirely separate issue, I might have one or more possible models of my own in mind … but if I have no specific reason to doubt whatever presents itself as Church teaching, then my ideas don’t matter and may be useful for personal use but not so much when talking with other Catholics. Common language, you know.

Honestly, it really amuses me that people assume that if I hold my own point of view over theirs it’s because I’m selfish and ego-centric and clinging to my precious binky-of-a-POV. That cracks me up, totally. People seem to think there has to be evil in every shadow. It’s kind of a socially implementable version of paranoia, coupled with quick judgment and/or stereotyping, inability to exercise non-dualistic thinking, and lack of self-control.

Alan

 

[AlanFromWichita]

Maybe this will help me convey what I’m trying to convey.

I’d say that for the purposes of the following quote, the “intuitive mind” is what I’m calling the “heart” and the “rational mind” is what I have been referring to all along just as “mind” or “carnal mind.”

https://fbcdn-sphotos-a.akamaihd.ne...7922_286497618036971_1028769_2097232860_n.jpg

So when Jesus tells us to love God with all our minds, He is talked about convincing the rational mind it’s ok to defer to the intuitive mind in matters of love. Thus, we need our entire mind, including BOTH halves, to cooperate to let Christ renew our rational mind, so that it works together with the intuitive one.

So when you say we are to love with our whole minds, I think you are telling me that I must love God with my rational mind… to this I say yes, we love Him through our rational mind, but not on its own power but through the unity the intuitive mind has with Christ.

Basically it’s the same issue as having a boss whom you seek to obey, but your brain tells you that it’s stupid so you give it your conscious attention but your mind continues to rebel against the boss. Eventually doing what you are told, the wisdom of the boss’s commands may reveal itself, therefore faith is evidenced and matured by works. Works becomes the bridge between the two minds, when the mind doesn’t want to offer any other form of connection because it won’t share its honest opinions that it believes to be superior to those of the boss (Christ).

Alan

 

[AlanFromWichita]

Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,

I have a confession to make:

Dear friends,

I believe in one God,
the Father almighty,
maker of heaven and earth,
of all things visible and invisible.
I believe in one Lord Jesus Christ,
the Only Begotten Son of God,
born of the Father before all ages.
God from God, Light from Light,
true God from true God,
begotten, not made, consubstantial with the Father;
through him all things were made.
For us men and for our salvation
he came down from heaven,
At the words that follow up to and including and became man, all bow.
and by the Holy Spirit was incarnate of the Virgin Mary,
and became man.
For our sake he was crucified under Pontius Pilate,
he suffered death and was buried,
and rose again on the third day
in accordance with the Scriptures.
He ascended into heaven
and is seated at the right hand of the Father.
He will come again in glory
to judge the living and the dead
and his kingdom will have no end.
I believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life,
who proceeds from the Father and the Son,
who with the Father and the Son is adored and glorified,
who has spoken through the prophets.
I believe in one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church.
I confess one Baptism for the forgiveness of sins
and I look forward to the resurrection of the dead
and the life of the world to come. Amen.

Dear Lord,
I am not worthy that you should enter under my roof, but only say the word and my soul shall be healed.
​

Thank you one and all for coming. If anyone can help me with my house, I’m having a repair/remodeling party and all are welcome. The door’s open, just come in.

Langiappe:

Remember, O most gracious Virgin Mary,
that never was it known that anyone who fled to your protection,
implored your help or sought your intercession,
was left unaided.
Inspired with this confidence,
I fly to you, O Virgin of virgins, my Mother;
to you do I come, before you I stand, sinful and sorrowful.

O Mother of the Word Incarnate,
despise not my petitions,
but in your mercy hear and answer me.

Amen.​

Alan

 

[Ubenedictus]

And if these documents are not sufficient??? Then what. One needs to look at the theological basis for the teaching…now we are back to the theologians…
See I’ve read the Catechism on the subject as well as some other “lightweight” items. they only confuse me more and I prefer to put my energy into learning more about things that have real bearing on my walk…I don’t see the Immaculate conception as effecting my faith.

All I am saying is that not everyone is a brilliant Scholar. The vast majority of us are happy to get the basics down. The rest we trust the Church on.

Peace
James

The IC does help me u can imagine someone had grace at birth and kept it, it encourages me. I know that with santifying grace i’m more than just human, i’m a branch in the vine sharing from that sap( the holy spirit), i could go on. Most times the church documents are sufficient but other times u are correct 'we just have to trust the church. Your post really makes sense.
Benedicimus.
Ubenedictus

 

[AlanFromWichita]

The IC does help me u can imagine someone had grace at birth and kept it, it encourages me. I know that with santifying grace i’m more than just human, i’m a branch in the vine sharing from that sap( the holy spirit), i could go on. Most times the church documents are sufficient but other times u are correct 'we just have to trust the church. Your post really makes sense.
Benedicimus.
Ubenedictus

I like that. Holy Spirit as sap in the vine of life.

One metaphor like that, IMO, can do more good than many moons worth of intense book study.

Alan

 

[Ubenedictus]

It is IMO too bad that the RCC tends to be thought of as a place where you are forced to obey a list of rules so exhaustive that there are enough rules to correctly cover any situation we’ll ever encounter, and in detail.
FUNNY,
Plus we are told we have free will, but depending how we exercise it we will be glorified eternally or punished eternally – how is that free will? It is in the same sense as I have free will not to show my hands if a SWAT team surrounds me and yells, “put your hands out to your sides!” I can choose whether to obey or not. IMO this is diametrically opposed to free will and demonstrates what happens when dualistic-only thinking is in play.
THE COMMANDMENT (RULES) DONOT LIMIT YOUR FREEWILL IT SIMPLY GIVE 2 ALTERNATIVES ONE IS RIGHT THE OTHER IS WRONG, SO CHOOSE Use UR FREEWILL.

God does not love us if we change.
God loves us so we can change.
YEAH
Membership includes those with sicknesses of all sorts.
YEA
One would think that if the Church were to form us into the people God wishes us to be, we would experience change at the hand and guidance of the Church. But the problem is we do focus on rules and dogma, and IMO have a poor track record of helping people make the changes we say are needed to aspire to to goal of perfection that was set by Jesus. We are great at persuading people to conform to our requirements on external behavior, but no matter how much we preach about internals, with no guidance on how to get there it might as well be wishful thinking because very few of us become as saints, when in fact all of us are. Does that make sense?
HaVE A POINT, I DON’T SUPPORT THE USE OF ‘WE’
That said, if you know where to look the RCC has abundant resources for helping us change for the better in order to receive peace, joy, and other gifts from God. It’s just that only a tiny minority of us actually knows these resources exist so they don’t know to even go look. We seem to think that if we preach about becoming more loving, patient, and kind, and conform to externals – like exactly how we hold our head at any given time – that we actually give the false impression that we are doing what we can to meet God when in fact, we are only behaving as lab rats and failing to become fully human because we are given a model of submission and conditioning as a Good Thing when in fact when this mindset is essentially what Jesus came to save us from.
CHRIST IS OUR ‘MODEL OF SUBMISSION’, AND ITS A GOOD THING.
Times change, but people stay the same unless we collectively do something about it. We are not without resources to bring about massive spiritual renewal, if we only had the will, as a Church, to accomplish that, and the honesty to see that what we are doing now is not going to get it done.
YEAH
There is a precept of the Church that we must go to Mass every Sunday. But there is no precept that we purge even a speck of sawdust from our eye, because we don’t know how to measure and judge and compare ourselves to each other to the extent we can systematically determine who has the Best Conduct. The spiritual journey is reduced to cheap behavior contests.
I DON’T SEE THESAME THING HERE.

That’s what I mean about externals. We are very particular about whether we appear to be in conformance with some version of code of conduct. We had that before Jesus came, though, so IMO conforming to these behaviors does not distinguish us from those who are still waiting for Jesus.
NOW IT CONFORMING TO JESUS.
Accepting Jesus and following His commands is neither prevented nor implied by somebody who appears perfect and follows every rule as far as anybody can tell – including ourselves.
Think “fisher of men.” If we find a fish and give it a bite of something it ALREADY likes to eat, we can entice it to come closer to us. If you try to explain to the fish why it wants to come have dinner, without bait it already understands this is not going to be a compelling explanation. Give me a little love now; promises of great love – to be achieved sometime later and only after my intellectual disagreements with you are cleared up – are not anywhere near as effective.
GOOD POINT
Alan

It seems you dont like the idea of modeling, submission or rules, Christ didnt stop the rules, modeling or submission he made himself the object and the church helps us see this our model in the true light unclouded by our preference,(remember tha what has an advantage may also have disadvantages and the presence of disadvantages does not make it a wrong idea). I guess the topic is long past i wanted to give my opinion. (my interpretation of your post may be wrong, do well to correct me.
Ubenedictus

 

[Ubenedictus]

It is IMO too bad that the RCC tends to be thought of as a place where you are forced to obey a list of rules so exhaustive that there are enough rules to correctly cover any situation we’ll ever encounter, and in detail.
FUNNY,
Plus we are told we have free will, but depending how we exercise it we will be glorified eternally or punished eternally – how is that free will? It is in the same sense as I have free will not to show my hands if a SWAT team surrounds me and yells, “put your hands out to your sides!” I can choose whether to obey or not. IMO this is diametrically opposed to free will and demonstrates what happens when dualistic-only thinking is in play.
THE COMMANDMENT (RULES) DONOT LIMIT YOUR FREEWILL IT SIMPLY GIVE 2 ALTERNATIVES ONE IS RIGHT THE OTHER IS WRONG, SO CHOOSE Use UR FREEWILL.
Does that make sense?
HaVE A POINT, I DON’T SUPPORT THE USE OF ‘WE’
That said, if you know where to look the RCC has abundant resources for helping us change for the better in order to receive peace, joy, and other gifts from God. It’s just that only a tiny minority of us actually knows these resources exist so they don’t know to even go look. We seem to think that if we preach about becoming more loving, patient, and kind, and conform to externals – like exactly how we hold our head at any given time – that we actually give the false impression that we are doing what we can to meet God when in fact, we are only behaving as lab rats and failing to become fully human because we are given a model of submission and conditioning as a Good Thing when in fact when this mindset is essentially what Jesus came to save us from.
CHRIST IS OUR ‘MODEL OF SUBMISSION’, AND ITS A GOOD THING.
Times change, but people stay the same unless we collectively do something about it. We are not without resources to bring about massive spiritual renewal, if we only had the will, as a Church, to accomplish that, and the honesty to see that what we are doing now is not going to get it done.
YEAH
There is a precept of the Church that we must go to Mass every Sunday. But there is no precept that we purge even a speck of sawdust from our eye, because we don’t know how to measure and judge and compare ourselves to each other to the extent we can systematically determine who has the Best Conduct. The spiritual journey is reduced to cheap behavior contests.
I DON’T SEE THESAME THING HERE.

That’s what I mean about externals. We are very particular about whether we appear to be in conformance with some version of code of conduct. We had that before Jesus came, though, so IMO conforming to these behaviors does not distinguish us from those who are still waiting for Jesus.
NOW IT CONFORMING TO JESUS.
Accepting Jesus and following His commands is neither prevented nor implied by somebody who appears perfect and follows every rule as far as anybody can tell – including ourselves.
Think “fisher of men.” If we find a fish and give it a bite of something it ALREADY likes to eat, we can entice it to come closer to us. If you try to explain to the fish why it wants to come have dinner, without bait it already understands this is not going to be a compelling explanation. Give me a little love now; promises of great love – to be achieved sometime later and only after my intellectual disagreements with you are cleared up – are not anywhere near as effective.
GOOD POINT
Alan

It seems you dont like the idea of modeling, submission or rules, Christ didnt stop the rules, modeling or submission he made himself the object and the church helps us see this our model in the true light unclouded by our preference,(remember tha what has an advantage may also have disadvantages and the presence of disadvantages does not make it a wrong idea). I guess the topic is long past i wanted to give my opinion. (my interpretation of your post may be wrong, do well to correct me.
Ubenedictus

 

[Ubenedictus]

As an engineer, I don’t need to know absolute truth to design products that work. I just have to know the truth closely enough to develop a model in which I can describe a situation and a desired goal, and a mechanism of physical and/or intellectual property that makes things that meet the specifications.

As an electrical engineer, everything I know is ultimately based on three axioms. 1) the existence of electrical charge, 2) the formula of how one charge influences another, and 3) superposition – all effects of attraction/repulsion of charges add up in a linear fashion.

That’s it. I don’t care if those are absolute truths or not. To be an electrician I don’t need to know any of the three axioms I stated above. I can base pretty much anything I’ll ever come across in a lab on Ohm’s law, or maybe not even that far, but housing codes. I don’t have to know how it works in order to be able to construct a working system using parts that someone else did the engineering and design on. If we didn’t do this, we would make no more progress as a group than as individuals, throughout history.

Now, electricians say electrical current runs from negative to positive. Engineers say it runs from positive to negative. It makes a HUGE difference if you get it right or not. But they work together in such a way they never actually have to agree on that definition to get their jobs done; it is all taken into account.

Again, until Einstein, Newtonian physics were the Bible of physics. For example, conservation of mass and conservation of energy are ABSOLUTES and never can one exchange one for the other. And the world was happy. So along comes Einstein, son of Adam, and asks himself questions like, “what would it be like to take a ride on a light beam?” and he came up with stuff that was so extremely wacky it totally blew Newtonian physics out of the water, when dealing with things that were very heavy and/or going very fast. So if we want to analyze a TV tube, or how light bends around objects due to gravity (actually the light doesn’t bend; the space the light travels in bends around heavy objects), or build a particle accelerator, we had better take Einstein’s theories into account or we won’t even approach the problem right, much less solve it.

Einstein wrote the formulas to explain how much energy you’d get per unit of mass converted into energy, and vice versa. That is his famous equation E = MC^2 that show us that if we take the speed of light squared, and multiply it by the mass, we get the energy released when they mass is turned into energy. Newtonian-only physicists considered it heresy to even suggest such a thing.

So what did this discovery get us? First thing it got us was the atomic bomb.

But we still use Newtonian physics in deriving train schedules. If the trains were going 10,000 miles per second we’d take relativity into account, but we don’t have to. So we still build houses and roads without training everybody in relativity. We not only don’t have to know relativity, we can believe it is false – in a world where i’ll never do anything that requires my knowing the truth, we all got along fine until …

Quantum physics. OMG. This is the most bizarre yet. Turns out when things are very, very tiny they don’t act anywhere near like what Newtonian physics would predict, although many of the Newtonian formulas are still useful.

Quantum physics is intimately responsible for the advances in electronic equipment. Without it we wouldn’t even have iPhones, and maybe not even laptop computers.

But guess what. We still use Newtonian physics for train schedules and for designing bridges and skyscrapers. And it’s OK if they tell me quantum physics doesn’t exist. As long as there isn’t a need to know, there isn’t a need to know.

Then there was … you guessed … another one … string theory!! I have many feelings about string theory, but anyway that’s the current Big Thing in physics, which IMO is interesting and useful, but overrated. It is not the end all; string theory never gets down to the level of Absolute Truth. MAYBE CHRISTIANITY IS AN EXCEPTION TO THESE EXAmPLES. FoR A XTIAN TO THROW AWAY THE ABSOLUTE TrUth MAY BECOME A DISASTER.

Agreed. This could explain my biggest issue in this discussion, that I don’t believe that you have to believe in the 100% accuracy of comprehensive set of abstract thoughts and rules, in order to live a good, abundant life, NOR to become closer to God except in the consequences of believing those things, not the things themselves. I DONT UNDERSTAND

 

[AlanFromWichita]

It seems you dont like the idea of modeling, submission or rules, Christ didnt stop the rules, modeling or submission he made himself the object and the church helps us see this our model in the true light unclouded by our preference,(remember tha what has an advantage may also have disadvantages and the presence of disadvantages does not make it a wrong idea). I guess the topic is long past i wanted to give my opinion. (my interpretation of your post may be wrong, do well to correct me.
Ubenedictus

No, really, afa i’m concerned the topic is still interesting.

To the paragraph you labeled “do not understand” all i’m saying is I don’t need to know every truth in the universe to get my kids to school, have a good life, learn to love and share and serve, without knowing the technical term for a way a priest hold his hands during the Our Father, for example. I could have lived my life without ever knowing that but now that I do, Orans position is a part of my vocabulary. is that easier? i’ve never really tried to say these things before so it feels a little awkward.

oh yeah, as an engineer, i don’t need to know how an object would be have at 400 degrees fahrenheit, if it is never going to be out of an air conditioned office. All i have to know is how the object behaves when not subjected to extremes, closely enough to get my job done. So like it is impossible to design a robot that puts the part down in exactly the right absolute position. it is silly to even try, but that’s what we do in religion. we take formulas that are designed for enough people that Christians could come to a “critical mass” without having to take into account the extreme cases. What you can’t do, is say that since my formula works at room temperature then I’m sure it works the same way at 400 degrees. in industry, the outliers are thrown away. society throws away deviants, such as myself… deviants from normal behavior otherwise called “psychosis” in humanity, the outliers are the ones who will watch out for you when you step over the line and get into uncharted territory.

Alan

 

[Ubenedictus]

Not wishing to get too deeply into the argument of how much is “commentary” I feel the need to comment on the above.

Perhaps every “morally sane person” could recite the Golden Rule…But that is something different than every morally sane person knowing it. That is - embracing it and putting it into practice.

Jesus himself said that He did not come to call the righteous, but to call sinners. So it seems that His mission was to those who did not, know and embrace and act on, the Golden Rule.
Further, Jesus summed up all of the Law and Prophets in two commandments. Love of God and Love of neighbor. So we could reduce the core of our faith even down to one word…Agape…Love…Which our dear St John says IS God (1 John 4:8)

That said, PR, I agree that “all the rest is commentary” sounds a bit too dismissive. Perhaps it is better to say that all the rest “builds on” this fundamental Truth as revealed by our Lord and King.

Peace
James

truly the command of lovf is the summary of the law and d prophet as the seed is the summary of the tree but i think the core of the faith is not a teaching but a person: Jesus. On him we should ‘build’.( we may be saying the same thing).
Ubenedictus

 

[Ubenedictus]

Because no amount of studying the teachings is going to bring you to God. You can memorize every document the Church has ever produced, and that’s not going to make you holy. We’ve established that you can do this and still be nothing. So how do you use your mind in such a way that God regards your effort as other than “nothing?”
Alan

I dont think there is something wrong with studying and memorising churbh teaching. And it will certianly draw u to God and make u holy unless you donot put what u have studied and memorized into practice.
Ubenedictus

 

[Ubenedictus]

You learn about your spouse by sharing time, not by reading hundreds of books and manuals about How To Love Your Spouse. The early Christians had none of this and were illiterate, and yet they were strong enough as Catholics that they got the message handed down and across to others by their mere demeanor.
Alan

the ealy xtian did have christ message, they were taught the new testament is proof of that. They didn’t have ‘giant books’ but they had the message.
Are u equating the churchs teach to reading manual? Is the bible also a manual? If they are then reading manual are very important. I really need to read manuals and see others to know how to u some machine, learning ( in whatever form) whether manuals or personally is important. What makes it more important in this case is that these “manual” prevent us from making a god after our image and likeness. Some have a good relationship (learning time) with God and still fashion him into their image, the “manual” show us God as he is so it easier to throw our gods thru the window.
Ubenedictus

 

[Ubenedictus]

OK, I guess I’ve held back long enough. You want to know what you can do with your mind that is constructive? More constructive than spending untold hours studying ever being refined details of a complex behavior code?

Now this is the first time I’ve talked about this publicly. I had a vision in 2001, during the week of June11, whereby I perceived the oneness between animate and inanimate objects. Father Sherlock came to visit me there (I was locked in a psychiatric ward) and I told him of this vision. (I had been working long hours on the Synod, and Fr. Sherlock was in charge of it so we got pretty close.) Father enjoined me from speaking of it, and I was released from it yesterday so now I can talk about it.

A few days prior, June 8, I actually catlyzed a “miracle” by which a tongue tied woman was suddenly released and the staff was dumbfounded because after two minutes with me, she was talking English instead of the gibberish noise she’d been making for over a week. When they threw me in the ward, I heard her from the opposite end of the hall and went to talk to her. I saw exactly what happened, but to others it seemed a “miracle.”

Since then I have come up with scientific explanations as to why statues “come to life” when we kneel before them and pray. I have published these on these forums, and received an enthusiastic response.

About 20 years ago I went to a charismatic convention, my first. The bishop was there and said Mass at the end. I went up with a crowd near the stage and the woman on stage signaled to my wife to bring me, specifically, to the front. OMG. They wanted me to fall down and I felt silly. So this woman is going along, saying a few words and then praying in tongues, and then the person falls, slain in the spirit. This went on for maybe an hour, except for when she got to me. She came over to me and took three steps back, and said, “woah. I’ve never seen anything like this before. I don’t know what it is. I’ve been doing this for 32 years and I’ve never witnessed anything like this.”

Of course, all this made me feel like I had better come up with something pretty good for the Lord. You see, I take the Bible personally. I put myself in the place of its characters to try to feel what they felt, beyond just the words. Here is one of the things that has totally bothered me now for over 20 years, and I had been pondering it for nearly a year before that charismatic convention.

John 14:12
Amen, amen, I say to you, whoever believes in me will do the works that I do, and will do greater ones than these, because I am going to the Father.

So do you want something to do with your mind that actually brings you closer to God? Challenge yourself to live up to this claim of Jesus. How do you know if you believe in Jesus? Well, according to this, for one thing, you had better be doing greater works than Jesus did.

So I applied my engineering skills to the problem, designing memes and spiritual exercises to p(name removed by moderator)oint specific areas of improvement as well as using all the information I received from numerous spiritual directors. I identified what I had to work with, what specific spiritual goal I want to achieve, and designed memes based on all I knew, that eventually resulted in total healing of my mind and a sense of overwhelming peace freedom, and joy.

I challenged myself to learn to radically obey Jesus in an absolute way. He says “love your enemies,” so I say “how can I learn to love Satan, he’s an enemy, right?”

He says “do not judge” and I have only found a handful of human beings ever that are willing to honestly delve into how to radically obey Him.

Figure out how it is the Jesus could save Mary before He was born, by an act He performed upon his death? Not just to say, “Oh the Lord works in mysterious ways” but to actually build a working intellectual model by which I can not only explain that, but conclude many many things from the same logic that it takes to figure this out. Want a small sample? Well, it turns out the what you are going to reply to my post here is actually influencing what I write right now. I have no idea why or how, just that it is. The Holy Spirit guides us all who are open enough for it, using resources we don’t have available … like operating in a system where time is negotiable or even avoidable.

DO U REMEMBER I ASKED IF U ARD A CHARISMATIC. I didnt get an answer. I think i understand mind+heart working with the holy spirit. That’s all i understand( i find it hard to understand all u post).
Ubenedictus