Is it infallibly true that some drugs should be illegal?

[TimeEntrance]

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesuit_spirituality

Ignatian spirituality sometimes called Jesuit spirituality, is a Catholic spirituality which both lay and religious people have traditionally found helpful. Founded on the experiences of a 16th century saint, struggling to live a good life, it is sometimes referred to as the spirituality for decision makers.

Self-awareness: Ignatius recommends the twice-daily examen (examination). This is a guided method of prayerfully reviewing the events of the day, to awaken one’s inner sensitivity to one’s own actions, desires, and spiritual state, through each moment reviewed. The goals are to see where God is challenging the person to change and to growth, where God is calling the person to deeper reflection (especially apt when discerning if one has a Jesuit vocation in life), to where sinful or imperfect attitudes or blind spots are found. The general examen, often at the end of the day, is, as the name implies, a general review. The particular examen, often in the middle of the day, focuses on a particular fault—identified by the person—to be worked upon in the course of some days or weeks.

 

[CopticChristian]

Your rhetoric reminds me of anti-Catholic rhetoric about the Catholic Church and it’s “vast wealth.” Just look at Vatican City they say. The Pope used to carried in a chair by men like a secular king. And we know about all the gold and silver used in churches throughout the Americas that often were produced by the slave labor of Amerindians and blacks.

You understand little to nothing about AA - and that’s saying something because I’ve not been involved in it for much time and even I know little about it.

AA, NA, and CA meetings are self supporting through the voluntary contribution of the addicts desiring to arrest their addictions or maintain the arrest of their addictions. And all are welcome even if they don’t have a penny to toss in the collection basket. If anything it is those that have one or multiple years of sobriety that contribute most the money to the meetings . Taking it upon themselves to keep the meetings financed so new comers have a meeting and place to go.

I stayed a very short time in the Catholic community down in Florida developed over in Italy by Sister Elvera (considered a living saint I believe), now spread to a few parts of the world. A very tough place to live in. They say they are a “school of life,” and that “community can’t be told but just experienced.” Both are true. And it is very cult-like. Think of it as AA on steroids. There are many young men - I knew one of them - that will write this nun living in Italy and ask her if they should date or marry some woman they’ve met and fallen for. If she says no then they will end their relationship with the woman. If she gives her approval they’ll continue the relationship and maybe even marry her.

The members there - many who are impressive people I have to tell you - speak about community the way people in AA speak about AA. And you are expected to learn to put total trust in what they term the “Community.”

Whatever you like they will take from you. Because suffering and sacrifice are promoted. They learned I liked to discuss Catholic theology, so, others were forbidden to discuss Catholic theology or teachings with me.

Also, for at least 3 years or so (they ask Americans to commit to at least 3 years - but in Europe it’s usually 5 or more), you are not allowed to speak to female visitors. Those with the most time in Community run Community and are expected to set an example and help lead those new to community down the right path. And the punishments can be harsh. Digging huge ditches for day, cutting the lawn with scissors, shunning, eating, sleeping, at bathing separate from everyone else. One of my friends had to sleep in the trailer at night that was infested with cockroaches as punishment (along with bathing in the sink in the trailer, community shunning, and eating separately). His punishment was for leaving Community and then coming back. They will accept you back in but you will have to be willing to endure a punishment - and for psychological effect they never tell you when your punishment will end. Could be a few days or or or two months.

We prayed the rosary 3 times a day and often on our knees on a stone floor. Sports was mandatory for males. Females have a separate community.

And this community now has priests and nuns. I admire any priest or nun or lay person spending years let alone their life in that Community because it is demanding and will strip away whatever pride and will to control you have. And while that community has not stopped even some of their long term members from relapsing once they “graduated” (for lack of a better term) and left Community, it certainly has turned some of it’s members into admirable, morally strong, and very disciplined people.

But even Community would not advise a drug addict to return back to drugs. Actually, they recommend you never return to the city you used in again. This I gathered - is due to their experience with their members that returned back to their city. Just like I was told in Italy Sister Elvera used to allow the Italian alcoholics and addicts to drink a glass of wine at dinner and allowed smoking of cigarettes. But from whatever some (not all) of the alcoholics and addicts did, Sister and the rest of the nuns stopped allowing both of those.

AA is built up in experiences too. And like many members in Community stay extra years in Community to voluntarily “give back” by helping the new people to Community learn the path to salvation from their addictions, so too, the “Old Timers,” in AA feel they need to give back to AA by helping the new comers.

Time,

You have a positive experience with the 12 step religion. Some do not. You are an empiricist and I am an empericist/rationalist and view things differently. Nothing I say can change your experience or perception. Only you can change your perception.

 

[CopticChristian]

No you don’t because I not only have gone to many meetings but have a number of associates in AA, NA, and CA. And I know as fact your view symmetrically follows the Protestant accusation about the Hail Mary Prayer, The Rosary, and Catholic worshiping of Mary.

The idea of grace can be inferred from the 12 Steps and knowing that Protestants mainly developed the 12 Steps. Just like it can be inferred from the 12 Steps that is was not atheists that developed AA.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twelve-step_program

I’m told the 12 Steps are similar to the Jesuit Spiritual Exercises. Are the Jesuits evil? I mean… if a Catholic or Jesuit had a spiritual awakening why the need for daily examinations (or taking of personal inventory as AA people say)?

I think one can infer from those things above that I placed in bold that at base AA founders taught alcoholics to surrender to the grace of God rather than try and fight by use of their own will and no need of God. Intoxicating to human pride I’ll admit; We don’t need God, our choice and mental gymnastics are sufficient.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spiritual_Exercises_of_Ignatius_of_Loyola

Time,

So you are unable to explain how the grace of God is taught in the 12 step religion.

 

[CopticChristian]

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesuit_spirituality

Time,

I think that you should spend more time with The Church of the Living God, the source of Grace and spirituality and Ignatius…if it is all you need why do you need to go to the religion of AA…do they have Sacramental grace…

Not all Protestants agree that AA is acceptable…because Jesus is absent…and if Jesus is absent, it is another gospel…see here.

psychoheresy-aware.org/12steps1.html

psychoheresy-aware.org/12steps2.html

Since you have such knowledge…compare and contrast the grace available in the 12 step religion with what is taught by our Church seen here…and since Christ is not the center of the AA religion explain how that differs from what we as Catholics believe…

II. GRACE

1996 Our justification comes from the grace of God. Grace is favor, the free and undeserved help that God gives us to respond to his call to become children of God, adoptive sons, partakers of the divine nature and of eternal life.46

1997 Grace is a participation in the life of God. It introduces us into the intimacy of Trinitarian life: by Baptism the Christian participates in the grace of Christ, the Head of his Body. As an “adopted son” he can henceforth call God “Father,” in union with the only Son. He receives the life of the Spirit who breathes charity into him and who forms the Church.

1998 This vocation to eternal life is supernatural. It depends entirely on God’s gratuitous initiative, for he alone can reveal and give himself. It surpasses the power of human intellect and will, as that of every other creature.47

1999 **The grace of Christ **is the gratuitous gift that God makes to us of his own life, infused by the Holy Spirit into our soul to heal it of sin and to sanctify it. It is the sanctifying or deifying grace received in Baptism. It is in us the source of the work of sanctification:48

Therefore if any one is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has passed away, behold, the new has come. All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself.49
2000 Sanctifying grace is an habitual gift, a stable and supernatural disposition that perfects the soul itself to enable it to live with God, to act by his love. Habitual grace, the permanent disposition to live and act in keeping with God’s call, is distinguished from actual graces which refer to God’s interventions, whether at the beginning of conversion or in the course of the work of sanctification.

2001 The preparation of man for the reception of grace is already a work of grace. This latter is needed to arouse and sustain our collaboration in justification through faith, and in sanctification through charity. God brings to completion in us what he has begun, "since he who completes his work by cooperating with our will began by working so that we might will it:"50

Indeed we also work, but we are only collaborating with God who works, for his mercy has gone before us. It has gone before us so that we may be healed, and follows us so that once healed, we may be given life; it goes before us so that we may be called, and follows us so that we may be glorified; it goes before us so that we may live devoutly, and follows us so that we may always live with God: for without him we can do nothing.51
2002 God’s free initiative demands man’s free response, for God has created man in his image by conferring on him, along with freedom, the power to know him and love him. The soul only enters freely into the communion of love. God immediately touches and directly moves the heart of man. He has placed in man a longing for truth and goodness that only he can satisfy. The promises of “eternal life” respond, beyond all hope, to this desire:

If at the end of your very good works . . ., you rested on the seventh day, it was to foretell by the voice of your book that at the end of our works, which are indeed “very good” since you have given them to us, we shall also rest in you on the sabbath of eternal life.52
2003 Grace is first and foremost the gift of the Spirit who justifies and sanctifies us. But grace also includes the gifts that the Spirit grants us to associate us with his work, to enable us to collaborate in the salvation of others and in the growth of the Body of Christ, the Church. There are **sacramental graces, **gifts proper to the different sacraments. There are furthermore **special graces, **also called charisms after the Greek term used by St. Paul and meaning “favor,” “gratuitous gift,” "benefit."53 Whatever their character - sometimes it is extraordinary, such as the gift of miracles or of tongues - charisms are oriented toward sanctifying grace and are intended for the common good of the Church. They are at the service of charity which builds up the Church.54

2004 Among the special graces ought to be mentioned the graces of state that accompany the exercise of the responsibilities of the Christian life and of the ministries within the Church:

Having gifts that differ according to the grace given to us, let us use them: if prophecy, in proportion to our faith; if service, in our serving; he who teaches, in his teaching; he who exhorts, in his exhortation; he who contributes, in liberality; he who gives aid, with zeal; he who does acts of mercy, with cheerfulness.55

Please teach me…

 

[CopticChristian]

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesuit_spirituality

continued…please teach me about grace and AA

2005 Since it belongs to the supernatural order,** grace escapes our experience and cannot be known except by faith. **We cannot therefore rely on our feelings or our works to conclude that we are justified and saved.56 However, according to the Lord’s words "Thus you will know them by their fruits"57 - reflection on God’s blessings in our life and in the lives of the saints offers us a guarantee that grace is at work in us and spurs us on to an ever greater faith and an attitude of trustful poverty.

A pleasing illustration of this attitude is found in the reply of St. Joan of Arc to a question posed as a trap by her ecclesiastical judges: "Asked if she knew that she was in God’s grace, she replied: ‘If I am not, may it please God to put me in it; if I am, may it please God to keep me there.’"58