Lots of anger on this forum

[JReducation]

A clarification has to be made here, but I shall make it brief, because it’s off topic. Hopefully, no one is saying that the Catholic Church has never taught that there is no truth outside the Church. In fact that would be totally wrong. How would we explain Baptism among Protestants, faith in scripture among Protestants, Jews, and Orthodox, faith in the Commandments, moral values among people of other faiths, the life of prayer among other people and many other expressions of faith and truth?

To say such a thing, would be dishonest and unfair. The Catholic Church teaches that the fullness of truth is found within the Catholic Church, but that parts of the Catholic truth can be found in other ecclesial communities. The Church goes as far as saying that the Spirit of Christ can use other faith communities as a means of salvation for those who belong to them, if they are faithful to those truths that they have in their belief system. God’s power to save is infinite and he can use whatever element of truth can be found in another faith.

That being said, it is not the same having part of the truth and having all of the truth. Therefore, it is the hope of the Catholic Church that someday all people will be united as one and share in the fullness of truth.

JR

 

[marietta]

CentralFLJames:

Yes, I am “a creative and perhaps artistic person” but I do not enjoy the freedoms of individual expressive power. These freedoms evidently are not available to me in any venue. I do “consider that God gave [me] all that” but it has all been nothing but an unendurable burden for five decades. So, yeah, I’m angry. Don’t know whether to be angry at God or just figure that this whole life business is a crapshoot and I’m off the table.

I hear what you’re saying about diversity and harmony and all that good stuff. Yet it is no more inviting to me now than it was the many months ago when I started reading posts here. I would just once love to hear one of you say that God inspired a Protestant or a Jew to lead his or her people to unity and harmony. You seem so unwilling to share God with others unless they subscribe to your beliefs.

[Oh, I see JReducation has weighed in on this topic. Without anger - bravo!]

Try to understand that everyone does not have a balanced, happy life, and it is not due to a lack of God in their everyday existence. Some of us wrestle with Him and divorce Him and cuss Him out and take Him back, just as if he were a wayward spouse. For me the journey through this life is strictly steerage class. I am doing the best I can with what I have, including the drive to question, instilled personally by God Himself.

You may put your rainbows away now.

marietta

marietta

 

[Jeanette_L]

CentralFLJames:

Yes, I am “a creative and perhaps artistic person” but I do not enjoy the freedoms of individual expressive power. These freedoms evidently are not available to me in any venue. I do “consider that God gave [me] all that” but it has all been nothing but an unendurable burden for five decades. So, yeah, I’m angry. Don’t know whether to be angry at God or just figure that this whole life business is a crapshoot and I’m off the table.

I hear what you’re saying about diversity and harmony and all that good stuff. Yet it is no more inviting to me now than it was the many months ago when I started reading posts here. I would just once love to hear one of you say that God inspired a Protestant or a Jew to lead his or her people to unity and harmony. You seem so unwilling to share God with others unless they subscribe to your beliefs.

[Oh, I see JReducation has weighed in on this topic. Without anger - bravo!]

Try to understand that everyone does not have a balanced, happy life, and it is not due to a lack of God in their everyday existence. Some of us wrestle with Him and divorce Him and cuss Him out and take Him back, just as if he were a wayward spouse. For me the journey through this life is strictly steerage class. I am doing the best I can with what I have, including the drive to question, instilled personally by God Himself.

You may put your rainbows away now.

marietta

marietta

I don’t normally just jump into these discussions, at least lately anyway, but I have to say something to you: there is nothing wrong with being angry with God, or with trying to figure the whole thing out when you are angry. Most of us spend half of our existences wrestling with the issues of life, the pains and sorrows, disappointments, the obvious cruelties that come our way, and wondering where is God while all this is going on.

You are not outside of the loop in this, but right along side us all. The truth of the matter is, you are honest enough to admit it. And angry when others don’t seem to be as honest about these things as you. But, your journey is the only one you should be wrestling with, not what you are seeing or think you are perceiving in others in their own journeys. That is just non productive and a drain on your energy.

If you are going to be angry with God, be angry with Him. Have it out with Him. He will at least respect that and deal with you accordingly.

Just my hunch anyway. Cause I’ve been there.

Don’t give up the fight!

 

[CentralFLJames]

I would just once love to hear one of you say that God inspired a Protestant or a Jew to lead his or her people to unity and harmony. You seem so unwilling to share God with others unless they subscribe to your beliefs.
…

Try to understand that everyone does not have a balanced, happy life, and it is not due to a lack of God in their everyday existence. Some of us wrestle with Him and divorce Him and cuss Him out and take Him back, just as if he were a wayward spouse. For me the journey through this life is strictly steerage class. I am doing the best I can with what I have, including the drive to question, instilled personally by God Himself.

You may put your rainbows away now.

marietta
marietta

An apologetic forum is not really the best way at all to get the essence of the Catholic experience. Apologists are often battle hardened individuals who have had to defend the faith against committed and unrelenting anti-Catholics who come in under the pretense of inquiry but with a hidden agenda to attack, mock and cross-convert others outside the faith who are genuinely seeking answers here. So, sometimes in these forums you will see “an edge” to certain responses that are intended to cut to the chase of the matter quickly - admittedly not always with perfect charity since there is a real war going on here.

I don’t imagine too many Catholics would disagree that there are many well intentioned Protestant and Jewish leaders out there. But ironically, given the internal infighting among Protestants its hard to even point to a single person for accolades without offending another group. For example I used to think Billy Graham was a good man who was making significant positive impacts. But when I tried to make a positive statement about that in a different forum I was jumped on by evangelicals and fundamentalists who saw him as in bed with “Satan” for his ecumenical outreach with the Catholic Church. There is a LOT of animosity among Protestants themselves that needs harmonizing before Catholics can make some meaningful progress with Protestants. We Catholics see a lot of good Protestants out there who are trapped into false theologies that are so addictive that it will take an act of God to get them the truth (for example the popular Protestant OSAS doctrine where one can “sin and sin boldly because they are saved”).

I am under no false pretenses that there will be unification at all since that implies bringing two different beliefs together with some sort of compromise. That is not an option for Catholics - we do not compromise the truth for the sake of gaining more people in the pews. That alone should tell you that we are authentic about what we belief in since the easier thing to do would be to open the doors and say “anything goes boys - come on in and pass the collection basket”. And this is precisely what we see in the 32,000 or so (depending on how one counts them) seperate new Protestants sects - with new ones popping up each week. Now that is what really makes Catholics angry - since that scandal is really giving Christians a lot of bad press.

James

 

[rpp]

The acceptance of a supreme being who is all knowing, all powerful, perfectly rational is the first assent that man makes to the absolute.

Once this assent is made, then one has already comitted himself to belief in the absolute and unsailable truth, for God is absolute and unsailable.

The only way to believe that there is not absolute and unsailable truth would be to deny the very existence of God.

But if we did that, then mathematics would confront us with absolute and unsailable truths such as the Descartes plane, Euclid’s postulates which have no proof, Pythagoras’ theorem, which can only be proven by an absolute axion that is unprovable.

If we deny that mathematics has absolute and unsailable truths, then we deny quantitative thinking. To deny quantitative thinking, would annul rational thought.

Rational thought is the joint venture of the quantitative and the qualitative.

If we deny the existence of rational thought, then we have no way of proving our own existence.

Thus we achieve perfect nihilism and we are back in the world of absolutes, for nihilism is absolute.

JR

This is an example of why people get infurtiated on this forum. This poster seems utterly unable to remain on topic.

First he is talking about the education nuns, now he is talking about the existence of God.

JR, Either stay on topic, or do not post on this thread.

This thread is about anger and bad behavior on this forum. Example of this are posting off topic and hijacking threads.

 

[marietta]

rpp:

At least JReducation was able to get a rise out of you. So we’re back on topic. Everybody happy being angry? Great.

marietta

 

[rpp]

rpp:

At least JReducation was able to get a rise out of you. So we’re back on topic. Everybody happy being angry? Great.

marietta

This is another example of why people get frustrated on this forum. Other people claiming they can read their minds. And then projecting their own feelings onto another person’s post.

Thank you for this demonstration.

Chiding someone to remain on topic is not getting angry. Accusing someone of being angry when they are simply asking a person to abide by forum rules is not charitable.

 

[JReducation]

This is an example of why people get infurtiated on this forum. This poster seems utterly unable to remain on topic.

First he is talking about the education nuns, now he is talking about the existence of God.

JR, Either stay on topic, or do not post on this thread.

This thread is about anger and bad behavior on this forum. Example of this are posting off topic and hijacking threads.

I was responding to Marietta’s comment. Calm down.

JR

 

[rpp]

This thread has been hijacked and is hopelessly off topic.

It has degenerated into baiting posts, exactly the opposite of what the OP wanted

 

[Salonika]

An apologetic forum is not really the best way at all to get the essence of the Catholic experience. Apologists are often battle hardened individuals who have had to defend the faith against committed and unrelenting anti-Catholics who come in under the pretense of inquiry but with a hidden agenda to attack, mock and cross-convert others outside the faith who are genuinely seeking answers here. So, sometimes in these forums you will see “an edge” to certain responses that are intended to cut to the chase of the matter quickly - admittedly not always with perfect charity since there is a real war going on here.

James

And what do you think could be the result when the poster who is genuinely seeking to understand the Catholic faith or get to the essence of the Catholic experience gets a reply with such an edge?

Do you think that at worst it might turn them towards being the type of poster that they are being accused of being or at least deciding if that is the response they won’t pursue their enquiries.

An no, I am not one who has “come in under the pretense of inquiry but with a hidden agenda to attack, mock and cross-convert others outside the faith who are genuinely seeking answers here.”

 

[rinnie]

I really dont think its alot of anger, at least i hope not. I think its just sometimes the words we use, or the way we say things. I think if we said the same thing in person sometimes (the tone of our voice) things would go down much better. Also when people talk about someones religion thats like talking about their kids. God is their heart and soul. But hopefully we all go away a better person, and learn how to be more respectful of others if nothing else. I know i sure have. I know i may have said something and then someones gets mad at me, and instead of fighting i go back and say please read it again i didnt either say that or mean it that way. 99% of the time they came back and apologized. I still think all in all we are trying to help eachother. Also the more you get on these forums, the more you can tell the people who are just trying to cause trouble,and then you just ignore them too. Some threads are just to cause trouble. But God knows whats in our heart thats what counts. God Bless

 

[CentralFLJames]

And what do you think could be the result when the poster who is genuinely seeking to understand the Catholic faith or get to the essence of the Catholic experience gets a reply with such an edge?

Do you think that at worst it might turn them towards being the type of poster that they are being accused of being or at least deciding if that is the response they won’t pursue their enquiries.

An no, I am not one who has “come in under the pretense of inquiry but with a hidden agenda to attack, mock and cross-convert others outside the faith who are genuinely seeking answers here.”

What is relevant here is for everyone to recognize that people are imperfect and that there is always going to be spoilers, lurkers and trolls who are agents of Satan looking to prevent somone from knowing the truth and looking to capitalize on human limitations to provoke conflicts. This is a forum where people can learn the truth. As such we can expect serious tension from agents of Satan who want to prevent others from coming into the truth. By and large most of the Catholics here are self moderating and many of us will bow out of a discussion if we feel we are harming it more than helping it and others are doing a better job of defending the faith for a particular topic.

But I think the way this site is organized lends itself to needless tension. There are two distinct kinds of people who come here - those genuinely wanting to know about Catholicism and those who want to compete and fight with Catholics or make themselves appear smart to their peers in defending their own faith or make a name for themselves. So the site should be partitioned into two areas. The Catholic Church would be better served if were segregated this forum into two distinct parts. One part should be highly moderated and for sincere inquiries only that are not open for debate of Church Doctrine. It would just a place for sharing the faith and answering questions and having fellowship. The other section should be for pure apologetics where debate is welcome but no trolling and endless circular arguments are permitted to run indefinitely as some here do till we run out the post limit of 1000 posts.

By the way, I have not seen any Catholic in these forums who is not pleased to answer sincere questions respectfully and charitably. It is only when opposing insincerity come out and heads start butting that some Catholics become fatigued and being human can get “an edge” in their tone. I have gotten more than a few “smacks” from fellow Catholics who corrected me in a few areas myself. So I have been on the receiving side of it too.

James

 

[Therese_Martin]

Ideally, posts on CAF should be a balance of truth and charity: Truth, in unapologetically proclaiming what is true; charity, in respecting the dignity of other members and of non-believers. If there are posts that egregiously violate this standard, these should be reported to the mod/admin staff by using the post-report feature – the red-and-white triangle icon (forums.catholic-questions.org/images/buttons_cad/report.gif) attached to each post.

CAF also encourages all members to review its Statement of Purpose and Charity Guidelines.

Note:

This thread is now closed. Thanks to all who participated in the discussion.