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netmilsmom
Guest
Yes. Applause for the choir and recognition of human achievements supercedes the holiness of all prayer, don’t ya know?
Thought so!
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Thought so!
L
LilyM
Guest
Sounds good. In our Cathedral it’s prayed after the Rosary (before Mass) at least once a dayWe pray it after every Mass at my parish.
And I say it at the end of my (near-daily) Rosary, besides praying for the needs and protection of the Church in my Morning Offering.
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NDIrish
Guest
My family prays this together after every Mass, before we leave the church.
W
water
Guest
My parish just got a human-sized St. Michael from Italy. We also have Statues of St. Faustina and many others. At our parish, we do say the St. Michael’s prayer.
The statues are wood - I believe it is hand-crafting.
http://img187.imageshack.us/img187/466/stmichaelbr1.jpg
The statues are wood - I believe it is hand-crafting.
http://img187.imageshack.us/img187/466/stmichaelbr1.jpg
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Detroit_Sue
Guest
Depends on 2 things - getting someone to work for me, which shouldn’t be a problem and the weather. I’m askeered of the snow, and I’ve lived here all my life.
J
Joseph_Smith
Guest
I was just wondering do you thing the people in the catholic church will ever start praying to God. I mean you pray to everthing but God. Do you ever actually read the word of God. I mean i see you all can write and how you can write. And speak of the most only scriptural things. Things from the pits of hell and pagan religions. So are you now going to pray to angles. You pray to everthing but God and you do so with your heads held high. Could it be you are religious but do nto know God or his ways.
Here are the things God hates, you praying to other gods, thus he wrote you shall no other Gods before me. Is it not written you are gods. If you are praying to a saint that has passed on you are having a god before God. It is called sin.
If you are praying to micheal the archangle it is called a sin also. And it is writen you have not make any image of anything in heaven above or in the earth. So why the carved images of the saints who are in heaven. They are another form of gods before GOD. When are you going to reverence GOD and Christ. You adorn you earthly priest with authority over the word of GOd which is both Christ above and Christ in logos form. Which means you have made your priest gods before God. When are you going to get the sin out and follow God.
Here are the things God hates, you praying to other gods, thus he wrote you shall no other Gods before me. Is it not written you are gods. If you are praying to a saint that has passed on you are having a god before God. It is called sin.
If you are praying to micheal the archangle it is called a sin also. And it is writen you have not make any image of anything in heaven above or in the earth. So why the carved images of the saints who are in heaven. They are another form of gods before GOD. When are you going to reverence GOD and Christ. You adorn you earthly priest with authority over the word of GOd which is both Christ above and Christ in logos form. Which means you have made your priest gods before God. When are you going to get the sin out and follow God.
V
Veritas41
Guest
Your ignorance of the Catholic faith is very clear from your post. Perhaps you should take the time to learn what we Catholics actually believe before you condemn our beliefs. And if you’re trying to win converts, I would suggest you take Abraham Lincoln’s advice, “You attract more flies with a drop of honey than a gallon of gall.”
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netmilsmom
Guest
To attack one section of Christianity in this day and age, is to waste time.
You my friend, need to look around you. You need to talk to the secularists who worship, money, power or possessions.
You need to speak to those radicals who would kill you, the Bible Christian as well as the Catholic Christian just for believing in our savior.
Do not waste your time with those who would support your beliefs.
While you preach your beliefs here, people look to kill you elsewhere. And who do you think will be standing behind you?
Better talk to those who won’t.
And if we want your opinion on our beliefs, we will call you.
R
Randy_Carson
Guest
Joseph-
If someone in your family was ill, would you ask a friend to pray for him? You can ask saints in heaven to pray for him too, because they are still alive!
Do you ever talk to God? Not all conversation with God is “worship”. Sometimes we give thanks, sometimes we repent, sometimes we intercede.
To “pray” to a saint does not mean to worship him or her; it simply means to “talk” to him or her. They can hear us because they are not dead - they’re alive! Jesus said:
“Have you not read in the book of Moses, in the account of the bush, how God said to him, ‘I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob’? He is not the God of the dead, but of the living. You are badly mistaken!” (Mark 12:26-27)
As for making images of “anything in heaven or on the earth”, consider the command of God: They traveled from Mount Hor along the route to the Red Sea, to go around Edom. But the people grew impatient on the way; they spoke against God and against Moses, and said, “Why have you brought us up out of Egypt to die in the desert? There is no bread! There is no water! And we detest this miserable food!” Then the LORD sent venomous snakes among them; they bit the people and many Israelites died. The people came to Moses and said, “We sinned when we spoke against the LORD and against you. Pray that the LORD will take the snakes away from us.” So Moses prayed for the people. The LORD said to Moses, “Make a snake and put it up on a pole; anyone who is bitten can look at it and live.” So Moses made a bronze snake and put it up on a pole. Then when anyone was bitten by a snake and looked at the bronze snake, he lived. (Numbers 21:4-9)
[Hezekiah] did what was right in the eyes of the LORD, just as his father David had done. He removed the high places, smashed the sacred stones and cut down the Asherah poles. He broke into pieces the bronze snake Moses had made, for up to that time the Israelites had been burning incense to it. (It was called Nehushtan.) (2 Kings 18:3-5)
The Lord commanded Moses to make an image of a snake to save the people who were bitten by serpents. However, when they began to worship it and burn incense to it, Hezekiah destroyed it as a false god.
Catholics have statues of great heroes of the past to remind us of their worthy example. Yes, we ask them to pray for us…just as you yourself might ask someone in your own congregation to pray for a need that you might have. The saints are alive and able to pray for us just as much as you and I can pray for each other.
And since they are already in heaven before the throne of God, we might consider that their prayers are even more effective than our own for “the prayer of a righteous man availeth much.” They are obviously righteous since they are already home!
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netmilsmom
Guest
Randy, that was a beautiful explaination.
This poster is here to “minister” to us, poor Catholics.
Do a seach of his 28 posts and you will see that he left the Apologetics Forum to dump here.
This is one of his quotes…
“I am anti-catholicism for sure, yeat i do not hate you. I hate your church for sure. And have a reason to. It is ungodly and is anti-christ in its teaching. So why would you thingk any christian would follow its traditions.”
He hates our church. He has distain for those who follow it. I hope you can make him see. Or at least leave us alone.
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Ridgerunner
Guest
I think it would be a healthy thing to reinstate saying the prayer to St. Michael at the end of Mass. Even as a child, I was mightily impressed by its powerful statement. I might be a bit too influenced by literature, but I have long believed there are chords within humanity that call for, and need harmonic stimulation. Music can do that. Certain modes of expression can do that. Images, both physical and mental, can do it as well. Half of our understanding is expressed in imagery and symbolism that represents for us much broader and deeper thoughts. That is precisely why a well-crafted poem, for example, can express very tightly what would take pages and pages to explain in prose. That is the truth underlying the old saw that “a picture is worth a thousand words”. There is a lot more to us than we realize.
We know about the biblical story of the war in heaven. That story, itself, presents an image that represents much, much more, conceptually. Jesus, Himself, expressed it in words that Shakespeare could have envied, and probably did. “I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven.” (paraphrase. Don’t have the exact words near to hand) Why did He say that? If His message was only about loving one’s neighbor, (emphasized to the virtual exclusion of everything else nowadays, but with no underpinnings particularly as to why it matters) He not only did needn’t have said it, but presented a distraction from His “real” message when He did.
Such a short expression. But it tells us so much. It tells us something of the nature of angels; gigantic, more powerful than we can imagine; irresistably powerful (as is lightning) potentially deadly; incredibly deliberate and intense, free from all save the governance of God. He tells us their fall was instantaneous and a remove from a former state, neither end of which we can possibly fathom. Jesus implanted that image in our minds for His purpose. Why did he implant that powerful and unforgettable image? And where does lightning “land”? It lands right here. His image tells us that we can no more predict where Satan will strike than we can predict where lightning will strike. And so it is. A Catholic boy becomes Hitler. An Orthodox seminarian becomes Stalin. A Jewish boy becomes Trotsky. A Muslim boy becomes Bin Ladin. Priests who no doubt felt vocations for at least some of the right reasons become sodomites and molesters of children. Protestant preachers of renown hire same-gender prostitutes. Are our own human powers sufficient against the lightning of evil? No, they are not. We require protectors of greater power; chief among them being Jesus, Himself. Why did God create angels; even the good angels? Why do angels do what they do? We can speculate about it, but we don’t know why He did it any more than we know why He created Black Holes, supernovae the “Big Bang” or unimaginably intricate atomic structures that, to us, seem needlessly complex. We just plain don’t know how any of it “fits in”. Much is beyond us.
And we know God’s angels are agents of His will; also in ways we don’t comprehend. We don’t understand the “how” or the “why”, but we can certainly understand the “what”, and we know they serve those of God’s purposes that include us.
It is important, I think, to impress upon us; particularly upon the young, that there are proportions in our faith that go inexpressably beyond sharing coffee and donuts with our neighbor. Our faith (and our being) is cosmic in its proportions, and we need to know that. “…defend us in the battle. Be our protection…” We need to know there is a battle and that we need protection. “…that wander about the world seeking the ruin of souls.” That’s what the battle is all about. Like cosmic structures millions of light years across and quantum particles so tiny their existence can only be detected indirectly, it is on all levels. It is NOT okay to live with my girlfriend as long as I don’t murder six million Jews and smile at someone on the way out of church.
So maybe people soemtimes ignore it; mumble the words, leave Mass early. But you know, not long ago my grandchild’s teacher told me it is obvious to her that we pray together, because, as a seven-year-old, she knows prayers the others (herself included, but she is a fairly recent convert) do not know, or at least cannot recite. My grandchild does not know the full meaning of every single thing in every one of those prayers. But she knows the words. You can’t listen to anything over and over and over again and fail to learn it. And what phrase, what image is in the corner of one’s mind when one knows “the words”. What seed is there that may later blossom and, perhaps, save a soul? When might it dawn on someone who is virtually overcome by, say, some addiction, that, indeed, there is a “battle”, not just some unfortunate tendency that we need to “accept”; that there are, indeed “allies” in that battle and that we need them when our own strength is revealed to be wanting?
Anyway, I have been tedious enough here. I favor restoring it.
We know about the biblical story of the war in heaven. That story, itself, presents an image that represents much, much more, conceptually. Jesus, Himself, expressed it in words that Shakespeare could have envied, and probably did. “I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven.” (paraphrase. Don’t have the exact words near to hand) Why did He say that? If His message was only about loving one’s neighbor, (emphasized to the virtual exclusion of everything else nowadays, but with no underpinnings particularly as to why it matters) He not only did needn’t have said it, but presented a distraction from His “real” message when He did.
Such a short expression. But it tells us so much. It tells us something of the nature of angels; gigantic, more powerful than we can imagine; irresistably powerful (as is lightning) potentially deadly; incredibly deliberate and intense, free from all save the governance of God. He tells us their fall was instantaneous and a remove from a former state, neither end of which we can possibly fathom. Jesus implanted that image in our minds for His purpose. Why did he implant that powerful and unforgettable image? And where does lightning “land”? It lands right here. His image tells us that we can no more predict where Satan will strike than we can predict where lightning will strike. And so it is. A Catholic boy becomes Hitler. An Orthodox seminarian becomes Stalin. A Jewish boy becomes Trotsky. A Muslim boy becomes Bin Ladin. Priests who no doubt felt vocations for at least some of the right reasons become sodomites and molesters of children. Protestant preachers of renown hire same-gender prostitutes. Are our own human powers sufficient against the lightning of evil? No, they are not. We require protectors of greater power; chief among them being Jesus, Himself. Why did God create angels; even the good angels? Why do angels do what they do? We can speculate about it, but we don’t know why He did it any more than we know why He created Black Holes, supernovae the “Big Bang” or unimaginably intricate atomic structures that, to us, seem needlessly complex. We just plain don’t know how any of it “fits in”. Much is beyond us.
And we know God’s angels are agents of His will; also in ways we don’t comprehend. We don’t understand the “how” or the “why”, but we can certainly understand the “what”, and we know they serve those of God’s purposes that include us.
It is important, I think, to impress upon us; particularly upon the young, that there are proportions in our faith that go inexpressably beyond sharing coffee and donuts with our neighbor. Our faith (and our being) is cosmic in its proportions, and we need to know that. “…defend us in the battle. Be our protection…” We need to know there is a battle and that we need protection. “…that wander about the world seeking the ruin of souls.” That’s what the battle is all about. Like cosmic structures millions of light years across and quantum particles so tiny their existence can only be detected indirectly, it is on all levels. It is NOT okay to live with my girlfriend as long as I don’t murder six million Jews and smile at someone on the way out of church.
So maybe people soemtimes ignore it; mumble the words, leave Mass early. But you know, not long ago my grandchild’s teacher told me it is obvious to her that we pray together, because, as a seven-year-old, she knows prayers the others (herself included, but she is a fairly recent convert) do not know, or at least cannot recite. My grandchild does not know the full meaning of every single thing in every one of those prayers. But she knows the words. You can’t listen to anything over and over and over again and fail to learn it. And what phrase, what image is in the corner of one’s mind when one knows “the words”. What seed is there that may later blossom and, perhaps, save a soul? When might it dawn on someone who is virtually overcome by, say, some addiction, that, indeed, there is a “battle”, not just some unfortunate tendency that we need to “accept”; that there are, indeed “allies” in that battle and that we need them when our own strength is revealed to be wanting?
Anyway, I have been tedious enough here. I favor restoring it.
E
edward_george
Guest
I must say I admire your energy, but not your technique. You have made virtually the same post on every thread on the front page of this particular forum. You will convince no one by hurling perjoratives and misunderstandings on every single page, as you will be quickly shot down–especially with your hit and run technique.
Nice try, though. Check out the Catholic Answers Library, linked by nearly everyone who has replied to you.
-ACEGC
W
water
Guest
Don’t waste your time arguing with Smith; he just doesn’t know what he was talking about. Just leave him alone with his concepts.
N
netmilsmom
Guest
S
shirleytowers
Guest
Mr. Smith is clearly a mormon. Mormons are not even Christians, because they do not believe in the divinity of Jesus, so I wouldn’t take it too seriously. Mormonism is a cult, basically, and NOT Christian.
P
paramedicgirl
Guest
And that pretty much sums it up, sadly enough.
W
Walking_Home
Guest
There is another gospel being introduced into the Church. One where it is judgemental to call sin —sin. Where it is considered judging—to rebuke evil acts or to turn evil doers in.
P
paramedicgirl
Guest
Would that be the Gospel of the New Springtime?
W
Walking_Home
Guest
Would that be the Gospel of the New Springtime?
Putrid fruit–from the “spirit” of Vat. II.
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