T
ThinkingSapien
Guest
I think there may be a misunderstanding. I’m not suggesting that any one be prohibited from joining a religion organized or otherwise.
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A
antunesaa
Guest
Ok. I probably misinterpreted you. Sorry.
T
ThinkingSapien
Guest
no problem. as long as there is dialog there is a chance for misunderstands. But as long as that dialog continues there’s also a chance for understanding.
R
Roscoe_Turner
Guest
There is definitely nothing easy about democracy, it’s work. I believe the separation of Church and State is beneficial to both.
What is sometimes missed by the religious and the secular is how to respect the boundaries. Each sometimes try and own the whole pie, like it’s a war to be won.
Example of respecting the boundaries:
During prohibition an exemption was made for Communion wine. An exemption has also been made for peyote for the Native American Religion.
Although against Catholic Doctrine, I think the ban on Polygamy, might have be a case of overstepping boundaries with respect to Mormons when they were forced to abandon the practice in the 1800’s.
Where we draw the lines is important and should be discussed. We have to be honest what constitutes the “Free practice of Religion” The fact that CVS sells condoms doesn’t keep me from practicing Catholicism. We can co-exist peacefully.
The Governments stepping back protects and allows the Free Practice. At the founding of the Nation that was unique. Everyone was free to chose and practice any Religion, or none with no repercussions from the Government. The tax exemption fro religion also allows financial freedom.
Religion knows that reward takes work. Religion knows what it’s work is. All we need is the space to do it, not all the space. We don’t want people crowding into our space of free practice so we have to be careful not to crowd into theirs.
What is sometimes missed by the religious and the secular is how to respect the boundaries. Each sometimes try and own the whole pie, like it’s a war to be won.
Example of respecting the boundaries:
During prohibition an exemption was made for Communion wine. An exemption has also been made for peyote for the Native American Religion.
Although against Catholic Doctrine, I think the ban on Polygamy, might have be a case of overstepping boundaries with respect to Mormons when they were forced to abandon the practice in the 1800’s.
Where we draw the lines is important and should be discussed. We have to be honest what constitutes the “Free practice of Religion” The fact that CVS sells condoms doesn’t keep me from practicing Catholicism. We can co-exist peacefully.
The Governments stepping back protects and allows the Free Practice. At the founding of the Nation that was unique. Everyone was free to chose and practice any Religion, or none with no repercussions from the Government. The tax exemption fro religion also allows financial freedom.
Religion knows that reward takes work. Religion knows what it’s work is. All we need is the space to do it, not all the space. We don’t want people crowding into our space of free practice so we have to be careful not to crowd into theirs.
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antunesaa
Guest
I’m ok with most of your post. Let me add that with some issues (like marriage or abortion) the camps tend to fracture along religious lines, but at the same time these themes are not entirely religious. Whatever people decide about them will have first order effects in the lives of all. Abortion is difficult (or impossible) to swallow for many people because it entails the death of human beings. In that case you cannot just idly stay on the fringes of discussion; you have to charge, and charge, and charge, until the day (if ever) people realize the cruel and barbarous nature of the whole practice.
C
Charlemagne_II
Guest
antu
** Abortion is difficult (or impossible) to swallow for many people because it entails the death of human beings. In that case you cannot just idly stay on the fringes of discussion; you have to charge, and charge, and charge, until the day (if ever) people realize the cruel and barbarous nature of the whole practice. **
And it isn’t only religious people who object to abortion. I knew an atheist who in his later years converted to Catholicism partly at least because he saw a certain common sense in the moral positions of the Church. Killing the unborn has been with the human race since the beginning, no doubt. But, like sodomy, it has been equally offensive to most civilizations, strongly suggesting a common sense morality, not just a religious objection.
Those who don’t see the common sense objection to abortion, for example, have been corrupted by political correctness to the point that they have lost their common sense. Many who see an abortion for the first time, or who hear how an abortion is performed, are immediately converted to common sense.
** Abortion is difficult (or impossible) to swallow for many people because it entails the death of human beings. In that case you cannot just idly stay on the fringes of discussion; you have to charge, and charge, and charge, until the day (if ever) people realize the cruel and barbarous nature of the whole practice. **
And it isn’t only religious people who object to abortion. I knew an atheist who in his later years converted to Catholicism partly at least because he saw a certain common sense in the moral positions of the Church. Killing the unborn has been with the human race since the beginning, no doubt. But, like sodomy, it has been equally offensive to most civilizations, strongly suggesting a common sense morality, not just a religious objection.
Those who don’t see the common sense objection to abortion, for example, have been corrupted by political correctness to the point that they have lost their common sense. Many who see an abortion for the first time, or who hear how an abortion is performed, are immediately converted to common sense.
R
Roscoe_Turner
Guest
I agree that the Catholic side is very clear. The secular side isn’t. Much of it is framed as a woman’s autonomy issue. Which the Catholic view is that the new life takes precedence.
Autonomy is difficult issue when put up religious vs secular. In today’s news Angelina Jolie revealed that she had elective double mastectomy because she has a strong genetic disposition to breast cancer. The catechism states
I think a case could be made for it being therapeutic but on the other, there is no disease yet. So I’m not sure where the church comes down on this issue.
My gut reaction is that it is ok. It wasn’t done for vanity. It is her body. So the morality of the action is unclear to me but her right to do it isn’t.
J
JamesCaruso
Guest
I hope those scriptures you posted do not apply to me. I don’t feel convicted, if they do.
I’m sorry that you feel I was judging you and casting stones at you. Whether I was or I wasn’t, God will be my judge.
If you don’t like to discuss these things, I will leave you alone. I believe my heart was in the right place, and I was trying to set right what I thought might be an incorrect perception, not condemn you. I mean, aren’t we here to discuss what each other says?
I know you’re not perfect, I can easily see that,
but I am also not perfect, and I can easily see that, as well. I attempt to allow the Spirit to work through me, but sometimes my own spirit gets in the way. If it was merely of me, it can go to the trash heap for all I care. But if anything I said was of the Spirit, it will not return to the Lord void.If you would rather I not address you again, that will be fine. I only go where I am welcome.
I will stand up for the truth, however, whether or not that is a response to what you say or what somebody else says. We should all do that. Again, I am sorry if my words offended you. They were not aimed at you, but at what you were saying.A parting thought, and it may not apply to you at all-- A preacher once told me that sometimes people take things personally when the speaker does not mean them that way; sometimes, it is the conviction of the Holy Spirit that is working in them. He does get personal, that’s his job. If I get personal, please ignore it. It’s neither my intention nor my right to do so. Peace.
R
Roscoe_Turner
Guest
I think your preacher had it right. I was addressing being charitable to people that hold different veiws and beliefs. If I didn’t want to discuss it I wouldn’t be here now would I?I hope those scriptures you posted do not apply to me. I don’t feel convicted, if they do.
I’m sorry that you feel I was judging you and casting stones at you. Whether I was or I wasn’t, God will be my judge.
If you don’t like to discuss these things, I will leave you alone. I believe my heart was in the right place, and I was trying to set right what I thought might be an incorrect perception, not condemn you. I mean, aren’t we here to discuss what each other says?
I know you’re not perfect, I can easily see that,
If you would rather I not address you again, that will be fine. I only go where I am welcome.
A parting thought, and it may not apply to you at all-- A preacher once told me that sometimes people take things personally when the speaker does not mean them that way; sometimes, it is the conviction of the Holy Spirit that is working in them. He does get personal, that’s his job. If I get personal, please ignore it. It’s neither my intention nor my right to do so. Peace.
J
JamesCaruso
Guest
There is certainly nothing easy about religion. God wants to be involved in everything man does. The Lord’s prayer says, “Thy kingdom come, on earth as it is in heaven.” Wow! That means that God wants to be honored in everything on earth. That is a mighty big order. What it means is that we have to be increasingly active in everything around us to try to bring the world into conformity with God’s moral order.
To do this, we have to be active in our political process by trying to elect only godly men who will be proponents of God’s moral values in governance of the state. We need to be relentless in our attempt to influence our elected leaders to pass laws that are pleasing to the ultimate authority, which is God. It is amusing that so many believe in a total separation of government and God or God-revealed moral values. If God be the highest authority, if all authority derives from him, if he sits at the top of the pyramid, if the state operates at his pleasure, then for the state to act in contradiction to his desire is not only foolhardy, but unpatriotic in the best sense of patriotism. We love our country and thereby want only the best for it. It goes without saying that the best for the state is strict adherence to the wishes of the highest authority, for which there is no penalty but only blessings in store for us, the people.
We should never give up the fight to overturn such monstrosities as Roe v. Wade which elevates a perceived right of women over human life itself.
We should never tire of the fight to keep the meaning of marriage as a God-approved and sacred institution, not a function of state.
The secular answer is the wrong answer. Purely secular answers may sometimes please the majority of the people, but it is still the wrong decision when it is contrary to God’s moral law.
The only way to keep secularism from destroying the country is for god fearing men and women, which comprise the largest segment of our society, to keep it reined in so that it does not trample on godly moral values.
Democracy is not a perfect system. Of course, we don’t have a democracy in the pure sense, because such a system has proven impractical; we have a representative democracy. It probably works better than any other system thus far devised by men (I’m biased), but it is by no means perfect. At one extreme it can give as much freedom to its citizens as possible, and at the other extreme, it can take away far too many individual rights for the sake of security and the so-called common good.
There is nothing about representative democracy that requires it to divorce itself from godly values, or principles espoused by the religions of its inhabitants, so long as those values do no harm to the citizenry. There is nothing that requires that every law, every rule, every decision, be made on a purely secular basis. There can be a tyranny when the state follows only the values of a particular religion, but there can equally be a tyranny when the state follows purely secular values, which seems to be where we are heading today,
Many equate secular with being neutral or being impartial. It is neither. It can impose on the vast majority of the people values that none of them embrace, that is, it can be grossly partial to the values of a few secularists, at the expense of everyone else.
To do this, we have to be active in our political process by trying to elect only godly men who will be proponents of God’s moral values in governance of the state. We need to be relentless in our attempt to influence our elected leaders to pass laws that are pleasing to the ultimate authority, which is God. It is amusing that so many believe in a total separation of government and God or God-revealed moral values. If God be the highest authority, if all authority derives from him, if he sits at the top of the pyramid, if the state operates at his pleasure, then for the state to act in contradiction to his desire is not only foolhardy, but unpatriotic in the best sense of patriotism. We love our country and thereby want only the best for it. It goes without saying that the best for the state is strict adherence to the wishes of the highest authority, for which there is no penalty but only blessings in store for us, the people.
We should never give up the fight to overturn such monstrosities as Roe v. Wade which elevates a perceived right of women over human life itself.
We should never tire of the fight to keep the meaning of marriage as a God-approved and sacred institution, not a function of state.
The secular answer is the wrong answer. Purely secular answers may sometimes please the majority of the people, but it is still the wrong decision when it is contrary to God’s moral law.
The only way to keep secularism from destroying the country is for god fearing men and women, which comprise the largest segment of our society, to keep it reined in so that it does not trample on godly moral values.
Democracy is not a perfect system. Of course, we don’t have a democracy in the pure sense, because such a system has proven impractical; we have a representative democracy. It probably works better than any other system thus far devised by men (I’m biased), but it is by no means perfect. At one extreme it can give as much freedom to its citizens as possible, and at the other extreme, it can take away far too many individual rights for the sake of security and the so-called common good.
There is nothing about representative democracy that requires it to divorce itself from godly values, or principles espoused by the religions of its inhabitants, so long as those values do no harm to the citizenry. There is nothing that requires that every law, every rule, every decision, be made on a purely secular basis. There can be a tyranny when the state follows only the values of a particular religion, but there can equally be a tyranny when the state follows purely secular values, which seems to be where we are heading today,
Many equate secular with being neutral or being impartial. It is neither. It can impose on the vast majority of the people values that none of them embrace, that is, it can be grossly partial to the values of a few secularists, at the expense of everyone else.
P
Poussin
Guest
Freemasonry, first and foremost requires a belief in a higher power. It discourages talk of religion AND politics at its meetings for the sole purpose of preventing disharmony. It encourages religious thought and belief and has a Bible in the center of every meeting. It is NOT the same.
J
JamesCaruso
Guest
Well, I hope you wouldn’t. People come here for a lot of different reasons.I think your preacher had it right. I was addressing being charitable to people that hold different veiws and beliefs. If I didn’t want to discuss it I wouldn’t be here now would I?
J
JamesCaruso
Guest
They are not so glad to cite the huge difference the Church has made in assistance to the poor and disadvantaged in terms of food, shelter, clothing, education, and medicine either.
R
RobbyS
Guest
Where the Courts are involved, force being applied. Manners and mores are being forcibly changed in the name of justice. Is this justice? I think not.
R
RobbyS
Guest
The Latin rite of freemasonry is atheistic. The English and Scottish Rites are not.
R
RobbyS
Guest
Regarding the last point: knowledge of Scripture was normative among western elites until a hundred years ago. Indeed, so was knowledge of the Greek and Roman classics. Today’s students are not tested on knowledge of either despite their importance to the development of western civilization. As to morality, yes, I know only too well how morals have changed since the ‘60s, and the NEA is fully in favor of such changes and pushes back hard when a local school is threatened by parents who uphold traditional Christian morality, which is to say that which was preached by all the churches prior to 1930.
R
RobbyS
Guest
What you overlook is that in Everson, Black, ignoring precedent and past practice , defined separation of church and state, to mean that government, both federal and state,was to be indifferent to religion. Black, a notorious anti-Catholic, in effect, incorporated the unratified Blaine Amendment into the meaning of the First Amendment, to prevent Congress from giving federal funds to support Catholic schools. To further undercut the popularity of Catholic schools, the Court moved to
eliminate the Protestant character of most public schools, to make them more agreeable to Jews and Catholics. Ironically, in many school districts with large Catholic and Jewish populations, the schools reflected religious opinion in the districts, making public schools Catholic or Jewish in tone. In 1947 the Catholic Church was booming and the bishops were pressing Congress hard to get funds for the parochial schools. Among the leading opponents was Mrs. Roosevelt who got into a public debate with Cardinal Spellman over the issue. But neither Black nor Mrs. Roosevelt shared the animus against religion that we find among today’s elites. That has gotten progressively worse since the ‘60s. They were more worried by the growing political power of the Catholic bishops.
J
JamesCaruso
Guest
One can certainly understand the concern when it comes to the state being partial to a particular religion, just as many of us today are concerned when it becomes partial to a single point of view, that of the atheist who would like all reference to God removed from the public schools. I think a better solution and a better reading of the Constitution would be to allow at the very least the inclusion of God and God-related subjects that find acceptance among all the major religions of the country. Rather than portray a Godless country in our school system, which pleases a tiny minority of citizens, we should portray a diverse culture that fairly represents the American people who recognize a Higher Power, a Creator, as do our founding documents. Succumbing to the irrational fear of Bishops gaining too much power, as if the whole country might become Catholic, as happened in centuries past in other places, is not borne out by the facts. But if, indeed, the entire populace did become Catholic, then (1) I think the citizens would want the Catholic point of view expressed in the schools, and (2) I don’t think the Church would be apt to fall into the same mistakes as in former times, plus the fact that the President and the Congress would still be subject to the voters and not the Catholic Church. .
R
RobbyS
Guest
Well, they had that diversity in 1947. The public schools generally reflected the religious opinions of the people whom they served. This real diversity was gradually suppressed by the Courts in favor of a “neutrality,” which is really a reflection of the views of John Dewey. It is rare that the views of a person so unfamiliar to the public should have such power over public attitudes, but everyone who is trained to be a teacher is imbued with his views although they are almost never attributed to him. He is the father is progressive education, which rejects the very idea of objective truth.
P
Pugsly
Guest
Homeschooling is under assualt in Europe…especially Germany and France…and the Leftists here in America are already mumbling about homeschools here.
The Family is THE most powerful structure and institution in any civilization…therefore those who see (Enlightenment philosophies) collective effort as socially redemptive…despise the Family…and seek to atomize individuals to the will of the State.
Thus, this administration’s push for the redefinition of marriage…mandatory preschool…and Eric Holder fighting a German couple’s assylum from (religious persecution) as part of setting an anti-homeschool judgment in the American courts.
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