What's the ONE Catholic Doctrine that you disagree with most?

[pacloc]

St. Augustine’s opinion has not been elevated to a de fide doctrine of the Church.

Saints can claim all sorts of things. They are not infallible and therefore their opinions are not elevated to dogma.

If you go by this, then your whole religion would only have 2 beliefs/doctrine/dogma, the immaculate conception and the assumption of the Holy Virgin. This is not the way the Catholic Church decides what is Truth. The Catholic Church like the Orthodox Church believe in the consensus of the Fathers of the Church to be what the Church believes. And like it or not, there is some truth in what St. Augustine stated, he errs by calling it sin, if in fact he did call it sin, but it definitely is the consensus of the Fathers that even marital sexual relations are earthly, a consequence of Adam’s sin, and it is angelic to forgo sexual relations.

 

[KarenAnne]

Be careful about depicting others as acting “blindly”. How would you know that?

We have to be aware of our own times, the current bias is always the most dangerous for you and me. There may or may not have been centuries when pressure to conform, meant believing orthodox teaching and authority, hiding any doubts. This is not the era we live in.
The extreme pressure to conform, in 2016, is to question every Christian rule, doctrine, and idea. The hostility is against those who believe, and accept religious authority.

To put it another way, the media practically ****defines ****“faith” as questioning, disagreeing, and searching for answers. If you do that, your “faith” is strong. Otherwise, your faith is blind, in the eyes of the secular culture. You don’t fit in.

On the one hand, Christians need to be charitable to those who are questioning, disagreeing, and searching for answers. We can’t judge the individual. We can judge the secular society that glorifies that, as a sailor is aware of the dominant wind at the moment, so we can try to avoid being blown off course.

Some act blindly, others do not

 

[KarenAnne]

How would they know they are “faithful Catholics”? Because of self perception? Suppose a man makes his own yardstick, out of rubber, with no permanent length; so 36 inches can be squeezed to be no longer than his hand, or stretched to be taller than his height. Would you trust his yardstick, or would you say measurements have to be calibrated by something objective, outside himself?

If all yardsticks were subjective, then “faithful Catholics” would be redundant, because everyone would be faithful, and everyone would be Catholic.

“Faithful” can mean different things to different people…there is no cut and dry definition. My definition of a faithful catholic is one who is trying to understand and follow to the best of the abilities that God has given that person. No single definition of “faithful” can apply to all people. The only circumstance in which it could would be if we were all “cookie cutter people: exactly the same”. The Bible teaches that if we have the faith the size of a mustard seed we can move mountains. Anyone with even a small amount of faith can technically be defined as “faithful”…it doesn’t take much…

 

[Blue_Horizon]

How would they know they are “faithful Catholics”? Because of self perception? Suppose a man makes his own yardstick, out of rubber, with no permanent length; so 36 inches can be squeezed to be no longer than his hand, or stretched to be taller than his height. Would you trust his yardstick, or would you say measurements have to be calibrated by something objective, outside himself?

If all yardsticks were subjective, then “faithful Catholics” would be redundant, because everyone would be faithful, and everyone would be Catholic.

Aquinas always maintained that “faith” terminated not in doctrines but a person, not in teachings but the Teacher. Likewise our yardstick is not ultimately tradition or articles of faith or dogmas because people invariably differ on the fine points. Surely it is loyalty to Peter, who alone guarantees we correctly grasp Tradition, Bible, Catechism and Canon Law. And even if he doesn’t … that is all Jesus expects of us lay people .

 

[Reuben_J]

If you go by this, then your whole religion would only have 2 beliefs/doctrine/dogma, the immaculate conception and the assumption of the Holy Virgin. This is not the way the Catholic Church decides what is Truth. The Catholic Church like the Orthodox Church believe in the consensus of the Fathers of the Church to be what the Church believes. And like it or not, there is some truth in what St. Augustine stated, he errs by calling it sin, if in fact he did call it sin, but it definitely is the consensus of the Fathers that even marital sexual relations are earthly, a consequence of Adam’s sin, and it is angelic to forgo sexual relations.

The poster was right, and sorry, you are wrong.

The Church decides doctrines, not saints, though what they believed may be what the Church believed too, but not necessary always.

 

[Contarini]

I don’t think a religion that doesn’t give you the willies has much depth.

Relics are an expression of Christian belief in the resurrection of the body. That’s why they don’t contradict the Church’s instructions about “cremains.” The Church is concerned about cremation because it could be seen as a symbolic expression of a lack of belief in the resurrection of the body.

The body is holy. The bodies of saints connect us to the God who dwelt in their bodies when they were alive. It gives me the willies too, but I think that’s a good thing.

Edwin

 

[commenter]

I don’t think a religion that doesn’t give you the willies has much depth.

True. I would expand it to this:

A religion has no depth, unless it “gives the willies” to the ****current ****culture of the society, to the ****present ****understanding of justice and spirituality, to the **fresh **insights of “what’s trending now”.

A religion that fits in well with 2016 is in no danger of giving anyone the willies.

 

[pacloc]

The poster was right, and sorry, you are wrong.

The Church decides doctrines, not saints, though what they believed may be what the Church believed too, but not necessary always.

Since you know that I am wrong, why don’t you explain how anything I said was not true. You need to explain how it is that the consensus of Church Fathers is not what the Church teaches. I would like to see your list of Church teachings that you are referring to that were not decided by the consensus of the Church Fathers.

 

[Wannano]

True. I would expand it to this:

A religion has no depth, unless it “gives the willies” to the ****current ****culture of the society, to the ****present ****understanding of justice and spirituality, to the **fresh **insights of “what’s trending now”.

A religion that fits in well with 2016 is in no danger of giving anyone the willies.

I think what you are saying echoes so many words of Jesus that the early Christian martyrs would have clung to in the pre-Constantine era.

 

[pacloc]

The poster was right, and sorry, you are wrong.

The Church decides doctrines, not saints, though what they believed may be what the Church believed too, but not necessary always.

I just realized that the poster I was responding to used the term De fide, and I was thinking of the Ex Cathedra De fide statements. So there are obviously way more than 2 beliefs, but still all the teachings of the Church have not been written as De fide statements in Church Councils. And even the ones that have been written were only brought forth and accepted because of the consensus of the Fathers.

 

[Michael68]

I don’t disagree with any doctrine nor dogma. I do disagree with other things inside the Church like altar girls and reception on the hand.

I can’t disagree with receptipn on the hand. Didn’t our Lord say " Take this all of you and eat of it. " I usually take things with my hand not my tongue. I don’t have a problem with altar girls either. Why can’t they serve the Lord too?

 

[Peter_J]

I just realized that the poster I was responding to used the term De fide, and I was thinking of the Ex Cathedra De fide statements. So there are obviously way more than 2 beliefs, but still all the teachings of the Church have not been written as De fide statements in Church Councils. And even the ones that have been written were only brought forth and accepted because of the consensus of the Fathers.

As a Catholic, I hold the Fathers in very high regard.

 

[Michael68]

As a Catholic, I hold the Fathers in very high regard.

I do too!!!

 

[vz71]

Can someone really be considered faithful if they disobey doctrines they do not understand?

 

[pacloc]

Can someone really be considered faithful if they disobey doctrines they do not understand?

In short no. But there are a lot of factors that complicate the issue. A lot of questions have to be asked about the current situation in the Church. To begin with, the number of people becoming Catholic and not either being instructed by their parents or by RCIA or their priest in a way that actually pushes the newly baptized to truly live the death to the old man and to live only in Christ, which the Church is the Body of. The fact that many like me were baptized as infants and never raised to learn anything about the Church, and worse to attack the Church, like in my case.

True catechesis is what is lacking, and very few pastors are willing to go out and explain things the way which the Church teaches on many subjects because they are at odds with the new social norm, or they themselves do not agree with Church teaching. Many priests have taught that the Church needs to not be so rigid in its understanding of Christ’s teachings. So if the Shepherds are disobedient to Christ’s teachings, it is harder to blame all of the people.

But the good news is that with all the available resources, we do not have to solely rely on our local priest to teach us. We can all find ways to get information about the subjects that we don’t understand or disagree with. But what needs to be done first is recognize what our baptism means, and humble ourselves and remember that Jesus Christ is Truth, so we MUST be wrong if the Church teaches otherwise. Without this acknowledgement, any study on the matter will not have the same benefit, but it would be better than nothing.

Like I mentioned earlier in the thread about what I do not agree with about what the Roman Catholic Church has stopped doing, is chrismating/confirming with baptism. The filling with the Holy Spirit also means that God will always be beyond patient and merciful to those that are Chrismated. (I truly believe that God is merciful with those in the RCC that have only been baptized and not confirmed and extends to them similar grace.) So that means that all that are Christians really have no excuse for disagreeing with the Church teachings, and would be absent of faith, a very dangerous position to have at death or the second coming of Christ.

 

[pacloc]

As a Catholic, I hold the Fathers in very high regard.

Peter J and Michael68, Thank God! I don’t know where I would be without falling upon writings of our Father among the Saints, St. John Chrysostom. That led to reading many beautiful things from other Fathers. We named our son Maximus Gregory for crying out loud. (for Maximus the Confessor and Gregory the Theologian/Nazianzen)

 

[commenter]

Can someone really be considered faithful if they disobey doctrines they do not understand?

I know a few things about electricity, but don’t fully understand it. But I trust authorities that have told me certain things about it that make it useful to me, and also warned me that doing certain things might electrocute me.

With doctrine, we need to avoid the (nowadays rare) error of fideism, that I can’t understand all of a doctrine, there’s no need to try to understand as much as I can. Just take it on faith. Much more common now is the error that I can cloud my mind with every source of confusion (TV, Internet, daily newspaper, current books), and give them all equal time with the Catholic Faith. Then my clouded mind can’t understand Christianity, so I say I am being creative, or renewed, or extra spiritual, when I disobey.

This confusion is sometimes presented as “You have to ****inform ****your conscience”, which nowadays means that you consult the Catholic Church, then 9 secular sources, give each source equal time, and then disobey.

We need to do a better job of helping people understand. But we also have to recognize there are such things as intellectual sins, and intellectual virtues. The overwelming bias is to conform our conscience to the current secular culture.

 

[AnimaQuaerenti]

I’m not sure about “doctrine”, but I think the Roman tradition of giving only the bread species is inferior to the Byzantine tradition of both.

I understand the reason for single-species. I do believe Christ is really and fully present in either, and that taking both does not bestow any additional grace - but after I’ve just heard the prayer of consecration, He says “take this, all of you, and eat of it” followed by “take this, all of you, and drink of it.” Not “take one of these, all of you.” It simply feels more like I’m doing what He commanded versus what small-tee tradition dictates.

Interestingly enough, my parish just announced that both will be served starting in 2017 to the laity.

 

[Contarini]

True. I would expand it to this:

A religion has no depth, unless it “gives the willies” to the ****current ****culture of the society, to the ****present ****understanding of justice and spirituality, to the **fresh **insights of “what’s trending now”.

A religion that fits in well with 2016 is in no danger of giving anyone the willies.

By “the willies” I meant more something “otherworldly” or “creepy” or even “gross.”

That overlaps with your meaning, of course, since those feelings are culturally conditioned and since we live in a very antiseptic, rationalistic society.

Edwin

 

[Contarini]

In that case, it isn’t the teaching as such that is an expression of clericalism, but only one particular line of thought that is used to bolster it.

To be honest, most of the things I listed weren’t doctrines I disagree with so much as tendencies or attitudes that bother me.

Edwin