Catechism of the Catholic Church 2042: “The first precept [of the Catholic church] (“You shall attend Mass on Sundays and holy days of obligation.”) requires the faithful to participate in the Eucharistic celebration when the Christian community gathers together on the day commemorating the Resurrection of the Lord.”
I’ve often wondered about this.
I believe it isn’t so much about “faith formation” as it is about keeping the LDS from falling apart. With access to information regarding the lack of truth of their teachings many LDS are leaving the church. When attempting to bring in converts they don’t tell the whole story, just enough of the good stuff to get them in.
I agree with you as well. We Catholics can learn a lot from our brothers and sisters.
Another way to look at “keep the Sabbath” is to make everything you do an action in remembrance of God. Some Catholics/Christians work during the Sabbath; doesn’t make them any less observant if they keep God in mind as they go about work.I’ve often wondered about this.
Places like Chick-fil-A, owned by evangelicals, close on Sundays because they do not believe in working on the Lord’s Day.
Yet these SAME people rush to the Golden Corral buffet to be served by people who DO work on Sundays.
It’s a Christian Church, but a very liberal one. Unitarian or something. Belief in God isn’t a requirement to be a member. It’s a mega-church out in town that I guess a lot of people have begun going to.
Unitarian Church is quite liberal and accepts anyone.
I have one of those churches up the street from where I live.
This is true to a point. They had me read the entire Book of Mormon and if I felt it was true basically I was in, they baptized me. While I now believe the BoM to be a fabrication (mostly- some of it is plagiarized, such as 2 Nephi which has great portions of the Book of Isaiah plagiarized into it) at the time I believe in it. And I think most LDS firmly believe that what they are taught is the truth. They do believe there is archaeological evidence which backs up their claims, the same as there is for the Bible, when the reality is there is not any archaeological evidence to back up the BoM and in fact the lack of evidence refutes the truth of the BoM. But most of them don’t know that, and are taught the exact opposite. I learned a lot when I started reading exmormon.org about how bamboozled I had been.
I loved RCIA but it’s hard to compare the two. LDS focuses on the scriptures in seminary (one year is OT, one is NT, etc) and not so much on what they believe although it is touched on and probably is significantly covered when the go over Doctrine and Covenants (I left the church before that seminary year). But LDS seminaryis a 1 hour class every weekday during the school year, and that is significant- 5 hours a week vs. the about 1-1/2 hr RCIA class once a week. But RCIA focused more on what we, as Catholics, believe. Bible study is separate. I think that is really important though- had I truly understood what it is Mormons believe, I probably would never have joined the church. I do think RCIA could be more comprehensive, however. For example, what we never learned in RCIA was what you do after you’re baptized/confirmed. We did have one class on the Rosary/Chaplets but we never went over Adoration, or Scapulars, or Consecration (as a layperson), or different ways to serve your Parish or community, or any of the other myriad things that Catholics participate in to deepen their faith and come closer to Christ and live the Gospel. I guess we were supposed to have something called “Mystagogia” which was to learn more after RCIA was over, but our Faith Formation leader became a Permanent Deacon right after RCIA wrapped up and he just got too busy I guess.
This is utter nonsense.
I think Horton was asking about your experience of RCIA vis. a vis. the LDS Missionary discussions (if we are to compare apples to apples). LDS Seminary isn’t analogous to RCIA. RCIA is a class for non-Catholic (actually non-Christians) who are interested in converting to Catholicism. LDS Seminary is for already Mormon high school students, the majority of whom come from long LDS families and haven’t made a truly voluntary, fully informed decision to follow Mormonism. It would be more similar to a Catholic Confirmation class. When we compare the faith formation of RCIA versus the LDS missionary discussions, RCIA wins hands down. A minimum of 9 months of classroom instruction before conversion on the one hand, and two casual conversations before being asked to be baptized LDS on the other hand.
Agreed. Baby steps are still steps towards God. Was watching a film titled “From Saul to Paul” on YouTube the other night. There’s a scene where the early catholic church leaders were divided on the topic of Mosaic Law: should the Gentiles be required to circumcise before joining the Jewish Christian church? No, each culture experiences God and His message in their own way. Still true today. Though our Protestant brothers and sisters may not worship as we do, they still worship God and His Only Son Christ Jesus. Keep the faith!
Ah. Yes, I would agree with that. I think my conversion process with the Mormons was about 3 months but that was more to do with they wanted me to read the BoM and give my testimony that I believed it was true. It took a bit for me to work my way through the BoM, but once I did and gave my testimony that was all it took. They baptized me. There were a number of things I didn’t realize that the Mormons believed. For example, while I was aware that they believed there were different levels of Heaven and that if you made it to the Celestial kingdom you could become a God yourself, I had no idea they thought God used to be a man too. Stuff like that. It also felt to me like they relegated women to second class citizens that were expected to bake and can food and have babies. I’m not a feminist, but it just seemed to be a really obvious lack of equality.
It’s too bad the Mystagogia part was left out. I’ve been part of RCIA in two different parishes and those last 4-5 classes were really stressed as important as the rest. Unfortunately many stop attending after the Easter Vigil.
Its my understanding that real faith amongst the Jewish population has grown despairingly weak.
I used to be on a team of church members who visited members of our local congregation who hadn’t attended in awhile. I found that most had either encountered health issues or quit attending because they thought nobody cared about them.
See my previous post - the article itself was using data from the Pew Research Center. Perfectly respectable data and report. Deseret News was just doing a piece on the information.
That is a ginormous report. Could you please point out the relevant information, specifically anything that addresses weekly attendance? All I was able to see from a cursory scan of that page is that it only deals with population demographics.