Why do some non-Catholic Christians avoid Christian devotions and practices? Is it simply because these practices are observed or performed by Catholi

  • Thread starter Thread starter Jimmy_B
  • Start date Start date
Status
Not open for further replies.
J

Jimmy_B

Guest
Why do some non-Catholic Christians avoid Christian devotions and practices? Is it simply because these practices are observed or performed by Catholics?

I believe that for some, that it is the only reason.

Why don’t all Christians make the Sign of the Cross and recite the prayer “In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit”? Is the only reason; “Because Catholics do it”?

I will post additional examples but first can anyone please explain to me why it is wrong for any Christian to “Cross” themselves? The is one of the most simple outwardly expression’s of Christianity, why would any Christian avoid making the Sign of the Cross?

Is the lack of this “sign”, a “sign” that you are not really Christian?

Your Thoughts
 
The bible does not authorize it. Therefore we will not do it.
 
panoikei said:
Listened to “Authority”

What do you think of it?
Click to expand...
Hello panoikei,

What do I think? Unfortunately I went to your link because you list as your “religion” (in your profile here at CAF) “Catholic”, so I think, as a Roman Catholic that I wasted about five minutes of my life that I will never get back. :banghead:

Yep… I was right… it is “Protestant” all right. Why do you list “Catholic” for your religion in your profile? Are you some sort of “secret agent” because your link is not a Catholic? Isn’t honesty a tenant of your religion? :rolleyes:

I got my eye on you. :knight1:

Take care.👍
 
Jimmy_B said:
Yep…I’ve heard this “Protestant” line before but I don’t believe it…:cool:
Click to expand...
So you ask a question
get an answer
then tell the poster you do not believe them
That…took nerve…
 
Rightlydivide said:
So you ask a question
get an answer
then tell the poster you do not believe them
That…took nerve…
Click to expand...
I wouldn’t have gone to his link, if I had known it was a “Protestant” link. He had indicated that he was “Catholic” in his profile and that is the only reason I went to his link… Good one…He got me… and you don’t have a problem with that? :o

Maybe my post will serve as an 'Alert" to other Catholics here not to follow his “Protestant”, anti-Catholic links around, believing that they are Catholic links. 👍

Some of us do check profiles and respond accordingly, that is why there are profiles. He could have listed anything for his religion, yet he listed “Catholic” and then posted a “Protestant” link. :confused:

BTW there was no “nerve” involved, I just won’t trust him anymore…😃
 
Now back to the original question:

Why do some non-Catholic Christians avoid Christian devotions and practices? Is it simply because these practices are observed or performed by Catholics?

Why don’t other Non-Catholic Christins make the Sign of the Cross?
 
Stop it! Just stop this anti NonCatholic vitriol.
Why are you so full of hate?
 
Jimmy_B said:
Now back to the original question:

Why do some non-Catholic Christians avoid Christian devotions and practices? Is it simply because these practices are observed or performed by Catholics?

Why don’t other Non-Catholic Christins make the Sign of the Cross?
Click to expand...
As a Fundamentalist (back in the day) I was taught that it was a superstitious act to cross yourself, and a pagan act to pray in repetition. Of course the Psalms are prayers that are full of repetitiveness, but we don’t want to muddy the waters here with reason or anything.

Of course, reason never did rule the day for that kind of mindset. I guess we didn’t think through the fact that we all were told to bow our heads and close our eyes when we prayed. Like that act made a difference in prayer, or was that also superstitious?

We were told that praying the Our Father (Lord’s Prayer) was a repetitive action void of meaning, but we said the same prayer of grace before every meal, and as children were taught our bedtime prayer that stuck with us until adulthood that we in turn passed on to our children. Most preachers prayed prayers that sounded very repetitive, there really is only so many variations on the same way to ask God for just about anything. But, of course, that makes too much sense and defuses the hostile attitudes towards ancient and traditional Christian practices. 🤷

Well all I can say, from where I sit today, I feel sorry for them all, they have no clue the beauty they are missing in joining the WHOLE body of believers since the birth of the Church in it’s customs and prayers.

I’ll never go back to the skeleton of Christian practice when I can have the full bodied one. 😉

And BTW, my profile says Catholic, I am blessed to finally be Catholic and will remain one all the way to ‘Thy Kingdom come’.:signofcross:
 
40.png
Hisalone:
:confused: I’m not sensing hate here, except maybe from you - although I may be misreading you, that’s easy to do with just a typed form of communication. Would you like to share as to why you feel this way?

There was a legitimate question asked by the OP. Why do you insist that hatred is behind the question? Why are you threatened by it?

:hug1: Be at peace.
 
Hisalone said:
Stop it! Just stop this anti NonCatholic vitriol.
Why are you so full of hate?
Click to expand...
Hello Hisalone

I like you, and my interactions with you here at CAF have been positive for the most part. 🙂

Stop what; I am not going to stop defending my Roman Catholic Faith. :knight1:

What are to basing your comment on here? 🤷

Ganging up on me for absolutely no reason, with a couple other ‘Protestants” here doesn’t make any sense. If you have a strong faith, then you should be able to defend it. 👍

Please provide an explanation for your post here and please be specific.

I would like for you to provide a single post of mine that supports this inappropriate response of yours. I have always been very polite and friendly to you and others here at CAF.

I do however, have a problem with people here (in general) who lack integrity and who are dishonest and when that occurs, I call them on it. . :cool:

Just because I may disagree with my Protestant friends, does not mean that I do not love them and I do believe that we are all “Brothers and sisters in Christ”.👍

Please provide a single post of mine that indicates any “hate”.

If I disagree with "Protestant” ideology, and I defend my Roman Catholic Faith, as you do your own faith, that does not make me “full of hate”.

I love all Christians. Your comments here are baseless, unnecessary and off-topic. If you disagree with a question that I have posed here, in this thread, please respond to the question and not to me personally.

The question here is -
Why do some non-Catholic Christians avoid Christian devotions and practices? Is it simply because these practices are observed or performed by Catholics
Click to expand...
In addition, why are there some Christians who will not Cross themselves?

God Bless You 👍
 
Jimmy_B said:
Why do some non-Catholic Christians avoid Christian devotions and practices? Is it simply because these practices are observed or performed by Catholics?
Click to expand...
Jimmy:

Since you have asked the question, here’s my best answer: the Protestant Reformation was not one single historical event but a process that went on for centuries, and which some consider to be going on still. The earliest Reformers were rather minimalistic in the practices and customs that they changed. Lutherans and Anglicans, for example, were rather comfortable with things such as the Sign of the Cross, the use of liturgy, the reciting of ancient prayers and so forth. Later Protestants felt that more changes needed to take place, that if the Christian faith was to be most like the Christianity of the Apostles and the earliest church, all extraneous practices needed to be very closely examined. It was the desire in faithfulness to our Lord Jesus to make the Christian Faith as simple as possible, and not so much the desire to rebel against Romanism which led some Reformers to expunge certain practices.

Look: I was brought up among Protestants whose theology was quite orthodox on the central points of creeds and doctrine. And yet I never had heard of such things as ‘creeds’ in the little Christian churches I grew up in. Or if they were mentioned at all, it was en passant, in such slogans as ‘No Creed But the Bible’.

I distinctly remember asking at one point whether or not our church taught and believed in the Trinity. I was walked through all of the ‘Trinitarian’ verses of the Bible, stopping periodically to be asked in Socratic fashion what I thought this verse or that verse was saying. The process was tedious and overlong to me, since I had asked a simple question and wanted a straightforward answer. But those who were teaching me were more interested in demonstrating to me their idea that doctrine should be established only by close scrutiny of the Bible and not by extraneous theologizings about it. When I pressed the point the person who was instructing me closed the Bible up and held it before me. He said:

“If you look through and through this Bible, you will never find the word ‘Trinity’. It’s better to never use anything but Bible words for Bible things, and so we don’t like to use words like ‘Trinity’. But yes, we do believe the Bible teaches the doctrine some Christians like to call the ‘Trinity’.”

There was nothing in that conversation that in any way was directed against Roman Catholicism. Rather, my teacher was militating FOR something, for a method of discerning Christian truth that is rather different from the one you are likely taught as a Roman Catholic.

I’m sure this is true because some time later, in a totally different context, I was engaged in an argument with a member of my Christian youth group about what all the different Christian churches in town believed. My point was that all of the churches professed that THEIR doctrines were drawn from the Bible more perfectly than all of the other denominations were, and I ‘knew’ that because so many of my own family were members of different Protestant denominations–Methodist, Baptist, Lutheran, Christian Church, Pentecostal, and so forth. They all seemed to believe pretty much the same thing and they all said, when asked that they believed what they believed because ‘the Bible said it’. So I figured that the differences between the churches weren’t so much about was people believed nor about whether their beliefs came from the Bible, but was rooted in tradition and personal taste.

Somehow this little argument led me to take a poll of as many Christian ministers as I could reach by phone or visit. Which confirmed for me that all Christians seemed to believe pretty much the same thing–I actually took notes about who I called, what church they were from, and so forth.

By the way, this is how I came to acquire my first Baltimore Catechism. I called the local Catholic priest–it was one of the few churches I really knew nothing about, having no known family members who were Catholic. He wasn’t quite sure what I was asking about or what I was trying to learn, but he asked me to stop by his office. I actually rode my bike up there, met with the old guy, and we had a little conversation. I don’t think he ever did figure me out but he pulled a Baltimore Catechism off the shelf and gave it to me. In the midst of that conversation I asked if Catholics believed in the Trinity. He started a little and looked at me oddly.

“Well yes. Don’t you?”

I explained, probably not very well, what I have explained in this post about how we believed the Bible teaches the Trinity but we don’t like to call it that because the word ‘Trinity’ isn’t in the Bible. He seemed doubled nonplussed at that. Then I blurted out that I really couldn’t figure out what the Trinity was anyhow. He actually opened the Catechism up and marked the pages where it discusses the Trinity. I read it later and it was the clearest explanation I had ever yet had of what the Trinity was. A lot clearer than walking through a score or more of Bible verses about the subject. A great relief, too, to ask a yes-or-no question and be given a yes-or-no answer.

A bit off-track from your OP, but perhaps it helps illustrate what is motivating Protestants.
 
Jeanette_L said:
:confused: I’m not sensing hate here, except maybe from you - although I may be misreading you, that’s easy to do with just a typed form of communication. Would you like to share as to why you feel this way?

There was a legitimate question asked by the OP. Why do you insist that hatred is behind the question? Why are you threatened by it?

:hug1: Be at peace.
Click to expand...
The question is spun in a negative way.

Most nonCatholics dont make a sign of the cross because they were never taught to.
When did Catholics first make the sign of the cross?
 
Jimmy_B said:
Hello Hisalone

I like you, and my interactions with you here at CAF have been positive for the most part. 🙂

Stop what; I am not going to stop defending my Roman Catholic Faith. :knight1:

What are to basing your comment on here? 🤷

Ganging up on me for absolutely no reason, with a couple other ‘Protestants” here doesn’t make any sense. If you have a strong faith, then you should be able to defend it. 👍

Please provide an explanation for your post here and please be specific.

I would like for you to provide a single post of mine that supports this inappropriate response of yours. I have always been very polite and friendly to you and others here at CAF.

I do however, have a problem with people here (in general) who lack integrity and who are dishonest and when that occurs, I call them on it. . :cool:

Just because I may disagree with my Protestant friends, does not mean that I do not love them and I do believe that we are all “Brothers and sisters in Christ”.👍

Please provide a single post of mine that indicates any “hate”.

If I disagree with "Protestant” ideology, and I defend my Roman Catholic Faith, as you do your own faith, that does not make me “full of hate”.

I love all Christians. Your comments here are baseless, unnecessary and off-topic. If you disagree with a question that I have posed here, in this thread, please respond to the question and not to me personally.

The question here is -

In addition, why are there some Christians who will not Cross themselves?

God Bless You 👍
Click to expand...
Jimmy virtually every thread that you have started on this forum that I can tell is meant to inflame and accentuate the differences between those that are Catholic and those that are not.
You can defend your faith but that is not what you are doing.
What you are doing is a subtle atack on those you disagree with.
 
Hisalone said:
The question is spun in a negative way.

Most nonCatholics dont make a sign of the cross because they were never taught to.
When did Catholics first make the sign of the cross?
Click to expand...
catholic.com/thisrock/1990/9007cc.asp

Here are excerpts from the above link giving some historical background for the ancient CHRISTIAN/CATHOLIC tradition of marking the body with the sign of the cross:

John Chrysostom, bishop of Constantinople in the fourth century, recognized the biblical nature of the sign of the cross. He encouraged his flock, “When, therefore, you sign yourself, think of the purpose of the cross, and quench any anger and all other passions. Consider the price that has been paid for you.”

The early Christian apologist Tertullian wrote, “In all our travels and movements, in all our coming in and going out, in putting on our shoes, at the bath, at the table, in lighting our candles, in lying down, in sitting down, whatever employment occupies us, we mark our forehead with the sign of the cross.”

Athanasius, the great bishop of Alexandria who almost single-handedly stood for Christian orthodoxy against the powerful Arian heresy, taught his flock that “by the sign of the cross…all magic is stayed, all sorcery confounded, all the idols are abandoned and deserted, and all senseless pleasure ceases, as the eye of faith looks up from Earth to heaven.”

Cyril of Jerusalem echoed Tertullian as he encouraged the Church: “Let us not be ashamed to confess the Crucified. Let the cross, as our seal, be boldly made with our fingers upon our brow and on all occasions over the bread we eat, over the cups we drink, in our comings and in our goings, before sleep, on lying down and rising up, when we are on the way and when we are still.”

The great bishop of Cappadocia, Basil, taught that the sign of the cross was a tradition the originated with the apostles, “who taught us to mark with the sign of the cross those who put their hope in the name of the Lord.”

Even Martin Luther urged his followers to use the sign. In his Catechism of 1529 he instructed fathers to teach their households the following: “In the morning, when you rise from bed, sign yourself with the holy cross and say, ‘In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.’…At night, when you go to bed, sign yourself with the holy cross and say, ‘In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.’”

The Christian who rejects the sign of the cross is rebelling against his own roots and is guilty of what C. S. Lewis called “chronological snobbery” about the superiority of modern thinking. Instead we should learn from our fathers, thereby heeding the wisdom of Bernard of Chartres, who recognized that the history of the Church enables us to be “dwarfs standing on the shoulders of giants.”

It is not hatred to ask a valid question which begs a thoughtful answer. Hope this helps. :signofcross:
 
Jimmy_B said:
Why do some non-Catholic Christians avoid Christian devotions and practices? Is it simply because these practices are observed or performed by Catholics?

I believe that for some, that it is the only reason.

Why don’t all Christians make the Sign of the Cross and recite the prayer “In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit”? Is the only reason; “Because Catholics do it”?

I will post additional examples but first can anyone please explain to me why it is wrong for any Christian to “Cross” themselves? The is one of the most simple outwardly expression’s of Christianity, why would any Christian avoid making the Sign of the Cross?

Is the lack of this “sign”, a “sign” that you are not really Christian?

Your Thoughts
Click to expand...
I’ve been to Episcopalian services and many of them do it.
 
Jeanette_L said:
catholic.com/thisrock/1990/9007cc.asp

Here are excerpts from the above link giving some historical background for the ancient CHRISTIAN/CATHOLIC tradition of marking the body with the sign of the cross:

John Chrysostom, bishop of Constantinople in the fourth century, recognized the biblical nature of the sign of the cross. He encouraged his flock, “When, therefore, you sign yourself, think of the purpose of the cross, and quench any anger and all other passions. Consider the price that has been paid for you.”

The early Christian apologist Tertullian wrote, “In all our travels and movements, in all our coming in and going out, in putting on our shoes, at the bath, at the table, in lighting our candles, in lying down, in sitting down, whatever employment occupies us, we mark our forehead with the sign of the cross.”

Athanasius, the great bishop of Alexandria who almost single-handedly stood for Christian orthodoxy against the powerful Arian heresy, taught his flock that “by the sign of the cross…all magic is stayed, all sorcery confounded, all the idols are abandoned and deserted, and all senseless pleasure ceases, as the eye of faith looks up from Earth to heaven.”

Cyril of Jerusalem echoed Tertullian as he encouraged the Church: “Let us not be ashamed to confess the Crucified. Let the cross, as our seal, be boldly made with our fingers upon our brow and on all occasions over the bread we eat, over the cups we drink, in our comings and in our goings, before sleep, on lying down and rising up, when we are on the way and when we are still.”

The great bishop of Cappadocia, Basil, taught that the sign of the cross was a tradition the originated with the apostles, “who taught us to mark with the sign of the cross those who put their hope in the name of the Lord.”

Even Martin Luther urged his followers to use the sign. In his Catechism of 1529 he instructed fathers to teach their households the following: “In the morning, when you rise from bed, sign yourself with the holy cross and say, ‘In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.’…At night, when you go to bed, sign yourself with the holy cross and say, ‘In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.’”

The Christian who rejects the sign of the cross is rebelling against his own roots and is guilty of what C. S. Lewis called “chronological snobbery” about the superiority of modern thinking. Instead we should learn from our fathers, thereby heeding the wisdom of Bernard of Chartres, who recognized that the history of the Church enables us to be “dwarfs standing on the shoulders of giants.”

It is not hatred to ask a valid question which begs a thoughtful answer. Hope this helps. :signofcross:
Click to expand...
So the sign of the cross was not part of first century Christiandom.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top