Why don't we use the Baltimore Catechism anymore?

[OraLabora]

Since the Baltimore Catechism is no longer used on a major scale, all we have seen in the world is the spread of evil. Promiscuity is no longer seen as seen as sinful, homosexuality is accepted as normal, living together without marriage has no stigma whatsoever. For women under 30, there are more out-of-wedlock births than those born into a marriage. Abortion - the legal killing of unborn babies - has been the law of our land for 39 years. Same sex marriage, which will entail the destruction of the family, is soon to be the law of our land, and churches who “discriminate” against homosexuals will no doubt be prosecuted by our judical system. Our “entertainment” is vulgar, profane and basically pornographic. Our government now feels it has the right to force the Catholic Church to go against her own teachings, i.e. forcing the Catholic Church to support contraception.

How is this related to the Baltimore Catechism given that what you describe pretty much hit Protestants as well as Catholics, not to mention Reformed Judaism, etc. and that in your country, Catholics are a minority? ISTM that those hills have struck all of Western society, not just the Catholic part. Unless I’m missing something and Protestants used the BC as well…

My whole purpose in the question was to ask why when it is fairly obvious to most that catechesis from the last couple of decades has been pretty bad-why not go back to something that we already know worked? People knew the basics of their faith, and today we’ve got Catholics who still go to Mass and don’t even get the concept of the Real Presence!

Well I grew up in the 60s with the French equivalent to the BC. I can’t say that I “got” the concept of the Real Presence after my experience with it. I learned what it really meant when I came back to the Church at age 39, 22 years after I left it. So the Catechism did nothing to teach it to me. Challenge-and-response may be good for memorizing things, it may be good for checklists in an aircraft cockpit, but it doesn’t really teach anything, IMHO. What would have maybe worked better would have been explanations tailored to the level of the students, very simple at first, more detailed later. Rote memorization is good for the memory, spelling and the times tables, but seems pretty limited to me as a tool to teach theological and philosophical concepts even at a simple level.

But I agree with one thing in your post, it doesn’t have to be either/or. I think balance is necessary, but I would always err on the side of more honey than vinegar.

If I look at my generation, brought up on a “challenge-and-response” catechism very similar to the BC, we were the ones who defected from the Church en masse starting in the 60s. Now the social reasons for this might have been peculiar to Quebec during the so-called “Quiet Revolution”, but nonetheless the BC did nothing to keep us in the Church. Some have trickled back like myself the the vast majority are a lost generation. If the BC didn’t keep us in, it isn’t likely to win us back, and it certainly wasn’t the BC that got me back; the current CCC however does an excellent job of teaching Catholicism in understandable language for adults, something simpler would be appropriate for children.

I think rather people here are pining for a simpler era when hard questions were answered in a concise and simple manner, and I can understand that nostalgia. Fact is though that things have evolved greatly since then (and not always for the good) and it’s awfully hard to put the genie back into the bottle and to solve complex social problems with simplistic formulae.

The world has moved on and so too has the Church. Oddly, like Cat says, there still quite a few converts coming into the Church. The thing that strikes me about our Church today is how it has become a warm and inviting place to be, in spite of the flaws (after all it’s populated with far from perfect humans); it was one of the things that first struck me when I came back, and went to the local parish priest for my first confession in 22 years. That was certainly not how I remembered the Church of my youth, which I recall as a slightly forbidding place that reminded me constantly how bad I was. Maybe other regions not so influenced by Jansenism as Quebec was had a different experience, but for me I would never want to go back to that.

 

[Dominique1234]

Now you are being openly insulting and disrespectful about bishops and a Pope.

Disrespect? Yes. Fact? ABSOLUTELY! It’s unfortunate but true.Look into Canon Law.

Canon Law states:

§3: In accord with the knowledge, competence and preeminence which they possess, they have the right and even at times a duty to manifest to the sacred pastors their opinion on matters which pertain to the good of the Church, and they have a right to make their opinion known to other Christian faithful, with due regard for the integrity of faith and morals and reverence toward their pastors, and with consideration for the common good and the dignity of persons.

We have the right to speak up when the Church is faltering or allowing intrinsic evils to permeate into our lives, affecting our Faith, our homes, children and our future.

I’m sure he meant no offense, but was stating fact. Unfortunately for us, we can’t go into his mind and see what he thinks. But good for you for jumping the gun and judging him!

 

[clem456]

Disrespect? Yes. Fact? ABSOLUTELY! It’s unfortunate but true.Look into Canon Law.

Canon Law states:

§3: In accord with the knowledge, competence and preeminence which they possess, they have the right and even at times a duty to manifest to the sacred pastors their opinion on matters which pertain to the good of the Church, and they have a right to make their opinion known to other Christian faithful, with due regard for the integrity of faith and morals and reverence toward their pastors, and with consideration for the common good and the dignity of persons.

We have the right to speak up when the Church is faltering or allowing intrinsic evils to permeate into our lives, affecting our Faith, our homes, children and our future.

I’m sure he meant no offense, but was stating fact. Unfortunately for us, we can’t go into his mind and see what he thinks. But good for you for jumping the gun and judging him!

This is the material Severus was referring to:

From poster sw85:

hen again I also disagree with your assessment that JPII was a particularly strong catechist. Looking back on some of his documents, I just see obscurantist gibberish, often peppered with some **really strange and borderline questionable sentiments **and often **gussied up **in such a way that it’s hard to tell what’s his **personal musing **and what’s actually authoritative teaching. I’m still trying to sort out what, exactly, the Church presently teaches with respect to the death penalty, for instance. And its new found silence on the evils of forcing mothers to work to help sustain families is equally strange. As for the bishops, no less an authority than Card. Dolan himself is on record stating that the bishops handling of catechesis the last several decades has been borderline cowardly. I hope and pray they find their voice and step up their game, but I can’t see that they’re making any improvements in this respect. Their handling of the HHS mandate business has been simply abysmal; a very sound opportunity to catechize forcefully on the evils of contraception squandered in favor of **banal mewling **about “religious freedom.” Sigh.

Severus is not not judging the poster, he is observing the obvious disprespect and vitriol aimed at a Pope and a bishop. Your quote of Canon Law is timely here…Does this poster have “the knowledge, competence and preeminence” required to criticise Blessed John Paul 2 in such a crude way? Does he construcively criticise in a way that enhances “the common good and the dignity of persons”? You be the “judge”. There is a huge difference between judgement and sober observation.

 

[clem456]

We have the right to speak up when** the Church is faltering or allowing intrinsic evils to permeate into our lives, affecting our Faith, our homes, children and our future. **:

Do you truly believe the Catholic Church is allowing evil to permeate your life? If you believe this, why would you belong to such a church? Why are you not a Protestant?

 

[TrueLight]

Who says to ignore hell? No one said hell is not real. A healthy presentation of salvation is what is needed. When we have Catholics pining for more hell and damnation in sermons and catechetics, that is worrisome. And mis-representing the gospel message and the writings of saints, that is worrisome.

Come now. As I posted earlier in the thread, for any Saint’s passages you find on mercy, I can show you a passage on hell. The idea that preaching about hell is misrepresenting the gospel message is your opinion.

A negative and burdensome message didn’t work 3000 years ago, didn’t work 300 hundred years ago…

If you refer to speaking about hell as “burdensome, and negative”, then of course no one is going to challenge that. Who wants to think of the gospel as “negative”.

Can you give an example of how the more direct messages from the early Saints did not work? It’s one thing to argue that people are different now, but it is another to imply that the early Saints either did not talk about hell or that their message didn’t work.

Here are a couple of quotes from some Saints. Yes, you most likely can find quotes of them speaking of God’s mercy. I am only posting these to show that the Saints spoke a LOT about hell.

St Francis Xavier: "‘Ah, how many souls lose Heaven and are cast into Hell!’

BL Jacinta of Fatima: ‘So many people are going to die, and almost all of them are going to Hell! So many people falling into hell!’

St John Neuman: ‘Notwithstanding assurances that God did not create any man for Hell, and that He wishes all men to be saved, it remains equally true that only few will be saved; that only few will go to Heaven; and that the greater part of mankind will be lost forever.’

And so on and so forth. There are tons of quotes.

I really have to wonder, those of you who believe fear of hell is motivation for salvation… How do you envision the relationship with your spouse…? It’s one of the best analogies to the relationship we have with God. If your wife asked “what keeps our relationship alive?”, would you reply that you are afraid of divorce?

I think we need to stop right now arguing as if it is an either/or proposition. In response to your question, I give you St Francis Xavier’s hymn of love:

St Francis Xavier’s Hymn of Love

O GOD, I love Thee for Thyself,
And not that I may Heaven gain,
Nor because those who love Thee not,
Must suffer Hell’s eternal pain.

Thou O my Jesus! Thou didst me
Upon the Cross embrace;
For me didst bear the nails and spear
And manifold disgrace;

And griefs and torments numberless,
And sweat of agony;
E’en death itself — and all for one
Who was Thine enemy.

Then why, O blessed Jesus Christ,
Should I not love Thee well:
Not for the sake of winning Heaven,
Or of escaping Hell;
Not with the hope of gaining aught,
not seeking a reward;
But, as Thyself hast loved
me, O ever-loving Lord?

E’en so I love Thee, and will love,
and in Thy praise will sing;
Solely because Thou art my God
And my eternal King.

But never should we forget there is a hell.

 

[AveMariaMag7]

The only thing I came away with was a horror for mortal sin and the fear of going to hell.

If that is all you got from it. THAT’s GREAT !!!

Nowadays the young aren’t getting THAT and that is why there is so much sin and decadence in this world.

I was brought up on the Baltimore Catechism, too and now it has served me well, at least I know what the Church teaches and not what opinions float around as “Truth” I remember praying before the St. Anthony statue one day and all of a sudden it was like the light turned on. “THIS” I said to myself “is what they were trying to teach me” At the time of my studies, it seemed facts were going in one ear and out the other…but… something stayed and I comprehended what we were being taught. It is important to get the FACTS: The FACTS and nothing but the FACTS. We are obliged to continue to grow in our Faith, so it is important to continue to seek the Truth (Although no new Truths are revealed but what Jesus Christ has taught us and Tradition and the Truths as interpreted by the Magisterium). But we grow by reading how these Truths were lived out by the Saints.

 

[Stylites]

OK, here is my point…again. My point is that, if one is only preaching hell, then they are not preaching the Gospel. Some people need the preaching of hell (and I didn’t necessarily mean that the self righteous ones–and others–that need to hear about hell would always be in church, that was just a point of reference so to speak). Some need to hear about the love of God. One priest, Fr. Larry Richards, said that far too often do we give people th rules and restrictions without teaching them how much God loves them. We just need to make sure there is a balance. I hope I’ve actually made my ponit clear this time…guess it wasn’t before.

Another way of saying it is that the faithful can get by with imperfect contrition, but that God wants the faithful to have perfect contrition. Doing what is right out of love for God is much, much better than doing what is required from the fear of hell.

 

[Jerry-Jet]

Why not speak of Hell in the same proportion as Christ did?

In other words if the Catholic faithful are to have all the four gospels preached to them–then everytime that Jesus speaks of Hell in the gospels then it should be preached to them!

What’s so hard to understand about that?

And everytime Hell is mentioned in the rest of the New Testament–if that is the scripture for the day then it should be preached to them!

When St. Paul speaks of “being saved only as through fire” then purgatory should be preached to them!

Any good Catholic priest that preaches his homilies based on the scripture in the lectionary is doing his job.

And everytime the scripture speaks of God’s mercy in the scripture of the day then God’s mercy should be preached!

All any priest has to do is just preach the bible as backed up by the Catholic church’s magisterium and doctrine that it has laid out over the centuries and people will sing them man’s praises!

Who can preach the truth of the bible and the truth of the Catholic Church and not be moved to tears?

Who can receive the eucharist and not be moved to tears of contrition and tears of joy and waves of thankfullness?

 

[Brooklyn]

Maybe you should review the last 5-6 pages of posts? That might help alleviate your confusion.

In your and other’s defense of more Hell in preaching and teaching, Scripture and The Dairy of St Faustina have been mis-represented. I posted the homily from JP2 to provide the healthy and real perspective in which Divine Mercy is preached and taught…by a Pope, not Michael Voris, who you seem to be fond of, but who’s show is banned from using the word “catholic” by his Bishop.

Clearly hell and damnation are not emphasized in scritpture or the Diary, heaven and salvation are. Or do you and others still disagree with that? One of the posters laid down a challenge to prove the assertion that hell and damnation are emphasized in scripture and should be preached more, and got no solid reply. Confusion is not a reply, it is a request for clarification, hence my post.

People who visit this forum need to see how qualified people (a Pope??) preach these issues.

I sincerely hope this helps with your confusion.

Maybe you didn’t notice, but I was actively involved in the last 5-6 pages of posts, so you would have me reading my own posts. Maybe you should read these pages again, and you will see how I have proven over and over again that hell has clearly been taught and even emphasized down through the ages. In one post I showed that Saint Faustina, through whom we are given Divine Mercy, was taken down to hell by our Lord so that she could show the rest of us just how terrible it is. Her comment was that she found most of those in hell did not believe in hell when they were alive.

You seem to have a bias against Michael Voris, who very much promotes traditional Cathoicism, which most definitely does include the preaching of hell. It makes no sense to me that we must separate the preaching of God’s great mercy and love from the preaching of hell. The Church has never done that before and I don’t know why we need to start now. St. Faustina did not separate these two subjects. But you and others seem to think we should shield people from the reality of hell. After all, we don’t want to offend anyone. We want to be “nice,”

Sometimes I feel like there really are two separate Catholic Churches - the Church of Nice, as Michael Voris calls it, and the Traditional Church. The Church of Nice always wants to be nice, but they sure aren’t very nice to those who disagree with them, as I have seen on this thread and many others in this forum.

 

[Brooklyn]

Another way of saying it is that the faithful can get by with imperfect contrition, but that God wants the faithful to have perfect contrition. Doing what is right out of love for God is much, much better than doing what is required from the fear of hell.

But surely you are not implying that for those who have not reached spiritual maturity, obeying out of fear of hell and damnation is somehow not acceptable to God? As you say, the church has defined that as imperfect contrition, and the Church definitely recognizes that as valid. The idea is that those who have repented out of fear of hell will grow in their love for God, especially as they recognize his Great Mercy. We all have to start somewhere, and most of us don’t start out as spiritual giants.

 

[Brooklyn]

This seems to be very reasonable. Very reasonable indeed. And I haven’t once, that I recall, said anything negative about the BC. As a matter of fact, I know next to nothing about it. I’m a convert, and a relatively young one–in my early 30’s. So, obviously, I didn’t even know about the BC until recently. But again, I think there is nothing wrong with ensuring that we are properly catechized (something which I regret to say didn’t happen well in RCIA for me…most of what I’ve learned, I’ve learned here or on my own). I just think that no one should down our Bishops, Pope or current Catechism.

I posted a sermon in which a priest criticized bishops for not preaching about hell. I have never put down any specific bishop or priest and most certainly have never criticized the Holy Father in any way.

If you are implying that I have " downed our Bishops, Pope or current Catechism", you owe me an apology, because that is patently false.

 

[clem456]

Maybe you didn’t notice, but I was actively involved in the last 5-6 pages of posts, so you would have me reading my own posts. Maybe you should read these pages again, and you will see how I have proven over and over again that hell has clearly been taught and even emphasized down through the ages. In one post I showed that Saint Faustina, through whom we are given Divine Mercy, was taken down to hell by our Lord so that she could show the rest of us just how terrible it is. Her comment was that she found most of those in hell did not believe in hell when they were alive.

You seem to have a bias against Michael Voris, who very much promotes traditional Cathoicism, which most definitely does include the preaching of hell. It makes no sense to me that we must separate the preaching of God’s great mercy and love from the preaching of hell. The Church has never done that before and I don’t know why we need to start now. St. Faustina did not separate these two subjects. But you and others seem to think we should shield people from the reality of hell. After all, we don’t want to offend anyone. We want to be “nice,”

Sometimes I feel like there really are two separate Catholic Churches - the Church of Nice, as Michael Voris calls it, and the Traditional Church. The Church of Nice always wants to be nice, but they sure aren’t very nice to those who disagree with them, as I have seen on this thread and many others in this forum.

So you do want Nice them? Or you don’t? Which would it be? People give you solid preaching and truthful observations, and that is meanness? Disagreement is what it is, it is not mean, people are simply going to disagree with you, get used to it. You have been presented with truthful observations from scripture, homilies, links to papal statements from JP2 and Benedict, and you cling to a message that is at odds with Tradition.

As much you would like to back-pedal, you and others are **mis-representing the Gospel **message by selectively pulling out quotes containing the word hell, which are outnumbered like 10-1 by quotes containing the word heaven. Same thing with St Faustina. For a diary with over 1800 sections, you badly mis-represent her Dairy which is titled oddly enough Divine Mercy in My Soul… Maybe you would prefer the title “Eternal Hellfire and Damnation in My Soul”, but alas, we are not given the option of reinterpreting the message. Or are we? I provide you with an entire homily from JP2 with his message on the diary and feast, you give us rigidly selective quotes and Michael Voris, and your wishes for more hell from the pulpit and catechists. It’s a sad sad thing that this is what discussion of our faith comes to.

Michael Voris is banned from using the word Catholic in his “ministry”, by his bishop. 'Nough said, no more comment needed. And this is my last post here as it is truly pointless.

 

[Brooklyn]

So you do want Nice them? Or you don’t? Which would it be? People give you solid preaching and truthful observations, and that is meanness? Disagreement is what it is, it is not mean, people are simply going to disagree with you, get used to it. You have been presented with truthful observations from scripture, homilies, links to papal statements from JP2 and Benedict, and you cling to a message that is at odds with Tradition.

As much you would like to back-pedal, you and others are **mis-representing the Gospel **message by selectively pulling out quotes containing the word hell, which are outnumbered like 10-1 by quotes containing the word heaven. Same thing with St Faustina. For a diary with over 1800 sections, you badly mis-represent her Dairy which is titled oddly enough Divine Mercy in My Soul… Maybe you would prefer the title “Eternal Hellfire and Damnation in My Soul”, but alas, we are not given the option of reinterpreting the message. Or are we? I provide you with an entire homily from JP2 with his message on the diary and feast, you give us rigidly selective quotes and Michael Voris, and your wishes for more hell from the pulpit and catechists. It’s a sad sad thing that this is what discussion of our faith comes to.

Michael Voris is banned from using the word Catholic in his “ministry”, by his bishop. 'Nough said, no more comment needed. And this is my last post here as it is truly pointless.

Because I posted the passage from St. Faustina’s diary about being taken to hell, and following the command of God in writing about it, I have misrepresented her diary? Oh please, give me a break. As I posted before, I did not make up this entry of her diary, it is right there for everyone to see, and we ignore it at our own peril.

The bishop of Detroit used a part of canon law to say that Michael Voris could not use the word “Catholic.” You have completely misrepresented that as well. This part of Canon law was not written just to “get” Michael Voris. “Real Catholic” continues just as it always did, now called “Church Militant”, which is another name for the Catholic Church, and in fact Voris is stronger than ever. The bishop may have told him not to use the word “Catholic”, but he didn’t do anything to stop Michael Voris from doing what he has always been doing nor did the Bishop condemn Michael Voris in any way.

I agree this is getting pointless. You are starting to get nasty in your posts and are completely misrepresenting everything I have been trying to say and no light is being shed on this subject whatsoever. Millions of souls are in danger because they are not hearing the dogmas of the Church. Catholics have left the Church by the millions, vocations are down the drain (we had one ordination in the New York dicocese this year), nuns are in complete revolt against the Church, there is scandal after scandal in the Church, and yet you attack me because I would like to see the dogmas of the Church taught to the people. We have seen several posts on here where people have said they were poorly catechized. Catholics do not know their religion because they have not been taught. All I am saying is let’s get beyond talking about only “pleasant” things and talk about the reality of sin, which is all around us, and the consequences of that sin - eternal damnation in hell.

I’m sorry you seem to have such a problem with that.

 

[TimothyH]

To me, all the catechesis in the world doesn’t equal one moment of God acting in our lives. For me, all the catechisms in the world don’t add up to one millisecond of God touching me in a profound and deeply personal way.

Catechesis is facts. Facts don’t build faith. Faith is trusting God, and all the facts in the world don’t teach people faith. All the facts in the world don’t teach people to trust God.

Adam and Eve didn’t sin because they lacked catechesis but because they didn’t trust God. Abraham didn’t bring Isaac to the mountain with the knife because he was well catechized but because God acted in his life, touched him personally and profoundly, and proved that he could be trusted. David loved God because God delivered him from Saul and David knew that God was real. Likewise Moses. St. Paul was perhaps the best catechized character in the Bible, and he persecuted the Church visciously until God acted in his life on the road to Damascus.

The entire Old Testament is the story of God teaching humanity to trust him. When they didn’t trust, they perished. When they did trust, there was great blessing. Teaching doctrine and dogma is good, but souls are lost because people don’t trust God. They aren’t taught to pray.

It’s not wrong to want to know the truth, but I really wonder if some non-Catholics are not right to a certain extent, if our religion hasn’t been reduced to catechesis to a certain extent. I wonder about the value of theology without being touched by the holy Spirit in some real, visceral way. Shouldn’t that be what we pray for? Shouldn’t that be what we beg God for?

Diadochus of Photike had this to say.

It is always better to await the illumination of faith, energized by love, which equips us to speak, since nothing is more miserable than a Godless mind philosophizing about God.

It seems harsh, and outside of it’s context it probably is. Before anyone shoots off a nasty reply, it’s a sixth century bishop’s observation, and the context is the attempt by some of his day to completely rationalize (philosophizing) the action of God through his Holy Church in the absence of an intuitive sense of spiritual things - call it the “Mind’s eye” if you will. That intuition can only be based on experience, and we get that experience in part through prayer.

I know it is a gift from God to be touched by him, but if we beg God for it, he will give it to us. Knock and the door will open. Ask and it will be given. That’s what I want. And the rare times it happens, all the catechesis in the world becomes academic.

These are just my thoughts. I’m sure some will take offense. I promise that if you reply in anger I will refuse to argue.

-PAX-

-Tim-

 

[TrueLight]

T

I know it is a gift from God to be touched by him, but if we beg God for it, he will give it to us. Knock and the door will open. Ask and it will be given. That’s what I want. And the rare times it happens, all the catechesis in the world becomes academic.

-PAX-

-Tim-

Tim,

We need both.

Without knowing our faith, we risk being led to and fro by all sorts of spiritualities and new ageisms.

If it is all academic then we lack the “heart knowledge” of God, which can leave us lukewarm.

 

[TimothyH]

Tim,

We need both.

Without knowing our faith, we risk being led to and fro by all sorts of spiritualities and new ageisms.

If it is all academic then we lack the “heart knowledge” of God, which can leave us lukewarm.

No, I agree with you. You are absolutely right and there is a great need for better catechesis. I have a friend with a very good grasp of moral theology who counted 150+ errors in a fifth grade PSR book. It is bad.

My point is that we need to put it in it’s proper place.

Catechesis needs to be backed up with moral theology - basic instruction on how to apply all this stuff to the details of our daily lives, and the strength to do so only comes from God.

For me, knowing all the dogma’s in the world was wonderful, but I was unable to do them until God gave me the strength. All the catechesis in the world by itself only creates really knowledgeable sinners. That’s all I’m saying. Nothing more.

-Tim-

 

[TrueLight]

No, I agree with you. You are absolutely right and there is a great need for better catechesis. I have a friend with a very good grasp of moral theology who counted 150+ errors in a fifth grade PSR book. It is bad.

My point is that we need to put it in it’s proper place.

Catechesis needs to be backed up with moral theology - basic instruction on how to apply all this stuff to the details of our daily lives, and the strength to do so only comes from God.

For me, knowing all the dogma’s in the world was wonderful, but I was unable to do them until God gave me the strength. All the catechesis in the world by itself only creates really knowledgeable sinners. That’s all I’m saying. Nothing more.

-Tim-

 

[Brooklyn]

To me, all the catechesis in the world doesn’t equal one moment of God acting in our lives. For me, all the catechisms in the world don’t add up to one millisecond of God touching me in a profound and deeply personal way.

Catechesis is facts. Facts don’t build faith. Faith is trusting God, and all the facts in the world don’t teach people faith. All the facts in the world don’t teach people to trust God.

Adam and Eve didn’t sin because they lacked catechesis but because they didn’t trust God. Abraham didn’t bring Isaac to the mountain with the knife because he was well catechized but because God acted in his life, touched him personally and profoundly, and proved that he could be trusted. David loved God because God delivered him from Saul and David knew that God was real. Likewise Moses. St. Paul was perhaps the best catechized character in the Bible, and he persecuted the Church visciously until God acted in his life on the road to Damascus.

The entire Old Testament is the story of God teaching humanity to trust him. When they didn’t trust, they perished. When they did trust, there was great blessing. Teaching doctrine and dogma is good, but souls are lost because people don’t trust God. They aren’t taught to pray.

It’s not wrong to want to know the truth, but I really wonder if some non-Catholics are not right to a certain extent, if our religion hasn’t been reduced to catechesis to a certain extent. I wonder about the value of theology without being touched by the holy Spirit in some real, visceral way. Shouldn’t that be what we pray for? Shouldn’t that be what we beg God for?

Diadochus of Photike had this to say.

It is always better to await the illumination of faith, energized by love, which equips us to speak, since nothing is more miserable than a Godless mind philosophizing about God.

It seems harsh, and outside of it’s context it probably is. Before anyone shoots off a nasty reply, it’s a sixth century bishop’s observation, and the context is the attempt by some of his day to completely rationalize (philosophizing) the action of God through his Holy Church in the absence of an intuitive sense of spiritual things - call it the “Mind’s eye” if you will. That intuition can only be based on experience, and we get that experience in part through prayer.

I know it is a gift from God to be touched by him, but if we beg God for it, he will give it to us. Knock and the door will open. Ask and it will be given. That’s what I want. And the rare times it happens, all the catechesis in the world becomes academic.

These are just my thoughts. I’m sure some will take offense. I promise that if you reply in anger I will refuse to argue.

-PAX-

-Tim-

I’m not offended by what you said, but I most certainly disagree. With all due respect, your reply sounds very protestant. One of my biggest problems with protestantism is that so much of it is based on emotion - Jesus loves us and saves us and that’s all we really need to know. But what does He save us from? Bad feelings? Is Jesus’ role in our lives just to make us feel better about ourselves?

Catechesis is much more than just “facts.” Catechesis is understanding the plan of salvation, it is understanding that we as human beings are separated from God, and it is a gulf so wide that there is nothing we can do to overcome that sweeping chasm. It is understanding and accepting the fact that we are sinful human beings and acknowledging that we are in need of a Saviour. That is not something we innately know.

Remember the story of the Ethopian eunuch in the book of Acts? Philip found him reading the scriptures, and Philip asked him: “Thinkest thou that thou understandest what thou readest?” (Acts 8:30). The eunuch answered: “And how can I, unless some man shew me?” Verse 35 says: “Then Philip, opening his mouth, and beginning at this scripture, preached unto him Jesus.” That means catechesis.

No, we don’t need to be Thomas Aquinas to be saved, thank God. We also have St. Bernadette of Lourdes, a little peasant girl who didn’t even understand what Immaculate Conception meant, and yet our Blessed Mother chose her to spread her message.

But that is what is so great about the Baltimore Catechism. It is not a book of great theology and complicated thought. It simply sets out the very basic teachings of the Catholic Church in a very easy and understandable format. I was learning from the BC when I was 7 years old.

Catholics need to know the basics of their religion, and that includes the four last things, which are death, judgment, hell and heaven. We are not Adam and Eve, we are Catholics living in a very complicated and evil age, and without knowledge, we are easy prey for every charlatan out there.

You say: “For me, all the catechisms in the world don’t add up to one millisecond of God touching me in a profound and deeply personal way.” Do you trust your sinful human nature enough to know when God “touches” you and that it is not the devil? The devil is far more cunning and far more clever than any of us. Just look at all the millions and billions of people around the world who have been deceived into believing lies. And we know that the devil is the father of lies.

Please ask yourself honestly why are you opposed to use of the Baltimore Catechism? Why are you opposed to the preaching of the four last things? To leave people to their own resources and trusting their uneducated conscience is a very dangerous thing to do. If you don’t believe me, just look around you and you will see the evidence of that everywhere.

 

[Cat]

Maybe you didn’t notice, but I was actively involved in the last 5-6 pages of posts, so you would have me reading my own posts. Maybe you should read these pages again, and you will see how I have proven over and over again that hell has clearly been taught and even emphasized down through the ages. In one post I showed that Saint Faustina, through whom we are given Divine Mercy, was taken down to hell by our Lord so that she could show the rest of us just how terrible it is. Her comment was that she found most of those in hell did not believe in hell when they were alive.

You seem to have a bias against Michael Voris, who very much promotes traditional Cathoicism, which most definitely does include the preaching of hell. It makes no sense to me that we must separate the preaching of God’s great mercy and love from the preaching of hell. The Church has never done that before and I don’t know why we need to start now. St. Faustina did not separate these two subjects. But you and others seem to think we should shield people from the reality of hell. After all, we don’t want to offend anyone. We want to be “nice,”

Sometimes I feel like there really are two separate Catholic Churches - the Church of Nice, as Michael Voris calls it, and the Traditional Church. The Church of Nice always wants to be nice, but they sure aren’t very nice to those who disagree with them, as I have seen on this thread and many others in this forum.

The sentence that I have bolded above explains a lot.

Brooklyn, I hope you will think about what I’m going to say. And I hope that it is OK for me to say this. It’s just my opinion, and I hope with all my heart that I am totally wrong about you.

It is wrong of you to divide the Catholic Church in your mind. The Bible and the Church caution us to avoid being “factious,” and I think this is what you are doing.

You have allowed yourself to get into a state of mind where you can see no good at all in the “modern” parishes, and I think this is a dangerous path for you to go down.

Many of the parishes that you and your mentors label with a derisive term are very likely in total or near compliance with the all the Church rubrics, and most importantly, they are doing what Christ commanded, which is to offer the Sacrifice of the Mass daily. Many Catholics who attend these parishes are faithful, humble, and seeking to follow the Lord Jesus and be true to His Church.

For some reason, you are not seeing all this good stuff, and you are not meeting the good, faithful Catholics. I’m not sure why you have had such rotten luck meeting really good Catholics. It seems that the only Catholics you are meeting are those who are under-catechized, “cafeteria” Catholics. No wonder you are so discouraged with the state of the Church.

Have you considered trying some “new meeting places” and attempting to seek out those Catholics in your area who are serious, studious, and sold-out to Christ and His True Church? There are lots of them, really.

Perhaps you are thinking too much of the past and idealizing it. Perhaps it’s time to try to come to terms with the present. Meeting other good Catholics will help you do this.

You must realize that any parish (or any Protestant fellowship, too) has a large majority of people who seem to be “luke-warm”. Some people call them “pew-sitters.” They keep coming week after week, but they never seem to be doing much and certainly don’t demonstrate a lot of passion or enthusiasm. However, it is wrong to judge these people as “bad Catholics.” We don’t know the state of their soul. And in God’s Eyes, they may be more righteousness than everyone because they keep the faith, even though their lives are rather ordinary and they don’t seem to accomplish great things.

Certainly there are miscreants in the Catholic Church and in each parish–there will always be miscreants, but to condemn entire parishes and label them in the most negative terms (“Nice” Church) because of the miscreants is just wrong.

And yes, sadly, there are plenty of Catholics who are doing great harm to the Church by their public witness.

But praise God, there are still plenty of good Catholics! I think that if you could find and associate with these Catholics, you would have a more positive and hopeful view of the Church, and realize that there aren’t two different Catholic Churches at all, but One Holy Catholic Apostolic Church, with many different kinds of members.

Godspeed to you.

 

[OraLabora]

One of my biggest problems with protestantism is that so much of it is based on emotion - Jesus loves us and saves us and that’s all we really need to know.

I want to pick up on this theme for a minute. I understand where Tim is coming from. We have confronted major crises in our lives and felt the guiding hand of God leading us out of it. As Catholics, we worship with all our senses, in a very sacramental way: taste, smell, sound+music, touch, an speech; and we also worship as whole persons which includes our intellect (of varying capacity) and our emotional responses (of varying capacity). We needn’t fear our emotions. The great mystics have had intense emotional responses to feeling God’s very real presence. People who fear their emotions build a false front and fear going deep into their hearts to confront who they truly are, both the good and the evil (we all have both in us).

I don’t like getting personal on these forums but I feel compelled to relate my own experience. Until about 2 years ago, I certainly was a “well catechized” Catholic. But as Tim says I was just a sinner with good knowledge. What I didn’t grasp was that it isn’t “all about me”.

At that stage my 22-year marriage had failed the 5 last years were very painful and lonely years. I was in Europe visiting a monk friend in a monastery in France, when my wife e-mailed me that she wanted to end it and end it now. I got the e-mail at the airport in Paris before my flight home as there was no e-mail available at the monastery.

When I got home she told me she wrote my spiritual director (a Benedictine monk and our abbey’s oblate director), in exasperation about all my foibles and that she’d had enough. And I have some serious ones (and so does she). Both my wife and I experienced difficult childhoods… but that’s another story. I had done the usual confession thing: go in with my “list” of sins, but it was a never-ending cycle. What I hadn’t done was confront my worst darkness; I started to do that in silent and solo meditation at a small chapel in the monastery in France.

When I heard she wrote my spiritual director I asked to meet him. I had arrived home on the Sunday and met him on Thursday morning. I just opened up my heart to him (as my wife had done in her letter). I still have no idea what she wrote him and he didn’t break her confidence. I think that’s when I really started to understand about humility and understand how I owned my issues, couldn’t blame others for them, and how I couldn’t control my wife’s response to them, I had to work on them myself.

That’s when the miracle happened. I got home (I worked from home at the time), opened up my e-mail, and there was a brief e-mail from my wife that simply said “I think we’re going to be OK.”. Nothing else. We both had to learn to accept each other as we were, it wasn’t “all about me” and we owed it to the other to work on ourselves rather than expect the other to “change”.

All I can say is that our marriage for the past two years has been blissful. The usual cycle of argument and recrimination was broken.

I’m by no means perfect, we both still wrestle with our respective sins; we have instead learned to be patient with the other. The Rule of St. Benedict has been especially helpful in teaching how to live with the foibles of others. But I have a sense of conversion. Confession has taken on a whole other meaning to me now, where it is a means of learning to live with my flaws, to accept myself as I am, to forgive myself as well as ask God’s forgiveness, to trust that forgiveness, and thus, to feel those flaws losing their grip on my life.

My point is that at one point all the intellect and catechesis in the world didn’t help my wife and I become better Christians. I believe the direct hand of God was involved. A real, palpable and direct interaction in our lives that operated on our hearts rather than our intellect.

Do I trust my emotions to enough to know God touched me? Not always. But in this case, I sure as heck do believe my emotions were spot on. It happened because we finally truly opened ourselves up to trust him. I remember thinking on the plane home how calm I felt, after the initial shock of reading her e-mail, thinking I had no other option but to trust Him to get me through this crisis. When I really turned my life over to His care when was when I really started to understand what salvation. And what it isn’t about, and it isn’t about being able to rattle off the catechism responses one learns by rote.