If you have any questions about Catholicism

[Anna Dlugosz]

This is simply for anyone who has questions about Catholicism. I will answer it to the best of my knowledge.Im only curious about the questions people have about this subject.

[Anna Dlugosz]

JULIA!!!! YES U WERE IN MY CLASS!!

[Julia Chapman]

We were Daisies together! Yay!

[Vertigo_One [Ops Mod]]

What is your opinion of the pope? Both in general (the office of the pope) and specifically the current one? Do you regard him as God's voice on Earth?

[Anna Dlugosz]

I do like the Pope. I follow him because he is Christ's vicar on Earth. I also follow him because he is infallable. Now that dosn't mean he dosn't have faults, he does because he's human, but over all he is incurruped so that is good.

[Hutch Hogan]

 but over all he is incurruped so that is good.

That's slightly odd. 

[Anna Dlugosz]

you'd think but if you look back in History there are many corrupped popes. If u look at the schism of the church, that was caused by corrupption in the church which the pope alowed

[Hutch Hogan]

There were certainly corruption with popes in the past (Alexander VI as a particularly easy example). 

But this current pope still has some areas of particular worry, such as when he was serving as the Prefect for the Congregation of Faith and was in charge of investigation of allegations of sexual affairs and paedophilia and the publishing of Crimen Sollicitationis. 

 

 

[Anna Dlugosz]

I've never have done research on this particular subject so i have no real room to talk. I may be wrong but from what i see from browsing the internet is that he wasn't trying to cover the allegations up he was looking into them and from what i see did nothing wrong. If you could send a link or something of what he did wrong i would like to look at it! but what i meant originally when i said "but over all he is incurruped so that is good" i really did just mean as a whole. He thinks he needs to go to confession every day, so if he truly believes he did wrong and is truly sorry for it, then he has already be forgiven.

[Kat]

I was raised Catholic, so I don't really have any questions about that, but I'm curious whether any political beliefs you may have do or don't differ from the traditional ones of the Catholic church, i.e. homosexuality, abortion, etc. I know many Catholics who stick one hundred percent to the theology, and others, such as myself, who don't. 

[Anna Dlugosz]

There's 1 thing that i disagree fully with the church on and that is animals don't have souls. Who are we to say that they don't have souls?

The second I'm on the boarder about, and that is gay marriage. Now I understand where the church is coming from, and i have done extensive research on this, but it doesn't really convince me. the simplest analogy of why the church stands where it does was made by my youth group leader and was "say your child wanted to eat nothing but sand for the rest of his life.{that is a real disease} Would you stop them? Of course you would! why? its bad for there body. The same goes for gay marriage.If you let them keep doing that, then there soul will become less healthy." which i think is an OK analogy, but defiantly not perfect. As of right now i am kinda leaning toward gay rights, but i haven't been fully convinced.

On the subject of abortion i am completely and utterly against it. I've also done extensive reasearch on this as well, and from the facts i gathered is that what they are doing is murder. I understand wanting a choice on things but not on this. THIS IS STRAIGHT UP MURDER. In late term abortions the child's vocal cords are developed enough that you can hear the child scream when they go in to kill it.

The only difference between the fetus and the baby is placement. Outside the womb it is safe, but inside the womb....where the child is suppose to be the safest.....not safe anymore,and that is just sad.

[Julia Chapman]

See, I'm also Catholic, and even grew up going to the same school as Anna, and I must say that I am quite liberal. I feel like God loves all no matter their choices.

About same-sex marriage, God made people that way. God made Ruth and Naomi, and the Bible uses the same form of "love" for them as Adam and Eve. They were claimed to have the perfect relationship.

As for abortion, I don't believe that getting rid of unwanted cells that are using my nutrients and energy is a sin. It is not murder, just as removing a tumor is not murder. I disagree with the "you can hear them scream" because that's just false. Sorry.

As always, with political decisions I find myself referring to the greatest commandment "Love your neighbor as yourself" and the guidance "Give to Caesar what is Caesar's, and give to God what is God's." Who am I to tell others how to live their lives based on my religion?

[Vertigo_One [Ops Mod]]

About same-sex marriage, God made people that way.

I think most Christians would respond to that by saying that people have predispotions and tendencies to all kinds of sins. That doesn't make them stop being sins.

God made Ruth and Naomi, and the Bible uses the same form of "love" for them as Adam and Eve. They were claimed to have the perfect relationship.

I've heard this argument before, and it doesn't work. The word used is "dabaq" which literally translated means "to hold fast/tightly". Although it is used in the context of man holding fast to his wife, it is also used in more non-erotic contexts as well. For example, it's used in the following instances

Ezekiel 3:26

And I will make your tongue cling to the roof of your mouth, so that you shall be mute and unable to reprove them, for they are a rebellious house.

Deuteronomy 28:11

The Lord will make the pestilence stick to you until he has consumed you off the land that you are entering to take possession of it.

Psalm 22: 15

my strength is dried up like a potsherd,

and my tongue sticks to my jaws;

you lay me in the dust of death.

Jeremiah 13: 11

For as the loincloth clings to the waist of a man, so I made the whole house of Israel and the whole house of Judah cling to me, declares the Lord, that they might be for me a people, a name, a praise, and a glory, but they would not listen.

2 Kings 5: 27

Therefore the leprosy of Naaman shall cling to you and to your descendants forever.” So he went out from his presence a leper, like snow

Deutoronomy 30: 20.  

loving the Lord your God, obeying his voice and holding fast to him, for he is your life and length of days, that you may dwell in the land that the Lord swore to your fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, to give them.”

It's also used in the same section of the Bible, later in the story of Ruth. In that story, Boaz uses the same word in Ruth 2:8 Then Boaz said to Ruth, “Now, listen, my daughter, do not go to glean in another field or leave this one, but keep close to my young women. And Boaz uses it again in Ruth 2:21 And Ruth the Moabite said, “Besides, he said to me, ‘You shall keep close by my young men until they have finished all my harvest.’ ” and again later in Ruth 2:23 So she kept close to the young women of Boaz, gleaning until the end of the barley and wheat harvests. And she lived with her mother-in-law. 

The point being that any claim that Ruth and Naomi had a homosexual relationship is throughly flawed. The problem with it is that you are taking the word that was used, and then only using a single other instance of its use, in Genesis, to derive its meaning. Where as in fact, it is the wider context that the word is used within in the book of Genesis, rather than the word itself, that demonstrates what it means there. So the fact that the same word then turns up between Naomi and Ruth is by no means proof of there being a homosexual relationship between Naomi and Ruth.

As for abortion, I don't believe that getting rid of unwanted cells that are using my nutrients and energy is a sin. It is not murder, just as removing a tumor is not murder.

Tumours are not self organising into the pattern of a human being.

I disagree with the "you can hear them scream" because that's just false. Sorry.

What has been reported is that people who survive abortions, even earlier ones, later on have nightmares on the subject in later life, even ones who were not told there was an attempted abortion.

As always, with political decisions I find myself referring to the greatest commandment "Love your neighbor as yourself" and the guidance "Give to Caesar what is Caesar's, and give to God what is God's." Who am I to tell others how to live their lives based on my religion?

While I agree that it is not religion that should guide whether or not homosexuals are entitled to unions equitable to marriage, the issue of abortion is more "real" for want of a better word. The idea being that if we have it wrong, we are killing thousands and millions of people. That's a perfect example of where the Christian church is getting the "love others as you love yourself" exactly right.