The Roman Catholic Church. A respectful, civil, sharing of thoughts.

I was almost an Episcopalian (Anglican), but that's a story for another day.
 

Pepper said:
I was almost an Episcopalian (Anglican), but that's a story for another day.
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Being an Episcopalian is just like being a Catholic with a few key differences:

1) Episcopalians socialize after church. Catholics "attend mass" and get out as quickly as they can.

2) Episcopalians ordain women and let (encourage) priests to marry. As a result, clergy people are more likely to be, well, sane.

3) The official Episcopal stance on abortion is that it is a matter of individual choice.

Plus the music is better, and the sermons are sometimes interesting.
 

It was a great privilege to be acquainted with the former Dean of St. John the Divine Cathedral in NYC, James Morton, for several years way back when. We had medieval stuff in common and I worked as a 'serving wench' for several medieval themed fund raisers.
 
Pepper said:
It was a great privilege to be acquainted with the former Dean of St. John the Divine Cathedral in NYC, James Morton, for several years way back when. We had medieval stuff in common and I worked as a 'serving wench' for several medieval themed fund raisers.
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I once went to a concert there by The Waverly Consort, medieval/Renaissance musicians and singers. I think it was called The Legend of Fauvel, but it was a really long time ago.
 
multimodAL said:
that's open to debate... my previous views of events has been tempered by time or maybe seasoned by trying to be more understanding.

these views are strictly mine though influenced throughout my life by happenstance and those with the knowledge (and power) to affect change in the world. those influences to which i gravitated to and which are now attracted to me.

realize my awareness spans different levels of control. my messages, if somewhat cryptic, is the open call to those who are watching while acknowledging those who seek control for their own gain. (hello!)

original thought? if that's possible... because nothing's really new but would be what i consider strictly internal. maybe more like evolution of thought with every retelling.

the fluidity of information as i type seems more like channelling because the massage has no shape or purpose at the start only the germ upon which the message is borne. fixed? only when it's broken.

thank you for asking... the thought of how to respond to such an inquiry stymied me only recently so off to the subconscious it went.
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I hope some of you don’t mind, but whilst you are respectfully chatting to each other about the Roman Catholic Church, and similar and other related matters, I just want to take a moment to say something to multimodAL. So please don’t mind me. I’ll be back.

multimodAL, as I reread your posts here, & go back to some other threads & reread some of your post there, I think I’m developing a better understanding of what you type, and what you are communicating. Can you help me to understand more.

Let me run something past you. Sometimes my own thoughts about things will split & go off in several directions. Each thought doing its own thing, & doing it simultaneously alongside other thoughts. Sometimes I might consciously influence those thoughts. Other times I might just sit and watch then. The other half of these thoughts that have split off might end up in my subconscious, doing their own thing, somewhat out of site & partly unknown to me, as they formulate something. Some of these thoughts might, at times, start debating with the others thoughts.

Then they might all come back to a central place. Sometimes coming back all at the same time, other times coming back one at a time. Sometimes this takes just a short time, other times it could take 30 minutes or more – sometimes a lot more. Sometimes it’s mentally exhausting.

When they come back to the central place, I might then be able to formulate an eloquent summary that I can understand internally. The difficulty I have sometimes is verbally communicating that in a way that people understand. Sometimes the central thought can be so complex that I’m unable to communicate it verbally, yet I still understand it.

Maybe, just for my own purposes, I might be able to reverse engineer the things I see in your posts. At what point in your thought processes do to you put your thoughts to paper – put your thoughts to keyboard?
 
oldaunt said:
Actually if the 2 cells that come together were not alive, they could not form the zygote that grows into a child. So logic (and science) says the fetus is very much alive. It is simply not yet aware.
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This is just a personal observation, based on emotion, not science nor religious dogma.

My daughter had her first two babies in hospital but the next two were home births. I was invited to be present, mainly to look after the older ones and to be chief cook and bottlewasher while daughter, her husband and the midwife got on with it.

I was called into the room when the third one was on the verge of being born. I saw her face just before the final contraction that delivered her into the world of the living.

My reaction was that at the precise moment she was suspended between life and death. She was alive but she was not yet breathing. I stopped breathing until she took her first breath.

Pregnancy and birth are very personal events. That is why I support any decisions about abortion being made by the pregnant woman with input from her doctors. Safe abortion is not only essential, it is a woman's right.

On another note, my only sister, younger than me, suffered from placenta previa at 20 weeks. They tried to stave off the birth but the baby died in the womb. She had to wait until her body expelled the dead foetus and it was a difficult and emotionally painful time. It would be terrible if women who have unviable foetuses (e.g. no brain development) were denied medical treatment to terminate the pregnancy. Carrying the child to term only to watch it die, and knowing that this was inevitable, is unimaginable to me. This is why abortion law with set time limits is not a good idea. Women don't have late term abortions for no good reason.
 
Magna-Carta said:
I hope some of you don’t mind, but whilst you are respectfully chatting to each other about the Roman Catholic Church, and similar and other related matters, I just want to take a moment to say something to multimodAL. So please don’t mind me. I’ll be back.

multimodAL, as I reread your posts here, & go back to some other threads & reread some of your post there, I think I’m developing a better understanding of what you type, and what you are communicating. Can you help me to understand more.

Let me run something past you. Sometimes my own thoughts about things will split & go off in several directions. Each thought doing its own thing, & doing it simultaneously alongside other thoughts. Sometimes I might consciously influence those thoughts. Other times I might just sit and watch then. The other half of these thoughts that have split off might end up in my subconscious, doing their own thing, somewhat out of site & partly unknown to me, as they formulate something. Some of these thoughts might, at times, start debating with the others thoughts.

Then they might all come back to a central place. Sometimes coming back all at the same time, other times coming back one at a time. Sometimes this takes just a short time, other times it could take 30 minutes or more – sometimes a lot more. Sometimes it’s mentally exhausting.

When they come back to the central place, I might then be able to formulate an eloquent summary that I can understand internally. The difficulty I have sometimes is verbally communicating that in a way that people understand. Sometimes the central thought can be so complex that I’m unable to communicate it verbally, yet I still understand it.

Maybe, just for my own purposes, I might be able to reverse engineer the things I see in your posts. At what point in your thought processes do to you put your thoughts to paper – put your thoughts to keyboard?
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wow! i'm going to have to read that again @Magna-Carta, like the rivers of possible outcomes swirling with eddies, bubbling with life, intermingled with the vast influence of others. i would hope some day we could all figure it out.

i gave up all understanding and release myself from any determination which frees me from that need (sweet dreams!)

btw, i've gained quite a bit of insight through our exchanges which fills me with wonder... thank you
 
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Can someone educate & enlighten me here? Is the Pope, whoever that might be at any one time, with his coat of arms, also considered to be a head of state? What does head of state actually mean in this instance? Does he have the powers of someone who is the head of a nation state. If so, would anyone consider that to be too much power for one person? Now I say he, because somehow I don’t think there will ever be a her.
 
Magna-Carta said:
Can someone educate & enlighten me here? Is the Pope, whoever that might be at any one time, with his coat of arms, also considered to be a head of state? What does head of state actually mean in this instance? Does he have the powers of someone who is the head of a nation state. If so, would anyone consider that to be too much power for one person? Now I say he, because somehow I don’t think there will ever be a her.
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AFAIK, (and I don't know much), The Pope be de man, with an interim 'group' temporarily in control between Popes.
 
Well, I have read through the post. The firsts things, I am not an person of advanced education. I just have common sense. I was raised baptist, my husband raised catholic.

I fell in love with a teenage boy that was willing to put on a tie and jacket, take his Grandmother and Great Aunt to mass. To me that says a lot of the success in the way he was raised.

Me, raised in the baptist church, the only thing I can remember is a song we sang in Sunday school.

God loves the little children
All the children off the world
Red or yellow, black or white
They are all precious in his sight.

Yes, I learned it but they did not practice those words I realized as I got older.

So when this baptist married that catholic, we decided to let a child choose, if they wanted to go to church, to follow any religion, it would be their choice.

At home, we taught respect, kindness, devotion to family, hardwork in all things. The only time we or our son were in church were for weddings or funerals. Yes, we, my husband and I, were believers but we also realized God does not live in church, he lives in you heart, your home. We can pray anywhere, anytime, in any way we are comfortable.

All that said, my husband's dear Grandmother would ask when we were going to get married. She did not see us as married because we were not married in the church. Funny thing, out of the five grandchildren in the house, my husband and I were the only ones to not divorce.
 
Blessed said:
Well, I have read through the post. The firsts things, I am not an person of advanced education. I just have common sense. I was raised baptist, my husband raised catholic.

I fell in love with a teenage boy that was willing to put on a tie and jacket, take his Grandmother and Great Aunt to mass. To me that says a lot of the success in the way he was raised.

Me, raised in the baptist church, the only thing I can remember is a song we sang in Sunday school.

God loves the little children
All the children off the world
Red or yellow, black or white
They are all precious in his sight.

Yes, I learned it but they did not practice those words I realized as I got older.

So when this baptist married that catholic, we decided to let a child choose, if they wanted to go to church, to follow any religion, it would be their choice.

At home, we taught respect, kindness, devotion to family, hardwork in all things. The only time we or our son were in church were for weddings or funerals. Yes, we, my husband and I, were believers but we also realized God does not live in church, he lives in you heart, your home. We can pray anywhere, anytime, in any way we are comfortable.

All that said, my husband's dear Grandmother would ask when we were going to get married. She did not see us as married because we were not married in the church. Funny thing, out of the five grandchildren in the house, my husband and I were the only ones to not divorce.
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In a way an education can be measured, quantified perhaps? I wonder how one measures someone’s level of common sense – what might we measure it against? At times I come across some really dumb ‘educated’ people, some with more academic qualifications than they know what to do with. I also come across some clever, intelligent, artistic people, with little to no academic qualifications at all. Some of them feel they have no need for a piece of paper to show others how ‘clever’ they are. Maybe the ‘qualification’ of common sense is underrated. Sometimes I think common sense isn’t actually that common.

The only person within my extended family (on both sides) with which I thought had religion, was an aunt. Over most of her lifetime she moved from one ‘organised’ religion to another. She even became a Jehovah's Witnesses for a good many years. She slowly became disillusioned with each & every one of these ‘organised’ religions. Eventually, she retired from work, rejecting all organised religions at the same time. She remained religious, but it became more of an internal thing, without any outside ‘organised’ influence. This was the happiest time of her life. It was a very long journey for her to find happiness. Everyone needs to find their own path for what’s best for them. It doesn’t require any judgment of them from the rest of us. It’s their journey, not ours. We should respect that, even if we don’t like it.

Even our children need to find their own path. However, as parents we all have the responsibility to give our children the correct tools in order for them to find that path. Tools that don’t involve a closed mind-set. Society; the understanding of the world around us; our understanding of the people within it doesn’t grow on closed mind-sets. Our children need tools that encourage an open mind. Tools that teach them to be non-judgmental. Tools that encourage them that it’s ok to change their views based on new learning or a developed understanding. On any subject, not just religion. Tools that show them that they will never stop learning and that they can carry these tools with them from the day they begin to be aware of their surroundings, to the day they die. All these tools are valuable; encourage them to not discard even one of them as they go through life.

Some of my friends and extended family are not married, yet they live with a partner and they have children. They work on their partnership every day. They are financially connected, owning property together and everything in it. Some of them later considered marriage, but never got around to doing it. They felt it wasn’t a priority, & felt it didn’t really add anything to what they have already got. Many other friends & family of mine did get married. With some of them it seemed that as soon as they got married, with that certificate, they were secure together and didn’t need to work at their partnership as much as they did previously. How wrong they were – most of them are either separated or divorced, or are seriously considering doing the same.

As for me, I’ve never been married, & have no intention of being. I made that decision at the age of 10, based on the world I saw around me; based on my own feelings; based on wondering what future obstacles an ‘official marriage’ might give. At that time the adults around me laughed when I said I will never get married, and assured me that someday I will get married. Many years later I became engaged to someone. That engagement was our commitment to each other -- a bublic commitment. Both she & I felt that’s all we needed – we felt we had no need for a certificate. We felt a certificate wouldn’t really add anything to what we had. In some ways, we felt that a certificate might actually end up removing something of what we had.
 
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Warrigal said:
Pregnancy and birth are very personal events. That is why I support any decisions about abortion being made by the pregnant woman with input from her doctors. Safe abortion is not only essential, it is a woman's right.
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That's exactly how I feel about it and why I'm pro-choice.

I do still sympathize with the other side, though, some really do see the fetus as a child being killed.

The exact moment when life begins is still a mystery to me, I wish we could be certain. The Bible (bringing this back to religion) seems to be telling me life begins at "quickening" which is around 4 months in, and that would tie in nicely with the "abortion allowed during the first trimester" we used to have.

Magna-Carta said:
We felt a certificate wouldn’t really add nothing to what we had. In some ways, we felt that a certificate might actually end up removing something of what we had.
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I always wanted the assurance of the certificate, but it didn't do me much good.
 
My mother was Catholic and my father Episcopalian. He had agreed beforehand to raise the children Catholic. Well, when I, the firstborn came along, he balked at my being Christened in the Catholic Church. I began to teeth early, running high fevers, so after my dad went to the office one day, she packed me in the car and drove to her aunt's home in Croydon, PA. She was convinced I was dying, so my aunt and uncle called their Parish Priest, who agreed to baptize me at once. When we returned home, my father hit the ceiling, but the deed was done. Grudgingly, my 3 siblings were also baptized Catholic. Strangely enough, one of my mom's distant cousins who was a Priest had come to our parish and he and my dad became good friends. Upshot of it all, Daddy-O converted and was more devout than any of us ever were. I came to the conclusion early in life that the church is big business, and that includes all religions. I feel to this day, that they should pay property taxes like any other corporation.

I've no quarrel with any religion's teachings or dogma. Just stay out of politics and telling people what to do with one's body.
 

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