The Rise of Fundamentalist Catholicism

[NachosFlandersStyle]

43 minutes ago, Marmion said:

This is not true however for churches that hold to the doctrine of " Sola Scriptura " . 

I suppose that's a matter of perspective. Every denomination has to draw from outside sources-- scripture doesn't interpret itself, as much as folks try to deny it. Go up against the prevailing interpretation of an ambiguous verse and see how little tradition matters! And then you need to carry out the business of the church, and you have the unspoken cultural norms of the congregation, etc.

[PennySycamore]

@quiversR4hunting,  one of my favorite of those "extra" books is Tobit because it has a dog in it.  "And the dog followed.  Judith is a complete badass, too, cutting off general Holofernes' head.  

If you find a Catholic Bible that is pre-Vatican II, then you may find that it's First, Second, Third,  and Fourth Kings instead of First and Second Kings and First and Second Chronicles.  Isaiah and Jeremiah might be Isaias and Jeremias, as well.   Song of Songs was Canticle of Canticles.  I think this was one of the things that contributed to the old thing that Protestants saying that Catholics did not have the Bible.  

[47of74]

A FB friend saw this from a far Reich wing “priest” all butt hurt about the halftime show. 
 

I went down the rabbit hole of his twitter feed so I have my doubts that he’s a priest in the official church. If he was I’d say dude you know where the Pope is from right?  

[laPapessaGiovanna]

1 hour ago, 47of74 said:

A FB friend saw this from a far Reich wing “priest” all butt hurt about the halftime show. 
 

I went down the rabbit hole of his twitter feed so I have my doubts that he’s a priest in the official church. If he was I’d say dude you know where the Pope is from right?  

He's definitely a member of the Catholic clergy, according to Catholic World Report "Fr Nicholas Gregoris is a founding member of the Priestly Society of Blessed John Henry Cardinal Newman and managing editor of "The Catholic Response." He holds a bachelor's degree in sacred theology from the Gregorian University and a licentiate and doctorate in Mariology from the Marianum, both in Rome. He is the author of four books."

But he's one of those who think he's more Catholic than the pope.

Managed to burn some bridges in the Vatican and got his press credentials revoked during the Synod on the Family.

[Pecansforeveryone]

Him, very interesting. Thank you, @laPapessaGiovanna. Would this sort of talk and behavior ever be grounds for defrocking?  

[47of74]

Him, very interesting. Thank you, [mention=21334]laPapessaGiovanna[/mention]. Would this sort of talk and behavior ever be grounds for defrocking?  

I think the recent practice has been to tell the offending clergy to shut the fornicate up and if they don’t then impose discipline after one of them slips up like this. The higher ranked ones usually get shunted off to some ceremonial office.

Usually defrocking for stuff like this isn’t a first offense punishment.

Of course being on the other side of the Thames for about eight years I could be waaaay off here.

[47of74]

Looks like Nicky’s tweet is gone.  Probably got some blowback from his higher ups. Of course with the internetz being forever his hate speech is already preserved for posterity 

[laPapessaGiovanna]

2 hours ago, Pecansforeveryone said:

Him, very interesting. Thank you, @laPapessaGiovanna. Would this sort of talk and behavior ever be grounds for defrocking?  

No, absolutely no. He was treated as any bothersome press member would have been treated religious or not, his position in the Church wouldn't be in peril for this sort of thing. Criticism of the pope isn't ground for defrocking. It would be different if the guy promoted an heresy or a schism, but he and those like him aren't there yet. They prefer to undermine the current pope from within the Church, on the long run it's more profitable than full out opposition.

27 minutes ago, 47of74 said:

Looks like Nicky’s tweet is gone.  Probably got some blowback from his higher ups. Of course with the internetz being forever his hate speech is already preserved for posterity 

I am not gonna wade through the obscene tRump's ass kissing of his Twitter feed to find out.

[47of74]

I just looked at the replies to Samantha and it’s not there anymore. Yeah I lasted all of about ten seconds looking at his verbal ass kidding of fuck face.

[SecularMusic]

Today a friend shared an Instagram photo of newly married Tim Tebow with Pope Francis at the Vatican yesterday. Apparently Tebow held one his Night to Shine events in Rome last night.

Not surprsingly, some of Tebow's fans chided him for associating with the "non-Christian" pope and one complained that the pope supports social justice initiatives, addresses climate change and doesn't condemn gays. The fan insisted there is no proof climate change is real.?

Meanwhile, Catholic fans criticized the pope for not being conservative enough.

I thought the meeting was interesting as Tebow's dad spent years in the Philippines trying to convert Catholics there to evangelical Christianity.

 

[hoipolloi]

2 hours ago, SecularMusic said:

Today a friend shared an Instagram photo of newly married Tim Tebow with Pope Francis at the Vatican yesterday. Apparently Tebow held one his Night to Shine events in Rome last night.

How strange. Was Tebow trying to convert the Pope?

Even stranger is that it is actually a thing amongst devout (conservative) Catholics to attend a sposi novelli or papal audience in which the Pope blesses newlyweds. A cousinʻs daughter and her new husband did this as part of their honeymoon trip to Europe some years ago.

[MamaJunebug]

On 11/15/2019 at 4:17 PM, Caroline said:

We're Irish-American and feel really culturally connected to Catholicism. It's the reason I'll never choose another faith, as strange as that sounds.)

Sweet @Caroline, you said it well. I’m the same way about Lutheranism, East-European/American and I haven’t found comparable liturgy and hymnody anywhere else. So I discreetly plug my ears at ow-y parts of the sermons. 

To the topic: one of my favorite friends is a mother of 8, grandmother of 30 & counting, Latin-Mass-only kinda gal. And yet she cusses a little more than I do and describes her final child’s birth as “enough for the cause.”  

Yet her paeans to SAHMotherhood are flowery to florid. Not one if her daughters has worked more than a year after marriage because the first baby came. (All have post-secondary educations, most with degrees.)

We've had each other’s backs in our secular community since the mid-‘80s and we’ve never talked religion or politics. And we never will. 

[Hane]

@Caroline and @MamaJunebug, I feel both of you. I’m deeply culturally Italian-Catholic, and admit it wasn’t an easy thing to change churches. In fact, my current minister and most of my congregation has Catholic roots, and he’s holding a discussion group for former Catholics in a couple of weeks.

[MamaJunebug]

14 hours ago, Hane said:

@Caroline and @MamaJunebug, I feel both of you. I’m deeply culturally Italian-Catholic, and admit it wasn’t an easy thing to change churches. In fact, my current minister and most of my congregation has Catholic roots, and he’s holding a discussion group for former Catholics in a couple of weeks.

Thanks, dove. And you’re now in .. UU? Episcopal? 

[louisa05]

On 2/5/2020 at 11:35 PM, hoipolloi said:

How strange. Was Tebow trying to convert the Pope?

Even stranger is that it is actually a thing amongst devout (conservative) Catholics to attend a sposi novelli or papal audience in which the Pope blesses newlyweds. A cousinʻs daughter and her new husband did this as part of their honeymoon trip to Europe some years ago.

The Christian school I worked in was purchasing their building on a land contract from the local Catholic diocese. When they had financial troubles and got behind on payments, three school board members went to meet with the archbishop to figure out a solution other than nullifying the contract and closing the school. 
Last spring that now retired archbishop did confirmation at my parish. The parish pays for dinner for the archbishop and the confirmation teachers (Mr.05 and I teach) after the event.  Evangelicalism came  up at dinner and I told the archbishop I had worked at that school. Quite a conversation followed. Among the things I found out was that at that meeting, the representatives of the school board spent most of their time  trying to convert him.  

[Caroline]

46 minutes ago, MamaJunebug said:

Thanks, dove. And you’re now in .. UU? Episcopal? 

I really respect people who find the right fit religion-wise, especially after having a less than wonderful religious experience when young.  I'm pretty done with it all at this point, but who knows what the future holds?  I'm not a super social person, and to me that is 90 percent of what organized religion seems to be.  I was never comfortable with the coffee and donuts, fairs, etc.   I appreciate all people who make a positive contribution to society (and I know many churches do), but I'll keep giving back through teaching public school kids every day and giving as much of me as I can to them and their families.  

[Sobeknofret]

15 hours ago, Hane said:

@Caroline and @MamaJunebug, I feel both of you. I’m deeply culturally Italian-Catholic, and admit it wasn’t an easy thing to change churches. In fact, my current minister and most of my congregation has Catholic roots, and he’s holding a discussion group for former Catholics in a couple of weeks.

I'm culturally Irish Catholic, but I'm a Quaker. I still feel a compulsive need to attend the evening Good Friday Mass. Intrinsically, I don't feel like there's any day that is more holy or sacred than another, but the Good Friday service absolutely does something to me, that makes me look deeper into what I believe.

[dharmapunk]

I wa raised catholic but converted to buddhism years ago in my twenties. I still feel a resonance when I visit a church or attend mass, which happens mostly for family events like weddings, christenings or funerals. There are certain hyms that will bring on a flash of childhood memories. Rationally I decided a long time ago, that catholicism was not rigth for me. But it was so much a part of me growing up that I guess there will always be that connection.

[Hane]

@MamaJunebug, I’m a UU now. 

[Smee]

The apocrypha is all Old Testament though, yeah? And if I’m understanding correctly, those books contain the text responsible for theological differences like purgatory (which doesn’t exist for protestants). My husband grew up Catholic and went to catholic schools* but is not very good at explaining to me the differences between what he was taught and what we teach our kids. Once, I walked past a second-hand book sale at a Catholic Church and I picked up a children’s book. It was FULL of all this stuff about Mary that I’d never heard of before, about her childhood and some miracles she did and Joseph being some older guy with kids from a previous marriage... as I understand it, the apocrypha has nothing to do with Mary, so I’m curious as to the basis for all these extra Catholic teachings about Mary. Is there a religious book somewhere with this stuff or is it just generally accepted doctrine passed on in other ways?

*the education system in Australia, as some previous posters have mentioned, includes a lot of Catholic schools, but it’s a bit more complicated, at least in NSW. Here, we have the government (public) school system which is non-religious, then the “Catholic education office” which is the overarching body for most Catholic schools run by the diocese they’re in, and then “independent schools” which are, as the name implies, independently run. The “elite private schools” like The Kings School and Sydney Church of England Grammar School are independent. However, so are some Catholic schools, like Loreto or St Ignatius College. So when people say they’re sending their kids to Catholic schools, they might mean CEO-run primary schools with comparably low fees (& reliance on government funding), or they might mean exclusive independent schools with a Catholic history and ethos (& $30K a year fees supplemented by the extra government funds). My husband went to a CEO primary and an independent secondary. 

[PennySycamore]

@Smee, I think some of the extra stuff is from the Pseudopigrapha aka Christian apochrypha  writings of the early church that were never accepted into the Canon as being inspired.  There are some stories about Mary there (infancy narratives and such) as well as some in the Koran which may have fed into Christian tradition.  

Wikipedia has some information but there may be a better source.  

[Cleopatra7]

@Smee A lot of the basis for Catholic extra biblical tradition about Mary comes from the Protoevangelion of James, one of the many rejected New Testament books:

http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0847.htm

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gospel_of_James

Given how popular the teachings of the Protoevangelion of James have proven to be, I’m surprised it wasn’t put into the canon. My guess is that it contained a lot of widely held beliefs about Mary and Jesus that were just taken for granted for centuries even if the book itself was deemed spurious for whatever reason.

I’d also like to point out that Fr. Gregoris’ complaint that Hispanics are doing Catholicism wrong is exactly what the Irish Americans used to say about other ethnic groups, especially Italian Americans. These days it seems more like some kind of generalized “white Catholicism” in the US is looking down on other ways of being Catholic, rather than a specifically Irish way.