Timely, today's Gospel is the whipping in the Temple (Holy Gospel according to Saint Matthew 21,10-17.):
And when he was come into Jerusalem, the whole city was moved, saying: Who is this?
And the people said: This is Jesus, the prophet from Nazareth of Galilee.
And Jesus went into the temple of God and cast out all them that sold and bought in the temple and overthrew the tables of the money changers and the chairs of them that sold doves.
And he saith to them: It is written, My house shall be called the house of prayer; but you have made it a den of thieves.
And there came to him the blind and the lame in the temple: and he healed them.
And the chief priests and scribes, seeing the wonderful things that he did and the children crying in the temple and saying: Hosanna to the son of David, were moved with indignation,
And said to him: Hearest thou what these say? And Jesus said to them: Yea, have you never read: Out of the mouth of infants and of sucklings thou hast perfected praise?
And leaving them, he went out of the city into Bethania and remained here.
We have made the modern Christian Church a den of thieves run by the chief priests and scribes. Can we at least have some decorum in the House of Prayer for Jesus?
Another thing I am sick of the BS me-too fad "what is a woman?" The whole "women are being erased, etc. etc."
You know what? What is a man?
Where are the men? Oh yeah, they have been "erased" years ago, now they are just gay or wanna be tranny/transvestites. People are ugly inside and out. No amount of clown makeup is going to make any "guy" or "gal" look pretty when their ugliness seeps out from the inside.
Hey, female athletes - if a freaking male transvestite is pretending to be a female because he sucks at male sports, DO NOT compete against the tranny. Stand your ground and state YOU WILL NOT COMPETE AGAINST A MALE IN A FEMALE SPORT.
No one cares, especially about morals and living by the Ten Commandments. On Substack, I wrote about the gay staffer who had sex on the tables in a Federal building in Washington DC and called out his lack of shame. Nothing happened to him other than he was "fired" (but I am sure he has a much better gubermint job now). No one on Substack really cares about gay fornication out in public places. It is all meh. Why be surprised at trannies and gays hooping it up in a Catholic church?
Walking into the Capitol building can get you years in prison, but having and filming gay sex in a gov't building in the Capitol, then posting it to your gay friends (who are also gubermint employees) that is perfectly A-OK. Nothing to see here.
Churches. They're sure not perfect. They are reflections of human nature. An awful lot of them resemble toxic waste pits as well, but can still somehow manage to make people feel good. Not the best places to look.
I'm not overjoyed with the state of The Church myself, but I still belong to one. It's a Reformed church, something I would not have chosen -- I knew about this one but had avoided it. But it's where I was eventually led, the story involving another person, a new believer, that was in need of a church equipped to disciple such people well.
This one is accepting of differences within reasonable bounds, and especially of differences in maturity, creating a space for people to grow (up). It's not perfect. It's sufficient. The differences I have with the theology, which can be discussed without getting kicked out, serve as seeds for my own growth. Strange how that works.
I began an in-depth study of 1 Corinthians in January, one that I expect to last most of the year. I was going to study something else, but "something" told me to do this. So far I have completed two chapters. I am working with a very well written Greek-based commentary rather than simply reading the text or following a curriculum, and picking up more Greek as I go, which slows things down but provides more time for them to sink in.
The Corinthian assembly ("church" is an English language thing) was quite a mess, but it was a gathering loved of God and of Paul. I never truly got that before, although the text shouts it out once you begin to understand Paul's language. This mess was one of the _good_ churches. There are clues to this in the Greek that don't readily translate. They probably can be seen in the English anyway, but it was never presented this way to me, and I was missing a great deal of what was written.
This study is teaching me things about the church I belong to, and how to regard and respond to the problems it has. I'm not trying to fix those. I'm trying to see beyond the problems, and onward toward what there is to do there. I don't know where this goes from here.
This wouldn't work just anywhere, but this is where I was most recently led, and it works for the present.. There's a former church that I continued to reach out to for three years after I left, and seemingly to no avail. In terms of community, that one was my favorite, but the teachings were deeply corrupt, as I was allowed gradually to discover, and are even worse now.
Behind the local corruption was a deeply corrupt denomination with which I became involved, briefly as a conference delegate, and as part of my learning curve, leading to my exit, after which it merged with a congregation from another corrupt denomination. Train wreck. Even so, I haven't totally given up on it.
My present church, in contrast, left its original denomination of nearly 60 years that was rapidly going downhill, and joined another that is still a faithful one as these things go. Ironically, that denomination had itself been formed by churches leaving another denomination, namely that of the group that merged with my former church leading to its further demise. Small world.
It's enough to make you want to just have your own church, under the staircase. Such is life on the narrow path. Oh Lord. Just give me Jesus. I look to a day when there are no longer denominations. Thankfully, as our call to worship hymn this morning proclaimed, "Jesus is coming again."
When these events occur, I read "the gates of hell shall not prevail against the Church" more literally. On Holy Saturday, Christ harrowed hell, but hell should not be read as the place of the damned. It refers to the place of (all) the dead. Those who have died the first death. So, we must go forward in time, taking as our marching orders to rescue men's souls from the second death. To cooperate with God, and not with Satan as was done at St. Patrick's.
I think you are right to remove yourself from the Catholic church as it does seem to be terribly corrupt. I recently photo of the interior of the Vatican and was blown away by all the satanic symbolism. When did this happen? When we weren't looking?
Oh, Napoleon! The path down which you have led me! First I checked into that YouTube of the Cecilia (ironic that she had the name of the musical saint) funeral, but didn't go too far, as it was all just too much show. Then back to your words. From there I was led to consider the earlier anti-Church movements, Albigensians, Cathars, Waldensians, Lollards--and stopped with them. I had not realized that Lollards were an English growth sprouting from Wycliffe.....Read their 12 Conclusions pinned, ~ 1395, to the doors of St. Paul's and Westminster--and Martin Luther gets all the credit for posting his theses two hundred years later in 1519? Reading through those 12 Conclusions, and finding nothing in them with which to take issue, I realized, by golly, I actually AM a Lollard. Then I realized that Chaucer's The Nun's Tale may be a fleshing-out of the contentions in the 11th conclusion. Now I will have to read that tale again, as I read it in 1969. Thank you for setting me off on this journey.
Timely, today's Gospel is the whipping in the Temple (Holy Gospel according to Saint Matthew 21,10-17.):
And when he was come into Jerusalem, the whole city was moved, saying: Who is this?
And the people said: This is Jesus, the prophet from Nazareth of Galilee.
And Jesus went into the temple of God and cast out all them that sold and bought in the temple and overthrew the tables of the money changers and the chairs of them that sold doves.
And he saith to them: It is written, My house shall be called the house of prayer; but you have made it a den of thieves.
And there came to him the blind and the lame in the temple: and he healed them.
And the chief priests and scribes, seeing the wonderful things that he did and the children crying in the temple and saying: Hosanna to the son of David, were moved with indignation,
And said to him: Hearest thou what these say? And Jesus said to them: Yea, have you never read: Out of the mouth of infants and of sucklings thou hast perfected praise?
And leaving them, he went out of the city into Bethania and remained here.
We have made the modern Christian Church a den of thieves run by the chief priests and scribes. Can we at least have some decorum in the House of Prayer for Jesus?
Another thing I am sick of the BS me-too fad "what is a woman?" The whole "women are being erased, etc. etc."
You know what? What is a man?
Where are the men? Oh yeah, they have been "erased" years ago, now they are just gay or wanna be tranny/transvestites. People are ugly inside and out. No amount of clown makeup is going to make any "guy" or "gal" look pretty when their ugliness seeps out from the inside.
Hey, female athletes - if a freaking male transvestite is pretending to be a female because he sucks at male sports, DO NOT compete against the tranny. Stand your ground and state YOU WILL NOT COMPETE AGAINST A MALE IN A FEMALE SPORT.
Meh, never gonna happen.
No one cares, especially about morals and living by the Ten Commandments. On Substack, I wrote about the gay staffer who had sex on the tables in a Federal building in Washington DC and called out his lack of shame. Nothing happened to him other than he was "fired" (but I am sure he has a much better gubermint job now). No one on Substack really cares about gay fornication out in public places. It is all meh. Why be surprised at trannies and gays hooping it up in a Catholic church?
Walking into the Capitol building can get you years in prison, but having and filming gay sex in a gov't building in the Capitol, then posting it to your gay friends (who are also gubermint employees) that is perfectly A-OK. Nothing to see here.
Screw this human world. I have had enough.
Churches. They're sure not perfect. They are reflections of human nature. An awful lot of them resemble toxic waste pits as well, but can still somehow manage to make people feel good. Not the best places to look.
I'm not overjoyed with the state of The Church myself, but I still belong to one. It's a Reformed church, something I would not have chosen -- I knew about this one but had avoided it. But it's where I was eventually led, the story involving another person, a new believer, that was in need of a church equipped to disciple such people well.
This one is accepting of differences within reasonable bounds, and especially of differences in maturity, creating a space for people to grow (up). It's not perfect. It's sufficient. The differences I have with the theology, which can be discussed without getting kicked out, serve as seeds for my own growth. Strange how that works.
I began an in-depth study of 1 Corinthians in January, one that I expect to last most of the year. I was going to study something else, but "something" told me to do this. So far I have completed two chapters. I am working with a very well written Greek-based commentary rather than simply reading the text or following a curriculum, and picking up more Greek as I go, which slows things down but provides more time for them to sink in.
The Corinthian assembly ("church" is an English language thing) was quite a mess, but it was a gathering loved of God and of Paul. I never truly got that before, although the text shouts it out once you begin to understand Paul's language. This mess was one of the _good_ churches. There are clues to this in the Greek that don't readily translate. They probably can be seen in the English anyway, but it was never presented this way to me, and I was missing a great deal of what was written.
This study is teaching me things about the church I belong to, and how to regard and respond to the problems it has. I'm not trying to fix those. I'm trying to see beyond the problems, and onward toward what there is to do there. I don't know where this goes from here.
This wouldn't work just anywhere, but this is where I was most recently led, and it works for the present.. There's a former church that I continued to reach out to for three years after I left, and seemingly to no avail. In terms of community, that one was my favorite, but the teachings were deeply corrupt, as I was allowed gradually to discover, and are even worse now.
Behind the local corruption was a deeply corrupt denomination with which I became involved, briefly as a conference delegate, and as part of my learning curve, leading to my exit, after which it merged with a congregation from another corrupt denomination. Train wreck. Even so, I haven't totally given up on it.
My present church, in contrast, left its original denomination of nearly 60 years that was rapidly going downhill, and joined another that is still a faithful one as these things go. Ironically, that denomination had itself been formed by churches leaving another denomination, namely that of the group that merged with my former church leading to its further demise. Small world.
It's enough to make you want to just have your own church, under the staircase. Such is life on the narrow path. Oh Lord. Just give me Jesus. I look to a day when there are no longer denominations. Thankfully, as our call to worship hymn this morning proclaimed, "Jesus is coming again."
Your anger is justified.
When these events occur, I read "the gates of hell shall not prevail against the Church" more literally. On Holy Saturday, Christ harrowed hell, but hell should not be read as the place of the damned. It refers to the place of (all) the dead. Those who have died the first death. So, we must go forward in time, taking as our marching orders to rescue men's souls from the second death. To cooperate with God, and not with Satan as was done at St. Patrick's.
I think you are right to remove yourself from the Catholic church as it does seem to be terribly corrupt. I recently photo of the interior of the Vatican and was blown away by all the satanic symbolism. When did this happen? When we weren't looking?
Oh, Napoleon! The path down which you have led me! First I checked into that YouTube of the Cecilia (ironic that she had the name of the musical saint) funeral, but didn't go too far, as it was all just too much show. Then back to your words. From there I was led to consider the earlier anti-Church movements, Albigensians, Cathars, Waldensians, Lollards--and stopped with them. I had not realized that Lollards were an English growth sprouting from Wycliffe.....Read their 12 Conclusions pinned, ~ 1395, to the doors of St. Paul's and Westminster--and Martin Luther gets all the credit for posting his theses two hundred years later in 1519? Reading through those 12 Conclusions, and finding nothing in them with which to take issue, I realized, by golly, I actually AM a Lollard. Then I realized that Chaucer's The Nun's Tale may be a fleshing-out of the contentions in the 11th conclusion. Now I will have to read that tale again, as I read it in 1969. Thank you for setting me off on this journey.