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Fervent · 2025-11-08T15:41:54-0600

Oompa Loompa said:
How can you be sure both are wrong?

Both could also be wrong, but the issue remains. If A and not A cannot both be true, then we're dealing with something objective. If A and not A can both be true(or both false) then we are dealing with something that isn't objective. So if we maintain that one of them can be mistaken in their preference, then we must be dealing with something objective.

Bradskii · 2025-11-08T15:41:40-0600

Oompa Loompa said:
As you have demonstrated by the examples you have provided, without an absolute standard, arguing about the morality of lying, killing, and torture is as nonsensical as arguing the position of north in space.

My point is that having an objective morality means that we should be able to determine the truth of a moral claim and that it would be true in all cases. But we're not trying to find a fixed point. We're looking for the best path to take considering the relevant conditions. There is no objectively best path that will take us where we want to go under all conditions.

Oompa Loompa said:
But even if we set a secular standard in place, one in which empirical data proved that particular behaviors were objectively good because it is best for the preservation and promotion of the human species...

That was a deep dive into the basis for morality using evolution to explain it. As we have seen in recent posts, not that many people in this thread have a grasp of the topic for it to be of any further worth.

But...we can see that certain acts are morally good in some situations and bad in others. Lying to a madman to save your family is good. Lying to cheat on your wife is bad. The act is relative to the conditions. How can it then be said that lying is objectively bad? It would make no sense whatsoever.

The Liturgist · 2025-11-08T15:41:30-0600

Amo2 said:
Ethics in Internet

Quotes below from link above, emphasis in quotes is mine.

It is important to note that since the time of this Papal document, the Popes have had private meetings with the owners, heads, or CEO's of all the major social media platforms. Many of which we have all witnessed exercising a great deal of censorship on their platforms. These of course only represent the censorship the public at large has noticed and therefore brought forward to be addressed.

Here we have an address from the Vatican intending to define the parameters and or narratives of communication on the internet. Which it had apparently already addressed regarding the media, and has continued to address to date regarding social media as well. Basically a call to regulate that which it has considered to deregulated. These regulations should be implemented in line with the principles of what the Vatican describes as the common good. So, who determines or defines what the common good is? Adolf Hitler’s twenty fifth point of his 25 Points of the Nazi Party was - Common Good Before Individual Good. Adolf and the Nazi’s are pretty much gone for now, so whose common good are we talking about exactly? Obviously, we are talking about the common good as defined by the Vatican and Popes. Who is the Vatican to be calling for these regulations by nations on a global scale?

It most certainly is not the voice of the people of the various nations via the representatives they have elected to convey and implement their political desires. The Vatican stands among and as another international globalist institution of unelected officials, who wish to impose their politics upon the various nations of this world with or without the consent of the people of these nations. Just like all the other international globalist institutions of unelected officials, desiring to do the same. The Vatican itself has stated and supports the implementation of the rule of certain of these international globalist institutions over all nations. All of which is to specifically bypass the will of the peoples of nations in favor of the rule of unelected elitist international globalist officials in cahoots with each other. Of which the Vatican itself is a major if not the most significant players. Being herself a monarchal leftover from the dark or middle ages, this is the form of authoritative government she most fully supports and has most often supported throughout her lengthy history. To create such a system on a global scale, would be to recreate the conditions under which the Vatican ruled with the kings of this earth for over a thousand years. Just a global version of the dark ages with the Vatican and unelected officials of international organizations ruling together over all. Rather than the dark ages version of the Vatican and unelected kings, queens, and royalty ruling together predominantly over all European nations.

Authoritative government and censorship walk hand in hand. We have already and do continue to witness attempts by globalist and or left leaning entities to censor speech that does not support and or contradicts their narratives. The most recent and appalling examples being demonstrated during the Covid-19 plandemic. As we continue to examine the topic of censorship, I intend to reveal the direct connection between the so called common good, and the same. The following post will be an article from the days of Hitler himself addressing the dangers of a supposed common good. After which we will continue to address the present Papal document under examination, followed by many other Papal documents defining “The common good”, and its connection to authoritarian government and censorship.

Are you seriously blaming the Roman Catholic Church for the censorship of certain left-leaning tech firms?

I would point out you have zero evidence - not even circumstantial evidence, that the Roman church has conspired with these firms. The fact that the Pope has met with their leaders is immaterial - the Pope meets with a number of people, and different Popes have had different agendas. For example Pope Leo XIV is concerned about the dehumanizing uses of AI, as am I.

zoidar · 2025-11-08T15:39:04-0600

Dikaioumenoi said:
You've said elsewhere, "I'm not very knowledgeable in Greek grammer (sic)." Yet you're comfortable asserting that I misunderstand the language, without offering a single example or counter-argument?

The problem isn't my Greek; it's that those making this claim have demonstrated elementary misunderstandings of it themselves. I've pointed this out. NewLifeInChristJesus confused participial aspect between narrative and gnomic contexts (post #10), treating temporal reference as if it were inherent to the participle rather than context-determined. BNR32FAN has likewise apparently denied the inherent logic of the perfect tense (a completed act with continuing results) and seems unaware of the difference between assertion and argument. These are basic errors.

Let the record of our discussion stand: no one has yet engaged the actual argument of 1 John 2:29, 4:7, and 5:1. The argument rests on the repeated syntactic pattern: a present substantival participle functioning as subject of a perfect indicative in gnomic statements. The ordinary sense of that construction is that the state expressed by the perfect grounds the action denoted by the present. The perfect highlights a completed act whose results persist; the present participle expresses the ongoing manifestation of that result. Hence, "the one who believes" is so characterized because he "has been born of God."

This is the normal and natural sense of this construction in most contexts. Does that mean the relationship is always causal? No, and I have never said otherwise. But exceptional cases, where context alters the logical force, do not overturn the ordinary usage.

My critics pretend that because I didn't explicitly mention exceptions, I therefore denied their existence. That is both an argument from silence and a misrepresentation. The argument does not claim that grammar requires one fixed meaning. It rests on the fact that the ordinary usage of the perfect + present participle, especially in gnomic or didactic statements, is that the perfect grounds the action or quality expressed by the present.

The syntax of 1 John 5:1 is straightforward. There should be no need for further argument to see that it fits this ordinary usage. But for those who wish to contest it, John himself confirms the same pattern in 1 John 2:29 and 4:7, where the identical construction clearly conveys logical order: the state described by the perfect (being born of God) grounds the activity described by the participle (doing righteousness, loving). It's telling that the argument is being dismissed rather than addressed. It would appear that BNR32FAN in particular believes that regeneration is not necessary for the sinner to practice righteousness or engage in godly love, since he/she has denied logical sequence in those verses. What, then, is the purpose of regeneration?

NewLifeInChristJesus and BNR32FAN's reasoning depends on a twofold caricature:

That the existence of exceptions erases any ordinary usage, and

That my argument supposedly requires the grammar to entail a single, invariable meaning.

Neither is true.

John 3:18 and 1 John 5:10 do not reverse the grounding of the perfect. They simply shift the relationship according to what is being asserted. In 1 John 5:1, the perfect expresses the foundational act that gives rise to the ongoing activity; the logic moves from cause to effect.

By contrast, in John 3:18 and 1 John 5:10, the grammar expresses corresponding condition, not causal grounding (in either direction). The participle doesn't function as the basis for the finite verb (or vice versa); it characterizes the subject whose state the finite verb describes. The perfect or present indicative is not grounded in the participle; it corresponds to it.

This is why their objections miss the point. They treat my observation of a logical relationship between participle and finite verb as though I had claimed the two are always temporally or causally linked the same way. I made no such claim. The participle-finite verb pairing indicates a logical relationship, but the type -- causal, resultative, or corresponding -- is determined by further syntax and context.

In the vast majority of cases, especially in gnomic contexts, the relationship is causal or at least logically progressive, because that is natural to the perfect tense's encoding of a completed act with abiding results, and it is therefore most common for the participle to describe what those results look like. That doesn't exclude other nuances; it simply establishes the ordinary, expected usage.

The proof that my opponents are clinging to a technicality while ignoring the substance is simple: had I opened the OP with the very parallels John himself provides (1 John 2:29; 4:7; 5:1), their comments would not yet have contributed anything to our discussion. It's doubtful they would even be participating, given their inability thus far to engage that argument.

So I'll simply ask again:

Is regeneration necessary for one to practice righteousness (1 John 2:29) or to love in the manner John describes (1 John 4:7)?

If not, what is the purpose of regeneration at all?

But if so, how do you deal with the grammatical parallel in 5:1?

That's a simple challenge. The fact that no one will answer it is telling.

I noticed you didn’t answer my question about your background in Greek. Since your argument rests heavily on grammatical claims, it would help to know what level of training you’ve had in the language.

The Liturgist · 2025-11-08T15:38:27-0600

Amo2 said:
We have direct testimony and teaching from our Lord Jesus Christ concerning the proper place of tradition in relation to the law and testimony of the word of God, that is to say holy scripture.

Mrk 7:1 Then came together unto him the Pharisees, and certain of the scribes, which came from Jerusalem. 2 And when they saw some of his disciples eat bread with defiled, that is to say, with unwashen, hands, they found fault. 3 For the Pharisees, and all the Jews, except they wash their hands oft, eat not, holding the tradition of the elders. 4 And when they come from the market, except they wash, they eat not. And many other things there be, which they have received to hold, as the washing of cups, and pots, brasen vessels, and of tables. 5 Then the Pharisees and scribes asked him, Why walk not thy disciples according to the tradition of the elders, but eat bread with unwashen hands? 6 He answered and said unto them, Well hath Esaias prophesied of you hypocrites, as it is written, This people honoureth me with their lips, but their heart is far from me. 7 Howbeit in vain do they worship me, teaching for doctrines the commandments of men. 8 For laying aside the commandment of God, ye hold the tradition of men, as the washing of pots and cups: and many other such like things ye do. 9 And he said unto them, Full well ye reject the commandment of God, that ye may keep your own tradition. 10 For Moses said, Honour thy father and thy mother; and, Whoso curseth father or mother, let him die the death: 11 But ye say, If a man shall say to his father or mother, It is Corban, that is to say, a gift, by whatsoever thou mightest be profited by me; he shall be free. 12 And ye suffer him no more to do ought for his father or his mother; 13 Making the word of God of none effect through your tradition, which ye have delivered: and many such like things do ye.

Tradition itself is subject to the law and testimony or word of God. Whatever traditions contradict the teachings of the law and testimony of holy scripture, are to be sacrificed by the believer, rather than the other way around.

Isa 8:20 To the law and to the testimony: if they speak not according to this word, it is because there is no light in them.

We know our Lord was speaking of the Pharisaical traditions, and not Holy Tradition, for this reason - St. Paul expressly enjoins us to follow Holy Tradition in 1 Corinthians 11:2, 2 Thessalonians 2:15, and in the original Greek through the use of a word that means “traditioned” in Galatians 1:8-9.

Thus the abuse of Mark 7 as a condemnation of the Apostolic Tradition is simply eisegesis. If one reads the New Testament as a coherent whole, it is clear it endorses tradition, which was acknowledged by the early Protestants such as Martin Luther, Thomas Cranmer, John Wesley and even John Calvin - who did not dispense with tradition but merely sought to use Scripture to evaluate the traditions of the Roman Catholic Church at that time.

It would probably have been better to evaluate the Roman Catholic Church relative to the Orthodox churches since everything Luther was bothered by was not an issue in the Orthodox church; indeed the first proper Protestant church, the Unitas Fratrum in Moravia, under St. Jan Hus and St. Jerome of Prague, was an attempt to restore those things the Czechs and Slovaks had enjoyed under Orthodoxy - communion in both kinds and the use of a language (church Slavonic) which they could understand, even if that language was not the vernacular (for some Europeans likewise Latin was appropriate as a comprehensible liturgical language, particularly in Southern Europe, indeed Italians can understand some bits of Latin even today, particularly in Sardinia, and other Latin words such as Gratias are plainly translated into other languages such as Spanish, and indeed the Roman Church originally adopted Latin as a vernacular language, to be more accessible to the lower classes of Rome who could not speak Greek, not having access in their adolescence to a Rhaetor, the Roman equivalent of a private high school, which was out of budget for all except Patricians, Plebs of Equestrian stature and wealthy merchants such as Marcion, the heretical shipping magnate.

Oompa Loompa · 2025-11-08T15:38:14-0600

Fervent said:
Still conflating deontology with objectivity, I see. The question of whether morals are objective or not is rather simple, if person A thinks that A is wrong and person B thinks A is not wrong, is one of them mistaken? Or can they both be right?

How can you be sure both are wrong?

BCP1928 · 2025-11-08T15:36:39-0600

It's not a crisis if it puts downward pressure on working class wages.

Aryeh Jay · 2025-11-08T15:36:25-0600

Hans Blaster said:
They got the last 50 days off.

With pay...

FreeinChrist · 2025-11-08T15:32:50-0600

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/07/opinion/donald-trump-great-gatsby-roating-20s-sec.html?campaign_id=39&emc=edit_ty_20251107&instance_id=165980&nl=opinion-today&regi_id=76236777&segment_id=210151&user_id=418d3f9cbb8173b0f7725d156c37ba31

....Published a century ago, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “The Great Gatsby” captured the culture of an overheated economy on the brink of demise. Just as Jay Gatsby fell from the height of fortune to an ignominious death, the 1920s roared with financial overindulgence until the markets drowned in the Wall Street crash of 1929. The Great Depression followed, and the consequences for the global economy proved calamitous.

Today we find ourselves again dancing toward new highs in the stock market. Speculative money is once more pouring into risky investment schemes, with staggering sums of money being thrown at artificial intelligence and cryptocurrencies. But rather than heed a century of hard-won lessons, the Trump administration’s financial regulators are embracing dissolute policies to keep the punch flowing.

The financial excesses of 100 years ago teach us how high the costs of negligent oversight of our markets can be. When sentinels sleep, fraudsters flourish; their frenzied celebration of unreal profits pumps froth into the market; ultimately, with panic and pain, bubbles will burst. As stages of that cycle are recurring, we must decide whether to intervene now — or to mop up the mess later.

The parallels between the 1920s and the 2020s are numerous — and ominous. The 1920s economy boomed while America recovered from a deadly pandemic, the flu of 1918. Americans used installment plans — the precursor to today’s ubiquitous “buy now, pay later” plans at online checkouts — to spend liberally on consumer products, and they poured money into speculative new investments. Automobile and telephone stocks were the high-flying tech investments of their day; Tesla and Apple are two of ours.

The prevailing interest rate was around 5 percent, as it is today. And as with today, masses of Americans took advantage of easy credit and ubiquitous stock brokerages to speculate in finance. In 1929, a New York Times editor quoted a major newspaper’s financial expert who said that the “huge army that daily gambles in the stock market” had come to include, in the editor’s words, “the woman nonprofessional speculator,” whose share of market trading grew by one estimate from less than 2 percent to 35 percent. That influx of buying from 1919 to 1929 drove the stock market up more than sixfold over the decade — a growth rate our market has actually surpassed over the past three years.....

It is a good read, and he is not the only one believing Trump's decisions are leading the USA into a financial crisis.

Multifavs · 2025-11-08T15:30:33-0600

I tried out 2D animation in Blender. It looks like a good tool, but I'm thinking I might just use SAI and my video editing software instead. As far as I can tell, it's hard to make frames in Blender where some things move and others don't, and the lineart is thicker than I want. On the other hand, my work looks messier in SAI and I'd have to save each frame separately...I have to decide which option is better overall, I guess.

The Liturgist · 2025-11-08T15:30:16-0600

keras said:
The Lord gave me a vision, when my wife and I lived in the Holy Land; 2010-2012.
He inspired me to write out the Bible Prophesies and to help explain them in short articles. All available free at my website; logostelos.info

And how do you know the reliability and provenance of this vision, particularly when it appears to clash with actual Gospel text of our Lord and His Apostles?

Your opposition to the idea that He will come like “a thief in the night”, that is to say, unexpectedly, appears prima facie to contradict several New Testament scriptures Revelation 16:15,Matthew 24:43,1 Thessalonians 5:2,1 Thessalonians 5:4,2 Peter 3:10.

Either you’re not communicating what you mean on this point clearly, by appearing to refer to the words of our Lord and His Apostles as “disgusting” or you actually disagree with it on the basis of this vision, which would suggest, according to the standards of the New Testament, that the vision was unreliable.

Considering that 1 Corinthians 11:2, 2 Thessalonians 2:15 and Galatians 1:8-9 tell us to trust the Apostolic kerygma, and Tradition more broadly, and that Matthew 16:18 promises that “the gates of Hell shall not prevail against the Church”, the fact that you’re unaware of anyone who agrees with your doctrine should also be a huge red flag - the idea that all Christians had it wrong for 20 centuries until you had a vision is problematic and echoes some of the extremist Restorationist groups of the 19th century and other ancient sects whose faith was driven by a visionary figure whose ideas clashed with the prevailing interpretation of Scripture.

There is also the important point, pursuant to that, that millions of Orthodox, Catholic and Protestant Christians were martyred, and continue to be martyred, for Pagans, Muslims and Communists, for the Christian faith as received from the Apostles. Are you saying the maryrdoms of St. Stephen the Protomartyr, St. James the Great, St. Peter, St. Paul, St. Bartholomew, St. Ignatius of Antioch, St. Polycarp, St. Lucia, St. Abanoub and others were in vain?

iluvatar5150 · 2025-11-08T15:30:09-0600

GoldenBoy89 said:
Right and now he's killing people on the high seas, almost weekly.

Pirate Goldbeard?

The Liturgist · 2025-11-08T15:27:12-0600

Valletta said:
I understand, but the whole meaning behind any of the terms using "co-" was that Mary fully cooperated with Jesus. Never was it meant to be on an equal footing, that's why a number of popes, such as John Paul II, used the title.

Indeed, but the title was never formally dogmatized, and the group pushing for its dogmatization, the Fifth Dogma people, were connected with an apparition the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith under Blessed Pope Benedict XVI (yes, I referred to him as Blessed; your Congregation for the Causes of the Saints has their schedule for beatification, and I have mine) and later under Gerhard Cardinal Muller, who by rights ought to be Pope now (or Raymond Cardinal Burke, or Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone, or Cardinal Sarah, or the Major Archbishop of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church; for that matter His Grace Athanasius Schneider ought to be the locum tenems for those German dioceses that issued a form for the blessing of homosexual unions during the Papal interregnum and falsely claimed to have worked with the DDF to implement it, which the DDF denies), rejected as not worthy of belief.

To allow this devotion to have official status would be yet another win for dubious Marian apparitions (the other being Medjugorje), apparitions which unlike those at Fatima, or the miraculous apparition of Our Lady of Guadalupe, have not produced any kind of radical mass conversion but which instead have a dark side (for example, Medjugorje has been used by the Franciscans who historically ran all the churches in Herzegovina before it became a Diocese following its incorporation into the Austrian Empire, at which time they were supposed to turn the churches over to Diocesan clergy - at one point they literally bricked up the Church of St. James in Medjurgorje to prevent this from happening) to maintain their influence, and indeed a film was made which depicted the pious Bishop of the Diocese of Mostar in an unflattering light).

Roman Catholics ought to venerate the Theotokos more in the liturgy and in a more controlled manner, with more Marian hymns, better Marian hymns, which already exist in the West by the way; they are in the old Divine Office and Traditional Latin Mass and certain other ancient Latin Masses such as the Ambrosian and Mozarabic - and additionally the importation and Westernization of Eastern Marian hymns such as the Stavrotheotokia, the acheingly beautiful hymns of Mary at the Foot of the Cross, which would go well with the Seven Sorrows devotion, would be very meet. And the use of the Akathist by Western Catholics would be more edifying and focused than the long Rosary services or the Novena.

peter2 · 2025-11-08T15:24:35-0600

Do you think, please, it's possible some people's minds could be such that they consider their sins or flaws so irrepressible that they consider them like their god, just because these flaws are stronger than they are.. A kind of devotion to the flaws, just because they feel unable to deal with their strength (the strength of flaws) ? (It would be like a kind of respect they develop for something just because this something is stronger than they are).

GoldenBoy89 · 2025-11-08T15:24:30-0600

FreeinChrist said:
Not just a 34 time felon but also a man found liable of sexual assault, and a man found guilty of defrauding others, and lying on his taxes.
He has a lifetime of such behavior with no evidence he has changed his ways.

Right and now he's killing people on the high seas, almost weekly.

Years ago I heard someone call him "President 7 sins." He's more than lived up to that moniker.

Strong in Him · 2025-11-08T15:22:41-0600

GeorgeSprites said:
Truly, I still am in great beleif that he does truly wish us to express ourselves, as we wish! The thing that matters is intent, not curse words!

Curse words certainly do matter!
It is God's will that we are holy. 1 Thessalonians 3:4. Holy means set apart or different. We are not to be like the world but different from it.
How can we be holy - set apart - from the word if we are using the same foul language they use?
How can we be light in a dark world if our language is dark, unwholesome, unedifying etc?
Read James 3 - with our tongues we praise our Lord and with the same tongue we utter curses. Can fresh and salt water come from the same spring?

GeorgeSprites said:
Its my opinion that those who focus on semantics , instead of the message of Jesus, which is to Love All, have not found his truth yet.

And what kind of witness are you being and message are you spreading if you talk about the God who is f...ing furious? How dare you put swear words in his mouth?
How are people going to be drawn to him if you describe his awesomeness, majesty, purity and love using swear words?

FreeinChrist · 2025-11-08T15:20:21-0600

GoldenBoy89 said:
Same way a 34 time felon is eligible to be president.

Not just a 34 time felon but also a man found liable of sexual assault, and a man found guilty of defrauding others, and lying on his taxes.
He has a lifetime of such behavior with no evidence he has changed his ways.

GoldenBoy89 · 2025-11-08T15:19:44-0600

Hentenza said:
Lol was waiting for the inevitable. The problem is that most leftists here don’t see anything wrong with a killer being elected but have big problems with non violent white collar crime being elected.

"Most leftists" aren't living and voting in Bangor, Maine.

But at least we've gotten to the point of agreeing the president did indeed commit his 34 felonies. That is progress in my book.

FreeinChrist · 2025-11-08T15:18:25-0600

Hentenza said:
I think it has a bearing on the job and I didn’t say anything about forgiving her. Tell me, would you let a child molester work at a day care center after he/she completes their sentence?

Yep. They own it.

Child molesters are known to have deep-seated sexual drive for what they do.
Walker was an alcoholic, though it is also something that she will always deal with. It would be bad for her to work in a bar.
The violent death of a Canadian tourist 20 years ago was awful, but she was dealing with addiction, and then served her time, and stopped drinking.
She has turned her life around.

The job she is elected to is to be one of a group that would make decisions and she wants to make sure the voices of the homeless and others have their voice heard. It is not equivalent to putting a knife in her hand.

fhansen · 2025-11-08T15:18:11-0600

Clare73 said:
Adam did not take it away Ro 1:17, Php 3:9.

Of course he did, and that's basic to Christianity. There's a reason why all people sin now and it's because we lost the original righteousness or holiness that is intrinsic to union with God. That's why sin flourished right after the Fall. Caim slew Abel, etc, which would have been totally foreign, impossible, beforehand. And Faith is the reestablishment of that union.

BCP1928 · 2025-11-08T15:17:16-0600

CRAZY_CAT_WOMAN said:
Walmart is the reason why many of their employees are on food stamps, Obama care and medical. Maybe people should boycott Walmart. I know some liberals won't go there, because of their labor abuse and they buy clothes from other countries, that have children making the clothes.

Don't blame Sam Walton. He was just another ambitious capitalist taking advantage of America's abandonment of a free market economy.

Fervent · 2025-11-08T15:17:05-0600

Stopped_lurking said:
Ok, so let's pretend you didn't bring it up. Where can I read the post about infanticide? I must have missed that one.

It was mentioned as a defensive strategy by @Hans Blaster in post #853. But we need not pretend I didn't bring it up, because even if the example is simply conjectural/hypothetical the fact that it is conceivable that rape improves fitness remains salient to the attempt to equate fitness with morality.

The Liturgist · 2025-11-08T15:16:07-0600

concretecamper said:
I think most who don't agree with the Title Co-Redemptrix view it as a title of equality with Jesus. That is an incorrect view. iMO, the Church should combat the misinformation rather than retreat from the Title.

Except your church never dogmatized that title. Also pushing for this would create yet another impediment to unity with the Orthodox - no one liturgically venerates the Theotokos as much as we do (Most Holy Theotokos, save us)*, but we already have an issue of division over the Immaculate Heart devotion and the Immaculate conception (that the Blessed Virgin Mary is immaculate is not disputed - our hymns describe her as such, but our model of original sin, which is based on St. John Cassian’s refutation of Pelagius and used to predominate in the West as well as the East does not require the Theotokos to have been conceived immaculately in order to be sinless, without endorsing Pelagianism).

Also its worth noting the birth of the Theotokos is already a miracle, since Saints Joachim and Anna, the Grandparents of God, were childless due either to infertility on the part Joachim or Anna until the conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary well past the age when St. Anna was potentially pregnant.

The chief difference between Orthodox and Roman Catholic devotions to the Theotokos is that we avoid mental visualization such as in the Rosary (we try to avoid this in prayer in general as it has proven to be problematic, which I can attest to from my own life experiences - the Holy Icons are all the visualization we need for prayer - and is more precise, and longer, and more liturgical, and at the same time more enthusiastic and pervasive.

We don’t just refer to her as St. Mary in the liturgy, for example, but as “our most glorious Lady Theotokos and ever virgin Mary”, and if I were to quote all of the Theotokia, the hymns to the Theotokos, especially the Stavrotheotokia, it would fill a book, and that’s in addition to the Akathists and Molebens.

Also I would note that what I have said largely applies to the more Byzantinized Ukrainian Greek Catholics in North America, but less so in Ukraine where certain differences in use still apply - there are some Ukrainian Greek Catholic churches here like St. Elias who follow the Typikon so precisely as to be indistinguishable from the Orthodox aside from the petitions for the Pope in the Great Litany and his commemoration in the Diptychs (and also for some reason Roman Catholic translations of the Divine Liturgy in my experience do not use the phrase “unto ages of ages” used by most Eastern Orthodox, except for the Ruthenian converts of the American Carpatho Rusyn Orthodox Diocese, and by the Copts.

* I base this statement on the number of liturgical and devotional services and their duration, such as the Akathist and Moleben, and the canons of the Theotokos and the frequency and diversity of the Theotokion hymns in our liturgy, and the fact that the Eastern Orthodox and Oriental Orthodox have been celebrating the Assumption or Dormition of Our Lady since the very early church and have regarded it as dogma this entire time; it did not require a Papal decree in the 1950s for it was for us dogma at least as far back as the fourth century when liturgical evidence of it starts to appear, making it as old in attestation as the Roman Canon.

In contrast the Roman Little Office of the Blessed Virgin Mary, which is beautiful, is now seldom celebrated, and I am not aware of public celebrations of it, and the public rosaries and novenas are not technically liturgical services according to the Western definition of liturgical (interestingly, in Orthodoxy Liturgy properly refers only to the Eucharist but I normally make use of the Western usage for the sake of consistency with Western scholarship, however, in an Orthodox context I will use verbs like liturgize, which means, to celebrate the Divine Liturgy) but were rather classed by Fr. Robert Taft, SJ, as devotions which had become liturgized. In contrast, the Akathist is a Kontakion, an ancient liturgical hymn, sung with a formal preface and closure, and the Moleben features a Canon; likewise equivalent services among most of the Oriental Orthodox do equivalent things (such as the Syriac Orthodox Mawrbo - a recitation of the Magnificat at night).

Also we Orthodox do pray the Hail Mary, and have multiple prayer rules for it, such as the Prayer Rule of St. Seraphim of Sarov.

GoldenBoy89 · 2025-11-08T15:15:48-0600

Vambram said:
How is a convicted killer even eligible for a political office in America?

Same way a 34 time felon is eligible to be president.

Oompa Loompa · 2025-11-08T15:13:54-0600

Bradskii said:
But we can look at examples of morality and determine if they are objective or not. I'm looking at the practicalities of the matter, not whether it can be accepted as a theoretical matter or one of faith. It's not valid to say 'X is wrong' if you think it's the right thing to do.

Take lying as the obvious example. It's a divine command not to lie. But would you lie to save the lives of your family? I'm certain that you would. So to call that lie morally wrong makes no sense.

Take 'Do not kill'. Some say it should be taken as 'do not murder'. But murder isn't an absolute concept. There's murder in the first degree, the second and third. All relative to the conditions.

Take torture. Absolutely wrong? But what you would define as torture would be different to someone else's definition. And you'd each have your reasons. Therefore it cannot be objectively wrong. It depends on the circumstances.

So again, do you think that all morality is objective? Or is there someone that's relative?

As you have demonstrated by the examples you have provided, without an absolute standard, arguing about the morality of lying, killing, and torture is as nonsensical as arguing the position of north in space. I believe, as a theist, that the absolute standard for morality can be measured by the two greatest commandments: to love God and to love people. Of course, I can not force an atheist to agree to that standard.

But even if we set a secular standard in place, one in which empirical data proved that particular behaviors were objectively good because it is best for the preservation and promotion of the human species, I then would ask, "With the planet's limited resources, why is the preservation and promotion of the human species objectively good? Would it not be better for the human race to thrive and collapse with resource availability just as every other species does?" Because I could then argue that murder is objectively good for an overpopulated humanoid planet, and that rape would be objectively good if humanity was an endangered species.

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