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Singles ~ Welcomes/Goodbyes (3)

Hey, I'm new here. Been feeling sad about being single but praying for God to show me what His plans are for me.

Hello all

Then, welcome, Miss .Iona. *bows*

The community's gotten a lot more scarce these days than it used to be, but even so, we're glad to see a new face. ^-^
Hope you find your time here both welcoming and worthwhile. :angel:
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Meditation/Contemplation

At what point in my response did I mention the Jesus prayer or a specific practice? You jumped the gun.

~bella

Psychophysical discipline and asceticism are part of praying the Jesus Prayer, as it is traditionally practiced. These aren't necessarily "new age", just because they are foreign to certain western forms of Christian (often Protestant) religion. Many forms of Christianity are embodied in practice, and not merely intellectual or affectivel/emotional; even the body participates in sanctification and glorification.

By psychophysical discipline, I mean certain ways of praying the Jesus Prayer involve:

1) posture, often bowing the head or closing the eyes
2) breath control (sometimes, though not always)
3) nespsis and apatheia (mindfulness and inner calm)
4) placing the focus on the heart (the physical heart, not just as a metaphor).
5) use of a rope or prayer beads (often, but not always).
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Sunday Is Not the Sabbath

*You are in the Catholic forum*

If we believe we have to ‘honor the Sabbath day,’ why aren’t Catholics obliged to attend Mass on Saturday instead of Sunday?​


One of the most appealing teachings of the Seventh-day Adventist denomination is their insistence that Christians must obey the Ten Commandments . . . all ten of them. They rightly expose the errant thinking among many Protestant Christian sects that claims, “We don’t have to keep the Ten Commandments for salvation anymore.”

Of course, Jesus has a reminder for us:

And behold, one came up to him, saying, “Teacher, what good deed must I do, to have eternal life?” And [Jesus] said to him . . . “If you would enter life, keep the commandments” (Matt. 19:16-17).
Given our agreement on this point, the Seventh-day Adventist commonly asks: “If you believe we have to keep the Fourth (our Third) Commandment, why aren’t Catholics obliged to attend Mass on Saturdays instead of Sunday?”

We can draw our first source from the the Catechism, which declares,

Since they express man’s fundamental duties towards God and towards his neighbor, the Ten Commandments reveal, in their primordial content, grave obligations. They are fundamentally immutable, and they oblige always and everywhere. No one can dispense from them. The Ten Commandments are engraved by God in the human heart (2072).
Thus, the Third Commandment is “fundamentally immutable” because it’s one of the Ten Commandments, which Jesus said we must follow to attain everlasting life. However, the Catholic Church teaches the particular day we celebrate in keeping the Third Commandment to be ceremonial, or an accidental component of the law that is changeable. Here’s how the Catechism puts it:

Continued below.

AI thinks aliens have occupied Earth

I know very little about artificial intelligence, but I thought that any information AI has to work with came in the first instance from human beings. The idea that AI can "believe" something sounds extremely unlikely to me.

AI can't believe, because AI can't think or reason, AI isn't alive.

-CryptoLutheran
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Faith without woks explained

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What Type of Salvation Is James Talking About? – Grace Evangelical Society

The bottom line is this: salvation in James refers to the deliverance of born again people from God’s wrath. James is not talking about what we do to be born again except for a brief reference in James 1:18. Regardless of one’s theological persuasion, anyone who reads James with eyes to see will discern that James is talking about blessings and curses in this life. The only way to miss that is to be blinded by one’s tradition. Compare John 5:39-40.
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Catholic Evangelization 101 - What is Conversion?

Have you ever actually read the entire terms of use for a new app on your phone? If so, did you understand everything in it? Even if you didn't, you probably still checked that you would “read and agree” to everything in the document. This kind of half-hearted consent is similar to what happens for a lot of Catholics every Sunday. When we get to the creed, many Catholics aren’t really paying attention to what their words mean, but are merely going through the motions. We all know it happens, but the real question is - if we aren’t giving our consent, can we have real conversion?

The answer is no. This is because conversion requires our consent.
Unlike a legal contract, conversion requires more than an outward act.

WHAT IS CONVERSION?
The root of the word “convert” means to “turn around”, “change”, or “transform”. Think of turning from sin, death, evil, and hell to now orient yourself toward God, grace, goodness, virtue, heaven, and everlasting life. It is the transformation of the human heart, by an act of God's grace.

Thus, we sometimes call one who becomes Catholic a “convert” which means they have turned from their previous beliefs and now are Catholic. We all know that many of the most vibrant Catholics have come from other faith traditions or no faith at all, to become Catholics. Why are they so vibrant? It is because they had to consent to becoming Catholics and their consent made all the difference. Consent is found in responding with a “yes” to an invitation by Jesus.

Notice the dynamic of conversion in the Bible:

Continued below.

Priests of West Bank’s only remaining all-Christian town issue urgent appeal against Israeli settler violence

The three priests of Taybeh in the West Bank issued an urgent appeal for justice this week after Israeli settlers reportedly escalated their acts of violence and intimidation against Christians in the region’s only remaining all-Christian town.

“We, the priests of the three churches of Taybeh — the Greek Orthodox Church, the Latin Church, and the Melkite Greek Catholic Church — raise our voices on behalf of the people of our town and our parishioners to strongly condemn the ongoing and grave series of attacks targeting Taybeh,” the three pastors wrote in a letter.

Continued below.

Encounter God in the heart of creation

Today is July 11, the Memorial of Saint Benedict, Abbot.

We read at today’s Mass, “‘Behold, I am sending you like sheep in the midst of wolves; so be shrewd as serpents and simple as doves'” (Mt 10:16).

That line describes St. Benedict perfectly — a man who founded an entire movement by combining wisdom and humility. But it also brings to mind Blessed Pier Giorgio Frassati.

Pier Giorgio wasn’t afraid to live his faith boldly. Though gentle in spirit, he stood with clarity and conviction. In today’s world, living that way — meek and courageous — is like being a sheep among wolves. But Pier Giorgio shows us it’s possible. And part of what gave him that strength was the way he encountered God in nature, especially in the mountains.

A sacred space​


Continued below.

FEMA missed major flood risk at Christian Camp Mystic, analysis claims to show

The Federal Emergency Management Agency FEMA failed to include multiple buildings on its flood risk map for Camp Mystic in Hunt, Texas, according to an analysis by NPR, PBS's FRONTLINE and data scientists.

At least 27 camp attendees died and five others remain unaccounted for after massive flash flooding swept the private Christian summer camp for girls along the Guadalupe River on July 4.

These findings come from a new analysis by NPR, PBS's FRONTLINE and data scientists, which show that at least eight buildings, including four cabins housing younger campers at Camp Mystic, are located within FEMA’s designated floodway, which is a dangerous area expected to see high-velocity water.

Continued below.
Wait, you mean the real floodplains were 20 feet further inland than what the maps depicted?!?
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Woe to the Unrighteous

I agree, but we are also told to put the Kingdom into practice, acting in servitude to the Father and each other in need.
Not to be coy, Timothyu, be for me, that’s the answer. We know there’s no cookie cutter approach to how to practice and serve, although the light of the Scriptures gives guard rails. Okay, there are concrete things to say, but we cannot exhaust them—the Spirit of Messiah in us being that creative.
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Spanish Inquisiton

I'm not sure why anyone would care what a random Catholic newspaper (from over a century ago at that) said; it means as much as a blog post does.



This one carries a little more authority than a random newspaper, though obviously hardly constitutes some kind of official declaration of the Catholic Church. Still, setting that aside, there are bigger issues with this one. In fact, it's odd you post it, given that in a previous topic I already pointed out the problems with this; one of the big ones being that "modify" is a mistranslation. This is especially problematic given you put so much emphasis on that word.

Since you apparently missed it the first time, here we go again. The below is a slightly edited version of exactly what I posted to you the last time:

Before we get into the mistranslation, I should note quite a while ago someone offered this analysis:

I did a bit of research to find some more details. First off, this is the page on which the sentence appears – I’ve highlighted the relevant phrase.

Notice that the phrase appears in italics, after a citation: “Petrus de Anchar [asserit], in consil 373, n. 3, vers.” This citation is a reference to a book by Peter of Ancarano, whose name is also spelled Petrus de Anchar. The book in question is probably Consilium, which, according to an Italian page I found, is indeed by Peter of Ancarano and is available in printed form at the Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana. The book principally discusses a heresy called conciliarism.


After googling for more information about this Peter of Ancarano fellow, I think I may have found out why he seems to have said that the pope can modify divine laws. The explanation involves a case of marriage law, so bear with me.

This page contains a description of a controversy in the 1400s, when Peter of Ancarano was alive, involving two competing anti-popes. One of these antipopes refused to grant a marital dispensation to a couple who wanted to marry but were impeded from doing so because they were members of the same family by a previous marriage. The other anti-pope acted differently in a similar case invovling a couple who thought he was the rightful pope – he granted them permission to marry even though they too were impeded for the same reason the other couple was. Before he made this decision, this second anti-pope consulted Peter of Ancarano and asked him for his opinion.

Now, in this controversy some people appealed to divine law to prove that the pope could not grant a dispensation in these cases. Specifically, they appealed to Leviticus 18:16, which forbids a man to marry his brother’s wife. The couples in question were each a nobleman and his brother’s widow – they probably wanted to marry to keep an inheritance in the family. Peter of Ancarano apparently argued that the pope had the power to dispense with the law of Lev. 18:16, even though it was a divine law, because Old Testament laws don’t work in the New Covenant.

So that seems to be the context in which this claim about the pope “modifying divine law” appears: it is a reference to the pope’s power to dispense with canonical impediments arising from Levitical laws that are no longer binding in the New Testament. Not the whopper that Seventh Day Adventists appear to think it is.

This seems to add up, and clears up what it's talking about. However, there is another big problem that is not even touched on by that analysis, namely the fact that the usage of "modify" is a mistranslation to begin with.

The Latin word being translated as modify is modificare (or modifico--some dictionaries list Latin words as infinitive (modificare), whereas others use the first person singular present tense (modifico)). This is where the word "modify" in English comes from. However, meanings can shift over time, and especially when they cross languages. In Latin, modificare does not mean to modify; it means to set limits or to control or regulate. This can be easily confirmed by any Latin dictionary; see, for example, this one. Thus what this was saying, especially when viewed in the context of the above, is that the pope has authority to determine instances when divine law--the example being marriage law--does not apply. It says nothing about modifying it.
You seem to be missing the point of my post.

I wasn't trying to give all the evidence of the Catholic church changing one of God's divine Law written by the finger of God.
For that we can see more here links from the catechism and pope Commandments of man or the commandments of God

Its these type of statements from Catholics over the centuries elevating them over God. As if God would had failed if it were not for the Catholic church and the Bible is their book, not the Word of God. Essentially making themselves above God.
The Bible is the book of the Catholic Church--no Catholic Church, no Bible.
If you want to buy into this narrative and history, that's your choice, but its not mine or what God's Word teaches
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They are working with the nephilim underground

I don't know but some did. Google it.

A human tail, also known as a caudal appendage, is a rare congenital anomaly where a baby is born with a tail-like structure. These structures are typically lumbosacral coccygeal appendages, remnants of the embryonic tail that normally disappears during fetal development. While sometimes considered a throwback to earlier human ancestors, they are more accurately described as a developmental anomaly, often associated with other spinal abnormalities.
Sorry, I think you may have misunderstood my post. I didn't mean that no human beings have ever been born with a mutation that results in them have a tail-like appendage. I was just saying that it can't be a throwback to an earlier stage of evolution, because God created Adam and Eve without tails. He didn't create tail-bearing animals and wait for them to lose their tails and become human. Sorry if I didn't word my post clearly.
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Normandt' meditations

165. Forgiveness leads to peace





Forgiveness leads to peace:

“Bearing with one another and forgiving one another, if one has a grievance against another; as the Lord has forgiven you, so must you also do.” Colossians, chapter 3, verse 13



To reconcile with the neighbour is the condition to live a life of peace and joy. Let’s continue to forgive and build lasting relationships with others, freely and smoothly on our way. Suffering itself will diminish. Even though forgiving is sometimes difficult, it’s liberating.



Let’s praise God continually. Whenever we have good dispositions of the heart with God and with the neighbour, each time it’s the Holy Spirit who lives in our heart and he motivates our actions and our sharing. He transforms the walls into fields of wheat, into generous vines. May the Holy Spirit stimulate us with his graces:

“Hallelujah! Praise God in his holy sanctuary; give praise in the mighty dome of heaven. Give praise for his mighty deeds, praise him for his great majesty!” Psalm 150, verses 1 to 2



The new American Bible, 2011-2014

Book: Watch with faith, Normand Thomas
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