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Ask the member of the Latin Rite of the Roman Catholic Church AKA Interrogate the Catholic ;)

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 (Edited)

Taking after the example of darth_ender, I have decided to start my own thread with the same intention. My religion is often misunderstood, and this thread is an opportunity for you to clear up any questions you have about Catholicism with a practicing Catholic. I have a pretty good grasp on my religion, though I don't know enough to delve into some of the more intellectually stimulating debates. I will do my best to answer whatever questions you might have, however.

EDIT: Please be respectful in this thread. I will do my best to show respect in turn, but I would appreciate if you did not belittle my religion, and please, if you are going to make jokes, consider that you may be joking about what I consider to be holy and sacred and that may have the same effect as directly insulting my religion. So just show the same respect towards my beliefs as you would want me to show to yours.

Thank you.

FURTHER EDIT: Please try not to be ambiguous with your questions as I would like to be able to answer them correctly on my first try.

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If the universe is expanding in all directions and the expansion is accelerating how is it that the Andromeda galaxy is on a collision course with the Milky Way?

Also if anti-matter has the same mass as matter how can we tell if the universe is full of Anti-matter galaxies or not?

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LOL :)

I said:

this thread is an opportunity for you to clear up any questions you have about Catholicism

That doesn't have much to do with Catholicism, so in order to keep this thread from derailing from the first reply, I am going to ask that you stay fairly serious and on-topic on this thread.

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@Bingowings

LOL, I get it now! But you know what I mean and the purpose of this thread is not to be a joke, but to clarify and inform, just like darth_ender's thread. :)

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Jaitea said:

Are you happy?

J

 Um...yes, I suppose. I don't believe that anyone can ever be entirely and truly happy in this world, but I would say I am a fairly happy guy. I'm certainly not unhappy.

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Are you happy with your religion?

J

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Happy in what way? As in satisfied with my beliefs, or happy with what has been done in the name of my religion or by members of my religion, or what?

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Nothing tricky,...does your beliefs make you a happy person....content....satisfied?

J

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That's a tough one to answer, and to answer your question in the simplest way possible: no. This doesn't mean that I don't think that my religion is true, or that it is incomplete, but what it does mean is that I am still learning about my religion and I have yet to find/read the answers to some of the trickier questions posed against it. Some of the questions can't be answered with the knowledge/resources/evidence we have on earth, so there are some questions that will never be answered, or not in my lifetime. I believe that I will find the answers after I die, but meanwhile on earth I can't honestly say I'm satisfied with the hypothetical/speculative answers from all sides to many of these questions.

Does that make sense?

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It makes perfect sense, I was brought up Protestant, but about 10 years ago I began to seriously question what was being preached, I wasn't happy then, but I feel a lot happier now without religion.

I guess why I was asking was perhaps your education in Catholicism answered your concerns

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Is the entire Catholic Church one big church? ;)

In all seriousness, I applaud this and feel that it is a brave thing to allow others to scrutinize your religion.  I first thought this thread was a joke, but I'm happy to see that you are serious about sharing your faith.  Good for you.  I guess I have a question, and I hope it, as well as all others I might ask, are taken as genuine and not as derogatory.

Considering the Bible's prohibition against idolatry and injunctions to pray directly to our Heavenly Father, how do Catholics justify praying to saints and venerating their likeness in statues?

To be fair, I am fairly well educated on most prominent religions, and I know at least some Catholics' answers to this question.  However, I am interested in your thoughts.

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The answer to your first question is that all the Catholics in the world go to one huge church the size of New York (up the street from the Anglican Church) called the Catholic Church, every Sunday. ;)

The second question is a trickier one to answer, so bear with me as I might take a little while to explain it. :)

We pray to saints in a different way than we pray to God. When we pray to God we know that our prayers are answered through his own power. When we pray to the angels/saints, we ask them to intercede between God and us on our behalf. Praying to the saints is like asking someone to pray for you. We are not praying in the sense that we are worshiping them or expect them to use their power to answer our prayers, because they cannot answer our prayers except with God's power working through them. So when we pray to the saints and angels we are not asking them to help us or thanking them for help received, but rather asking and thanking God through them.

You might ask what the point of that is, as it isn't as if the saints help with the backlog so that God can catch up later, and he can hear our prayers anytime. The reason for that is because the more prayers there are on our behalf, the more likely God is to answer our prayers. Again, this is not because God is hard of hearing and might miss us the first time, but because we believe in what is called the "Communion of Saints" which includes the saints in heaven, those in purgatory, and those on earth who are still working towards heaven. Communion means "union" and is related to the word community and that is sort of what the Communion of Saints is. Because all these people are in communion with each other (not meaning that we are all telepathically communicating with each other or are some kind of hive collective or anything like that ;) ), we pray for each other. (Praying for others is beneficial to those on earth because we believe that those on earth and in purgatory receive graces for prayer.) We believe the prayers of the holy (the saints) have more effect (James 5:16–18 gives the example of Elijah) than the prayers of other people. If you think about it, that makes sense because you are more likely to help someone who cares about you than an enemy. Of course God is not human and we believe he is infinitely merciful, but I don't want to get to deep into things right now so I will just leave it at "Scripture says that the prayers of the righteous are more powerful than the prayers of sinners" for now.

As Catholics we are encouraged to pray to God as well, and often, but since there is nothing wrong with asking the saints to pray for us, we do so.

Regarding veneration of images, we do not worship the images or the people of which the images are representative, but honour them as being examples which we should strive to imitate. When we make a shrine to venerate a saint and place flowers and other objects at the shrine, it is equivalent to placing flowers on the grave of someone who has died, in respect to their memory, but you wouldn't say we worship that person. If you lose a loved member of your family, you may have a picture of them in a prominent place to show your respect for that person, but you wouldn't say that it is idolatry. It is the same way with the saints. Because they were so close to God on earth we venerate them in a special way, so it is just a glorified version of what people do for deceased loved ones.

It can become idolatry though if you pray to a saint with the expectation that they will answer your prayers personally, or if you treat a statue or image as if it were alive and able to answer your prayers (i.e. if you pray to the statue and not the saint). When we honour an image we are just showing respect to that person, but should in no way think of the image as having power of its own.

Hopefully that makes sense and I didn't reiterate too much, as I am known to do that. :P

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^Sorry for the formatting errors, I'm not sure why half the text is black.

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Yeah, the text formatting is weird, and I don't know what to do when it does that.  Whenever I copy text of a different color from another site, it changes the whole text and I can't get the right color back.  Don't worry about it.

As for your answer, it is very good and thorough.  Thank you for the thoughtful reply :)

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TV's Frink said:

What do you think about the new Pope?

 I think Pope Francis is a very holy and humble man. I agree with a lot of what he teaches, but he is often misrepresented by the media who take his words to mean something other than what they actually do (partly the Pope's fault in many cases). For example, when he said, "Who am I to judge," in reference to homosexuals, it was not a step towards permitting gay/lesbian marriage in the Church as the media portrayed it, but just showed his acceptance of homosexual people as opposed to homosexuality. He seems to be in line with previous Church teachings though, which I think is a good thing, and I like that he doesn't sit around in a palace on his rear all day, but gets out there with his people and leads by example. Overall I think he is a very good Pope and a good man, so I'm pretty happy that us Catholics have him as our leader.

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timdiggerm said:

How can Roman Catholic & Eastern Orthodox reconcilliation take place?

 It could be very complicated, since both the Roman Catholic and the Eastern Orthodox Churches believe they have the fullness of the truth, so a compromise in beliefs between them likely won't happen, or at least not for some time. Unification will have to be a very gradual process, and as the first steps towards reconciliation only began in the mid-20th century, so there is a long ways to go. The Catholic Church (unless I specify otherwise I will always be referring to the Roman Catholic Church when I use the term "Catholic") permits Catholics to receive Orthodox sacraments and go to Orthodox churches on Sunday if there isn't a Catholic church nearby, but the Orthodox Church has yet to respond in kind. Making peace with each other is the first step and that has gone quite far, but there may never be true unification.

If by "reconciliation" you mean unification, then it will probably take something pretty drastic to unify the two churches. Correct me on this if I'm wrong, but I'm taking you to mean making peace with each other and not necessarily unifying. Well, this has already began with Pope John XXIII I believe, the Pope who began the Second Vatican Council in the early 1960s. There were several representatives from the Orthodox Church present at the council and I believe the Pope had met with at least one of their main Patriarchs before that. Later Popes, most notably John Paul II, also met with Orthodox Patriarchs and I believe it was he who declared the Orthodox Church's sacraments valid (I'm going off the top of my head right now, but I will make sure I have my facts straight when I have more time). The next step is for the Orthodox Church to reciprocate and then the two Churches can take further steps forward. The Churches are in a far greater state of reconciliation than they were a hundred years ago, so we have made progress and I believe the best way to reconciliation is mostly to continue as we are now with a bit more communication and cooperation between the Churches.

(I have heard that many members of the Orthodox Church are willing to join the Catholic Church and accept papal supremacy, but that is just hearsay and I'm not sure what "many" means.)

Hopefully that answers your question. If not, then I can find you some links and give a better explanation later.

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timdiggerm said:

Why is the immaculate conception a necessity? Why does Mary have to be without sin in order to give birth to Christ? How could she be born without sin?

 We believe that Mary was predetermined to be the mother of God. If you put drinking water in a pitcher, you want that pitcher to be completely clean. We believe that it was the same with Mary. She was going to be a "vessel" through which God would become incarnate and come into the world as a human being, so God made her without original sin so that she would be as pure and holy a vessel as possible. Technically she didn't have to be without sin in order to give birth to Christ, but you could say that for a pitcher of water. Technically you can drink the water without cleaning the dirty pitcher, but most people (in the first world anyway) would clean it first. She was preserved from sin so that she would be prepared for carrying Christ in her womb, just as you might clean your house and try to keep your it as clean as possible when you have important guests coming over.

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HotRod said:

What do you think of the majority of priests being child molesting kiddie fuckers??

 the majority??????