Ask the member of the Latin Rite of the Roman Catholic Church AKA Interrogate the Catholic ;) — Page 14

Mas is short for...mass, as in Catholic Mass.  And ray_afraid, that is an excellent comment, and I thank you for making it!

That's what I thought, though I wasn't sure because I remembered hearing something else.

So Christmas is short for "Christ's Mass" which makes sense, because a special feast day would have a special Mass.

RicOlie_2 said:

^That's weird, I've never heard that one...

That's not all. I also was taught to believe that "Halloween" was a mockery of the "hallowed by thy name" part of the Lord's Prayer. How that etymology works is anybody's guess.

My parents follow a rather stupid, irrational pseudo-Christianity.

Yes, that is correct, but I think Duracell knows that now. He was just saying that he was taught differently when he was growing up.

Apropos of nothing, the word Mass in the Catholic sense comes from a Latin phrase meaning "go home".

Cool, I didn't know that.

It is fun. It comes from the last phrase of the service, "Ite, missa est".

Essentially it's saying "the service has finished, see you next week' :-D

For HotRod:

http://ncronline.org/blogs/ncr-today/retraction-vat-now-confirms-almost-400-priests-defrocked-sex-abuse

If you see this HotRod, read at least the last five paragraphs of this article:

http://cosmostheinlost.com/2013/09/10/richard-dawkins-puts-pedophilia-perspective/

The incidence of child pedophilia and molester shuffling is much higher among publish school teachers, policemen, border patrol, but especially within the family. It’s all right there, in plain sight, on the internet and in print from reliable mainstream sources. Do the research if you really do give a damn.

Couldn't he do the research for me?  This isn't a class assignment.

JEDIT: Argh the stupid limited text editor strikes again.

JEDIT2: Publish school teachers, eh?

TV's Frink said:

The incidence of child pedophilia and molester shuffling is much higher among publish school teachers, policemen, border patrol, but especially within the family. It’s all right there, in plain sight, on the internet and in print from reliable mainstream sources. Do the research if you really do give a damn.

Couldn't he do the research for me?  This isn't a class assignment.

JEDIT: Argh the stupid limited text editor strikes again.

JEDIT2: Publish school teachers, eh?

 LOL

Maybe he meant "published" ;-)

While we're interrogating folks' religious beliefs, I'm curious how you and other Catholics have taken the statements of Pope Francis regarding evolution, the Big Bang, etc.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2014/10/28/pope-francis-backs-theory-of-evolution-says-god-is-no-wizard/

Speaking for myself, I am not surprised at all. As the article mentions, this is a view that has been widely accepted by the leaders of the Church for some time. In fact, in case you weren't aware, it was a Catholic priest who came up with the Big Bang theory in the first place.

Evolution is a bit of a trickier issue for some, since if we humans are descended from apes, how could we be descended from two human beings, as the Church teaches, and at what point would we have been considered "human enough" to be given souls? As a result, many Catholics accept microevolution, but reject macroevolution. There are still many Catholics who take the creation story literally, but I consider that an untenable position, since it contradicts current scientific knowledge and the two creation stories contradict each other if taken literally. Other Catholics, including myself, believe the generally accepted theory of evolution from microbes to complex organisms to humans.

I couldn't tell you what percentages of Catholics accept one stance or the other, however. Since the Church has stated that Catholics are free to accept any of them, we are all over the map in this respect.

Not the entire Old Testament, however. The first eleven chapters of Genesis are generally considered allegorical. The rest of Genesis is partially historical, but it cannot be given the same amount of credibility as modern history, firstly because it was likely written thousands of years after the fact, and secondly because it is "sacred history" meaning its intent was to teach lessons and provide explanations, not to be factually accurate.

The rest of the Pentateuch is considered more historical, since it was more recent, but it is still sacred history, as are pretty much all of what are called the "historical books."

The books of Tobit, Job, Jonah, etc. are often considered works of fiction, and the Catholic Church fully allows this position.

The prophetic books are considered literal so far as their genre allows--i.e., they employ metaphors, symbols, allegories, and hyperbole, so a reading of them must take that into account. That doesn't mean we think they're unreliable.

So, none of the biblical books contain historical writings the way we'd write them today, but that doesn't mean they're all to be taken allegorically. It just means that we shouldn't get our knickers knotted up over the dearth of archaeological evidence for Solomon. Being that he was considered a wise and wealthy king, his story could have been embellished to emphasize his greatness and subsequent fall from grace.

We're pretty sure Ninevah didn't convert to Judaism en masse, as in Jonah. In Job, it reads very much like a fictional story based on a real man, or even complete fiction. Other wisdom books claim authorship by Solomon, but most scholars don't think Solomon wrote them. He was a figure who represented wisdom, and was perhaps used to give authority to the books under his name. I am agnostic on whether or not Tobit and other books are fiction, since I haven't heard any arguments either for or against that position.

Tobit isnt in the Protestant Bible.

Timdiggerm, out of curiosity, what exactly is it that causes Protestants' heads to explode? Is it that we recognize what we believe to be works of fiction as inspired scripture?

Well, I'm not an expert on ancient genres of literature, but it seems to me that Job and Jonah portray themselves as non-fiction just as much as any other novel does today. I don't think there are many works of historical fiction that explicitly say that they aren't non-fiction, for instance, a person just knows. Similarly, I think a person in the ancient world might be aware that Jonah was fiction, if it was, without it having to be either implicitly or explicitly stated within the work.

As you mention, genre is being taken into account more, and that is where my stance comes from. I think it's incorrect to project a modern way of writing history, for instance, on ancient writings, where their intent was not as much about relating the facts entirely accurately as it was interpreting the events.

I could drone on and on about why I think as I do, but this isn't the "convince all the non-Catholics to adopt my beliefs" thread. :)

RicOlie_2 said:

Well, in the Catholic interpretation of things, priests are called by God. If God doesn't call any women to be priests, we can't very well ordain any. That's obviously a very simplistic explanation, but if there is really a God, I think he's got that kind of authority.

 So how does the Catholic Church determine if somone is called by God to be a Priest?