You are right th message was in the movie. It just wasn't the focus of the movie as much as the crucifixion was. I didn't object to that being in there, or much of anything else that was in there. I just didn't understand why that part was the focus of it.
jewish rabbis used to describe God and the scriptures as being like a gem with 70 faces...turn it just a little and you may see a refraction of light you didn't see before. the suffering and the horror of the cross is one of those refractions for me. it's not the whole story...but it's certainly part of the whole. there are times in reading and praying over the gospels where it stands out to me...and there are times where it goes almost entirely unnoticed. that's why i didn't have a problem with it in this movie. it's one of the refractions of the bigger story...not the only one...but it is one. and twhy -- i didn't mean to offend you. if you find God there...if those elements of worship are real and true to you, then please engage them! i'm just saying that Christians dividing over issues like that is a sincere waste of time to me.
In Catholic Understanding, it is really a nexus for understanding Christ, both his humanity and his divinity and highlights his incarnation as well as our ability to be saved through the very substance of his flesh.
And I agree. However, without dogma or interpretation of the Bible by someone I think there is more room for discord among Christians. Dogma is supposed to be a unifying idea.
but instead it's abused. we all have different interpretations. people within the same church have different interpretations. there are certain things that i'd say are required to call a person a Christian. in the same way, i can't call an animal without a certain DNA structure a zebra. but those are very basic things to me. not to be rude, but i'm always offended when I attend a Catholic mass and i'm not invited to participate in the Lord's Supper. i don't think God's table is nearly as exclusionary as that. in like turn, i'm offended by Baptists who freak out because i was baptized as an infant. these rituals are for us. they're part of worship. people have literally gone to war over stuff like this. and Christians have divided, casting doubts in the minds of non-believers as to their sincerity. enough of that crap. that's an inflexible faith that creates a very small god.
I don't think it's your sincerity that's cast in doubt by these countless divisions.. but rather the accuracy, and hence credibility, of what you believe in. It's more than a little difficult to subscribe to a universal truth if there are numerous versions of it floating around out there.. This divisiveness is the one thing I never did get about Christianity. You have to ask yourself why things are this way, and from an objective point of view you could probably attribute it to the vague nature of the message (more precisely, its medium). I do understand if Christians prefer to mark it down to the failings of man, though
i'll grant you the bible is extremely difficult to understand. it's complex and i struggle with it all the time. i find it to be highly credible. i find the teachings of Christ to be nothing short of true. i look around the world and i find the sermon on the mount, for instance, resonates in everything. i find it's tons better and healthier to forgive than to seek revenge. i find it's healthy to not be consumed by consumption. just a couple of examples. there's truth there to me. i believe that whatever is true is from God...no matter where you find it. the problem with christian culture is it only sees something as true if it has a christian label on it. that's dangerous because it limits God and it causes you to just accept something as good and true because it has that label on it (see Christian Conservative Family Coalition blah blah blah) without probing it. the core message...similar to the early creeds of the church...is universal in the what some would call the pale of orthodoxy. i've been in the episcopal church, the lutheran church, the methodist church, the catholic church, presbyterian church, and countless non-denominational churches...i attended a baptist university and visited many baptist churches...at they're core, the central message is the same. who christ is...what he taught...it's the same. it's the stuff on the periphery that many have decided to amplify and divide over. the text is difficult...it lends itself to different interpretations. i'd argue that in some cases the interpretations can BOTH be true.
Theater of the absurd.....I'm sure they know a couple of shrinks who can help him out... Getting back on topic, YES the Cops did cover up his tirade, on the pretextual grounds that it would "inflame middle east peace", lololololol, and on the real grounds that he was a celebrity who deserves special treatment. Lame.
They say they want to trluy teach people what they are truly doing before they do it. Otherwise it just becomes lunch. It's not like Gibson's version where they kick you out of the church itself.
i hear you. my closest friends growing up were catholic so i went to mass with them all the time. i just don't think Christ puts those kinds of requirements on people. it isn't about how smart you are or what you're capable of understanding or how many cartwheels you can turn. god's love just is. and i don't believe the invitation to that metaphorical table is conditioned on anything other than wanting to know God more. not sure there's a right or wrong way to approach if that's what you're seeking. that's just my view of it.
Well see it's not metaphorical to them. It is very real. That's what they want people to understand. Jesus said to do this as a way to keep him alive. It's a protective measure of "keeping it real" and not letting it become merely metaphorical / lunch. If you don't understand what you are doing, then you really are not doing it. It becomes superficial. (And that's probably what most people do.) But I think you can do this with any bread and wine anytime and anywhere if you have the right understanding. So I'm not totally pro-catholic on this stuff but I get where they are coming from on it.
i get where they're coming from, too. i realize the meal isn't metaphorical for them...that they truly believe that the bread and wine mystically become, in a very literal sense, the body and blood. i get that. i think that's beautiful. but the reason behind communion is explained in every service. the liturgy about what Christ said at the last supper is repeated. i've never been told i didn't understand communion by a catholic. i've been told i'm simply not catholic, thus i can't take communion. you might understand my feelings on that given that. i went with some friends to galveston when i was in junior high. they were catholic. it was easter weekend. one of my friends had a priest for an uncle who was staying with us. on sunday morning we got up and did a little "church" service on the beach. he retold the easter story in a very dramatic sense. it was beautiful. i was so moved by it. my friends were like, "eh." they took communion. i was excluded. this isn't a "poor me" story. i don't mean it to be that way. just trying to use the story to illustrate my point. my closeness to God and my limited understanding of who he is has nothing to do with my denominational tie, protestant or otherwise. when Christ tells the story of the "good" neighbor, he uses the lowest rung of society, a samaritan to illustrate it...people the jews of his day would have excluded.
yes and no. I don't know if you can get communion immediately after you become a Catholic. I was Catholic for years before I had Communion because I was born Catholic. That's why First Communion is such a big deal. You have to be prepared for all sacraments. But I guess I understood I wasn't ready when I was a small child and I knew my time would come. It wasn't a big deal to me. These days the kids can go up and get a blessing from the Priest so they don't feel left out. And some Catholic Priests will give communion to non-catholics. Daniel Berrigan did. I think his views on it would be more like mine and the Buddhist monk he gave it to. But I'm guessing he thought the monk's mind was already pretty prepared.
And you don't have to do cartwheels or be smart to participate in Catholic Communion. You do have to believe in the true prescence and be in a state of moral readiness, i.e. no mortal sins. The Church asks non-Catholics to take part in spiritual communion with Catholics, but its like a bunch of kids are eating chocolate, another kid comes by, says "that's not chocolate, that's green beans," and then gets mad because the other kids won't give him any of their chocolate. That's probably the worst example in recorded history, but you get the idea. It's not a metaphorical table for Catholics, as was said before, it is the same table of the last supper. The Eucharist is not a metaphor for Catholics, it is something real. I like to think of it from an viewpoint of hospitality. You are supposed to make your body hospitable for Christ, to show reverence for the true prescence (i.e. fasting an hour before mass, making sure you have confessed your mortal sins, being there for the consecration). All of these things are meant to mentally and physically prepare your soul and body for an encounter with the divine. When you invite people over to your house and the place is a mess, in some ways this means you don't care enough about them to clean up. You don't invite someone over to dinner with a dirty house and then expect them to eat air because its all supposed to be a metaphor?
i just think that's a lot more complicated than the story scripture tells us. i don't like when people put conditions on coming to Christ. that's all. i hope that doesn't insult you...because that's not at all what i'm trying to do. i think you're awesome and your faith is intensely real.
As a born-again believer, my first wife (Catholic) and I (non-Catholic) were pulled aside after taking communion one Saturday night at a Catholic church (we used to go to her church on Saturday and my church on Sunday). We were asked if we were married and our answer was yes. Then the priest asked if we were married by a Catholic priest and our answer was no - we were married by someone who I don't even think was saved, but that's another story - he had a license. We were told that neither of us could partake in future communions because we were "living in sin". I wanted to point back on the crowd and say, "Do you know your congregation?"
Fair enough. If the moral message is the most important thing to you, as it should be, I totally respect that. But seeing truth in most of His teachings often seems to entail taking the little, not-so-credible bits as truth too.. that, to me, is a big problem along with what you mentioned about the Christian label. Moral credibility does not equate to divine credibility - I'll go so far as to say it doesn't even contribute to it You have no reason to doubt that Jesus was the son of God; I have every reason to doubt it. Truth is a highly personal thing, and it's coloured by our own perceptions far more than we'd like to admit..
And maybe its just semantics, but I'm not getting what you mean by conditions. Vatican II outlines that there are different modes of coming to Christ. Coming to Christ through the sacraments of the church, as understood by the Catholic church, has always been a matter of preparation (outside of baptism, i.e. the different teachings on the various modes of Baptism that we see at the end of "Lumen Gentium"). If you don't believe you are taking the body and blood of Christ in the Eucharist, how are you less coming to Christ if you believe that not to be true? No offense taken at all! I enjoy these ecumenical discussions.
