Opinion and Religion

[big daddy]

Since you are responding to my post, I wish you'd be more elaborate. It feels like you're saying we shouldn't talk about tolerance, about what other people in the world believe, and that you think our school does that so much that the students don't know enough about our Catholic faith. YTou couldn't be further from the truth.

The school I work at is in the heart of the ghetto. USC is across the street. Over half the students are on scholarship, countless from broken homes. Yet our school is lauded as the top one in our entire district, And it's because of our principal, who I believe is a living saint. Yes, we do a unit on other religions. But our school is devoted to the Catholic faith. I've learned a ton about Catholicism just by working at this school and teaching the kids (and learning from them as well).

Just today we had a prayer service in which we 'buried the Alleluiahs', which comes from Catholics not saying the word Alleluiah during Lent. Every student in the school decorates a cut-out of the word alleluiah, and we put them in a locked room in the church. We do this every year, and after Easter we have a prayer service in which we resurrect the 'A's". All the kids in the school, from Kinder to 8th, all know that you don't say the "A" word and more importantly, WHY you don't say it. Sounds cheesy I'm sure, but damn if those kids don't learn about our faith. And this goes on with different activities throughout the year.

My long-winded point is, you can teach about tolerance and other religions and still teach about your own...

I'm sorry if I have offended you.I was just making a general statement. I have met many people that have gone through Catholic school who do not know anything about the faith or have lost it. God bless you for your work.

 

[NDinL.A.]

I'm sorry if I have offended you.I was just making a general statement. I have met many people that have gone through Catholic school who do not know anything about the faith or have lost it. God bless you for your work.

Not offended at all. It's all good...

 

[big daddy]

Keep up the good fight.

 

[Corry]

Pope Francis: Evolution and Big Bang Theory Are Real - NBC News

Big Bang theory and evolution in nature "do not contradict" the idea of creation, Pope Francis has told an audience at the Vatican, saying God was not “a magician with a magic wand.” The Pope’s remarks on Monday to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences appeared to be a theological break from his predecessor Benedict XVI, a strong exponent of creationism.

“When we read in Genesis the account of creation [we are] in danger of imagining that God was a magician, complete with a magic wand that can do all things. But he is not.”

 

[Whiskeyjack]

First:

Second, Catholics have never been creationists, at least not in the way that the term is usually deployed nowadays. And I'm certain Benedict was not a "strong exponent" of it.

 

[Veritate Duce Progredi]

Pope Francis: Evolution and Big Bang Theory Are Real - NBC News

Good for Pope Francis but this isn't a break from what Pope Bendedict promulgated. He was a proponent of understanding the world within the framework that theology and science elucidated.

 

[tussin]

People often fail to realize that much of the modern scientific process was founded by noted members of the Catholic Church.

 

[Emcee77]

First:

Second, Catholics have never been creationists, at least not in the way that the term is usually deployed nowadays. And I'm certain Benedict was not a "strong exponent" of it.

Dying laughing. How would that look, in terms of notation?

_ Benedict
Creationism = ?

or
Benedict
? = Creationism

None of this is working at all, on any level.

 

[Old Man Mike]

The Catholic Church ever since the late 19th century has openly stated support for the scientific aspects of The Theory of Natural Selection {there are many non-scientific tack-ons to that.} This naturally has expanded to include, first, Geological Uniformitarianism [and things like Continental Drift and its tight linkages to changes in life on Earth] and Cosmic Evolution [with its theories of Galaxy, Star, and planetary system formation.] The Big Bang Theory is an integral element of this, and has been consistently supported by elements of the Church like the Vatican Observatory.

This acceptance of the Big Bang hypothesis and the consequential Cosmic Evolution overview has had two consequences:

1). The Church has gotten WAY ahead of the curve in acceptance of real scientific discoveries, when most Christian conservatives have fallen so far behind that they have become veritable laughingstocks of ignorance [see most publicly, Kansas and denial of teaching Natural Selection in science classrooms, to the hooting derision of anyone with a good education.]

2). By accepting the actual science without accepting the pseudoscience of the atheist-reductionists, the Church Theologians can construct defensible and persuasive creationist theologies wherein it is GOD who organizes the Original Creative Event [The Big Bang] and in towering genius embeds in that Event His WORDS [i.e. The Laws of Nature] which then allow the development of Marvelous Diversity to occur via the mechanisms of "Evolution" Writ Large.

All of Science then becomes, as Isaac Newton intuitively knew centuries ago, the Quest to discover The Words of GOD.

Rather satisfying, methinks.

 

[Veritate Duce Progredi]

As further proof, here's an article from one of my favorite science/tech news sites. They are notably anti-religion but somewhat fair. Can't say the same for the comments sections but anyway: Ars Technica link

 

[connor_in]

Didn't really think this fit into the theology thread...almost put into politics but wasn't sure about that either, so I found the most recently used thread with religion in the title

Another statue of St. Junipero Serra vandalized in California

Critics, however, associate Serra with human rights violations and the destruction of native cultures, among other things charging that natives at his missions who refused to embrace Christianity were often mistreated, including imprisoning them to prevent them from leaving.

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Junipero Serra Statue Beheaded at Old Mission <a href="https://t.co/puQgifHlDi">https://t.co/puQgifHlDi</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/edhat?src=hash">#edhat</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/SBnews?src=hash">#SBnews</a> <a href="https://t.co/nPgiD7rsPF">pic.twitter.com/nPgiD7rsPF</a></p>— Edhat (@Edhat) <a href="https://twitter.com/Edhat/status/907444296365649920">September 12, 2017</a></blockquote>
<script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

 

[Old Man Mike]

Yes, seems a bit sick ... but that probably reflects the individual who did it rather than some "movement." Though the current "attitude" aided in its overt expression by the incendiary obtuseness of Trump surely encourages crazies of all sorts to act out.

My view: it didn't cause pain to the statue. If law enforcement can put some pressure out there to worry the perpetrator, it shouldn't be a sign of future harm to actual people. Those of us who fret about this probably shouldn't and get on with our lives doing worthy things.