I am disgusted with the comments in the last two posts which misconstrued what I wrote and which engaged to an attack on each other.
Does this need to go the way of Rorate? Or AKA, Verrecchio's blog? Do I have time for this?
And Catholic Mission, you are banned from here for ever. Call me a heretic? Never again!
A corporal work of mercy.
Click on photo for this corporal work of mercy!
31 comments:
Vox--Please keep the combox open. It us helpful and permits folks to ask questions and share opinions.
So sad that people are so quick to jump to nasty conclusions. I've been called plenty of names too. Ad hominem attacks are the only "argument" some people have.
They ruin everything they touch.
This is why all discussions on religion should remian objective. Man has no business judging a soul damned nor does he have any business judging a soul saved. Stick with the Faith as handed down from Christ to the Apostles.
Keep it open. Close it up. Whatever works best for you. I tend to favor free and open communication and let people express themselves and deal with the consequences.
I actually learn plenty from those negative comments you refer to. And I’ve learned about myself by making comments like that in the past. I think most people get it and have decent perspective.
You get called a heretic, says more about them than you. Really. Skojec has said the same about me and I am completely unpersuaded. Because *he banned me*. Won’t engage the issue. He runs. He appears emotional and afraid. That reduces his credibility significantly.
Anyway, this topic was excellent and changed my views. I understood your nuance. Without the combox ..... I would not have understood your essential point - which was excellent. With the combox, you were able to address the confusion I had. How is that bad? Your blog will be less without it. Engage the commenters like St. Paul on Mars Hill. It’s helpful to us and perhaps, in another way, to you.
Stay on point.
No EENS will be published.
We are not going down that rabbit hole.
It is an unfortunate fact that blogs addressing serious religious and political issues act as a magnet for certain types of unstable people.
I would say to these people they should realize they are guests and act accordingly. Would they consider it civilized behavior to enter a private residence and start ranting and raving, as they do in the comments section.
No great loss will be incurred in banning these troublemakers.
How is Extra Ecclesium Nulla Salus a rabbit hole?
People have questions. People believe wrongly. Others are learned. Isn’t instruction of the ignorant what we are meant to do? This is Dogma. People who ask wrongly or in a bad spirit should not close off discussion for everyone else on crucial matters of the Faith. Or turn this topic into a subject of controversy. I am a convert. I would very much like to know more about this in practical terms.
Dogma is good. Dogma is safe. Dogma is the Word Of God.
Aqua, people were losing perspective and did not read. The tone became unacceptable. I may open it again. May!
I understood that the Commbox was moderated, by you Vox.
How is someone sneaking comments in that you would not allow (not to say that you would agree with)?
I think eliminating or inordinately restricting lively discussion by people of good faith diminishes the value and the audience for the blog.
I've seen it happen at the Remnant and elsewhere.
Always a tough call.. Easy for us out here since you're the one who has to babysit or designate a mod(s).
Aqua, the dogma of EENS is objective and has been settled by the Church. Its application, however, is entirely subjective and rests only in God's hands. The subject becomes too heated and emotional when we start applying it subjectively.
Stick with what you are David do not weaken. I have been called to my face satan. Their name calling is not yours or my problem. I find Psalm 108 Douai Rheims most helpful saying it almost daily. I do not seek signs but the results are too obvious.
I will leave, but after I say the following:
Multiculturalism is evil. It causes, among other things, cognitive dissonance.
Does the Church really teach that a person who has not read the entire Gospel, and without reading or asking a Christian for an explanation, rejected Jesus Christ as one who is liar - because allegedly God desn't have a son - can still be considered invincibly ignorant?
In my almost 55 years I have never wished for anyone to find himself in hell. Thinking of seemingly good people (perhaps me included) ending up there, has always caused me extreme disbelief and sadness. I even left the Church for along while.
Compassion and our human sense of justice is, I am sure, why Bergoglio told Scalfari that hell is empty due to dissolution to evil souls. This explains why he preaches against taking on the Great Commission.
I do not accept that Muslims (even very virtuous ones) can reasonably use my sinfulness as the reason to deny Jesus Christ. Muslims know who Jesus said He is. Claiming invincible ignorance in such a case is irrational.
I am either with the Church or outside of it. I can't be both at the same time. Perhaps the teaching has always been wrong. But if we decide to believe so, we should have clarity in our mind about what we believe.
I asked nobody to leave, Dorota. In fact it was comments directed toward you but finally prompted me to shut it down. If you choose to leave that is your choice you did before you came back. Now everyone take a deep breath and step back and think about how you comment here and even though yes I moderate them I have to read the stuff. I’m happy to leave the boxes I think it’s important to have this discussion good heavens folks stop beating a dead horse and when I say read my post and understand the nuances and do it .
I can now see why others made the choice to shut down the boxes I don’t want to have to make that choice but if I have to I will be judicious from here on in about what gets through.
Thank You Vox for your response and your work.
I suggest keeping it open, but edit out the unstable.
@ Tom A:
It rests in God’s hands in the way all things do. But practically speaking it rests in our hands since we are called to evangelize the world and EENS is a major element of Catholic evangelization. We are God’s living, active members “on the stage”.
I don’t mind “heated” in the slightest. I only mind arguments where others don’t listen, respect or respond directly to others. The objective Truth is easy. The subjective application of that Truth can be harder. Working that out was never meant to be clean or easy. Not in this life.
That is why “instruct the ignorant” is an essential work of mercy. Telling the ignorant a fact is not the “work of mercy”. Relating that fact to the ignorant’s specific situation, tirelessly and persistently, in accord with Constant Church Teaching and Tradition is.
Blogs and commentary are important to me because that is where I work out my Catholic understanding. Free flow information from sources you can trust are crucial when heterodoxy is so rampant at the Parish level, or, as at my Parish, an orthodox Priest is overworking himself to exhaustion and has little free time to spare for detailed discussion .. (he is so good, God bless him and all like him).
So, Vox’s blog Is one of the few I still read. Because it contains substance and I can trust his orthodoxy. I love disagreements. That’s where knowledge is gained. I learned something from this one. I hate self-centered, closed-in fights, which are an ego festival. The comments here, are almost always excellent like the blog itself.
It seems the days of fair and balance has been thrown out the window. I understood your post perfectly and you were 100% correct Vox. Do not be discouraged by vicious comments.Soldier on!
I see that your comment moderation is on. That is excellent; mine too are moderated. I also took the extra step of disallowing "anonymous" commenters to post - this after I started receiving vitriol bordering on threats to my safety. I too had to make it clear to some that their dribble would no longer see the light of day on my blog. Just some suggestions to consider.
Dear Dorota, If you go I will haunt you! :)
Well I'm a little late to the discussion but honestly, having read the two posts that apparently caused the ruckus, I can't really see what the problem is.
That is, there is nothing heretical, objectionable, or offensive in the content authored by Vox. In fact, I pretty much agree with all of it.
I'll go even further: In terms of fundamental values, I feel more commonality with conservative, evangelical Protestants or orthodox Muslims or orthodox Jews than I do with much of the current hierarchy of the Catholic Church. And I say this as an observant Catholic who raised six children (one of them now a cloistered Poor Clare) in the faith.
In any war, you have to know who your allies are and who they are not. The basic division in our culture and world now is between those who worship God and those who worship Man...between those who understand Truth to be authored by God and those who think we get to make up our own Truth.
Conservative Protestants, orthodox Muslims, orthodox Jews...and, yes, faithful Catholics are on the same side of that line. And anyone who believes that nobody from the first three groups can be saved is at the very least misguided -- to use a charitable term -- and in rejection of the actual teaching of the Church. Look it up sometime.
@Peter Lamb
But I must. (I do not wish to be a drama queen, and would be very embarrassed to appear like one.) Likely, I deal with the evils of humanism more than an average person here.
Regardless, those who deny Christ will never be my allies and I will not be friends to those who support such alliances.
It is not goodness or some kind of worship of some kind of deity, but Christ that must be the focus of every Catholic's life. It is the focus on Christ that the one world religion will not allow.
Peter Lamb, You have always been very kind to me. I wish I had a friend like you not so far away. Will remember You, always well.
God help us all.
Islam never was, is not, and cannot be our friend or ally. Islam's goal is to establish a caliphate, worldwide domination. It is allowed to pretend to befriend "infidels" and lie to them, pretend to be one thing but be another. The Koran tells Muslims to kill infidels if they can.
Last week the group Open Door reported at least 140 Christians killed by Muslims in Nigeria alone. They report 4,305 Christians killed for their faith in 2018 by Muslims. We see the constant attacks and rapes in Europe.
I maintain too many of us are as wise as doves, and we had better wise up.
Dorota,
Please do not cease posting here.
Karl
Restore-DC-Catholicism,
As an anonymous poster, I am painfully insulted by those who refuse to publish anonymous comments.
However, malevolence does need to be addressed.
Karl
I am well aware of the evils of Islamism. I know what it is that is not what this was about.
This was about the slaughter of innocent people at prayer in the only way they know how in the failure of the Catholic Church to convert them and my hope that in spite of all of that they might have received some kind of salvation from God above.
The horse has been beaten to death can we let it lay?
An example in my own life, which contributes to why I am, who I am.
I once had an interaction with a Hijab wearing wife, who was Indian by birth. She was a nurse. Her husband was a doctor. She was not typical of a Hijab wearing lady, but neither was she noticeably different than numerous others that I have interacted with. She worked at his practice, part time. She knows and has been exposed to many different beliefs and practices.
I tend to be a nice guy. I schmooze, sometimes. Anyway, in the course of our friendly, fairly diverse, topically, conversation, I learned that both she and her husband attended Catholic schools growing up in India and, if my memory is correct, since this was awhile ago, their children attend Catholic School presently.
In the course of our conversation, she asked me if I would answer a question for her, which she, hesitatingly, described as, possibly inappropriate, but nevertheless, something, that she hoped to have the answer to, from me.
In typical fashion I told her that as a conservative I believe in freedom of speech that is, generally, widely tolerant so, I told her that I seriously doubted that I would take offense at her question.
She then felt comfortable enough to ask.
Her question was:
Are you Catholic?
I was completely taken by surprise by THAT question from HER and my reaction showed it.
She asked if her question was upsetting to me and I quickly told her, NO, NOT IN THE SLIGHTEST! I just admitted to her that in this context, and I asked her to step outside of our personal distance and our exchange and to try to look at it as if she was a third person in the room who was unknown to either of us, but who had observed everything that transpired, objectively, I had NEVER, EVER been asked that question under similar circumstances. She thought, quietly for a few moments, then smiling she said, I was so comfortable with you that I just asked that question, due to that comfort.
Then she explained to me that the nuns and priests who had educated her, as she grew up, treated her better than many, even most of the people, in her family and that had made a strong impression upon her, as she grew. She continued to say that she had been in America for numerous years, in contact with many diverse people and I WAS THE FIRST PERSON, THAT STRUCK HER AS HAVING TO BE CATHOLIC!!!!
She NEEDED to know if her impression was accurate!
I told her, yes, I am Catholic.
I told her that I was honored by her question but that, at the same time, it made me sad that no one before me had made such an impression upon her. She agreed, because she said that those nuns and priests shaped, strongly, who she had become.
She asked me more about myself and I told her most of "my story", which, to her, was exactly what she was taught how Catholics should behave, in similar circumstances, but that I was the first person she had seen, on this side of the pond, who reflected what she was taught of Catholicism, as she grew up, enough to bring her to ask the question that she asked me.
Ultimately, she hugged me, when our conversation concluded, and told me that I MUST MAKE GOD HAPPY, BECAUSE I FOLLOW WHAT I UNDERSTAND OF GOD'S TEACHINGS, as she had been taught of Catholicism.
Yes, finishing this comment up, there are real tears in my eyes, because of having had to remember/recall that interaction to write about it here, I believe that God wants me to pray for this family, whose mother crossed my path, and that God will intervene as HE SEES FIT, in their lives. Which I must trust that He will do.
God bless you all.
Karl
No Christian supports the killing or harming of innocent people, harming them in any way. I completely agree with your point that the church failed and fails to offer Catholicism or Christianity to Muslims or other nonbelievers.
I don't know what people wrote to you, but the free exchange of ideas, even unpopular ones, is a critical part of maintaining a free society. If individuals abuse that and become threatening or really insulting on your blog, the one you take your time to manage and on which you provide so much great content, you have every right to take action which limits them, or close down comments or even the blog if you so wish. This is your site.
What a great comment Karl. :)
Peter,
A sincere, THANK YOU.
I wish that I was a much better Catholic, but I keep trying.
Karl
The moderator of this blog is very snowflock,if you denies a dogma of holy catholic church, you are in good company with Marcion, Arius, Nestorius and Luther, because birds of the same feather flock together
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