Revival

[Eutychus]

[quote] esus must be very pleased at each and every child of His, who hears His call to come home to His Church. As the angels must surely rejoice, I rejoice for each brother and sister who is welcomed into the Church. Perhaps you can attend an Easter Vigil this coming year. It's very beautiful.[/quote]

Pray tell, why on earth would that appeal to me?

It may indeed be beautiful, but many of us have walked frome the sensous rituals and now rest comfortably in relationship, rather than rites.

[Mary-Kathryn]

[quote name='Eutychus' post='1097686' date='Oct 21 2006, 12:37 PM']
Pray tell, why on earth would that appeal to me?

It may indeed be beautiful, but many of us have walked frome the sensous rituals and now rest comfortably in relationship, rather than rites.
[/quote]


~sigh~

[Thy Geekdom Come]

[quote name='Eutychus' post='1097686' date='Oct 21 2006, 12:37 PM']
Pray tell, why on earth would that appeal to me?

It may indeed be beautiful, but many of us have walked frome the sensous rituals and now rest comfortably in relationship, rather than rites.
[/quote]
It wouldn't appeal to you. Fundamentalists have a long tendency of rejecting the goodness of God's material creation in a misguided effort to emphasize the spiritual. Catholicism uses the material in order to convey the spiritual, since we were made both matter and spirit and since Christ Himself came to us that way, in order the better to appeal to us, but had Christ come to fundamentalists, they would have outright rejected Him because He was incarnate, dwelling in a body, eating, drinking, sleeping, and suffering in a body, and they, again in their misguided way, would see that as a sign of weakness for His message and a sign that his message was irrelevant to their purely spiritual pursuit, rather than a sign of the great love He has for us that leads Him even to come to speak our "language" of bodily things in order to communicate His message for the redemption of man. It wouldn't appeal to you because you don't believe in sacramental concepts. It wouldn't appeal to you because when Christ came to give us the answer, He also came to give us the question, because we were seeking Him in the wrong way, and so He not only gave us the end toward which we sought, but also showed us how to seek: through the body and the spirit. It wouldn't appeal to you, essentially, because you are looking for something other than what Christ came to offer.

We seek relationship through the the bridge of a rite. Fundamentalist seek relationship by ignoring the bridge and leaping the chasm.

Sorry, but that's the way it is. Please use the bridge God gave us. Learn to accept that God wants to use spiritual and the corporeal to bring us to Him and it will start to appeal to you.

[Farsight one]

[quote name='Eutychus' post='1096751' date='Oct 20 2006, 11:29 AM']
The 50,000,000 Latin Americans that have left the syncratic/paganism behind for "mere Christianity" just might disagree with you there.
[/quote]
[quote name='Eutychus' post='1097630' date='Oct 21 2006, 05:30 AM']
Actual number of converts in last year USCCB was 160,000.

Actual number of parishes in the USA per the USCCB is 19,000

I assume that 1/3 convert in not for belief, but for marriage and family harmony, and I assumed that 2/3rds converted in because of a personal belief the Catholic Church was for them.

Do the math yourself.

Claimed number of adherants RC USA is 63 million, or 3300 average per parish.

For a 3.300 member parish to take in 6-8 new converts a year, well, let's just say if that were an Evangelical church, they would fire the pastor and start looking for another one.

To put this into context, one of my favorite churches { I do not attend there, but listen weekly on the internet to the sunday early service } is Calvary Chapel Fort Lauderdale. Every two months, they have open air baptisms in the ocean. They generally have over 300 per session or 1800 a year. Given where they are, I would assume that 75% of them were formerly Catholic Church, but that is only a guess. My mid sized church, has four welcoming new member sessions a year, they are averaging 30 per class, or 120 a year {adults} and I would guess that about 1/2 are former Roman Catholics.

I only put these numbers out, to show that REVIVAL within the Catholic Church is desperately needed. And getting all excited about a few new faces coming in { that were not born Catholic Church} is premature.

Revival comes like a wildfire, it is contageous, and for those that are hidebound, it is threatening too.
[/quote]Maybe that's part of the great falling away mentioned in the bible? Wrap your brain around that possibility.

[Eutychus]

[quote] Maybe that's part of the great falling away mentioned in the bible? Wrap your brain around that possibility.[/quote]

Only a myopic would say that.

Let's see here. We have poor believers, the Holy Spirit moves them, they are Born Again, they join a church that expects THREE sessions a week, they start tithing for real, they get baptised and join a bible study program....

And that, to the Catholic Church is "Falling Away" at the end times?

May I suggest that the CEO ROMAN CATHOLIC { Christmas and Easter } is the one that has fallen away, not the on fire, spirit filled, gung ho new bible believing Christians.

[MilesChristi]

[quote]I assume that 1/3 convert in not for belief, but for marriage and family harmony, and I assumed that 2/3rds converted in because of a personal belief the Catholic Church was for them.[/quote]

[quote]I would assume that 75% of them were formerly Catholic Church, but that is only a guess[/quote]

[quote] I would guess that about 1/2 are former Roman Catholics[/quote]


Well, thanks for sharing a bunch of baseless assumptions and guesswork.

[Eutychus]

And YOUR numbers would be?

[MilesChristi]

I accept your numbers from the USCCB, but I'd like to see some actual evidence for the guesses I quoted in my last post, if you have any.

[Guest T-Bone]

My guess would be that he has none.

[Eutychus]

Sorry, I didn't mean to CONFUSE you when I CLEARLY stated the following...which you actually QUOTED back to me...

[quote]QUOTE
[u][b]I assume that[/b][/u] 1/3 convert in not for belief, but for marriage and family harmony, and I assumed that 2/3rds converted in because of a personal belief the Catholic Church was for them.


QUOTE
[u][b]I would assume that[/b] [/u]75% of them were formerly Catholic Church, but that is only a guess


QUOTE
[b][u]I would guess[/u] [/b]that about 1/2 are former Roman Catholics[/quote]

There you go, EVERY STATEMENT of supposition, was CLEARLY labelled as such.

Sorry to get you all CONFUSED with that "tricky protestant stuff" ... next time, I would have USED [u]BIG RED LETTERS [/u]to help you understand, but everytime the FONT POLICE issue me a WARNING and add another 10% to my warning level.

Damned if you DO, and damned if you do not, that seems to be the way of Catholic discussion sites.

Edited October 22, 2006 by Eutychus

[cmotherofpirl]

[quote name='Eutychus' post='1097630' date='Oct 21 2006, 06:30 AM']

To put this into context, one of my favorite churches { I do not attend there, but listen weekly on the internet to the sunday early service } is Calvary Chapel Fort Lauderdale. Every two months, they have open air baptisms in the ocean. They generally have over 300 per session or 1800 a year. Given where they are, I would assume that 75% of them were formerly Catholic Church, but that is only a guess. My mid sized church, has four welcoming new member sessions a year, they are averaging 30 per class, or 120 a year {adults} and I would guess that about 1/2 are former Roman Catholics.

I only put these numbers out, to show that REVIVAL within the Catholic Church is desperately needed. And getting all excited about a few new faces coming in { that were not born Catholic Church} is premature.

Revival comes like a wildfire, it is contageous, and for those that are hidebound, it is threatening too.
[/quote]
If they are former catholics then the baptism is simply playing in the water, since there were baptised already. We do our RCIA converts in a group every year as a diocese, and we have so many converts we have to fill the cathedral on two separate Sundays, since it only seats 2000 at a time.

[Thy Geekdom Come]

[quote name='cmotherofpirl' post='1098185' date='Oct 22 2006, 01:56 AM']
If they are former catholics then the baptism is simply playing in the water, since there were baptised already. We do our RCIA converts in a group every year as a diocese, and we have so many converts we have to fill the cathedral on two separate Sundays, since it only seats 2000 at a time.
[/quote]
It's wonderful to see so many coming to the light of Christ!

Eutychus and everyone else, the number of converts to or from Catholicism really does not prove or disprove its accuracy. We know that people joined even in the Apostles' time for the wrong reasons without any faith; we know that people left even in the Apostles' time because they did not believe.

These statistics may show great holiness on the part of those joining the Church and personal, albeit misguided, conviction and integrity on the part of those leaving the Church, but they do not prove anything necessarily except that our human nature is weak and that God living in us accomplishes all our goodness.

[Farsight one]

[quote name='Eutychus' post='1097991' date='Oct 21 2006, 07:35 PM']
Only a myopic would say that.

Let's see here. We have poor believers, the Holy Spirit moves them, they are Born Again, they join a church that expects THREE sessions a week, they start tithing for real, they get baptised and join a bible study program....

And that, to the Catholic Church is "Falling Away" at the end times?

May I suggest that the CEO ROMAN CATHOLIC { Christmas and Easter } is the one that has fallen away, not the on fire, spirit filled, gung ho new bible believing Christians.
[/quote]At least my eyes are open enough to be able to look around. You've (or perhaps Budge. If so I apologize.) implied the coming of the end times by attempting to show that people were falling away from your faith, but according to you, they are leaving the Catholic faith at a much higher rate, thus a GREATER falling away than the one you claim is indicative of the end times.

Gotta admit, whether on purpose or accident, the "Myopic" making fun of my screen name thing was kind of funny. I'm not insulted, just impressed by the wit of it, intentional or otherwise.