Merry Christmas!

I'm just glad it's over. It's bad enough that we were short staffed to begin with. Sales were way higher than projected and some workers decided not to show up. They didnt even fake being sick. I got to say "yes, we are open 24 hours" about 15 times to the never ending phone calls.
Thanks for letting me vent. New Years Eve better be better or else.......

Oh ya, Merry Christmas and a happy New Year everyone.

One thought I had a year or two as a kid is Jesus dies really quick after being born. The concept of Easter being months later caught me off guard the first time.

Also, you watched TV shows in reruns in a compressed time frame where kids get older at accelerated rates much faster than you do, so it's not completely unusual that whole lives can be lived in a short time.

Another note -- if you die on a date where a really famous person dies you get a short shift. Farah Fawcett and Michael Jackson died on the same day. Guess who stole 90% of all the air time that week?

But we do note the two guys who got crucified with Jesus. Because of that they are remembered for thousands of years now. Yeah, whatshisname, and whatshisname are not forgotten.

Quote: rxwine

The concept of Easter being months later caught me off guard the first time.
.

No matter what propaganda the padre is
truing to spread about dates, most if
no all scholars agree the early Church
co-opted the Pagan holidays at the
Winter Solstice and the Spring Equinox.

We cannot know what a hard time the
fledgling Church was having overcoming
thousands of years of idol and Goddess
worship. So they they very cleverly included
them in the new religion. Mary was the
Goddess, they had their major holidays at
exactly the same time as the Pagans, and
there were idols enough for everyone.

They did what they had to do, and slowly
but surely it worked. If the Protestants
had been around in the early days and
not the Church, the religion would have
surely not survived.

Quote: Evenbob

No matter what propaganda the padre is
truing to spread about dates, most if
no all scholars agree the early Church
co-opted the Pagan holidays at the
Winter Solstice and the Spring Equinox.

We cannot know what a hard time the
fledgling Church was having overcoming
thousands of years of idol and Goddess
worship. So they they very cleverly included
them in the new religion. Mary was the
Goddess, they had their major holidays at
exactly the same time as the Pagans, and
there were idols enough for everyone.

They did what they had to do, and slowly
but surely it worked. If the Protestants
had been around in the early days and
not the Church, the religion would have
surely not survived.

I'm really surprised there was no comment
from the Vatican rep about this post.

I've said very clearly that there are no idols in the Catholic Church. You made no response to my arguments and then drop this horsecrap on Christmas, I didn't feel like it deserved a response then, nor do I really feel it deserves one now.

Quote: FrGamble

I've said very clearly that there are no idols in the Catholic Church. .

It's funny that the one thing that's obvious
to us on the outside, that Catholics are very
heavily into using 'objects' in the practice of
their religion, that looks very much like idol
worship, is the one thing you don't want to
go near. You must hear about this a lot. I
mean, it's all the same to me, non Catholics
all have that big ol cross hanging in their
church, and many of them wear crosses
on their neck, my wife has many of them.
To us atheists, it's idol worship. But
we don't care because we don't believe
in any of it, it's under the same blanket called
'organized religion'. It's y'all that care about
all the gory details.

Ha! We have talked about it recently on another thread and you dropped it like a hot potato once we more clearly defined what idols were and what idolatry is. Part of the reason for a forum with other people is maybe learning something about what they believe instead of being content to stay in ignorance and just watch from the outside.

On I side note I learned something from you today. I kind of like that image of using 'objects' in the practice of their religion. We would never criticize a carpenter for using a tool that helped him. You could think of some of these tangible images or objects like a rosary or holy water as tools to help people connect to God.

Quote: FrGamble

You could think of some of these tangible images or objects like a rosary or holy water as tools to help people connect to God.

Dude, you just described idol worship. What
is an idol but a direct connection to god.
The crucifix, to me, is the ultimate in idol
worship. Jews and Islam think it's an abomination.
I don't think that, but it does smack an awful
lot of paganism. Which isn't a bad thing. Pagans
are closer to who we are than any organized
religion will ever be.

Remember idols are either considered to be gods themselves or some type of direct access to God - they are not tools or helps to reach God. Like a picture is a help to remember your grandma, but is not your grandma or some type of magic portal to speak to her. Sacramentals as they are sometimes called in the Church are helps, they are not a direct connection to God. By the way you don't need any pictures of grandma or statues or crucifixes to be in communion with God, again they are simply 'objects' or tools that can help.

Quote: FrGamble

Remember idols are either considered to be gods themselves or some type of direct access to God

I know for a fact that those old ladies
out there holding their crucifix in a
death grip in their hand, think that
it's a direct hard line link to the Christ
Jesus. The Church does not a thing to
talk them out of this, why would they.
They've only been encouraging idol
worship for 1500 years.