The Papists

The Legend of Korra

I had a thought…it’s a bit of a stretch so bear with me. 

The other day I was watching “The Legend of Korra” with my little brother. For anyone who doesn’t know it’s the sequel series to “Avatar: The Last Airbender”. I don’t watch much TV so I’ve never really seen either show. 

After watching a few episodes I realized the plot line. The Equalists want to rid benders of their abilities. 

One character in particular stood out to me. That Soto guy who made the cars. He joined the Equalists because he didn’t like benders. He didn’t like benders because one firebender killed his wife. I sympathized with this guy a bit, it’s understandable that you’d be extremely upset after your wife dying. However I (and any other viewer of this show) thought “But you can’t blame all the benders for what one did!” Then I noticed in both Avatar and in The Legend of Korra, many firebenders had killed parents, and yet people watching this show understand “most benders are not like that”.

Which brings me to my point. I feel as though (despite it being fiction) this parallels  the scandal surrounding the Catholic Church. If you replace the groups as such, maybe you can see where I’m coming from: 

Benders= Priests

Soto (Equalists)= Media/Society

Fans of the show (people who know benders are good)= Catholic Laity

A small number of Priests did some terrible things and suddenly all Priests are bad. It’s the same mentality that Soto guy had, one bender did something bad and suddenly all benders are evil. 

But the reality is, that just like we know that most benders in the show are good, so too are most Catholic Priests.

-Javi

Because common knowledge of the day taught by psychologists was that these priests could be ‘trained’ or ‘reformed’ out of it.  The Church was trying to heal these priests.  Had the Church known what we know today, it would have never happened.  The Church was operating with the best psychiatric knowledge of time. 

However, school districts which have a child abuse cover-up going on right now, don’t have that problem.  Why aren’t they taking any heat?

Obviously, it’s not because of what the Church did that makes it take heat, but what the Church is.  The Church is a bastion of objective morality, and in a relativist world, that makes it an easy scapegoat. 

-Niko

A reading from the Holy Gospel according to Saint John

empty-and-beautiful:

John 17:11b-19

Lifting up his eyes to heaven, Jesus prayed saying:
“Holy Father, keep them in your name that you have given me,
so that they may be one just as we are one.
When I was with them I protected them in your name that you gave me,
and I guarded them, and none of them was lost
except the son of destruction,
in order that the Scripture might be fulfilled.
But now I am coming to you.
I speak this in the world
so that they may share my joy completely.
I gave them your word, and the world hated them,
because they do not belong to the world
any more than I belong to the world.
I do not ask that you take them out of the world
but that you keep them from the evil one.
They do not belong to the world
any more than I belong to the world.
Consecrate them in the truth. Your word is truth.
As you sent me into the world,
so I sent them into the world.
And I consecrate myself for them,
so that they also may be consecrated in truth.”

The Gospel today touched my heart. Jesus told us that if the world hated us, to remember it hated Him first. The world is fallen and is not what we are made for; we are made for the perfection of the kingdom of Heaven (“The world’s thy ship and not thy home.” - St. Therese of Liseux).

John writes in the second reading (1 John 4:11-16):

Beloved, if God so loved us,
we also must love one another.
No one has ever seen God.
Yet, if we love one another, God remains in us,
and his love is brought to perfection in us.

True love is not of the world, because true love is God. By loving, we remain in Him and are sanctified.

Also, I think a lot of the time we forget that while Jesus Christ is fully Divine, He is also fully human. Because of His Ascension into Heaven, as well as Mary’s Assumption, there are two fully human hearts beating in Heaven and interceding for us.

Yes, Jesus is God, and one completely with both the Father and the Holy Spirit. But, that doesn’t mean He can’t pray for us. 

Today, I feel that the Gospel truly expresses Jesus’ desire for our protection, well-being, and for us to belong completely to Him. That in and of itself is a powerful thought - that God does not need us, by any means. He’s perfect by Himself. The key is that He wants us; He sent His Son, in the person of Jesus Christ, because He couldn’t stand the thought of spending eternity without us.

Next time you feel abandoned, remember that you have a God who loves and wants you, and never stops praying for you.

In the entirety of the Bible, we find two sets of laws in the Old Testament and The New Testament. These laws are moral laws and cultural laws. The OT contains many cultural laws as well as moral laws. The NT does not contain cultural laws, but contains moral laws. 

The cultural laws of the OT are present to differentiate between the Jews and their pagan neighbors and to keep the Jews in line. As time when on, Mosaic Law resulted with around 612 laws for the Jews to uphold. Both cultural and moral. When Christ came, he did not abolish the law, but fulfilled it. From his coming, we are no longer bound to the cultural laws of the OT for “there is no Gentile nor Jew.” So, no. We do not follow every dictation in the entirety of the Bible, but we do follow every moral law for Jesus commanded that of us from both the OT and NT. 

-Justin

Do you have questions about the Catholic faith or teachings? Ask us :D

RE: Civil “Gay Marriage”

Something else to remember is that just laws can only be based in the truth.  If we love our country, (and we should,) we should desire that its laws be based on what is true.  So we should not advocate for laws that create a false equivalency between ‘gay marriage’ and marriage for the reason that it is false.  Now, we walk a fine line here.  On the one hand, we do not want to become a theocratic state, because the faith suffers.  Thus, we should not legislate our religion.  However, if we truly believe our religion is true, and its morality is true, then we should desire that the laws of the nation are based on our religion’s morality because we desire the laws of the nation to be based in truth.

-Niko

RE: “I think I have a vocation to become a sister…”

(I already wrote this and didn’t want it to go to waste!)

Hey anon! This is Caroline (heartallonfire). I’m actually discerning (the process of coming to know) religious life too! First off, in the words of Pope John Paul II, “Be not afraid!”

Here are some steps you can take to discern this vocation a little better:
      1) Stay in the state of grace. This means head over to confession if you are in mortal (grave) sin. You and I will not be able to hear His voice to discern our vocations if we are not in the state of grace! Pray, pray, and pray some more. Make sure you make time for quiet time, because God is already inside of you because of your baptism. He is gentle, He does not shout. He will whisper to you what He wants for your life.
        One of my favorite passages of the Bible is found in 1 Kings 19:11-13: The Lord said, “Go out and stand on the mountain in the presence of the Lord, for the Lord is about to pass by.” Then a great and powerful wind tore the mountains apart and shattered the rocks before theLord, but the Lord was not in the wind. After the wind there was an earthquake, but theLord was not in the earthquake. After the earthquake came a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire. And after the fire came a gentle whisper. When Elijah heard it, he pulled his cloak over his face and went out and stood at the mouth of the cave.

Then a voice said to him, “What are you doing here, Elijah?”
        We often are looking for God’s voice in the huge, spectacular events in life, when really, He’s been talking to us all along but we haven’t been listening to the quiet.

         One of the best ways to pray for your vocation is the Rosary. Our Mother, Mary, wants to help you in this and she will only lead you straight to Christ. She has helped me SO much in this process, and she will comfort and guide you as well.The other great way to pray is through going to daily mass. You don’t have to go every day, but try to go a few times during the week. Get to know Jesus in the Eucharist. Read books written by the saints, especially Introduction to Devout Life by St. Francis de Sales.  I highly recommend it, since it is basically a compilation of letters written to a young woman discerning religious life just like you and me!

 2) Seek spiritual guidance. You could ask for advice from a priest, a religion teacher, a nun, your youth minister…anyone who you know is mature in their faith. Priests and nuns obviously have experienced many of the trials or feelings you might be in discerning your vocation, and they’re great helpers! Often, God speaks to us through other people, and spiritual direction can help us to figure our way through. Try talking to your parents, as well. Although they may not take it well, they can be great advocates in this journey.
3)  Make sure you are following God in the little things. Are you helping out around the house? Are you doing all your work and schoolwork or do you procrastinate? Are you making time for prayer? If we can’t be obedient to our small duties now, how will we be able to follow God when He asks big things of us later? 
4)  Check out vocational websites such as this one:  http://www.vocation.com/QandAItem.aspx?id=1832. There are youtube videos, etc. as well. There is so many resources for people like you and I on the Internet alone so be sure to check it all out!

          These are only a few tips I have for you. There is so much I could say, so please feel free to message me at www.heartallonfire.tumblr.com/ask .  I will definitely be praying for you! Be blessed, sister.
                                                                       In Christ, 
                                                                        Caroline 

Well, the following scripture passages tell us that Christ died for all people.

2 Corinthians 5:15 

Galatians 3:28

Colossians 3:11

Joel 2:29

Romans 3:29

1 Corinthians 12:13

Christ sacrificed himself for all people.  You only sacrifice yourself for something valuable.  Therefore, people must be valuable in God’s eyes. 

Furthermore, we are in the image of God, so being of His image, we must bear some value.

-Niko

From the YouCat:

The Church believes that “the most Blessed Virgin Mary was, from the first moment of her conception, by a singular grace and privilege of almighty God and by virtue of the merits of Jesus Christ, Savior of the human race, preserved immune from all stain of original sin.”

Belief in the Immaculate Conception has existed since the beginning of the Church. … It is saying that God preserved Mary from original sin from the very beginning. 

So, from the very beginning, Mary had no original sin. This is not to say that Mary is divine - she is not. She is fully human, simply “preserved from original sin” at her conception. This was necessary for Mary to be the mother of God because Christ, who is fully human yet fully divine, could not dwell in a place where sin exists, since He Himself is perfect and without sin.

I hope this helps. Feel free to contact us with any further questions.

Grace be with you!

+Jordan

True, there are shades of grey.  But where did these shades of grey come from?  From man, a fundamentally good/white creation, who shattered his nature by sin/blackness.  So in the Heinz dilemma:

A woman was near death from a special kind of cancer. There was one drug that the doctors thought might save her. It was a form of radium that a druggist in the same town had recently discovered. The drug was expensive to make, but the druggist was charging ten times what the drug cost him to produce. He paid $200 for the radium and charged $2000 for a small dose of the drug. The sick woman’s husband, Heinz, went to everyone he knew to borrow the money, but he could only get together about $1,000 which is half of what it cost. He told the druggist that his wife was dying and asked him to sell it cheaper or let him pay later. But the druggist said: “No, I discovered the drug and I’m going to make money from it.” So Heinz got desperate and broke into the man’s store to steal the drug for his wife, leaving the $1000 where the drug was sitting.

Should Heinz have broken into the store to steal the drug for his wife? Why or why not?

The problem is that you have greed and callousness on the part of the doctor.  Had he acted out of good/white instead of evil/black, there would have been no need for a ‘grey’ ethical question because Heinz could have payed the drug.  Am I saying that there are not grey ethical questions?  No, of course not.  But who made them grey?  We did.  By our sin we complicate ethical matters.  If we just followed God’s way, we would have it easy.

-Niko