"Cult of Mary"

Quote: FrGamble

Here is the Church's definition of superstition:

Superstition is the deviation of religious feeling and of the practices this feeling imposes. It can even affect the worship we offer the true God, e.g., when one attributes an importance in some way magical to certain practices otherwise lawful or necessary. To attribute the efficacy of prayers or of sacramental signs to their mere external performance, apart from the interior dispositions that they demand, is to fall into superstition.

Holy McSmoke, did a lawyer write this?
It's a 'duck is not a duck' in legalese.

Translation: When you cross yourself,
it's not superstition because we say
it's not. Got it?

You could make a sacramental sign (like the sign of the cross) into a superstition if you thought the mere external performance, apart from any true belief or feeling, was all that mattered.

Quote: FrGamble

You could make a sacramental sign (like the sign of the cross) into a superstition if you thought the mere external performance, apart from any true belief or feeling, was all that mattered.

But nobody who is active in superstitious
activities thinks they are mere performances
bereft of any true meaning. If they thought
that, they wouldn't do them. The mere fact
that the Church wrote it's own Catch 22
for it is proof that they knew what they were
doing was pure superstition.

To refresh your memory, in the book the army
said you could quit flying is you were crazy.
But if you requested an evaluation to see if
you were crazy, that meant you were sane
because you made the request. Catch 22.

The Church says, there are lots of superstitious
people out there, waving their hands around,
lighting candles and incense, chanting prayers
to idols. When they do it, it's practicing
superstition. When we do it, it's not, because
we really mean it. Catch 22

Quote: FrGamble

the Blessed Virgin Mary, the Mother of Jesus.
....Most importantly Catholics do not worship Mary

All that capitalization and the word "Blessed"... you sure he is Priest rather than a Lawyer named Saul?

Quote: rxwine

I am skeptical of a pregnant woman claiming virginity, giving birth to a child, not of the husband.
Normally, that creates all kinds of unpleasant speculation.
Perhaps I shouldn't chuckle so much at what the Scientologists or Mormons have come up with.
I suppose I am off to a bad start.

Not at all... a few centuries later the English came up with the Incubus an innocently mischievous creature that gave relief to teenage girls arriving home without their panties.

Now parthogenesis ain't impossible but it sure is rare.... but dat don't mean that the woman has been touched by the hand of Allah.

Quote: aceofspades

As a family law attorney, I would take on Joseph's case — no way he should have to support a child that is not his

It ain't that Joseph is complaining about the facts; its that generation after generation of priests are asserting this stuff. Why just the other day a cleric of some sort denied this Earth/Sun thing. Its not a paternity action, its a fraud action.

Quote: aceofspades

If Mary was indeed pregnant out of wedlock - would that not make Jesus a bastard?

Ssshh. Ace. Don't you know Westlaw don't even got no such Topic anymore.


NOTE: Fleastiff stops for a while...gonna go scrounge up an "adult beverage". Desperation level rising.

Every time you say Catch 22 in that post you are really exposing your own perfect circular reasoning. You are saying this:

Nobody who is superstitious admits they are.
They don't want to be superstitious.
So they write that they aren't superstitious.
Therefore they are superstitious.

You might as well say nobody who is a witch will admit it.
She claims she isn't a witch.
Therefore, she is a witch - Burn her!

Come on, bro.

Quote: FrGamble

Nobody who is superstitious admits they are.
They don't want to be superstitious.
So they write that they aren't superstitious.
Therefore they are superstitious.

Yes. The Church can't admit they teach
superstitions.
They don't want to be seen as superstitious,
so they make it a sin.
Therefore they can't be superstitious because
they say they aren't.

If I wasn't familiar with the Church, and saw
a woman in her home kneeling before a
shrine, with a rosary in her hand, and crossing
herself, I would think it's the epitome of
superstition.

And you would be wrong.