Amen.

=============

That being said, I am a baptized and confirmed Catholic, I attend Mass weekly, and take communion. I went through the parochial and diocesian school system, kindergarten through high school graduation.

I intend to vote for John Kerry.

I hold that the bishops who are saying that Catholics who vote for Kerry emperil their souls are in error, that they are wilfully placing their own salvations at risk, and will be called answer for their heedless works in this matter before the sternest Judge.

Wait. Wrong Nielsen Hayden blog. Apologies. Though one must admire Leo XIII's foresight.

At least in this case.

On a side note: Obviously my word doesn’t have the same weight as that of someone representing the organization f.k.a. the Holy Office, but, speaking as a lapsed Methodist who went to the same Oxford college as John Wesley, I’d like to register an objection to NewDonkey’s characterization of Bush as a Methodist. If he is, he’s even more lapsed than I am.

(It is educational to read the heresies list and find the various things I'm probably guilty of, though...)

We are both voting for Kerry, and it was not a close call.

While I am in the process of making a more detailed statement about this for some of my Catholic friends on email and on my blog, the reasons are not too complicated. The explanations can be, but we'll skipt them here. Basically, I agree with the Church's teachings on life issues without reservation, holding human life sacred from conception to natural death. While both parties have good spots and bad spots in their platforms, that is not the main issue -- what is at issue is policy, and that is defined as what a government actually does, not what it says it does or intends to do. While the GOP likes to throw the occasional bit of meat to pro-life groups, they show no real hunger to really change anything there, just to grandstand. On issues like abortion, the differences between the two parties are moot.

When you move to the rest of government policy, especially the issue of war and peace, I find that in good conscience I cannot vote for Bush this year, as a Catholic.

Πιστεύω είς ενα Θεόν, Πατέρα, παντοκράτορα, ποιητήν ουρανού καί γής, ορατών τε πάντων καί αοράτων.

Καί είς ενα Κύριον, Ίησούν Χριστόν, τόν Υιόν του Θεού τόν μονογενή, τόν εκ του Πατρός γεννηθέντα πρό πάντων τών αιώνων. Φώς εκ φωτός, Θεόν αληθινόν εκ Θεού αληθινού γεννηθέντα, ού ποιηθέντα, ομοούσιον τώ Πατρί, δι’ ού τά πάντα εγένετο. Τόν δι’ ημάς τούς ανθρώπους καί διά τήν ημετέραν σωτηρίαν κατελθόντα εκ τών ουρανών καί σαρκωθέντα εκ Πνεύματος ‘Αγίου καί Μαρίας τής Παρθένου καί ενανθρωπήσαντα. Σταυρωθέντα τε υπέρ ημών επί Ποντίου Πιλάτου καί παθόντα καί ταφέντα.

Καί αναστάντα τή τρίτη ημέρα κατά τάς Γραφάς.

Καί ανελθόντα είς τούς ουρανούς καί καθεζόμενον εκ δεξιών τού Πατρός.

Καί πάλιν ερχόμενον μετά δόξης κρίναι ζώντας καί νεκρούς, ού τής βασιλείας ουκ εσται τέλος.

Καί είς τό Πνεύμα τό ¨Αγιον, τό Κύριον, τό ζωοποιόν, τό εκ τού Πατρός εκπορευόμενον, τό σύν Πατρί καί Υιώ συμπροσκυνούμενον καί συνδοξαζόμενον, τό λαλήσαν διά τών Προφητών.

Είς μίαν, αγίαν, καθολικήν καί αποστολικήν Έκκλησίαν. ‘Ομολογώ εν βάπτισμα είς άφεσιν αμαρτιών. Προσδοκώ ανάστασιν νεκρών. Καί ζωήν τού μέλλοντος αιώνος.

Άμήν.

And no, that was not from memory, so yours is still more impressive. (While Marilee can read Koine, I can't. I can pick it out a few letters at at time and sound some words out.)

Moreover, as Msgr. Ronald Knox argued in his influential 1950 book, Enthusiasm, Wesleyans reflect a persistant heretical tendency towards elevation of subjective experience in the pursuit of religious truth that links them to such widely varying heresies at Donatism, Hussism and Jansenism.

Mike -- Trent Affair? Special relationship? State Department website? Say what?

Andrew, the Americanist Heresy is part of the official classification system. For instance, all Mormons are Americanist heretics.

Claude, I love "self-inflicted Catholic." What does a Master Catechist do?

I don't speak Greek and I don't know its alphabet, so I didn't expect to be able to puzzle out any part of your second post; but Έκκλησίαν jumped out at me, and καθολικήν καί αποστολικήν Έκκλησίαν followed, so then I knew what it was.

========

For me war and peace, torture, the death penalty, and the principle that the workman deserves his hire have taken precedence.

Not to mention overall honesty and competence.

I love you guys.

-l.

Claude, isn't the normative Greek form of the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed Pisteuomen (&c) rather than Pisteuo, etc., reflecting its source in the Council? (Sorry, no support for Unicode input here.)

Pelagianism (named after the monk Pelagius, an opponent of Augustine) is the belief that it is possible to attain to an entirely virtuous life by the unaided human will.

I can recommend Enthusiasm; it's Knox's most scholarly book and a very good read.

Sorry, I phrased my question poorly. What I meant was, given that this is what the Pelagian heresy is, what's the name of the heresy I described?

Are you thinking of Donatism? (Donatism claims that the validity of the sacraments depends on the virtue of the priest who performs them.)

At one point I tried to compile a phylogenetic chart of recognized heresies. The single biggest group involved disputes about the nature of and relationships between the component members of the Trinity. Next biggest group consisted of disputes about the relationship(s) between God, man, and church. Third were the procedural questions about how religion works, and what are the best ways to pursue it. After that, things got miscellaneous.

I gave it up because I couldn't figure out how to chart it. There were too many movements that adopted several heretical beliefs at once.

There were some odd affinities. For instance, it seemed to me that there's a tendency for groups that decide they're in a permanent state of divine illumination, guided constantly by the promptings of the Holy Spirit, to go on to believe that they no longer have to observe any external religious practices, and from there go on to the belief that they can perform very naughty acts without actually sinning. Not that I'm naming any names, of course.

All pretty silly from my pagan faith. But very, very interesting in terms of being a writer and seeing how people interact.....

(I started out in youth as a Southern Baptist, and had a conversion event in late high school. But I later had fundamental questions about what was being told to me as "you have no right to question, you have to BELIEVE." My problem was that the Bible says the Jews are God's chosen people. But at least Baptist doctrine says they have to be born again in Jesus. This was a puzzle (to me at least, especially for a sect that proclaims that the Bible is the literal truth.

I resigned, then explored other reiigions. I'm a solo-practicing wiccan now and much happier for it. Blessed be. And we don't judge people much for anything except violating other people's right to live in peace as they have chosen.

I don't think so, but then this is not exactly my area of expertise. The context in which I originally read about this heresy was that of faith healers - they have a distressing tendency, when someone they instructed to pray for healing dies, to blame them by saying that their faith was not strong enough, or similar things. This was identified as the X Heresy, where I thought X was Pelagian, but clearly not. Of course whoever I was reading could have gotten it wrong.

For instance, you could be Pelagianist in regards to yourself (you can attain a truly virtuous life through unaided will) while applying Jansenism to other people (they couldn't possibly be virtuous without outside help).

Not only do you get two heresies for the price of one, but you get extra points for at least one deadly sin. :)

Apology to the admirable polyglots in this thread: I'm afraid the variant Creeds this game produces only come in English.

The best source for early church heresies I know is the "Panarion" by St. Epiphanius, Bishop of Salamis: highly recommended. Large chunks are available online (via Google: not many false hits!), and there was a good edition of select passages -- all the juicy heretical beliefs and scriptures, none of the boring orthodox refutations -- some years back (edited and translated by P R Amidon, published by OUP: ISBN 0195062914).

http://www.state.gov/r/pa/ho/time/cw/17612.htm

The Trent Affair was the diplomatic crisis that potentially brought Great Britain and the United States closest to war during the first year of the American Civil War. Although war seemed possible, both sides managed to avoid an armed conflict, and in the process gained greater confidence in one another.

Yeah, right.

Mike, that's loony. The Trent Affair did nothing of the sort. All that the best efforts of both sides managed was to not go to war. Is there some kind of agenda being pushed on that page, or is someone just being stupid?

We Believe in One Nation,
The Greatest in Heaven or Earth,
Up-holder of all things Civilized,
the best there is, seen or unseen.

We believe in One Constitution,
the Definition of our Nation,
Inerrantly devised by the Founding Fathers,
rules from Rule, rights from Right, true laws from True Law.
Inspired, not invented, of one Being with the Nation,
Through It civilization was made.

For us and for our emancipation
it came down from Heaven,
a Platonic Ideal of society,
it was ratified by constitutional convention
and became law.

By our will it was amended to include rights
like free speech and the right to bear arms,
and guarantees against self-incrimination.
In the Civil War it was refined further,
above States, not of them,
applied to all regardless of skin color.

It will preserve us always from the sea of enemies,
foreign and domestic, which stands against us.

We believe in the separation of powers, the Supreme court,
the representative legislature and the executive arm,
which proceed from the Holy Constitution.

Together with the Constitution they guarantee divided
government, and this is a feature, not a bug.

We believe in an immutable electoral system, unrepresentative
and slow, which shall elect the two houses of the legislature.
A different strange system shall elect the President, and through
him alone Supreme Court judges shall be appointed.

We believe that without these arcane rules no nation can be civilized,
and to those foreigners who diss our Holy Government we say:

"If it ain't broke, don't fix it".

Amen.

"Shortly after you (whichever you are) were born, your father the King abandoned the creed of his ancestors, and became a Wesleyan Methodist - of the most bigoted and persecuting type. The Grand Inquisitor, determined that the innovation should not be perpetuated in Barataria, had you (whichever you are) stolen away to Venice. Six months ago, the Methodist monarch and all his Wesleyan court were killed in an insurrection, and we have come to hail you (whichever you are) as King of Barataria."

Which, by an easy process of association, brings me to

In enterprise of Vietnam
When there was any fighting
He flew (or not) in Alabam' -
He found it less exciting.
But sending other men to war
His place was at the fore-o
That easy-going, steady-handed, well-connected chickenhawk
The Duke of Plaza-Toro.

I'd go on, but I have proofs to read, and it's just too depressing anyway, even with the Atlantic in the way.

This is why you get certain lowbrow American religionists interpreting reverses abroad and at home as evidence that we've been sinful.

Antinomianism! I know that one.

And while I’m not naming any names either, if you haven’t read Jeffrey Sharlet’s Harper’s article, “Jesus Plus Nothing,” you should.

George's claim of trusting his instinct or guts is an appeal to Gnosis. He is not any kind of Methodist that John Wesley would recognize but I have met many Methodists and Baptists who share his beliefs.

A friend asserted that George W. Bush "isn't a real Christian" because (among other things) he doesn't perform any good works. I said that I thought the doctrine of good works (if I am phrasing it correctly) was true for Catholics but many Protestant denominations don't recognize it or emphasize it. He replied that it is universal to the Christian faith.

Does anyone know which is correct?

I should probably mention that I am not implying anything about the president, nor am I trolling. We're just a couple of knuckleheads looking for answers (Googling has been inconclusive so far, but I may not be asking the right question).

Teresa, master catechist roles and requirements vary by diocese. A basic, or parish, catechist is certified by either the diocese or a parish director of religious education (the dreaded DRE) after maybe 8-12 hours of classes. These mainly cover process and legal issues, basically how to be a religion teacher without getting the parish into too much trouble. A basic catechist will lead fairly basic classes working with prepared materials, under supervision (one hopes). It's a bit better than the usual volunteer who got dragooned into teaching by the DRE.

A master catechist is generally someone with experience in teaching, who goes through anywere from 50 of classroom time to a masters degree. In my case it is several hundred hours in scripture, theology, liturgics, psychology, and ministry along with a mid-sized stack of books and a couple of retreats, followed by some supervised practice and review. Some dioceses have one or more steps between basic and master. With all this, a certificate from the bishop, and a couple of dollars cash money you can buy a big latte at Starbucks.

Master catechists generally run programs, train other catechists, work as (often unpaid) parish DRE's, and act as local consultants on religious education issues. I'm doing it in support of the work my wife and I do in detention facilities.

And I refer all questions about Greek to whoever out there really understands it.

Drat. You beat me to it.

I am pleased as punch that there is a specific Americanist heresy.

WOW!! And here I thought they were just antinomians!

Try googling on these four words: salvation faith "good works". I guarantee you'll find plenty of directly relevant discussion, which suggests the issue isn't as cut'n'dried as your friend thought. The always-amusing Jack Chick (www.chick.org) seems to have it in for good works... which is probably why he never perpetrates any.

(If you missed last year's Cthulhu Chick Tract, catch it here now).

Scene: a horde of heretics have descended on a cloud of converts, and
are halted only by the approach of...well, you'll just have to imagine the
musical background yourself.

Heretics:
For he is a Presbyterian!

Converts:
He is! Hurrah for the Presbyterian!

Presbyterian:
And it is, it is a glorious thing to be a Presbyterian!

Converts:
It is! Hurrah for the Presbyterian! Hurrah for the Presbyterian!

Presbyterian:
I am the very model of a modern Presbyterian,
I've information venerable, ancient, and sectarian,
I know that some have tried to make me turn Episcopalian,
But I find their theology is altogether alien...

I'm very well acquainted too with matters theological,
I even try to tease out passages deemed paradoxical,
I may not cross the Baptists on some matters theoretical,
But I need not share their fear of all substances intoxical!

Converts and Heretics:
But I need not share their fear of all substances intoxical,
But I need not share their fear of all substances intoxical,
But I need not share their fear of all substances intoxi-toxical!

And it continues. :o)

But be that as it may.

Whether John Kerry is a good Catholic or not, I'm not prepared to answer. I don't claim to be a particularly good Catholic myself. But I will say that while Kerry may be a bad Catholic, a Protestant cannot be a good one. See, for example, this (Nihil Obstat and Imprimatur, 2004), which clearly identifies Protestantism as a heresy.

Bush & Cheney: Bad Catholics for Bad Times

Teresa, I can't believe you haven't learned Greek. It's the only language with a middle voice. Very cool.

We were brought up Methodist.

I attended a Christian (Church of Christ) Church while in college. One of the reasons I left was because I was discovering that I thought of myself as a Catholic, specifically a post-Vatican II one. I made my first (official, at least) communion in 1976. I don't consider myself a "self-inflicted" Catholic. And the conversion was gradual, over several years. As was my "falling away", for that matter.

Still, I have always had the sense of the Catholic Church as the "home" in Robert Frost's poem, where "when you have to go there, they have to take you in."

Another reason I left the Christian Church, though, was because I kept getting into arguments with the minister over things like ordination of women and what sounds suspiciously like TNH's definition of the Americanist heresy.

There's an article in today's Pittsburgh Post-Gazette about whether Catholics' decisions on how to vote should "be reduced to the single issue of abortion".

I have some other citations from Catholic publications like America and National Catholic Reporter on this, but don't have time to look them up now (it's closing time at the library).

Suffice it to note that no less an authority than Cardinal Ratzinger has apparently said that:

a Catholic who deliberately voted for a candidate precisely because of the candidate's pro-abortion (or pro-euthanasia) stand would be guilty of "formal cooperation in evil" and should exclude himself from receiving Communion.

Second, when a Catholic does not share a candidate's stand in favor of abortion but votes for that candidate for other reasons, it is considered "remote material cooperation," which is "permitted in the presence of proportionate reasons."

The middle voice is usually the same in form as the passive voice; the Latin deponent verbs have largely the same function (they frequently correspond directly to verbs usually used in the middle form in the Greek), and may be derived from middle rather than passive voice.

The aorist is straightforward enough -- as long as you remember that it has two different significations (tense and aspect) originally derived from one root but having diverged considerably even by classical times. Although aspect is probably, I understand, older than tense, it's dropped out of many IE languages, so that most of us run into it (if at all) only in Greek and Hebrew (since the semitic languages have aspect but not much in the way of tense).

James (MacDonald): a Protestant cannot be a good Catholic if he is informed, but may be counted as one (in the end), more or less, if he has invincible ignorance. I think that this is a real possibility in Bush's case.

The Ratz allows single-issue voting? (Pause to check the contents of my head.) M'gawd, I actually agree with the man on something.

The Ratz allows voting on the basis of a candidates overall platform? (Pause to check the contents of my head.) M'gawd, I actually agree with the man on something.

You bring back a fond memory of my first-year Classics teacher, whose lectures on The Iliad and The Odyssey included explanations of subtext lost in the translation to English. During one lecture, when struggling to explain the flirtatious and sexually-charged subtext in the conversation between Circe and Odysseus, he finally threw his hands up and cried "Oh, DO learn Greek! Before it's too late!"

I went off and learned Akkadian (badly) and Ancient Hebrew (moderately well), so I'm no good. But still.

Necesse est ad urbem redire.

Trooper that she is, she recovered nicely.

I can do big chunks of the Requiem the same way. They're a little more current because I've been setting them (on and off). In particular, since 9/11 the phrase 'solvet saeclum in favilla' has been playing in my head over and over. Not all the time, just episodically, like a migraine.

I have a gorgeous little (simple, singable) setting of the Ave Maria in my head, just waiting for me to get to my Finale screen and put it on paper -- or into electrons, I guess. But the Ave has very few words and was real easy to memorize.

The fact that even the man whom gay activists call "Cardinal Rat" says Kerry isn't a heretic is pretty telling.

james, the aorist exists in Old Church Slavic, and aspect exists in modern Russian -- and in some dialects of English. Not the standard ones, which are poorer for it IMO. For example, if someone says "She in the hospital," that refers to her present condition, whereas if s/he says "She be in the hospital," that refers a condition repeated so often as to be habitual.

Similarly, a coworker of mine once referred to a street in the financial district (NYC) "where they be putting up ropes to keep people from blowing into the water" -- and yes, the wind really does get that strong down there in the winter. She was very clearly referring to a repeated action, not something that had occurred on a single occasion.

I'm in the (very slow) process of learning Ancient Egyptian. Plays to my weaknesses -- mostly vocabulary -- and neutralizes my strengths (pronunciation, since there is none). Smart, huh?

Claude, if you become a Director of Religious Education, and you have a doctorate, does that make you Dr. DRE? Will you start a feud with Master Catechists on the opposite coast?

If you haven't been confronted by Satan today, it's possible you two are walking in the same direction.

Best comment is Ted's:
Pete you're just mad because the fallen angel mutant warrior guys are getting more action than you.

At least they haven't started saying that THK actually turns into a giant leopard at night and roams the streets of the city looking for lost children to carry off...

It would certainly be a very traditional thing to do. (I'm amused, sometimes, by how much the history of the early church seems like a series of long-running fanfeuds conducted in very slow-moving letterzines.)

Xopher, I managed to not dump my coffee on my laptop, but it was close. Perfect.

Which is one of the hardships for English speakers, acquiring it late in life.

TK

You mean Origen, who removed his own testicles rather than face the temptation of lust? Yikes.

Claude, if you become a Director of Religious Education, and you have a doctorate, does that make you Dr. DRE? Will you start a feud with Master Catechists on the opposite coast?

It would certainly be a very traditional thing to do. (I'm amused, sometimes, by how much the history of the early church seems like a series of long-running fanfeuds conducted in very slow-moving letterzines.)

Vaster than empires and more slow?

---------------------------

Xopher ::: (view all by) ::: October 22, 2004, 02:38 PM:
Hey, I'm not even Catholic (or Christian), and I bet I could recite the whole Credo in Latin. Maybe spell it right, too. Only trouble is, I have to sing it...and the tenor part of a Mozart mass sounds funny by itself

And now I'm being earwormed by Scheidt's Missa in A Flat which I sang one of the eight parts of, in a chorus under MIT's "Little Dome" in the Building 7 Lobby. The resonance was incredible.... Deum vestrum.... Et dum assumptus fuero a vobis mitam vobis spiritum veritatis...

There are MUCH worse things to be earwormed by!

In other words, Origen's good bits themselves are missing, but other people talked about them all the time?

I guess that fits.

Paula, I agree on earworms. But I don't recognize that text. What section is it from? (I thought I knew the whole Mass, at least at recognition level.)

I am not really otherwise exactly familiar with Latin masses, other than having sung that piece Long Ago.

Sort of like having nothing left of one's apazines except other people's letters of comment.

Oh, it is not. Plenty of other languages with a middle voice. Icelandic, for one. And, um, (looks at the examples in Payne's Describing Morphosyntax) various Mayan and Cariban langages, among others.

(Admittedly, there's a certain degree of disagreement among linguists as to what qualifies as middle.)

Plenty of other languages with a middle voice. Icelandic, for one. And, um, (looks at the examples in Payne's Describing Morphosyntax) various Mayan and Cariban langages, among others.

(Admittedly, there's a certain degree of disagreement among linguists as to what qualifies as middle.)

Heck, in my classes we were always told that English had a middle voice, as seen in sentences like "This car drives easily". A quick literature search seems to support that usage, so I'm not just misremembering the reading.

Now, I don't know anything substantive about Greek or Icelandic or Sanskrit, so "middle voice" may mean something different for those languages than it does for English. But unless you're using a technical definition which excludes the English middle (I want to make a bad logical fallacy pun here, but I'm too tired), middle constructions don't seem to be all that rare.

Has anyone (Catholics only) ever attended a TLM (Traditional Latin Mass)??

Let's skip the comparative religion; this is a really good post/chat place/whatever it's called (It's making me laugh; and it's a rare thing that can do that)...and maybe all we Catholics should branch out and make our own post here?? Email me if any ideas; subject line: CATHOLIC discussions

Credo in Unum Deum, Patrem Omnipotentem, Factorem Caeli et terrae, visibilium omnium: et invisibilium. Et in unum Dominum Jesum Christum: Filium Dei Unigenitum: et ex Patre natum, ante omnia saecula. Deum de Deo: lumen de lumine: Deum verum de Deo vero. Genitum, non factum: consubstantialem Patri, per quem omnia facta sunt. Qui propter nos homines: et propter nostrem salutem: descendit de caeli.
ET INCARNATUS EST DE SPIRITU SANCTO: EX MARIA VIRGINE, ET HOMO FACTUS EST.
Crucifixus etiam pro nobis: sub Pontio Pilato: passus et sepultus est. Et resurrexit tertia die, secundum Scripturas. Et ascendit in caelum: sedet ad dexteram Patris. Et iterum venturus est cum gloria: judicare vivos et mortuos: cujus regni non erit finis.
Et in Spiritum Sanctum: Dominum, et vivificantem: qui ex Patre Filioque procedit. Qui cum Patri et Filio, simul adoratur: et conglorificatur: qui locutus est per Prophetas.
Et in unum, sanctam, catholicam, et apostolicam Ecclesiam. Confiteor unum baptisma in remissionem peccatorum. Et exspecto resurrectionem mortuorum: et vitam venturi saeculi. Amen.

Now, while I did type this from memory & I'm only 17, I've been attending Sung Latin Masses weekly for 5 1/2 years; so...hearing the tune really helps; plus I have my own missal; plus, I kind of "sang" it in my head.

Sure did. When I was growing up that's all there was.

Now, can you remember the entire Requiem mass text? I only get lost in the Introit, because there are bits of text the tenors don't sing (in the Mozart)!