Adventures in RCIA: An Updated Discussion on Mariology

On the Virgin birth, obviously I have always believed it and always will.
As to the perpetual virginity, the story of the Virgin of Guadalupe got me wondering and I went from disbelieving to wondering. Later, a friend who is studying the Orthodox church read a book by St.  James, who was Jesus' step-brother. In this book, James says Mary was indeed a virgin all her life because of his father's advanced age. He hinted that Joseph couldn't actually do anything about that, basically.
This differs from the Catholic teaching that she remained a virgin all her life due to a call to do so from God, but it does give an explanation for the perpetual virginity of a married Jewish woman. Being called by God to stay in that marriage, and after Joseph's death to be celibate and give herself to ministry, doesn't clash with anything she would likely have believed, as far as I know.
I therefore can assent to the perpetual virginity of Mary, in light of this further information.

As far as her ascension, she would not be the only person besides Jesus to do this. Enoch went that way and so did Elijah. All of the oldest churches believe this, including the Copts. I don't have legitimate reason not to. Therefore, I do.

Regarding the Immaculate conception, I am still unsure. It doesn't make any more sense to me than it did before. The only improvement I have in this area is that I can believe all the other ones. I do not believe that thinking this will send someone to hell. I have my doubts, serious doubts, but still,.. I think belief is a choice. I am going to pray about it, and consider if God would have a problem with my choosing to believe it until further evidence is offered that she wasn't. It may help me, in some ways, as far as theneed for a female role-model, and with this revised understanding of perpetual virginity, I would not have an obstacle to that anymore, especially since right now I am single.
I expect I will proceed as if she was, and just go from there, and if God wants me to not believe that, then He will be able to tell me. Right now, I feel called to the Catholic church and sense in my spirit that God is going to straighten out the reservations I have about gender roles. I hope so.
So, at this time I do, with some minimal reservation, accept the Catholic teaching on Mary.


Godspeed.

~Mother Star.

Adventures in RCIA: My First Lenten Season

Well, I think we're about half-way through Lent.
Yesterday was Friday and I ate meat. I forgot until it was too late.
I think last week I did not, but I can't remember. I have been able to abstain from chocolate and sweets.
I have a Valentine's heart full of chocolates and an organic fair trade dark chocolate bar sitting on a stand near my bed, and I have not touched them.

There are certain things I really wanted to stop doing through this season of repentance, and at first I was doing ok, but lately I have not been doing as well. I have "Gotten back up" to some extent, but not to the degree I would like. I have not yet been to confession.

What I have succeeded in dong is praying more and worshiping more. I have been working my way through the Book of Sirach, whereas for a while I had not been doing much scripture reading. I think this increase in scripture reading is going to give me the wherewithal to get the victory I am really hoping for in certain areas of my life.

Homosexuality - Living Out Christian Convictions In A Productive Way.

Have you guys hear about that doctor in MI who refused to treat a baby because she was being raised by "married" lesbians?

I assume she would accept the children of un-wed moms and cohabiting opposite sex couples (there are sooo many now, it would be hard to stay in business otherwise, I think), so why choose this sin on the part of the caregivers to refuse to take care of the baby over? If you think this is what standing up for your beliefs is, ask yourself if you refuse service to cohabiting couples or people who likely use drugs or drink heavily on a regular basis, or own a business that does things you don't believe in like sell porn or booze or whatever. If the answer is no, then you are not really standing for your beliefs but genuinely discriminating.
I recognize a need in the church for balanced teaching on how to respond to situations like this, and how to know if you really are compromising your faith or not when confronted with such people in a work or business environment, because so many Christians just don't know what to do and the enemy takes advantage by tempting them to do counter-productive stuff like this. Sometimes, people dothe wrong thing because they really do not know what to do.

Medical care for a child conceived in rape doesn't mean you condone rape. Medical care for a child raised by unmarried parents is not condoning cohabiting or fornication.
Medical care for a child raised by practicing homosexuals is not condoning homosexual behavior or giving your stamp of approval to same-sex marriage. Rather,  it just makes it harder for people who think they are homosexuals to find the truth, because those who carry the truth are not in any close personal contact with them.
Treat those who commit this sin different from how you treat other sexual sins, and your statement that you do not really discriminate or hate, and do not believe they are truly even different, starts to look silly. This behavior really does a lot to promote the gay agenda, and severely hurts the cause of Christ.
Now, refusing to participate in a same-sex wedding is refusing to actually participate in the sin, but refusing to work with the baby who is going to be raised in that environment? If it is not a refusal to participate in a sin, then refusing to serve someone in your business on grounds of the way they live outside of your business is indeed discrimination. Refusing to serve lunch in your restaurant to people caught in that particular stronghold? That is not helpful at all!

The point where it becomes necessary to refuse in order to live out your views is when you must participate. Involvement in a same-sex wedding is participating, obviously.
Serving lunch to a person in a same-sex relationship is not participating. Taking care of a baby is taking care of a baby, it is not participating. Helping

The gay-agenda has built its crocodile tears and emotional appeals on behavior like that, not on mere disagreement. This particularly true of appeals for laws that persecute and discriminate against Christians. More of the same will only make things worse. Balance. God created everything to function in balance. If we aren't in balance we are easy prey for the devil to tempt and to use.

Godspeed

~Mother Star.

Things To Know If You Pray To End Trafficking

I geared this piece for Christians, but the information is secular and relevant to everyone:

If we are going to bring light to this world it is important that we not accept things as inevitable outside of heaven that are not actually so. It is important not to be deceived about how good or how much better things can be. If we do not believe for something or if we resist it without believing the battle can be won, we will not receive it and then neither will the rest of the world.
As Ive been doing some research on the problem of trafficking for the sex trade lately, it concerns me that so many men in the church have bought into the lie that prostitution is "the oldest profession in the world" and that it is just part of life in a fallen world, across the board. It is actually not a natural temptation. The oldest profession in the world is more likely farming, and in some places it is gambling. As of the early 1990's there was one relatively "developed" culture, meaning they have school and higher eduction and police and jails and banks and etc, that still did not view sex as a commodity at all, or have a concept of sex just for its own sake. I looked it up, and they are not a Christian tribe. there are lots of people's in the world who are similar to that. The enemy has not been able to bring perversions we accept as inevitable everywhere as yet, and hopefully he won't. I have attached an article by anthropologist Peggy-Reeves Sanday, and have copied below two excerpts from this piece work comparing at least some elements of our society with the ways and views of their society. Note that none of these people are Christians. The rather developed Sumatran culture examined toward the end is an unreached people-group:

"Getting their information about women and sex from pornography, some brothers don't see anything wrong with forcing a woman, especially if she's drunk. After the l983 case of alleged gang rape I describe in the book one of the participants, a virgin at the time, told a news reporter:
' We have this Select TV in the house, and there's soft porn on every midnight. All the guys watch it and talk about it and stuff, and [gang banging] didn't seem that odd because it's something that you see and hear about all the time. I've heard stories from other fraternities about group sex and trains and stuff like that. It was just like, you know, so this is what I've heard about, this is what it's like....' (Sanday l990:34). "

"Since l981 when this research was published, I spent approximately twenty- four months (extended over a period of fourteen years) doing ethnographic research among the Minangkabau, a rape free Indonesian society. . . . Missing from the Minangkabau conception of sexuality is any show of interest in sex for the sake of sex alone. Sex is neither a commodity nor a notch in the male belt in this society. A man's sense of himself is not predicated by his sexual functioning. Although aggression is present, it is not linked to sex nor is it deemed a manly trait. The Minangkabau have yet to discover sex as a commodity or turn it into a fetish."

Click here to read the full article.

Pornography, Prostitution,and the Economy

Regarding the argument that pornography creates jobs for people who would other wise not have them:


The economy is going down the drain worldwide, but the sex trade is booming.
Porn is addictive, where many other forms of media are far less so, or are not addictive at all.
People are hooked on porn, and they get an arousal addiction. They spend money on that, and don't have it to spend on other forms of entertainment or other luxuries or, in severe cases, even on necessities.

How does that benefit it the economy?
If the money that was going into the porn industry were used for about anything else, it would go a lot farther. If it were invested, it could start thousands of businesses and create jobs that people might choose freely and not out of extreme desperation.
NO ONE chooses to work in the sex trade freely,trafficked or not. If the other option is dying for lack of basic resources, that is not freedom of choice being exercised.
Put the money into building the economy, not into exploitation.

I met a young lady once, in her early twenties. She lived in horrible poverty growing up and suffered considerable abuse and willful neglect (not a lack of resources causing her mom not to meet her needs, but deliberate neglect even when resources were available). Her mom had actually stolen her identity, ran up several thousands of dollars in bills, and then left it like that so when she came of age it impacted her employability and her ability to get an apartment and etc. She had to get her apartments in someone else's name,usually a man who put her bills and such in his name in exchange for you-can-guess-what, and then she paid the bills out of her disability check. Off and on, from her adolescence, she had sold her body. In her late teens, she had worked for an escort service, which brings me to my point in telling his story:
She told me of a a time when a man paid her $7,000 to do something very disgusting, which I wish she had never told me about.... Most of it went for drugs to try to survive the emotional damage that this lifestyle, I guess especially that incident, caused her,and from which she never really recovered. She saidit generates an amazing amount of money but is not worth it. She took huge amounts of prescription anti-depressants and street drugs to keep from resorting to suicide. Several years after leaving that behind her, she still needed a lot of anti-depressants for severe suicidal depression, and endless counseling.
If a person has $7,000 to spend on a night out, how many concert tickets,t-shirts, and EPs might that buy them? There are so many things a person can get that can be enjoyed for many years, that cost less than that. There are numerous ways a person can amuse themselves on a weekend, making memories worth having with those they care about. Addiction of the sort that man almost certainly had robs people of the ability to enjoy those things, and this does a lot of damage to the economy. The music and film industries are both suffering now, along with many others. Yet this addictive and damaging industry is thriving, Its not that there is no money, but little money is going into productive things. Buying band T-shirts supports the band, the silk-screeners, the makers of the t-shirt, those involved with growing the cotton, the makers of the dye, the makers of the equipment used to make the dye, grow the cotton, weave the shirt, and silkscreen it, and all the transportation businesses involved in getting these various products to the next phase in the process. Buying CDs affects bands, and everybody in any way connected to producing the CD or the equipment used in making and recording the music.
When that young woman gave in to that man'swishes, she, her pimp, and drug dealers benefited financially, no one else. She also suffered tremendous psychological damage from these activities, in addition to the circumstances that pushed her into those activities in the first place.

The sex and illicit drug industries are worse about hogging profits then mega corporations are, and do not improve the economic conditions in the areas where they thrive.
If you care about people having jobs, don't support, or tolerate, the sex trade. 
Unless you want an economy that runs solely on hard drugs and various forms of prostitution, don't support,or tolerate, the sex trade.

Godspeed.

~Mother Star

Adventures in RCIA - The Difference between a Mass and a Protestant Service

There are some differences between a Mass and a Protestant service. The Mass is modeled very much after the Jewish tradition, whereas Protestant churches usually, though not always, have a tradition all their own or at least much further removed from Jewish traditions.
The first thing that is different is that a Mass is called a Mass instead of a service or meeting. The word is capitalized.
Not every Protestant church uses vestments for the ministers.
Protestant churches usually do not have communion at every single service, though some do.
You can go to Mass about every day if you choose to, whereas most Protestant churches meet 1-3 times a week.
The pulpit in a Catholic church is called an ambo, but it works the same way.
Superficial differences aside,
The first thing that happens is a server, formerly called an alter boy, carries in a cross. The cross goes ahead of everything, since the Jesus' cross is how we are saved. It's the core of our faith. That goes ahead of everything.
Another server will carry a big, ornate book. It has the gospels in it. Not the whole Bible, Just the gospels, and it is held aloft as it is carried. Again. the gospel is the core of our faith.
The priest walks in last. These all comedown in a procession, like a little parade.
Some Protestant churches have a similar arrangement but most don't. Most of the tens of thousands of Protestant sects in the U.S, are pentecostal or non-denominational charismatic churches. Such churches tend to have very little ritual, and do not follow a liturgical calender, save Easter and Christmas.

Water is mixed with the blood of Christ to represent Jesus's humanity. It is not holy water, just regular water. As far as I know, there are no Protestant sects that mix the communion wine/juice with any amount of water, unless they use unfermented juice from a concentrate, which, again, I've never heard of. I would not be surprised though, to hear of it.
Some charismatic and/or non-denominational  churches do not have a set order for their service but pretty much "play it by ear" every week! I've been in those. They say they let the Holy Spirit run the service, and have free reign. I am not sure that is necessarily what is happening all the time though, I think many times it is the emotions and whims of those in the church running the service. I have no doubt the holy spirit takes advantage of this open door, but strongly doubt whether anybody is capable of hearing and discerning so well that they can truly let the Holy Ghost order the service individually and specifically each time. Also there is not always adequate accountability for the leadership. I have been fleeced pretty badly in a church like that, as well as seeing a lot of corrupt doctrine that proved to be destructive in my life and others, and more false prophesy than I can even specifically recall.
Loads upon loads of false prophecy like that is much harder to find in Catholicism. In the Catholic church, a committee of bishops and cardinals have to examine and verify a spiritual gift like prophesy or word of knowledge before the church recognizes it. It may seem like quenching the spirit, but I see wisdom in it. Some people have had "words" for people to go off of their medicine, and the individual died as a result. A pastor of a church my family went to lost a dear friend that way. Others have just made fools of themselves and God by giving words about "Problem between you and your wife will be resolved" to unbelievers visiting who were not married. My dad actually saw that happen once.
Mass is a very different thing for me, obviously, but I enjoy it.

I will discuss the actual Mass and how it runs and the meanings and roots behind everything in my ext post. Today I just wanted to do a contrast and point out some differences that might take newbies by surprise, I will remind everybody not to take communion in a Catholic church unless you have been confirmed Catholic.

Adventures in RCIA - More on the Eucharist

As I mentioned in my first post in this series, this is one of the biggest pulls for me, to the Catholic church.
Eucharist is a Greek word that means, "thanksgiving." It refers to Holy Communion.

There are a few description that Catholics use to explain the Eucharist that work very well for insiders, but will make little sense to someone who is not already Catholic.
"The Real Presence of Christ" for example. This refers to "trans-substantiation," the belief that the second person of the Trinity is present in the bread and wine. When the bread is blessed, we believe that Jesus'presence comes into the bread and wine, sort of like a vessel carrying his spiritual presence. We do not think that a chemical test would start showing human flesh and blood rather than grains and fermented fruit, though.
God is everywhere, of course, but yet if you have had any kind of encounter with God at all, you understand how God can seem to be more in some places than others at times. We believe that, spiritually Jesus is present with us in the Eucharist in a special way.
We believe this is referred to in John -6:24-69. If Jesus had been speaking metaphorically, wouldn't he have said so, for the sake of the disciples who he so loved who were offended and walked away? In RCIA last week, it was explained that this has always been a hard teaching for people, and this scripture was given to demonstrate both how upsetting it was for Jesus' first followers and how important it is to him. He came to die by torture for those people. He had just fed them all with a miracle because he cared about them (v. 5-24), if he was speaking metaphorically, don't you think he would have explained himself to those who he cared about? Having people walk away from you because they do not like what you are saying is one thing, but letting them go like that to damnation (it says they "walked no more with him") over a misunderstanding is something else.
I note that in this text, it says they told him he was crazy when he said that he was God and was before Abraham and that some in the crowd intended to kill him.
I do not find actual scriptural support for the notion that communion is supposed to be just a symbol. He said on two occasions that "This is my body, this is  my blood." Paul taught that we should examine ourselves before communion, and that it is life-threateningly dangerous to take communion when not right with God (1 Corinthians 11:27-32), because when we do that we become guilty of the body and blood of the Lord.
I think this is because the early church was before the Catholic/Protestant division, before Constantine and long before Luther. They did not have any offense at any group within the body that they sought very hard to distance themselves from, and did not have anyone telling them it was only a symbol. They were in agreement about what they were doing, so it would have been that powerful.
If you visit a Catholic church, either do not go down for communion, or go down with your arms crossed over your chest, sort of like the traditional coffin laying position. The communion servers will give you a blessing instead of communion, because you are out of agreement in what is going an and since everyone is in such agreement about the actual habitation of the spirit of Christ resting on that host (the bread and wine); it is not safe for you to eat it. "According to your faith be it done to you." If you commune in a Protestant church, you are not in danger of dying. Nobody invited Jesus to use that bread and wine that way, it is only a symbol. go ahead and eat it, if you agree to revere what it symbolizes.
I would probably take communion in a Protestant church again, I can receive it as a symbol to recollect things by. However, I was told in RCIA that "memorial" in Judaism,like the Passover, is not just sitting around recalling something. It is reliving. It is almost like repeating but not exactly. Its not just thinking about something, it goes much farther.
The RCIA lady who taught the class last week said Eucharist was what drew her to this Church as well, and when she finished RCIA and took communion the first time, she was full on just that.
You are supposed to fast an hour before receiving Holy Communion in the Catholic church,so she was ravenous when she went up, but she was full for hours after taking it. It is only one bite worth, maybe less, of unleavened bread, but she was full the rest of the day and felt the presence of God very strongly.  I believe this happened for her because her belief was so strong. She said she actually snatched it out of the priest's hand, which was not proper decorum at all, because she was so excited about it. He forgave her and overlooked it, though.
I hope I don't do anything drastic like that...
Communion is supposed to mimic the Passover. Like the Passover Feast, it is not a mere recalling but a reliving, an actual experience of it, sort of like. The sacrifice is Jesus, present in the Eucharist and consumed just like the lamb was. The Passover also foreshadowed the coming of Jesus and his Sacrifice for us all. In the Eucharist, we relive the sacrifice of Jesus. We have our Passover Feast - every single week, and almost every day if we so choose. There are daily Masses as well as Sunday Masses.

Next time in RCIA, we will be having a walk through the Mass. I am greatly looking forward to it. I understand there is a connection between the Mass and the Catholic interpretation of Revelation. Soon I will be going through some extra things that are part of actually joining the Church, so I can also fill you in on those details when I get them.

Godspeed.

~Mother Star