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Tuesday, March 11, 2008

Some thawing in the cold war - and some blog tweaks.

Some of you might notice some subtle changes on this blog and on Candy's blog. Those came about because we actually started TALKING TO EACH OTHER via e-mail! And to her credit, Candy e-mailed me first to apologize about an incident on her blog last week.

I wrote her back to thank her and to accept her apology, and then we corresponded some more. While I can't say that we are the best of friends, or that there aren't some major issues between us, we did make some small compromises. I think you will find that you have full access to her blog and to her comment section. She also removed the link to Sister Charlotte and is also pulling things from her archives. We have removed her last name from our header and from all of the posts in 2008 so far and we will take efforts NOT to use it in the future. I also removed the boycott on the childbirth ebook.

We could not reach agreement on removing the last anti-Catholic link on her front page or changing it's inflammatory title. But hey, the cold war lasted 40 years, so I don't think we can expect to embrace each other fully in just a few days!

In the meantime I think this blog will continue as always, defending and explaining the Catholic faith as it relates to our life and times, with a special emphasis on issues as they come up on the Keeping the Home Blog. As the Vatican vs. God link remains up I'm going to keep links to our rebuttal in the side bar.



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8 comments:

Jennifer Sr. said...

I am so pleased to hear this!

I do have a question and seek the input of all the ladies here. Who do you pray to? Mary? Jesus? God? All of the above?

My dh and my ds12 attended a leadership conference last weekend. Now I wasn't there so I don't know the exact words used, or the tone or the point to saying this, but I heard my ds and dh both separately mention a comment made by one of the speakers. The ds of the speaker (who is protestant) attends Catholic school and he said that he just corrects things they teach that he doesn't believe in like "praying to Mary".

I told dh needed to check here about Catholics actually praying to Mary.

I told him about how kneeling before statues doesn't mean the person is actually praying TO the statue and he said Well, ask so and so, she used to be Catholic.

And I said "I am not going to get my info from disgruntled ex Catholics. Just like you can't claim someone is 'converted' from Catholism when all along they have one foot out the door and the other foot on a banana peel."

I think it is so important that we not foster prejudice in our children. I think we should be upfront, informative and respectful about other denominations. In my case my husband's WHOLE family is Catholic, so do I really want my child to feel like this is a religion to be ridiculed?

My inlaws do believe things I don't, but I teach my kids that we still love them, but just don't agree w/ this area and here's why.

I heard the term "Christ-shun" one time and I think it fits too many people!

Off the soapbox now, have a great day and thanks!

kozimom said...

I am pleased to hear this as well. It's great to hear that 2 sisters in Christ are trying to iron out their differences and be more gracious.

Tracy said...

Praise the Lord for small miracles!! God is so good!!

unknown anon said...

To Jennifer sr.

Part of what you have related is a difference in language between Catholics and Protestants. "Praying to Mary" is a kind of Catholic oral shorthand (lingo) which means to the speaker (and the Catholic hearer) "I'm going to ask Mary to pray for me about such-and-such."

We believe that those who have gone before us to heaven are still part of the family of God, and still desire to assist us. We think of it like we do asking others here on earth to pray for us for a special need. The Protestant boy attending a Catholic school hears the words, and they mean something different to him.

We offer honor to the saints, for their heroic virtue, and ask them to pray for us. Mary, as the Mother of God, receives a version of this kind of honor.

However, we know that all the good that comes to us comes from God alone. We offer only worship (in terms that Protestants use that word) only to God. So, Catholics pray to God, to the individual persons of the Trinity, and ask others to pray for us. Some of those we ask to pray for us may be in heaven with God.

Kelly said...

jennifer, I think unknown anon gave a great answer.

There is a good article on this at Catholic Answers:
http://www.catholic.com/library/Praying_to_the_Saints.asp

KitKat said...

This is wonderful news! :)

Jennifer Sr. said...

Thank you unknown anon, I knew Elena had written about it before, but I wasn't able to remember it exactly or articulate it to my husband!

Sal said...

Wonderful news! Will continue to pray for all concerned.

Can't improve on unknown anon's answer- perfect! Again, it's SO important to make sure we understand what the other thinks our 'terms of art' mean. So much wrangling can be avoided that way.