Who Truly Threatens the Church?

Winner, winner, chicken dinner.

 

Not in my office and warehouse lol.
I wont even use the men's room. We have a contract with community service through the courts and I make them clean it.

 

I wonder how long till we start hearing the term culturally Christian?

 

We’ve been hearing it for years if not decades.

 

The Gospel Truth …

 

Sorry if my response came off too casual. I am concerned with declines in church attendance. The goal, however, is not merely to have people sitting in the seats. The goal is to have people come to a living relationship with Jesus Christ.

My post you originally responded to was aimed at the people who falsely think that somehow Christianity is in opposition to science. It is not and never has been.

The decline in church attendance has complex factors. A lot of the decline is in the mainline denominations, who drifted away from preaching the Gospel. When they just become a social club, a lot of people decide to socialize elsewhere.

There are people who grew up in Bible-believing churches that have drifted away when they get older, especially when going to college. I think a lot of that comes from the church not preparing kids with a good grounding in the rationality of faith in order to withstand the attacks they will get in a secular university.

There are also numerous churches that are growing. These churches preach the Gospel and that attracts people.

 

Because that would be rude …

“We don’t want to convert the young people to Christ.”

https://www.theamericanconservative.com/we-dont-want-to-convert-the-young-people-to-christ/

 

Faith doesn’t have to include any organized religious practice.

 

No…..THAT is my opinion. I’ll stand by “most” christians are hypocrites.

 

My personal appeal to you …

Please don’t join a church.

Because you know what Groucho Marx said.

 

And I'll stand by the "opinion" that you possess the very type of narrow mind that you probably imagine you don't.

 

The title of the thread says 'church' not 'religion' or 'faith'. Church does not equal religion or faith. My answer to the thread title is the church threatens its own self, through its own hypocrisy, ignorance, narrow-mindedness, and refusal to adapt to modern society.

 

The church is by definition the body of believers. It is literally the faith.

And the churches job isn't to bend to the whims of society.

The church should impact culture, not bend everytime culture changes.

 

Well said.

Today at the St Augustine farmers market was a lady trying to get signatures for allowing abortion to be on the ballot for our Constitution. The lady was respectful and wanted to know why I would not support her side.

With my 15 year old daughter right next to me I politely explained that her life and mine began at conception as a zygote. 23 chromosomes from our mother and 23 chromosomes from our father. We were a separate life from our mother. I can’t support legal killing for convenience. She politely acknowledged my point. Not sure it truly hit home. But I hope it did.

 

I don't necessarily agree with "bible believing" or the emphasis on just "preaching the Gospel", both of which sound off to a Catholic. But JPII issued an Encyclical on your larger point.

Fides et ratio - Wikipedia

 

Perhaps. I truly don’t believe, so.
It never hurts to contemplate such.

 

Thanks for this. I will study it.

I understand that certain evangelical language is different from the way Roman Catholics express things.

In terms of the intersection of faith and science, in case you don’t know this, the astronomer who first proposed the expanding universe was the Belgian Roman Catholic priest Georges Lemaître. He also was the first to propose the Big Bang for the origin of the universe.

 

That's nonsense. You don't have to belong to a church to be a Christian or have faith. You don't have to depend on some religious bureaucracy to explain everything to you and tell you what to do. As for your whims of society, most people don't think that allowing women to be in positions of leadership or allowing people to marry whoever they want to are 'whims'.

 

Very well. Fr. Lemaitre was trained and formed by the Jesuits, though he elected not to enter the Society. Fr. Guy Consolmagno, S.J, currently heads the Vatican Observatory. Though Fr. Lemaitre was perhaps the most accomplished, he was not an outlier in seeing no contradiction between faith and reason.


Some fun links

Jesuit inventions and discoveries--Aleteia

Dedicated to Discovery: A Brief History of Jesuits in the Sciences

List of Catholic clergy scientists - Wikipedia

Jesuits, science and a Pope with a chemistry degree: A productive pairing?

How Jesuit spirituality gives rise to great scientists

 

And faith is separate from science. I don’t think there is any need for much faith but using the scientific method does not preclude one from believing stuff on faith.