Church officials had announced in 2004 that nearly one-fifth of the parishes in the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Boston would be closed. This had to do with a convulsive restructuring caused partly by declining attendance and increased financial problems that were worsened by the sexual abuse crisis among clergy members. This caused thousands of Catholics to find parishes in other neighborhoods and in some cases other towns.
Parishioners have gone as far as taking this to the courts in hopes of blocking the sales of the church, but the Supreme Judicial Court has ruled the First Amendment prevents them from interfering in the case, which it said involved principles of canon law and the spiritual authority of clergy members.
It makes me wonder… is the Catholic church that low on cash or is it more of people seeing the light and actually leaving the church?
“Free Will” . Huckabee here talked about it. A broken world because God does not want to force HIMSELF on us, so then why do Christians force their ideas, beliefs and faiths on us? It is like saying, my master gives you ‘free will’ but I, his servant, am taking that away from you.
I have a friend that is pretty much tormented by this. She tells me that she is gay, yet she isn’t out. She is sick and is in her early thirties. She is seeking that ’special’ someone on the internet. She was raised christian and she told me that all she remembers her pastor mentioning “A LOT’ is “FREE WILL”…she repeated that statement several times to me. She asked me what I thought about ‘free will’. The ‘free will’ she was taught was the idea that God is allowing you a choice, but if you make the wrong choice you will be punished by hell.
Why give us free will in the first place? There is no such thing as ‘free will’. Presenting ‘free will’ as a free choice to make, but adding: NOW IF YOU DON’T MAKE THE RIGHT CHOICE YOU WILL BE TORMENTED IN HELL, isn’t ‘free will’. This is a false teaching. It is a teaching that is used to just control someone and basically keep them in that church based on fear.
People tend to forget that according to the bible, Christ came to save everyone from sin(1 Tim 2:6). Adam failed and someone like Adam had to come, in order to balance the scale, which was Christ. The Old Testament and all its laws and regulations were taken care of with Christ. Christ came to save and not condemn and people need to remember that or learn that, because if they did, our world today would have more people trying to save and do good deeds then the “damning and your going to hell if you don’t do this” type of thinking, which pushes people away.
The New Testament bares witness to the Fruit of the Spirit and talks more about compassion, forgiveness, loving your neighbor, etc. Those that tend to state they are followers of Christ don’t usually demonstrate any of these qualities. They are more on the judgemental side, or the Old Testament side.
Now, again, I also state this: the new testament was written by men in the flesh, and it is based on their perceptions and their interpretations and their translations.
