April 21, 2006

Confessions of Baptist
Farlas

Well, to start completely out of order here... The sudden interest in St. Basil comes from a recent visit to a catholic school and suppressed laughter. No offence intended for my dear Catholic friends here, but um... as far I knew up til that point, Basil was an herb, not a saint. So to randomly see a statue dedicated to a guy named after an herb just aroused my curiosity as to what he did, and made me wonder if he is the one the herb was named after, or if it was named after him. *shrugs* Such is my sudden interest.

But of course, my thought comes in looong and often weird trains, so next I wanted to know more about saints in general. Being a Baptist, I'm not taught much about Catholic saints, so I want to know. No real deep, religious interest. More like a random spark of curiosity. Sorry! No conversions today!

So, to sum it all up, dead Catholics that the Church thought did some nifty are given the name Saint _____ as an honorary title? I am guessing they are also given a little more sway amongst the masses in heaven (according to your beliefs at any rate) and that's why you pray to them?

Oh, and about the rich man's brother: I do believe that the damned man saw Lazurus in Abraham's bossom, but I don't think he saw his brother. The Bible does not say he saw his brother. Why did he ask for Lazurus to go see his brother then? Because he knew his brother before he died, and knew what sort of fellow he was. That seems pretty obvious to me.

And I'm not going back into a debate about Mary!

Annatar, how in the world can Evolution and Genesis coincide??? Oooh! Are you one of those Day-Age theorists?

Sure Noah's flood was local! All the continents were still shoved together, and the mountains weren't formed yet because they formed as the continents drifted! And have you thought about how large the ark was? If he took two of every animal, a few extra sheep and so forth, there would be room for all them, his family, and some more. And as far as feeding and all that goes, I personally think God put them all into hibernation of sorts. God is a God of miracles. I firmly believe He could and did do that.

Everett, what Bible are you reading?!? It says he named all the animals and wished he had some help in tending the garden and caring for the animals.

Oh, and is Pope John Paul the Great the one that just died? I know he was John Paul the Third, but any other titles I would be ignorant of.

*reads your reply to Annatar* You all believe some intersting stuff.

Hey! I learned catechisms in kindergarten. But they were more like New England Primer catechisms. Pretty generic stuff like "God made man in his image." Once you get older they narrow it down to finer religious point by making you memorize the Baptist Distinctives. Which, at that point, is every core belief you have in an acrostic.

That is incredibly foreign to think that a council, a couple hundred years ago, dictates what pepole think.

Being Baptist, we have nothing like that. We are quite an unorganized religion that way I suppose. No pope like figure telling us what to do, say, think, preach, etc. Your church is so dead opposite end of the spectrum that it boggles my mind.

I've had this question for a while, and since I'm making the great inquiry here, might as well throw this out: Is Martin Luther some tabooed guy according to the Catholic church? I mean, is he viewed as some wicked revolutionary sort, or like a wayward child? I know at the time he wasn't exactely loved...

Anyway, I've rambled on now entirely too long. Well, okay, it doesn't look that long right now, but you have no idea how many HUGE paragrpahs I cut out because I was being redunat, ridiculous, or just plain weird.

-Farlas Rambelina