3DOP

Okay. Well said. You are right. I have been wrong. My mind is changed. It was a ridiculous looking mascot.

So Wagner ended up having around ten good years with the Cleveland Indians. 25 homers a year. Maybe a little less. But certainly more than 200 home runs. A nice career. I bring that up to scrape the scab that was bleeding somewhere else about name changing. We talked about this Bombay change. So...let's talk about the blankety Guardians who were once supposedly so offensive to Native Americans. Why were American Indians so upset about a baseball team, but everybody is okay with the state of Indiana and its capital, Indianapolis? I propose that we exclude this state from the Union until they drop their racism. Guardianapolis, Guardiana should be acceptable to all sensitivities. I am an old man who remembers Sammy Davis Jr. making jokes about his race with good nature in an era when there was certainly more anti black racism. Now the racism, ageism, and sexism is turned on me. White Boy Boomers are the worst. I sat with the only black kid in our high school at basketball games. But I am a bigot and object of hate because of my age, sex, and race? So just kill me you young people of righteous virtue. Good bye. Sorry for the ranting stream of consciousness...kind of...this is how it feels to be hated...online.

Calm, hi. Don't feel bad about your brain drain. I can't remember things from recent days. But I can't forget my old baseball cards from the 60's! My son must know I like to show off my unforgetfulness of the past. He asked me about Leon Wagner the other day. I gave him the history of how the Giants needed to clear out a young outfield full of phenoms, including Wagner, and two Alou brothers, to make space for Willie Mays, Orlanda Cepeda and Willie McCovey to play every day. My GP, who also can talk old baseball, (which means he must be a good doctor), has a word for our phenomenon, but I have forgotten the word! But anyway, it isn't dementia, (if I remember correctly). Take care calm, 3DOP

So I have been waiting for more LDS input. I thought Ostler was too "classical" for most LDS. Calm, you will remember our friend David Waltz. I just now left a message on his phone. He has a library of LDS books like probably few LDS and no other non-LDS in the world. Ostler is the only recommendation? He is the last word? Surely he is not the only word? Anyway, I will report back if I find out there is any other LDS book that talks about God as an exalted man.

Hi MustardSeed. I apologize for my rant about new words and names of places. It distracted from the discussion and I am sorry if it seemed directed at you personally.

I found out Friday night that the young have changed the name of Bombay, India. I don't need to say the new name. I guess I dislike all the name changes and new vocabularies needed to communicate with the young. But whatever. Enjoy your new schedule and your new words. Sorry that our words (and schedule?) don't work for you.

I know I am giving myself away as old and out of touch. Is it good, or bad, or something else, to be "gobsmacked", according to the current lexicon among our young people?

Best to you too, Navidad. God brings good out of bad, out of weakness. I hope you and Mrs. Navi the best. God knows what that is for each individually. Its a tough life for most. Keep on. We are getting towards the end. Keep on. We still have maybe greater strength than ever we have known, when we are frail in body. God love you and Mrs. Navidad.

In terms of the life of the Church, not at all! Less than two millenia. I tried to emphasize that dreadful settings, necessarily endured with our Lord are wonderful. You might have missed my edit? The importance has to do with necessity. When it became unnecessary to celebrate our faith in ancient tombs, it seemed to be inoffensive and even pleasing to God if we should celebrate in a more congenial atmosphere. I am saying that it might be good if none of God's people assume that a particular of worship, imposed by particular circumstances should be thought to be normative for all times and places. I was giving an approval, for what my approval is worth, if the Latter-day Saints are being led towards a worship space that welcomed a more visual experience of God as well as the auditory. I am not forgetting that "faith that cometh by hearing". But I am thinking that all of our senses can come into play in our worship. PS: I see you changed your mind about posting. That's fair. I did not take your remark in an adversarial way. I hope that my reply clarifies my thoughts in a way that you and our LDS friends find to be reasonable.

Maybe my church's best days were underground (the catacombs of Rome). Today we can still see the primitive images of biblical stories painted on the walls. Thank God for our fathers and their best efforts under their circumstances. But when we could freely come out, it would have been unreasonable for my fathers to argue for continuing to worship in a truly dreadful and undesirable setting. Skeletons and skulls in the dark with a candle and Jesus where we gather, can be wonderful when persecuted. But when we can, the truths of the faith of the catacombs has inspired beautiful human art and architecture which in a different culture is an aid to worship too. Thank God for my later fathers who recognized that the Church adapts to every circumstance, and especially with our best efforts to honor and glorify the One that we worship.

I was thinking about Dario today! People come and go. It seems like many have gone. I thought you might be one of those, Dario. Anyway Dario, what is on your mind?

Navidad, For what it is worth, LDS who are familiar with Ostler have seemed to me, in my limited experience, to be much more understanding and less dismissive about my belief in an unchanging God.

Thanks Tony. I will be praying for you as well. Teddy hi. Do you recommend the same calisthenics every day? Is your six day the same every day? I don't know if my knees could handle deep squats. I know you are not a therapist, and I'll do more research, but would you recommend going down as far as my knees permit, or would some other substitute accomplish the same thing? Thanks

I have a friend about my age, 70, who happily mentioned that he broke a personal record on "the elliptical", (whatever that is) of burning over 600 calories in either a half hour or an hour. When it isn't religion or sports, we talk fitness. I retired over a year ago and have put on weight. I have started walking, and like Teddy, my friend says that we need more. I don't think it is realistic to do an elliptical. I just want to see my grandkids grow up, and not die early because I have abused the Lord's temple. I have returned one notch on my belt. I have a way to go and we can do it. I am only walking regularly and fasting one or two days a week. I count mowing my overgrown big lawn as a walking day too. I am looking for some reasonable way to start with the goal of feeling like Teddy and my friend do...after 70. I know God gave us bodies that endure a lot of mistreatment, and have amazing recuperative responses as well. I think I need to add some form of resistance training like Teddy said. Let us begin by being encouraged. Not waiting, figuring out the right way to start to add what's needed to what we are already doing. I don't recommend the 36 hour Friday or Wednesday fasts that I try to practice, unless you know how to break that long fast. But the benefit is great. I chose those days as a Catholic because they have become a custom over the centuries, as it corresponds with the betrayal of our Lord on Wednesday and His Passion on Friday. We can offer up our fasts to the Lord as a spiritual penance as well as pleasing Him with taking regard for "our body" which he gives to us as "His temple" to glorify Him. But Catholics should not fast unless we feast! After 1st Vespers for Sunday around five, Saturday evening, we can enjoy a special beverage, and on Sunday as well, with our best healthy feast of the week. With a freely chosen resolution, we can rejoice in every waking hour of the next week as we do our physical and spiritual exercises, which support each other. We are encouraged by our knowledge that if we keep our resolutions until the Vigil on Saturday, we will rejoice more than ever as we restfully enjoy the Sunday feast, the Day of the Lord. The above is my ideal. I don't always make it. Pray for me, Tony. We can help each other! God bless. Rory

Excellent webbles! Thanks.

I have already replied to the first paragraph, and leave it now for context. Maybe someone else that is LDS might want to try to answer the second paragraph for BlipBlap? The Catholics here have obviously gotten off on the wrong foot with this person. Maybe she/he would listen if it was explained by a non-Catholic at least, or better, a Latter-day Saint. I might suggest that you look up the meaning of consubstantial according to Catholic theology. Then go to the Vatican web page for the Council of Chalcedon and find what it says about who Jesus is consubstantial with. Combine that with what Catholics mean by the hypostatic union and there is our answer. It doesn't prove anything against the LDS position. It just shows that we are consistent with our own beliefs, contrary to what BlipBlap wants to think. No obligations obviously! I have never seen anything like this around here. In a way it has been fun, but it also brings out the worst in me. I waited almost a week before an earlier post to BlipBlap because my opinion of her/him was so negative that I could feel some malice stirring. But now it is just getting distasteful. Pray for me. I have to love everybody here. I may have mentioned this before. But one of my favorite quotes from our last Council is paraphrased "Through His Incarnation, Christ has, in a certain sense, united Himself with every man." Pray that I may be true to that belief. I will reply later if anyone else expresses curiosity about anything she/he has raised. But I will consider myself relieved from any further fruitless interaction with BlipBlap, for the sake of my own soul. I am sorry BlipBlap. I should have more love and patience. I truly wish you every grace and heavenly blessing in this world and in the next. I do. God make us be friends in heaven. God love you. Rory McKenzie

At our parish, we try to have adoration of the Blessed Sacrament 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. This means that someone volunteers to keep our Savior company as He shows Himself in His chapel under the appearance of consecrated bread for each of the 168 hours of every week. I think most of us do it once a week. That is what I do. My hour is 3:00 every Wednesday morning. It seems like the least I can do as a retired guy who can grab a nap any time almost every day. One main idea behind this practice is to remember how it seemed like Jesus desired fellow company with some of His Apostles during His agony in the Garden. The Heart of Jesus is unfathomable. He doesn't need us...and yet He expresses these desires for us. Before the Last Supper, wherein Catholics believe that Christ celebrates the first Mass He says, "With desire I have desired..." What? I guess that means He wants to do this thing with an intensity that we might find hard to relate to? "...to eat this Passover with you before I suffer." (Luke 22:15) This is why the Mass is also named the Paschal (Passover) Mystery. The time went so quickly this morning. I could not get over the idea of God who creates out of nothing is about six feet away, out in the open, easy to see. The same eternal God has been waiting for me this morning in this humble manner, so unimposing? There is a natural doubt that man can attain to a union with a Being so far above us. I understand the appeal of God being a man. But I also understand the appeal of God being infinitely more. The Incarnation of Christ gives us both. One author puts it this way speaking of Christ assuming our nature: "...it strengthens our hope all the more since it brings the excellence of our nature home to our consciousness, and shows us that we, elevated as we are above all creatures, can and ought to achieve perfect happiness in closest union with God." ---The Mysteries of Christianity, Matthias Scheeben, B. Herder Book Co., St. Louis, MO (1947), p.417 Sometimes my differences of opinion with my LDS friends can make me ponder delightful beliefs, as happened this morning in pondering over again some of the beliefs that we agree upon and those we don't. At the end of my hour, I was thinking about how different it might be if mfb were here. I might be frustrated, but I miss him very much. I hope Mark is okay. He made me think so much harder than I ever would have without his opposition to my transcendent God. I would be happy if he could poke his head in here, and offer his misgivings...and then I would probably get angry! Heh. May the good Lord bless our absent, but well remembered friend/adversary Mark Bukowski, and may God draw him to his His loving heart, even if God created ex nihilo. Yeah, I know Mark, it doesn't make sense unless God has a heart. (I am speak anthropomorphically. Of course. That is the only way we know how to express ourselves, and that is why God speaks to us that way too, Mark!) Sorry for taking the last word, my friend. I know you would have more to say.

Okay. Much appreciated.

God existed eternally, unlike Creation, which marks the beginning of time. God is One, but God is also Three, in a different sense. God would not be the only one. There would be two others Persons who have the same divine nature as the Father. If God is omnipresent, there is nothing that can surround God for Him to be inside of. This would go back to what was said above about "Him who the worlds could not contain, was contained in the womb of the Blessed Virgin." As man, the person of Christ was contained. As God, the Person of Christ, made Mary the Mother of a Person who was unbounded Existence, God. I understand you saying "Hmmmm". How? Why? Why is there something instead of nothing? The fact of existence is an amazing mystery. Maybe an eternal God has something to do with it? I apologize for saying this poorly. Of course you are welcome to explain a different understanding of why there is anything. Like, why would matter exist before God made it? Maybe we should worship matter if God depends on it or else He wouldn't exist? Hmmmmm. You very much agree that the Father won't mind if we overestimate what He is. I am not infallible. I am not even a philosopher. I believe the most that I can possibly believe about God. There is a passage in the Psalms where the Israelites were chided for doubting that God could provide for them in the wilderness, and it seems like He was insulted (anthropomorphically speaking). With God all things are possible, or maybe not ALL things? Why must we doubt that God could create matter out of nothing? Why Is that flawed speculation for the presence of matter? Why do we have to believe that nobody made matter? It strikes me as impersonal and without purpose. Does that make any sense? What if God can make matter out of nothing? Maybe it would be an insult (anthropomorphically speaking)? The universe is already a mind blowing place anyway. Why limit God? For religious reasons, I instinctively want two P's. #1) A Person, #2) A Purpose. I can't worship in a universe that doesn't begin with at least a Person and a Purpose. Creation ex nihilo has provided that. I can't go back on that without losing my religion. So I am biased. Maybe I am not objective. If it is about the problem of evil, God will exonerate Himself or not someday. I am not worried about that. I believe we will all see that God brings good out of evil. What is evil? It is a defect of what is good. It is a cleft palate. It is immorality and strife with neighbors and selfishness. But all of these evils involve good natures. They are negatives. Evil is not positive. It isn't a thing, but the lack of a thing. Evil is in a sense, less than nothing, a negative, a corruption of the good, and God intends to bring good out of that! How much more then should it be possible that we should believe that God can bring good (matter for instance), out of pure neutrality, mere nothingness? Nothingness is so much better than evil! Maybe I should just erase this whole thing calm? I know you will be nice though even if it seems ridiculous to you. I don't know what else to say right now. God bless, Rory

Well BlipBlap. I am afraid that I can hardly agree with anything you have been saying. (there IS one thing I almost agree with in the paragraph I quote above, except that you think it is some kind of an argument against my position). The problem is that it seems like you have little understanding of what we believe. Let me respectfully try to explain. 1) Your first clause above is about the belief that God is not a man. Do you think that for 1,700 years we "Niceans" haven't given any thought to what it means for a material creature to be made in God's image? When asked whether it was lawful to render tribute to Caesar, Jesus asked for a coin. Then he asked them whose image was on the coin, and the answer of course, was Caesar. The point I am making is that the coin was made in Caesar's image. Does that mean that Caesar is a coin? Given that there are Scriptures where God says He is not a man, (you can look them up BlipBlap) we think that just as we believe that Caesar is not a coin, we have reason to believe that God is not necessarily human. Catholic Niceans teach that only the Son is the perfect image of the Father. We privileged creatures, made out of matter, are however also made, to a lesser degree than God's only begotten Son, in God's image, imperfectly. Still, what a magnificent dignity has been bestowed upon every human being! It comes with a weighty responsibility though. Unlike the rest of the material creation, we are free. In God's wisdom and love He has made us alone able to exercise freedom of the will. Every other material creature obeys the law of its nature. Every mineral, vegetable, and animal in material creation "obeys" the law of its own given nature, giving glory to its Creator. It is given to man alone to use his reason to discern the physical actions and mental exercises that befit what we are, created children of the Almighty God of heaven and earth. We use God's image in us reasonably to His glory, and our beatification. But we are capable of misuse too. 2) Next, you make an assertion that is easily refuted when you say that when the Son becomes man, it means that God changed. No, He who thought it not robbery to be equal with God, condescended to take on Himself the nature of a servant, and for our sakes became man. That does not mean he stopped being God! The divine nature of the Son was neither enhanced nor diminished when he assumed human form in the womb of the Blessed Virgin Mary. He was still the unchanging God! It doesn't seem like you are familiar with the way Catholics, at least, see and understand the marvel of the Incarnation. During Advent, just before Christmas, the Church reminds us of the stupendous and sublime inference of the Incarnation of the Son. We are asked to remember that "He who the worlds could not contain was contained within the womb of His Blessed Mother". Just ponder that! As a man, Jesus lived in His mother's belly like any other human child. But He was still God, no change at all! We like it a lot. It is wonderful. It prefigures the Holy Eucharist when we take God into our own flesh, and He really lives in us body and blood, soul and divinity. (what about His Mother who carries Him for NINE MONTHS?) He Who gives us Himself as our food? It is not so we will assimilate Him, like what happens when we have a piece of toast in the morning. Rather, he assimilates us! He doesn't change. We become more and more and more made in the likeness of His perfect image of the Father, so often as we can lawfully receive Him in Holy Communion! 3) I am running out of time today. I'll try to be quick, on what we somewhat agree about. You say that the way we understand the Incarnation would mean that the Son of God is created. We almost agree.. The Son of Man IS created. The 2nd Person of the Blessed Trinity, who becomes man, is and always will be God, uncreated. Regarding the manhood of Christ, we affirm the Scripture where it revealed that the Son is "the firstborn among many creatures". (Not chronologically, but in excellence and dignity) And yeah, the body was created when Mary, the New Eve, agreed to be Mother of God: "Behold the handmaid of the Lord, be it done unto me according to thy word." The faith is so beautiful. It is beyond suitable description. One should only laugh, or cry, (or both!) with tears or shouts of joy at the wonderful truths we say we believe. I think next up is the hypostatic union. You mention that later on. But its meaning is important here too, especially with the third clause we have discussed. God bless you BlipBlap. I hope this helps.

Maybe so InCognitis. I don't claim that my position is without any problems to be solved.

Hi calm. I don't want to reduce anything to total understanding. We have mystery. So do you. The main thing I was saying is that BlipBlap was presenting a syllogism that was based on a faulty presupposition that nobody pretends to defend...a complete strawman.

Hi calm. Ex nihilo literally means "ex" out, as in going out of Egypt. Exodus. Nihilo means literaly..."nothing". We profess and believe that God created the world, without any antecedent matter, or spirit, "out" of nothing. No greater accomplishment is conceivable. That is our faith. It doesn't seem like a loving Father should be too upset with us for overestimating His powers...if we have done so. Does that make any sense? We approach these ideas from vastly different paradigms. God love you. 3DOP

So good to see you Jesse. Happy 20th Sunday in Ordinary time, and 12th after Pentecost. We probably won't meet in this life. But we are sure we will if neither of us falters. God save us both.

No BlipBlap. That does not follow because we reject the absolute materialist precept that if there was a God, God's mind would be material. Your argument begins with a false supposition. Even our minds are immaterial. Unlike God, we cannot make matter with a word. But like God, our thoughts and words are immaterial. They don't have physical properties. Our rational faculty is unique in creation. Our ability, like God, to entertain immaterial ideas and concepts are Godlike faculties. Thus, we are made in His image, unlike the irrational creation. That is why we, unlike the irrational creation possess the potential by God's grace to partake of His very nature through His Son who is now like us, an amalgam of matter and spirit, the God-Man. What wonderful good news to learn what can become of us! We cannot help what materialists believe. But we must insist that materialists grant us our own presuppositions if they are trying to disprove our beliefs.