actually, according to those two articles, the pope actually never said ” go to weekly confession”, nor did he say “do not watch any sports on sunday ever”. i’d say all within reason and personal conscience…
I don’t watch sports on Sundays anyway, so it doesn’t really matter to me.
What I got out of the articles was not an “Official You Must Do This To Be Catholic” but a call to keep in mind the value and benefits of the sacrament of confession, particulalry frequent confession, and to keep in mind we are to keep Holy the Sabbath.
I think I get what the Pope was trying to say. I’ve made this mistake with my Sundays, and I’m going to stop.
A good example: Last Sunday night, I went to the movies. In fact, I went to see a scary movie, with zombies in it. And the Lord has been allowing my imagination to punish me for it ever since. 🙂
Seriously, though, my choice of entertainment took all the “holy” out of Sunday night. I spent it trying not to think about zombies. (And I’m 27, for goodness’ sake! You’d think I was Hambet’s age, since I’m having a different version of his “ghost and dinosaur” situation. Sheesh.)
From now on, my Sunday entertainment will conform to the day, and my overall entertainment will conform with my faith. No more scary movies!
OT-was is Day of the Dead?
Dawn of the Dead — the new remake. I’ve been having nightmares ever since about my loved ones turning into zombies. Ugh. I know I have an over-active imagination. I don’t know why I do this to myself.
All the Holy Father is saying is that sports should not dominate. There is not even a hint on a ban or even a call to abandon all sports altogether. However, this comment: Lapchick had harsh words in reply. If the Catholic church did place a ban on Sunday sports, he thinks the church would lose congregants. “Sports is a religion in this country and a lot of the world,” he said.
shows very well the ill that the Holy Father is trying to address. If sports is a religion, then it certainly must be fought against. However, the battle is not against sports but against giving them an excessive amount of attention.
The way I read the article isn’t “don’t watch sports on Sunday” but “don’t make Sunday sports more important than Mass, family, and other better things.”
Skipping Mass to watch football, bad. Watching football with the family, interacting and talking, can be good.
Oops, “Dawn” of the Dead. Yes, that was the one I meant. I saw the previews and it freaked me out slightly. Now I am someone who is a die hard Buffy and Angel fan so it is not that I am an anti-horror genre type, but much of the imagery in many horror movies of late has been very disturbing to me. A couple of movies I saw in the past year were The Ring,Fear Dot Com and The Jeepers Creepers movies. The stories were simple,stupid and typical horror dribble, but the images aside from gratuitous violence were just creepy enough to make me very uncomfortable to look at. Lots of stuff with decaying bodies, body parts stitched together and other really weird/creepy stuff.
That’s really irresponsible reporting if the Pope didn’t say “no ‘secular’ diversions” on Sunday — and I rather doubt he did, but I guess I’d better go find a more faithful source for what he did say.
Although I must admit resuming the activity I’d given up for Lenten penance — listening to secular music — on Sunday just seemed really out of place.
irresponsible reporting indeed.
i understand our holy father; nothing chaps my hide like seeing kids in soccer cleats and knee pads clunking up to receive the Body and Blood. i mean, really.
Around here, Sunday sports practices are a Catechist’s worst nightmare. Smockmomma, I understand what you mean, but at least the parents of those kids are making sure they get to church… I know parents who, if it’s (insert sport here) season, don’t make their kids go to church or CCD at all. Though I think the soccer cleats at the very least could be left in the car. If a kid owns soccer cleats, surely they own another pair of shoes too.
I don’t understand how sports could get in the way of attending Mass in most areas, even if parents wrongly believed that a scheduled team soccer game was an acceptable reason to miss Mass. Are there that many places where there’s just one church or all the churches have all their Masses in a short time frame? What about the Vigil Mass? I don’t know how much time these events usually take but it’s hard to believe if the Masses run from 7:30 to noon, say, that they couldn’t make one, and then there’s the 5 p.m.ish Masses a lot of places have.
even if parents wrongly believed that a scheduled team soccer game was an acceptable reason to miss Mass.
Okay, at least I think they’d be wrong to believe that, but sometimes Catholicism is surprisingly accommodating — I can’t see how it’d be okay to sign up for a team that misses Mass regularly throughout the season, though… I just don’t want to declare rules I’m not sure exist.
The second article is pretty misleading. The actual text of the Holy Father’s speech is at: http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/john_paul_ii/speeches/2004/march/documents/hf_jp-ii_spe_20040326_ad-limina-australia_en.html
The passage in question actually reads:
Any weakening in the Sunday observance of Holy Mass weakens Christian discipleship and dims the light of witness to Christ’s presence in our world. When Sunday loses its fundamental meaning and becomes subordinate to a secular concept of “weekend” dominated by such things as entertainment and sport, people stay locked within a horizon so narrow that they can no longer see the heavens (cf. Dies Domini, 4). Rather than being truly satisfied or revitalized, they remain entrapped in a senseless pursuit of the novel and deprived of the perennial freshness of Christ’s “living water” (Jn 4:11). Though the secularization of the Lord’s day understandably causes you much worry you can, however, draw comfort from the faithfulness of the Lord himself who continues to beckon his people with a love which challenges and calls (cf. Ecclesia in Oceania, 3). In urging the dear faithful of Australia – and in a special way the young people – to remain faithful to the celebration of Sunday Mass, I make my own the words found in the Letter to the Hebrews: “hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, … not neglecting to meet together … but encouraging one another” (Heb 10:23-25).
Very misleading, has all have noted. If sports have become the new religion it is telling that in the Middle Ages we built marvelous cathedrals while now we build marvelous sports stadiums.
actually, according to those two articles, the pope actually never said ” go to weekly confession”, nor did he say “do not watch any sports on sunday ever”. i’d say all within reason and personal conscience…
I don’t watch sports on Sundays anyway, so it doesn’t really matter to me.
What I got out of the articles was not an “Official You Must Do This To Be Catholic” but a call to keep in mind the value and benefits of the sacrament of confession, particulalry frequent confession, and to keep in mind we are to keep Holy the Sabbath.
I think I get what the Pope was trying to say. I’ve made this mistake with my Sundays, and I’m going to stop.
A good example: Last Sunday night, I went to the movies. In fact, I went to see a scary movie, with zombies in it. And the Lord has been allowing my imagination to punish me for it ever since. 🙂
Seriously, though, my choice of entertainment took all the “holy” out of Sunday night. I spent it trying not to think about zombies. (And I’m 27, for goodness’ sake! You’d think I was Hambet’s age, since I’m having a different version of his “ghost and dinosaur” situation. Sheesh.)
From now on, my Sunday entertainment will conform to the day, and my overall entertainment will conform with my faith. No more scary movies!
OT-was is Day of the Dead?
Dawn of the Dead — the new remake. I’ve been having nightmares ever since about my loved ones turning into zombies. Ugh. I know I have an over-active imagination. I don’t know why I do this to myself.
All the Holy Father is saying is that sports should not dominate. There is not even a hint on a ban or even a call to abandon all sports altogether. However, this comment:
Lapchick had harsh words in reply. If the Catholic church did place a ban on Sunday sports, he thinks the church would lose congregants. “Sports is a religion in this country and a lot of the world,” he said.
shows very well the ill that the Holy Father is trying to address. If sports is a religion, then it certainly must be fought against. However, the battle is not against sports but against giving them an excessive amount of attention.
The way I read the article isn’t “don’t watch sports on Sunday” but “don’t make Sunday sports more important than Mass, family, and other better things.”
Skipping Mass to watch football, bad. Watching football with the family, interacting and talking, can be good.
Oops, “Dawn” of the Dead. Yes, that was the one I meant. I saw the previews and it freaked me out slightly. Now I am someone who is a die hard Buffy and Angel fan so it is not that I am an anti-horror genre type, but much of the imagery in many horror movies of late has been very disturbing to me. A couple of movies I saw in the past year were The Ring,Fear Dot Com and The Jeepers Creepers movies. The stories were simple,stupid and typical horror dribble, but the images aside from gratuitous violence were just creepy enough to make me very uncomfortable to look at. Lots of stuff with decaying bodies, body parts stitched together and other really weird/creepy stuff.
That’s really irresponsible reporting if the Pope didn’t say “no ‘secular’ diversions” on Sunday — and I rather doubt he did, but I guess I’d better go find a more faithful source for what he did say.
Although I must admit resuming the activity I’d given up for Lenten penance — listening to secular music — on Sunday just seemed really out of place.
irresponsible reporting indeed.
i understand our holy father; nothing chaps my hide like seeing kids in soccer cleats and knee pads clunking up to receive the Body and Blood. i mean, really.
Around here, Sunday sports practices are a Catechist’s worst nightmare. Smockmomma, I understand what you mean, but at least the parents of those kids are making sure they get to church… I know parents who, if it’s (insert sport here) season, don’t make their kids go to church or CCD at all. Though I think the soccer cleats at the very least could be left in the car. If a kid owns soccer cleats, surely they own another pair of shoes too.
I don’t understand how sports could get in the way of attending Mass in most areas, even if parents wrongly believed that a scheduled team soccer game was an acceptable reason to miss Mass. Are there that many places where there’s just one church or all the churches have all their Masses in a short time frame? What about the Vigil Mass? I don’t know how much time these events usually take but it’s hard to believe if the Masses run from 7:30 to noon, say, that they couldn’t make one, and then there’s the 5 p.m.ish Masses a lot of places have.
even if parents wrongly believed that a scheduled team soccer game was an acceptable reason to miss Mass.
Okay, at least I think they’d be wrong to believe that, but sometimes Catholicism is surprisingly accommodating — I can’t see how it’d be okay to sign up for a team that misses Mass regularly throughout the season, though… I just don’t want to declare rules I’m not sure exist.
The second article is pretty misleading. The actual text of the Holy Father’s speech is at:
http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/john_paul_ii/speeches/2004/march/documents/hf_jp-ii_spe_20040326_ad-limina-australia_en.html
The passage in question actually reads:
Any weakening in the Sunday observance of Holy Mass weakens Christian discipleship and dims the light of witness to Christ’s presence in our world. When Sunday loses its fundamental meaning and becomes subordinate to a secular concept of “weekend” dominated by such things as entertainment and sport, people stay locked within a horizon so narrow that they can no longer see the heavens (cf. Dies Domini, 4). Rather than being truly satisfied or revitalized, they remain entrapped in a senseless pursuit of the novel and deprived of the perennial freshness of Christ’s “living water” (Jn 4:11). Though the secularization of the Lord’s day understandably causes you much worry you can, however, draw comfort from the faithfulness of the Lord himself who continues to beckon his people with a love which challenges and calls (cf. Ecclesia in Oceania, 3). In urging the dear faithful of Australia – and in a special way the young people – to remain faithful to the celebration of Sunday Mass, I make my own the words found in the Letter to the Hebrews: “hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, … not neglecting to meet together … but encouraging one another” (Heb 10:23-25).
Very misleading, has all have noted. If sports have become the new religion it is telling that in the Middle Ages we built marvelous cathedrals while now we build marvelous sports stadiums.
ditto tso’s comment — bigtime!