Personal interpration of the Bible

The following is an excerpt from the Catholic Answer Bible:

"Catholics view the Bible, the Church, and sacred Tradition as completely harmonious pieces of a whole. Catholics have always believed that sacred Scripture is God's inspired, infallible, inerrant written word and revelation. The Bible is central and primary in Catholicism, but not exclusively authoritative - it is never in opposition to the magisterium (i.e., the teaching authority of the Church). We maintain that this is the apostolic and patristic viewpoint. The Bible itself points to Tradition and the Church as authoritative; it doesn't teach that it alone is the Christian's sole ultimate authority, or self-interpreting. The Catholic Church believes that Bible reading is very important for every Christian and approved translations of the Bible into many languages long before the sixteenth century. What the Church opposes is an individualism in biblical interpretation that would reject doctrines that the Catholic Church has always held through history. [I would reject any doctrine that does not stand up for life within the womb, the body and blood of Christ present in Communion, etc.] St. Augustine well sums up the Catholic position: "In regard to those observances... which derive not from Scripture but from Tradition, we are given to understand that they are recommended and ordained to be kept, either by the apostles themselves or by plenary councils, the authority of which is quite vital in the Church.""

The Catholic church is the universal and first Christian church. The Bible is a catholic book, written by the first Christians.

Cousins

Joe and Haylee Carrell, you are both wonderful people and are great examples to the younger cousins. You are very blessed to have each other! I can't believe you will be nine years old this year.

Intercession

When I pray for other people, I am certainly interceding on their behalf to God. So, when I ask Mary in heaven to pray for me to our Lord, I am asking the woman who gave birth to Jesus Christ to intercede on my behalf. Why is this so controversial? Maybe people think I am worshipping her? It is clear that I am obliged as a christian to worship only God.

The following excerpt is from the Catholic Answer Bible.

"Why do we as catholics venerate Mary and the Saints?

We honor the saints in heaven because they have more perfectly attained God's likeness (2 Cor 3:18). "

2 Corinthians 3:18 states, "All of us, gazing with unveiled face on the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, as from the Lord who is the Spirit."

It is interpreted;
"Another application of the veil image. All of us... with unveiled face: Christians (Israelites from whom the veil has been removed) are like Moses, standing in God's presence, beholding and reflecting his glory. Gazing: the verb may also be translated "contemplating as in a mirror"; 4, 6 would suggest that the mirror is Christ himself. Are being transformed: elsewhere Paul speaks of transformation, conformity to Jesus, God's image, as a reality of the end time, and even v. 12 speaks of the glory as an object of hope. But the life-giving Spirit, the distinctive gift of the new covenant, is already present in the community (cf 1, 22, the "first installment"), and the process of transformation has already begun. Into the same image: into the image of God, which is Christ (4, 4)."

Kate and Justin with Mia

Life

I think the following scripture supports my belief that preborn children ought to be honored just as born children are. That they have their soul from the moment of conception. It makes sense scientifically (when the sperm meets the egg), from that moment on, a human being is growing and developing. A whole new life begins; if nothing happens to disrupt this development (miscarriage, interference by abortifacient birth control, abortion, IVF, etc.), then this life will undeniably grow within and eventually leave his mothers womb and live amongst us:

"Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I dedicated you, a prophet to the nations I appointed you." (Jer 1:5)

"He will be filled with the holy Spirit even from his mother's womb." (Luke 1:15)

"Did not he who made me in the womb make him? Did not the same One fashion us before our birth?" (Job 31:15)

"You formed my inmost being; you knit me in my mother's womb." (Psalm 139:13-14)

"Thus says the Lord who made you, your help, who formed you from the womb..." (Isaiah 44:2)

"But when [God], who from my mother's womb had set me apart and called me through his grace, was pleased to reveal his Son to me, so that I might proclaim him to the Gentiles..." (Galatians 1:15-16)

Marriage

"Be subordinate to one another out of reverence for Christ. Wives should be subordinate to their husbands as to the Lord. For the husband is head of his wife just as Christ is head of the church, he himself the saviour of the body. As the church is subordinate to Christ, so wives should be subordinate to their husbands in everything. Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ loved the church and handed himself over for her to sanctify her, cleansing her by the bath of water with the word, that he might present to himself the church in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish. So [also] husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. For no one hates his own flesh but rather nourishes and cherishes it, even as Christ does the church, because we are members of his body.
"For this reason a man shall leave [his] father and [his] mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh."
This is a great mystery, but I speak in reference to Christ and the church. In any case, each one of you should love his wife as himself, and the wife should respect her husband." (Ephesians 5:21-32)

John 1:1-5

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came to be through him, and without him nothing came to be. What came to be through him was life, and this life was the light of the human race; the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.