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My dad is a Catholic and a Notre Dame alumnus. When I asked him his opinion on the Obama visit he replied that it was common for Notre Dame to ask the president to commencement addresses and he really didn't care.

Then he told me the Notre Dame visit is nothing when compared to Obama and Congress spending this country into oblivion where his grandchildren and yet to be born great grandchildren will have to pay for it.

Naturally others do have strong opinions regarding this visit and plan to protest, as they have the right to do.

It sounds like the usually eloquent Mr. Obama put clumsily what many parents, would wish for their children i.e. If your daughter messes up you don't wish them to have to pay the penalty of having a baby before she is ready. This was a statement about contraception, not about abortion btw (before we get off on that).

It's up to the faculty of ND who they invite to speak and don't. Having invited the President it would look weak and be rude to uninvite him.

I thought Mary was the mother of Jesus, not God.

As for Obama speaking at the Notre Dame commencement, it is up to the university whom they invite or don't invite. And I highly doubt the subject of abortion would come up. If it does, then he truly is dumber than Bush.

Psssst. And by the way, not all students who attend Notre Dame are catholic. :)

But Notre Dame is traditionally a Catholic school, and operates on Catholic prinicples.

Still, the LTE writer's assertion that the President should respect the wishes of Catholics should have a qualifier: SOME Catholics. Not all Catholics oppose the President speaking at ND.

President Obama has free speech rights like everyone else. He's not going there to talk about abortion--but to give words of wisdom to graduates.

So the pro life nuts need to just shut up and let the President honor these students and not deprive them of the opportunity of a lifetime over political squabbling.

BTW firerescuechick. You are quite right, Mary is the mother of Christ, not God. But too many Christians I know treat Christ as if he were God Himself, and forget all about God and why He sent His Son among us.

Who cares?

"So the pro life nuts need to just shut up and let the President honor these students and not deprive them of the opportunity of a lifetime over political squabbling."

The lefty goofballs just need to shut up when people like Tom Tancredo and Vigil Goode are invited to speak at places like UNC.

"Mary is the mother of Christ, not God. But too many Christians I know treat Christ as if he were God Himself, and forget all about God and why He sent His Son among us."

You obviously have no clue about mainstream Christian theology, do you?

Why don't you enlighten us, Bubba?

"the opportunity of a lifetime"...

I nearly tossed my muffin. Gag...

Not only do I have no clue about mainstream Christian theology I also have no interest -

Randal and Panacea: The Pew Research Center recently reported data that shows 73% of Notre Dame students, including 97% of the seniors support the invitation of President Obama giving this year's commencement address.

Bubba brings up a good point. A university should be a place where diverse opinions should be heard so students can learn...well...diversity of opinion. What the UNC students did to Mr. Tancredo was despicable.

I agree with rescuechick, Obama isn't going to be stupid enough to preach a pro-choice message at the address.

"Why don't you enlighten us, Bubba?"

Do you have any idea what the word "Trinity" represents in Christian doctrine?

Probably not.

Otherwise you would know why the statement "But too many Christians I know treat Christ as if he were God Himself" is astoundingly absurd and shows a complete lack of understanding of one of THE basic tenets of the Christian faith.

The concept of the Trinity is not that Christ is God Himself.

It's more like Christ is God, His Other Self.

"The concept of the Trinity is not that Christ is God Himself."

Yes, it is.

It's more like Christ is God, His Other Self."

No, it is not.

Read and learn:

"The Christian doctrine of the Trinity teaches the unity of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit as three persons in one Godhead.[1] The doctrine states that God is the Triune God, existing as three persons, or in the Greek hypostases,[2] but one being.[3] Each of the persons is understood as having the one identical essence or nature, not merely similar natures.

Since the beginning of the third century[4] the doctrine of the Trinity has been stated as "the one God exists in three Persons and one substance, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit."[5] "

And:

"In the New Testament, the Gospel of John has been seen as aimed at emphasising Jesus' divinity, presenting Jesus as the Logos, pre-existent and divine, from its very first words, 1:1: "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God"; and 1:14 "The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth."[38] Other passages of John's Gospel interpreted in this sense include 8:58 ("before Abraham was born, I am!"), 10:30 ("I and the Father are one"), 10:38 "The Father is in me, and I in the Father"), and 20:28 ("Thomas said to him, 'My Lord and my God!'").[39]

Expressions also in the Pauline epistles have been interpreted as attributing divinity to Jesus. They include Colossians 1:16 ("For by him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things were created by him and for him") and 2:9 ("For in Christ all the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form"), and in Paul the Apostle's claim in Galatians 1:1 to have been "sent not from men nor by man, but by Jesus Christ and God the Father".[40]"

And:

"In the Trinitarian view, the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost share the one essence, substance or being. The central and crucial affirmation of Christian faith is that there is one savior, God, and one salvation, manifest in Jesus Christ, to which there is access only because of the Holy Spirit. The God of the Old Testament is still the same as the God of the New. In Christianity,

it is understood that statements about a solitary God are intended to distinguish the Hebraic understanding from the polytheistic view, which see divine power as shared by several beings, beings which can, and do, disagree and have conflicts with each other.

According to the Trinity doctrine, God exists as three persons, or in the Greek hypostases, but is one being.[71] God has but a single divine nature. Chalcedonians—Roman Catholics, Orthodox Christians, Anglicans and Protestants—hold that, in addition, the second person of the Trinity—God the Son, Jesus—assumed human nature, so that he has two natures (and hence two wills), and is really and fully both true God and true human."

And:

"It has been stated that because three persons exist in God as one unity,[73] 'The Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit' are not three different names for different parts of God but one name for God,[7]"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christianity

The Trinity is NOT "God, Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit."

Jesus IS God in mainstream Christian theology. There is NO OTHER mainstream interpretation.

""The Christian doctrine of the Trinity teaches the unity of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit as three persons in one Godhead.[1] The doctrine states that God is the Triune God, existing as three persons, or in the Greek hypostases,[2] but one being.[3] Each of the persons is understood as having the one identical essence or nature, not merely similar natures."

Exactly, three persons...'selves,' one being...owner.

But they have more than one name...like, the Creator, the Sustainer, and the Redeemer.

"Jesus IS God in mainstream Christian theology. There is NO OTHER mainstream interpretation."

While I think that the definition of 'mainstream' precludes the existence of another mainstream interpretation, there are Christians who do not follow the mainstream, and then there are persons who are not Christians at all. Being either of these doesn't exempt one from understanding the 'mainstream concept of the Trinity,' it only means that they don't necessarily believe it.

"While I think that the definition of 'mainstream' precludes the existence of another mainstream interpretation, there are Christians who do not follow the mainstream, and then there are persons who are not Christians at all. Being either of these doesn't exempt one from understanding the 'mainstream concept of the Trinity,' it only means that they don't necessarily believe it."

Irrelevant to the point.

Your comment "The concept of the Trinity is not that Christ is God Himself. It's more like Christ is God, His Other Self.", and Pancea's statement "Mary is the mother of Christ, not God. But too many Christians I know treat Christ as if he were God Himself, and forget all about God and why He sent His Son among us." are academically and doctrinally wrong.

One more thing: You do not understand the use of the word "persons". It is not used in the way you think it is in the passage you quoted.

This should clarify that point for you.

"It is understandable that someone might have difficulty grasping the explanation of the nature of God. Part of the reason why the doctrine of God’s nature can be difficult to understand is due to the Greek terminology used to explain it. The early Greek and Latin Christian theologians were the first to wrestle with the problem of how to rightly discuss the nature of the one God in terms of his threeness—as God the Father, Jesus the Son and the Holy Spirit.

They used words like the Latin persona to refer to the 'Persons' that compose the Being of God. Theologians of the early centuries wrote mostly in the Greek language, understandable to people living in their time and culture. But most people today have not been trained in theological terminology or know the Greek language. A certain amount of 'translation' and explanation is necessary to understand such statements as 'Jesus is God.' This is especially so since the theologians of the early church who crafted the Trinitarian creeds used common Greek terminology that was given a wholly new meaning when used of God.

The phrase, 'One God who is three Persons—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit,' is a common way of referring to the Trinity. However, the ordinary meaning of the word 'persons,' for example, which is normally included in English-language definitions of the Trinity, can cause people to wrongly think of God as existing in three separate Beings. Thus, the ordinary meaning of the word 'persons' as understood when applied to humans is misleading when it is applied to God. It gives the impression that God’s threeness lies in his being three separate individuals. This is not biblical.

There is only One God, not two Gods (bitheism) or many Gods (polytheism). The Father is omnipresent, the Son is omnipresent, and the Holy Spirit is omnipresent, and they cannot be 'separate' from one another as three Gods. Therefore, to avoid such an error, 'Persons' in the Godhead should not be thought of in the same way as human 'persons' like you and I are."

http://www.wcg.org/lit/jesus/isgod.htm

"Irrelevant to the point."

It's relevant to this Bubba-statement:

"You obviously have no clue about mainstream Christian theology, do you?"

You seem to assume that because someone states a view that isn't 'mainstream' that they don't understand it, which isn't necessarily the case. They may just simply not believe it.

"They used words like the Latin persona..."

I'm familiar with the Latin. Persona, in it's original meaning, refers specifically to the mask that an actor would wear in a play. The mask that the wore defined his character. However, a player might play multiple characters, each with a different mask. The actor remains the actor throughout a particular play, but takes on many different personas. He is, all at once, different 'selves' with one owner.

Jesus is God would be an accurate statement. God could be perceived in some sense (using my terminology) as 'the owner of selves,' the actor. God's masks would be those of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. It would not be accurate to say that the Son is the Father or that the Holy Spirit is the Son. The actor does not wear all masks at the same instant, but he may wear them all in the course of the show.

Essentially, we agree (I think), but I'll give it to you. Taken by itself, I see how my original statement could be considered 'wrong' in light of mainstream Christian theology.

However, in the context of the conversation, stemming originally from Pan's statement, I was considering Christ as equivalent only to 'the Son' [' Mary is the mother of Christ' --making Christ the Son]and 'God' as exclusively 'the Father' ['about God and why He sent His Son'--God as Father].

Considering this, my original post might be more accurately read as:

'The concept of the Trinity is not that Jesus [the Son] is the Father Himself.

It's more like Jesus [the Son] is God, His Other Self.'

I hope you'll understand the caveats.

I will be clear though. My biggest problem is not disagreements about theology, but with your assumption that others lack knowledge of it just because they've stated something else.

Let me be clear with you.

Both the statements from you and Panacea exhibited a fundamental misunderstanding of a basic Christian principal.

Your attempt to rationalize what you said doesn't pass academic or intellectual scrutiny.

There is no other conclusion that can be drawn, and your statement that (my) "assumption that others lack knowledge of it just because they've stated something else" is just an attempt to deflect criticism of your misunderstanding.

It's too bad you can't deal with that, but it's YOUR problem, not mine.

"Your attempt to rationalize what you said doesn't pass academic or intellectual scrutiny."

I don't think I'm wrong. Perhaps you could explain me to me, in your own words, (without all of the copying and pasting) what exactly it is you think that I am saying and how it is different than what you are saying.

"is just an attempt to deflect criticism of your misunderstanding."

Again. I don't think I'm wrong. I don't think I have a misunderstanding. That said, I wouldn't have a problem being wrong and if you can clearly relate to me how I am wrong (especially my revised statement and my last post, as I already admitted how my first statement could be wrong), I will admit that I am wrong.

But your error of assumption still exists. This is not an attempt to deflect criticism of the theological portion of our discussion. The arguments are separate, independent of one another, and I have always accepted valid criticisms.

So, once more, I'll ask that you explain to me in your own words how my arguments do stand up to academic or intellectual scrutiny?

* do not stand up to...

I already have.

Grow up.

Since my original post, and not including your 6:44 pm post, which has no bearing on the theological discussion, here are the words that you have given me that are NOT copied and pasted.

"Yes, it is.

No, it is not.

And:
And:
And:

Irrelevant to the point.

Your comment..., and Pancea's statement...are academically and doctrinally wrong.

One more thing: You do not understand the use of the word "persons". It is not used in the way you think it is in the passage you quoted.

This should clarify that point for you."

If we're counting, that's 59 words (145 if we include 6:44). That's out of 1104 words (1190 w/ 6:44). That's 5.34% (12.18% w/ 6:44) of your posts that have been your words practically none of which have been explanatory, unless you are the author of the links you have presented, and I don't think that you are.

So, please, tell me again that 'you already have' done anything in your own words. If you can, you're nothing but a lying liar.

I'm just trying to have honest discussion. Just stating that my arguments don't 'stand up to academic or intellectual scrutiny' doesn't make it so. That would be something you would have to prove...by pointing out specific instances where they don't, you know actually scrutinizing them. All you have done is claim that I am wrong and then copy and paste from other sources. Where are YOUR words, Bubba? Your thoughts? Do you even have any?

I have documented why you are wrong not once, but three times. I backed it up with citations from authorities.You, however, continue to run your mouth, having nothing of academic or intellectual importance to offer regarding the subject matter.

You're not interested in a conversation. You're only interested in some way you can turn this into something about me, rather than admit you don't understand.

Your over-developed but undeserved ego can't stand the thought that you've been shown up for the immature and insecure little rocket scientist you are, so you turn it into a personality challenge.

You're the classic example of a little person, with little intellect and little integrity who possesses the big mouth.

Buzz off, Idiot Child.

Yup. I'M the one who needs to grow up.