• Starting today August 7th, 2024, in order to post in the Married Couples, Courting Couples, or Singles forums, you will not be allowed to post if you have your Marital status designated as private. Announcements will be made in the respective forums as well but please note that if yours is currently listed as Private, you will need to submit a ticket in the Support Area to have yours changed.

Recent content by Bob Crowley

  1. Bob Crowley

    For converts looking back, the emotions can be complicated

    I was originally Presbyterian (and atheist before that). I actually enjoyed my time in the particular Presbyterian Church I went to, not because it was "Presbyterian" but because of the people there, and in particular the pastor and his family. He actually predicted I'd become Catholic. We...
  2. Bob Crowley

    How do you think AI has effected Christianity and the gospel?

    I don't think AI has been around long enough to have had much of an effect on Christianity and the Gospel. As far as that goes, the "Gospel" doesn't change, although Christianity changes in the sense of having cultural baggage. By cultural baggage I mean the various outward forms the church has...
  3. Bob Crowley

    Study: 9 in 10 cradle Catholics leaving the Church; experts urge stronger faith community

    This paragraph came from the quoted article. Gregory Thompson's comment about the digital world bubble is correct, and is quoted as one of the factors in declining church attendance. As an older convert I'm fairly immune to the digital world bubble (apart from getting on Christian forums and...
  4. Bob Crowley

    Anyone up for a chat thread?

    The last post reminds me of a quip one of the other postmen made years ago when I was working as a postman (circa 1980). One of the blokes asked another postie "How did you know she was the one for you?" The post office comic gaffed, with a bit of a stutter "When she pr...pr... proposed!"
  5. Bob Crowley

    Anyone up for a chat thread?

    You can always take a leaf out of Alan Coren's satirical piece about Californian advertising (a long time ago) in his essay "Sigmund Freud and the Jelly Babies". There must be plenty of conversation stoppers in a supermarket when some strange bloke tries to make a meaningful connection when...
  6. Bob Crowley

    El Salvador Ends Term Limits, Letting President Bukele Seek Re-Election Indefinitely

    Years ago I knew a chap who'd migrated from Singapore to Austalia as a schoolboy, probably around 1960 or a bit later. He told me that when Lee Kuan Yew took over the government of Singapore in 1959, the gangs in Singapore made the New York gangs look like boy scouts. His father sent him to...
  7. Bob Crowley

    American Nazis moving into mainstream conservative groups

    I think the US is going to have a lot of problems with these militia groups down the track. We've got neo-Nazis in Australia but they're not as heavily armed as the US variety.
  8. Bob Crowley

    Can AI Ever Understand Purpose?

    You (Liturgist) are obvously an IT expert and have a lot of computer programming experience. As a sideline is it worth trying to do basic AI programming just to satisfy my personal curiousity? I've only done a bit of BASIC and C programming, and even that was a long time ago. I'm thinking of...
  9. Bob Crowley

    Why are some Catholics scared of studying the Bible themselves?

    There's a fairly good summary of the reasons Catholics don't read their Bibles as much as Protestants in this article. https://www.catholicity.com/commentary/carlin/05386.html The fact is that Catholics, on the whole, don't tend to read the Bible as much as Protestants. While I'm a...
  10. Bob Crowley

    Do you believe that facts kill conversation?

    It's going to depend on how forum members phrase their questions. To give an exaggerated example, suppose someone is a hardline Protestant Reformer looking for justification for their Calvinist beliefs. They're going to ask for as much evidence as they can get to support the opinion they...
  11. Bob Crowley

    Catholic Woodstock

    I lifted this line from the quoted article. This is off topic, but way back circa 1988 there was an Australian TV comedy show called the Comedy Company. One of the characters was an Uncle Arthur. Also in 1988 Brisbane held Expo 88 in what is now Southbank. It transformed what was then a...
  12. Bob Crowley

    Catholic Woodstock

    I didn't like crowds even when I was young. Driving a distance wouldn't bother me, but I would not go anyway. Various items in the media pop up from time to time about the 1969 Woodstock, but it would have left me cold. A Catholic Woodstock doesn't hold any more appeal.
  13. Bob Crowley

    Mortal Sin?

    Obviously I don't know the whole story, but I get the sense it's past history. If I was in your situation I'd just move on. I don't think I'd even bother going to confession in case you inadvertently open another can of worms (talking about one priest to another priest). You're a new creature...
  14. Bob Crowley

    Are Catholics Lost In Theological Fog? Sadly, Many Are…

    This reminds me of a comment my old pastor made at one time. We were talking about God's love and judgement. He said "Love and judgement are two sides of the same coin." He added, probably with his own sermons in mind, "It's very hard to get the balance right!" I think a similar comment...
  15. Bob Crowley

    If nothing else, isn't Fatima an answer to the question of whether hell is empty or not?

    Our humanitarian instinct wants Hell to be empty. I think people also have a hard time coming to grips with the fact it appears to involve eternal punishment for temporal sins. I think there are people in Hell unfortunately. I'm sure of it - I've said ad infinitum the night my father died he...
See more
Top Bottom