Gemma Therese

Very original!

ex-preacher

Thanks! I do believe that's the first truly nice thing you said on this board.

Eudaimonist

Gemma, ex-preacher made a good point. What reasons do we have to think that your convictions are objectively true? After all, if you can't give us these reasons, why should we be worried about your beliefs about hell?

Gemma Therese

Are you for real?

ex-preacher

Yeah, baby!

Gemma Therese

Because hell is very real, and I'm trying to help you. Does a young child understand why not to touch the stove until it's too late? I care very much about you, and I want to help as many people as I can. I pray to St. Therese and I know she will help you if you pray to her, too.

Gemma Therese

ex-preacher

So have you been to hell?

Bible Humper

Hello Gemma, thanks for your prayers on our behalf.

What takes 7 years? Don't take this offensively, but I would have thought that nuns don't particularly need any training besides what they have already received at church throughout their lives.

Eudaimonist

So you say. Why should we believe you that hell is very real?

I did! When I was a child, my parents showed me the stove when the heating element was red and hot. I saw them cook food on the heating element until that was hot. They gave me rational reasons to believe that I would burn myself if I were to touch the heating element with my bare hands -- and so I never did.

Did you catch that? I had rational reasons to believe that a stove could burn me, and so I never did anything with a stove to burn myself. Reason and evidence made this possible.

Do the same for us as my parents did for me then. Give us rational reasons to believe that hell exists.

Gemma Therese

First, you contact the order you want to join. You visit them, live with them for a time, feel them out.

-Up to a year.

Next, you are a postulant. You live within the community.

-One year.

Then, you are a novice. You wear the (novice) habit, and you are part of the community.

-Two years.

If the community feels you are ready, you take temorary vows. You are professed, and you can renew these vows after five years if you are still not sure.

-Five years.

Now, you are ready to take final vows -- poverty, chsatity, obedience, and sometimes, stability (enclosure).

Hope this helps.

Oh, in the strict sense of the word, "nun" is a religious sister in a convent(cloistered). "Sister" applies to women relgious in active ministry (nursing, teaching, etc). All nuns are sisters, but not all sisters are nuns. This is common area of confusion even for Catholics.

Gemma Therese

[ August 09, 2002: Message edited by: Gemma Therese ]</p>