10 thoughts on “People Ask Me…”

  1. It’s been quiet around here. I think I’ll start a religious flame war, just to liven things up.

    Every religion claims to be The One True Faith. If they didn’t believe that, then what’s the point of joining? Why not join a competing faith?

    Since my faith is The One True Faith, then by definition, you must be Worshipping False Idols. The very notion of reaching out to other religions makes no sense (why embrace the darkness) . . . unless the intent is to convince them to leave their heathen ways and come join us in the light.

    Catholics mending fences with Lutherans makes sense (Okay, we admit it, Luther was right. Selling church office and pre-paid sin cards were bad ideas. But we’ve dropped them now, so come on back). Probably not going to work after all this time, but the doctrinal differences between Roman Catholic and Wisconsin Synod Lutheran might be small enough that some accord could be possible. Reaching out to them makes sense. If we’re all basically headed in the same direction and the only question is who leads us, we should be able to talk about that.

    Presbyterians opening their assembly with a Muslim prayer isn’t comparable at all. The differences in the core beliefs of those two religions makes them incompatible. So why reach out? It smells like cargo-cultism. “Catholics and Lutherans are reaching out, maybe we should reach out, too.” Missing the point of the exercise, people. It’s not about the reaching. It’s who you’re reaching to.

    When the leaders of a church can’t remember why theirs is the One True Faith and all the rest are false, that religion is in trouble. Worshippers know when it’s happening and head for the exits. I predict a schism.

  2. When Christians pray with Jews, the polite thing to do is to leave doctrine out. Both Jews and Christians can pray to God the father, creator of the universe (or “providence”). If the report is to be believed, the Muslim leading the prayer purposely chose to make his prayer with Christians center on matters of doctrinal difference with them. He reduced Christ to non-divinity, one of the prophets superseded by Mohammad.
    And the Presbyterians went right along with it.

    One of the few things I heard on NPR recently that was interesting was a report on whether Christians and Muslims worshiped the same God. The Muslim said yes, both worship the God of Abraham. The response (from a Baptist theologian) was, no, Christians and Muslims do not worship the same God. He said that Christians are able to relate to God only through Christ, the son of God. Christ’s incarnation, death, and resurrection was the price paid for the covenant of the gentiles with God. No divine Christ, no pathway to God (unless you are a Jew).
    It was refreshing to hear the doctrine explained directly and firmly. Too bad it had to come from a Baptist 🙂

  3. The Catholic church has it’s issues with homosexual predators, and I am not making any excuses for the whole nasty mess, but many Protestant denominations have turned their dogma into fetishes.

    Catholic priests have abused boys, but at least the Pope isn’t changing the liturgy to make that a celebration of love.

  5. Joe, when the next big schism happens in the Catholic Church (and I do see it coming), I think I may join up with the dirt worshipping heathens, or maybe the snake people. I really need to spice up my spiritual life.

  6. I left the Catholic Church several years ago. There were too many hypocrites practicing it.

  7. There were too many hypocrites practicing it.
    So, you’ve found a church without too many hypocrites?
    C’mon, don’t keep its name a secret . . .

  8. Islam is integrally political. The other ones aren’t. Per Andrew C. McCarthy.

    Act accordingly.

  9. a little dose of reality from wikipedia:
    “According to a 2004 research study by the John Jay College of Criminal Justice for the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, 4,392 Catholic priests and deacons in active ministry between 1950 and 2002 have been plausibly (neither withdrawn nor disproven) accused by 10,667 individuals of the sexual abuse of a youth under the age of 18. Estimating the number of priests and deacons active in the same period at 110,000, the report concluded that approximately 4% have faced these allegations. “
    By comparison the number of children sexually abused by public school teachers in USA during the same time period is estimated to be well over 1 million see http://www.hofstra.edu/pdf/orsp_shakeshaft_spring03.pdf for one view of the rampant and severely under-reported abuse taking place in public schools.
    Attacking Catholics is part of a leftist media narrative downplaying US public school abuse simply protects one of the left’s biggest union cohorts – the teachers union.

  10. You have to do a bit of “kremlinology” with the MSM. If a comparison between the safety of Catholic schools and the safety public schools made the public schools look better, it would be in the headline. Since public schools aren’t compared, you can assume the public schools numbers are worse than the Catholic school numbers.
    If you compare public schools to Catholic schools, standard reading test scores, graduation rates, and the percentage of college-bound students who graduate from college in 4 years, Catholic schools beat public schools by large margins. It’s not even close.

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