Replies

I seem to have misunderstood your question. Allow me to try again.

As I understand your question, you what to know how I can determine that one or all of these other religions are false (or “demonic”). You asked what was the criteria I used?

If this is correct allow me to say, I can not determine anything of the sort. And if you read my posts to others as well as to yourself I referred to what a well know authority has said. It is either “Saint Paul said…” or the “the Church teaches….”. To be honest left to my own imagination and reckoning I would join may others here in determining all these different faiths are equal or much the same. After all there is much common ground, right.

But as you may have guessed I have abandoned my own reasoning and accepted a different authority on these matters. As to why I have done so you can refer back to my post on the events at Fatima for an example of why. There are many other examples other than this one event but that one is as good an example as they come and still be fairly recent.

You may be thinking, that is not a good enough a reason. Why surrender my own sense of things, my own observations for a theology that pit me against so many and so much common thought in the world?

To answer that allow me to point out we all do just this sort of thing all the time. The best example of what I am talking about is your Doctor. Consider for a moment you rub your chest along the top of the bone that runs between your neck and shoulder and you feel a lump. It is firm but you do not feel any pain. You have felt something like this before when you had an illness but then you were obviously sick and the lump felt tender. This time it is different you feel in the best of health, maybe getting a little older but other than the sort of thing one expects you feel fine and this time the lump feels fine as well.

Your rational thought and your own common sense tells you to leave it alone it should go away by its’ self. If you think differently it is because you know something told to you from a credible authority. An authority called a doctor who is working in a government regulated healthcare system that regulates tests and monitors the credentialing of doctors. You see one of these licensed physicians eventually and show him your lump. His response is to schedule you with a surgeon; he tells you that painless lump may be a sign of cancer.

Your limited education would never tell you that all on it own, if you knew it, it would only be because those who have experience and education in this matter have told you your health is in serious question despite what you may feel. You put some trust in those who have been trained and that training has been built upon the back of one doctor after another one improving the skills of the profession upon the other, generation after generation. You have seen them work on others who you knew to be ill and you have seen real improvement in their lives, and so you override your own sense that you are in good health and submit to their higher level of education.

And so I do with Saint Paul as well.

Is this answer any closer to you question?

P.S. By the way that little lump is a real sign of cancer and in a very serious level of the illness. It is a sign the cancer has migrated into the lymphatic system and is spreading throughout the body. This very thing happened to my father and the doctor told him it was fine it would go away. I knew better and happened to be there during the appointment. I had to keep asking the doctor "Are you sure?" Which I did as gentle as I could. I know he wrote the consultation only to please me. Father died less than one year later. Again I relied on what I had been taught by a trustworthy authority and even when faced with someone with more credentials in the matter I knew I was following the training that the doctor was ignoring. I relied on that authority while the doctor ignored his own training. Much the same happens in faith as well.