That would be the universe where the Catholic National Shrine to the Immaculate Conception is...
Posted on 12/28/2006 8:37:27 AM PST by Alex Murphy
Pope Benedict's Christmas message was one of great importance, no matter one's spiritual bent. "Does a 'Saviour,' " he questioned, "still have any value and meaning for the men and women of the third millennium?" This, he queried in his Urbi et Orbi (to the city and the world) message to 10,000 faithful in St Peter's Square," Reuters reported.
Sounds to me like a man on a mission, a worried man on a worrisome mission. Would you be asking these questions if business were good, if your flocks were growing? He went on: People should not allow technology to trump theology. "Mankind, which has reached other planets and unraveled many of nature's secrets, should not presume it can live without God." Implicit in the positing of this presumption is the subliminal fear technology will lead to just that end.
Truth be told, Christianity is wilting if not dying in the continent that propelled it to global prominence, Europe. Europeans pay lip service but eschew church services. Christianity's growth markets are on other continents.
A Policy Review magazine article in 2003 recounted the following, "Of the roughly 2 billion Christians worldwide, Europe still claims a plurality, with 560 million believers -- although that number includes many who are counted as Christian only on the baptismal roles of their emptying churches."
If present trends continue, by 2025 there will be 633 million Christians in Africa, 640 million in South America, and 460 million in (South) Asia. Europe's numbers will have remained constant, leaving it at third place among the continents and falling. By 2050, to extrapolate further, only a fifth of the world's Christians will be non-Hispanic whites. As author Philip Jenkins puts it, quoting a Kenyan scholar, "the centers of the church's universality are no longer in Geneva, Rome, Athens, Paris, London, New York, but Kinshasa, Buenos Aires, Addis Ababa and Manila."
What does this mean? Christianity is growing all right, but not in world financial centers, not in nations housing the world's foremost educational institutions, not in the world's technology hubs. It is growing most rapidly among the poor and the uneducated.
Does Pope Benedict's tone imply that God -- the Christian God in any event -- is dead? God's death has been debated since time immemorial. The answer is, of course not. At home among our own highly educated, financially savvy and technologically gifted populace, the most powerful and cohesive voting bloc remains that of evangelical Christians. Democrats took back both houses of Congress only by narrowing the so-called God gap and stealing Catholics and Evangelicals back from the Republican column.
At the same time, God as we know him/her/it is in mid-morph. Western culture is personalizing God and turning him into her, person into spirit and customizing God to fit all shapes, sizes, hair colors and beliefs. Gone are the days when one could walk into an African Methodist Episcopal church and witness a portrait of a blonde-haired, blue-eyed Jesus hovering above a room full of black believers. Gone is America's uniform vision of God as a bearded white man seated on a cumulonimbus.
Historical evidence places Jesus as a first-century Middle Eastern Jew. This means Jesus probably looked a lot more like Yasser Arafat than a Nordic prince with long blond locks. European transmogrification of this religion born in Israel imposed Eurocentric visions onto its icons. Thus, Jesus' features were magically overtaken by those of his more powerful followers: the Europeans.
Perhaps Pope Benedict's fears of a god-bereft populace are better explained by today's custom-fit God. The Pope wants God to remain as traditional Christianity sees him -- the God of the Crusaders, a God whose followers are on a short leash and allowed little by way of interpretation, questioning or free-thinking. A transgression of the 10 Commandments is a sin and that's all there is to it.
Educated believers are demanding more variety, having more doubts and reworking religion to fit their own mores, lifestyles and cultures. Religion without penance -- no hair shirts, no self-flagellation? No wonder the Pope is worried.
** The Pope wants God to remain as traditional Christianity sees him -- the God of the Crusaders, a God whose followers are on a short leash and allowed little by way of interpretation, questioning or free-thinking. A transgression of the 10 Commandments is a sin and that's all there is to it. **
The truth will prevail.
Apparently the author lives in a alternate universe where AME churches routinely used to buy used portraits of Jesus imported from Lutheran churches in Norway.
What an incredibly clueless analysis! You are right: God and the Truth will prevail.
To the contrary, he has absolutely no worries on that score.
What he is very worried about is the eternal fate of the souls of Europeans.
By abandoning the faith they are fatally injuring themselves.
Christianity can survive without Europe, but Europe cannot survive without Christ.
Pope Offers Christmas Wish for Peace
Now do you understand why I said the truth will prevail? Complete Reuters spin on the story.
I watched the address, there were at least 100,000 people there in Saint Peter's square alone. Wonder why she reduced the count.
That would be the universe where the Catholic National Shrine to the Immaculate Conception is...
The Pope is not worried. He has a "plan", referred to in the Catholic Catechism, to bring all those Muslims into the fold by playing a little fast and loose with the facts, which never stopped a Roman Pontiff before.
sources please?
At least he's not imaged as a Nordic blonde. I don't know, that could be an image of a son of David, " He was ruddy, a youth handsome to behold and making a splendid appearance."
No ... the people are. Just because people don't exercise their faith does not mean that God is not needed. This article is useless and just follows today's believers who only want God on thier terms.
Your post is the very definition of a non-sequitur.
The mural of Jesus in the basilica does not depict him as either blonde-haired or blue-eyed.
The mural is not imported.
The mural is not affiliated with either the Lutheran Church of Norway nor the AME.
What exactly were you trying to say?
Please provide a citation to the passage in the Catechism where this plan is outlined, or at least mentioned.
by playing a little fast and loose with the facts
Which facts in particular are being subjected to this "fast and loose" treatment?
which never stopped a Roman Pontiff before
Which doctrinal statements of previous Popes have played "fast and loose" with such facts?
Please provide at least one specific instance.
Otherwise, it seems like you are the one who is playing fast and loose.
LOL! I don't.
The Pope's weekly audience alone routinely draws more than 10,000 of the faithful.
What a crock!
that is the problem right there. because social mores descend to the gutter, wrong becomes right? i don't think so.
"The plan of salvation also includes those who acknowledge the Creator, in the first place amongst whom are the Muslims; these profess to hold the faith of Abraham, and together with us they adore the one, merciful God, mankind's judge on the last day".[Catechism of the Catholic Church, New York, An Image Book published by Doubleday,1994, pp 242, 243 paragraph 841]
He talks as if there is something wrong with it.
Twisting again I see. Why not post the WHOLE reference. (Where it appears right before noting those outside the church are not saved).
From the CCC
The Church and non-Christians
839 "Those who have not yet received the Gospel are related to the People of God in various ways."325
The relationship of the Church with the Jewish People. When she delves into her own mystery, the Church, the People of God in the New Covenant, discovers her link with the Jewish People,326 "the first to hear the Word of God."327 The Jewish faith, unlike other non-Christian religions, is already a response to God's revelation in the Old Covenant. To the Jews "belong the sonship, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the worship, and the promises; to them belong the patriarchs, and of their race, according to the flesh, is the Christ",328 "for the gifts and the call of God are irrevocable."329
840 And when one considers the future, God's People of the Old Covenant and the new People of God tend towards similar goals: expectation of the coming (or the return) of the Messiah. But one awaits the return of the Messiah who died and rose from the dead and is recognized as Lord and Son of God; the other awaits the coming of a Messiah, whose features remain hidden till the end of time; and the latter waiting is accompanied by the drama of not knowing or of misunderstanding Christ Jesus.
841 The Church's relationship with the Muslims. "The plan of salvation also includes those who acknowledge the Creator, in the first place amongst whom are the Muslims; these profess to hold the faith of Abraham, and together with us they adore the one, merciful God, mankind's judge on the last day."330
842 The Church's bond with non-Christian religions is in the first place the common origin and end of the human race:
All nations form but one community. This is so because all stem from the one stock which God created to people the entire earth, and also because all share a common destiny, namely God. His providence, evident goodness, and saving designs extend to all against the day when the elect are gathered together in the holy city. . .331
843 The Catholic Church recognizes in other religions that search, among shadows and images, for the God who is unknown yet near since he gives life and breath and all things and wants all men to be saved. Thus, the Church considers all goodness and truth found in these religions as "a preparation for the Gospel and given by him who enlightens all men that they may at length have life."332
844 In their religious behavior, however, men also display the limits and errors that disfigure the image of God in them:
Very often, deceived by the Evil One, men have become vain in their reasonings, and have exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and served the creature rather than the Creator. Or else, living and dying in this world without God, they are exposed to ultimate despair.333
845 To reunite all his children, scattered and led astray by sin, the Father willed to call the whole of humanity together into his Son's Church. The Church is the place where humanity must rediscover its unity and salvation. The Church is "the world reconciled." She is that bark which "in the full sail of the Lord's cross, by the breath of the Holy Spirit, navigates safely in this world." According to another image dear to the Church Fathers, she is prefigured by Noah's ark, which alone saves from the flood.334
"Outside the Church there is no salvation"
846 How are we to understand this affirmation, often repeated by the Church Fathers?335 Re-formulated positively, it means that all salvation comes from Christ the Head through the Church which is his Body:
Basing itself on Scripture and Tradition, the Council teaches that the Church, a pilgrim now on earth, is necessary for salvation: the one Christ is the mediator and the way of salvation; he is present to us in his body which is the Church. He himself explicitly asserted the necessity of faith and Baptism, and thereby affirmed at the same time the necessity of the Church which men enter through Baptism as through a door. Hence they could not be saved who, knowing that the Catholic Church was founded as necessary by God through Christ, would refuse either to enter it or to remain in it.336
847 This affirmation is not aimed at those who, through no fault of their own, do not know Christ and his Church:
Those who, through no fault of their own, do not know the Gospel of Christ or his Church, but who nevertheless seek God with a sincere heart, and, moved by grace, try in their actions to do his will as they know it through the dictates of their conscience - those too may achieve eternal salvation.337
848 "Although in ways known to himself God can lead those who, through no fault of their own, are ignorant of the Gospel, to that faith without which it is impossible to please him, the Church still has the obligation and also the sacred right to evangelize all men."338
http://www.vatican.va/archive/catechism/p123a9p3.htm
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