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.
Well, there's always Episcopaganism.
If the author things the Pope is going to bend to the fads and fashions of the day he/she/it is smoking some pretty good stuff.
Kudos... the Cathedral in D.C.
Will be there in January as usual.
Sounds a lot like the cafeteria christianity, "your best purpose driven life now" claptrap spewing from our own mega churches to me.
Because, after all GOD LOVES YOU and HIS PLAN IS ALL ABOUT YOU!
< hurl >
Clue.
Dominus Iesus.
http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/documents/rc_con_cfaith_doc_20000806_dominus-iesus_en.html
Here, so there's no time wasted:
ANSWERS TO MAIN OBJECTIONS AGAINST DOMINUS IESUS
http://www.ewtn.com/library/Theology/OBDOMIHS.HTM
I think this summarizes it quite well. The Creator must be the Muslim Allah, "the merciful God, mankind's judge on the last day" that they both adore together. What could be more clear? How do you say "Allah Akbar" in Latin? How about in Greek?
Is there something in there that negates paragraph 841?
Amen.
;-)
Excellent.
Now we are dealing with facts.
Place this citation back into the chapter of the Catechism it is drawn from, and your implied criticism falls completely apart.
The plan of salvation includes all people - God wants the entire world to believe in His Son - and Muslims acknowledge that there can only be one God.
The Catechism characterizes monotheism, including the monotheism displayed by Muslims, as a "preparation for the Gospel" (Catechism 843)- i.e. belief in one God is one part of what is necessary for salvation and Muslims already possess that piece of the whole.
What they lack and need to obtain is knowledge of and belief in Jesus Christ - the fullness of the Gospel.
Only an intentional twisting of the Catechism can create the implication that Islam saves.
Would you deny that God is merciful, or that He will judge mankind on the last day?
The Muslims are lucky enough to know that there is one God, that He created the universe, that He shows mercy to those who trust in Him and that one day He will judge the world.
Is there any error in these propositions?
Should the God who created the universe not be adored by His creatures?
Are you arguing from an atheist persective here?
So you agree with the Catechism that the Allah that the Muslims worship is the same God that the Roman Catholics worship? That must make the Koran part of Sacred Tradition now, right?
I'm sure in Chip's church they burn Effigies of Muslims and he's against any church that doesn't delcare Muslims eternally damned, and unable to be converted.
No it doesn't --- read it again. Together they worship the same God.
All the CCC says is that they 'acknowledge the creator', it doesn't say the Muslims worship the creator, nor that they worship the same God Catholics do.
Do you need an English translator:
"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]
adore = worship now?
Sheesh, I'm starting to wonder whether protestants might take 'were seen in the same room as a Muslim' to be an endorsement of Islam; The Catholics have no plan to engage Muslims as though they were Catholics, but obviously have plans to convert them.
That said Personally I don't beleive Muslims worship the same God which Orthodox Christians do (And our priest confirmed this in a sermon not so long ago).
You are aware that there is only one God, correct?
Or do you believe that the universe was created by more than one Creator?
That must make the Koran part of Sacred Tradition now, right?
That's a bizarre excuse for logic.
The Koran is a faked document written by a non-Christian that explicitly contradicts the truths of Christianity on nearly every page.
It can no more be part of the traditions St. Paul and the other Apostles handed on to us than the Aeneid could.
The Koran happens to contain a few scraps of fact - that there is one God, that He created everything, that Abraham was a real person to whom God made His plans known, that there are angels, and some other bits of information that Jews and Christians were already well aware of.
But these truths cribbed from actual Scriptures don't give the Koran any inherent value.
There is only one God - the Muslims worship Him incorrectly and ascribe to Him actions which He has not undertaken and assign attributes to Him which He does not possess.
My personal belief is that the Koran is the work of a demon who appeared to/possessed Mohammed.
That's why the Koran is such a clever mix of truth (that God is one, is merciful, will judge the world, chose Abraham for himself, etc.) and fiction (that Jesus was only a prophet, that Mohammmed was also a prophet, that there is a new revelation after Jesus, etc.)
If the God they worship, the violent one who gives virgins to murderers, doesn't actually exist. Do prayers somehow migrate to the One True God, or are they in a sense simply worship intangible idols? (or worse real demons)?
According to the CCC, its the same God though worshiped wrongly, and sinfully.
According to my Orthodox Priest, they don't really worship the same God.
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