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.
Son 5:10 My beloved is white and ruddy, the chiefest among ten thousand.
Son 5:11 His head is as the most fine gold, his locks are bushy, and black as a raven.
indeed. Whatever.
Be Chistian all you like. I'll trust God if there's any salvation to be had and not your presumptious psuedo mithraic proclamations.
Oh please the Cult of Mithrus ripped off Christianity not the other way around.
Let me rephrase then:
Be Christian all you like. I'll trust God for any salvation to be had and not some blowhard who's been on FR since July of 06 and thinks he has to add his two cents worth on every religious thread imaginable. Take a few breaths. Familiarity breeds contempts. I'm sure you've heard that one.
oops #83 meant for you.
Oops 82 is still my response.
(isn't calling someone a blowhard making it personal?)
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.
What condescension! But she is right on one point. "Educated" believers want God made in their own image, and are deluded about the nature of reality and the powers of science. People live in their comfortable bubbles and refuse to think about the future. Europe enjoys the moment and refuses to provide for the future. Yet the apocalytic message of global warming terrifies them, I guess because this is something that might impact them in the near term. Didn't Louis XV say "Apres moi, L'deluge?"
Yes, I believe it is.
I make exceptions for those with your kind of hatred.
Knock off the personal attacks.
That's exactly what it says...Any other group has to become Catholic...Muzlims with their relationship to Allah and their belief in Abraham and obviously Mary, are already saved...That's what it says...
You ought to be re-evaluating what your church believes and teaches instead of criticizing folks who have to point it out to you...
However, without the salvific work of the Holy Spirit, there is no salvation, and there is no regeneration of the spirit by the Holy Spirit without the believer exercising the mind of Christ.
Although any number of fishing techniques might be employed, no man brings an unbeliever to God. That is the ministry of God the Holy Spirit after God the Father makes the call. We are able to testify and manifest our witness of His work through faith in Him, demonstrating His Spirit and His power.
It's been said that it only takes a little more faith than absolutely no faith whatsoever for a saving faith.
Satan acknowledges the Creator. Hmmm, ..maybe the present CCC has lost some salt.
But these truths cribbed from actual Scriptures don't give the Koran any inherent value.
Perhaps they just added some 'Sacred Tradition' that would seem to legitimize their religion...
Facts about Islam?
As long as a person of Jewish race denies the sacrifice provided by God Himself, they also deny the God of Abraham.
There were believers and unbelievers amongst the Hebrews of the Tanach. Their race didn't determine their belief. Their status in Abraham's Bosom was still based upon their faith until the resurrection.
"Protestants"? Most protestants know that Islam is just a Christian heresey as Catholic thinkers have long claimed
That said a lot of protestants will do just about anything to try to discredit Catholics (like saying the CCC says Muslims are Catholics...)
That is a minority of Protestants. They are matched by the same sort of thinking about Protestants by a minority of Catholics. I say a plague on the houses of both of these types.
Well I wonder how the "educated believers" will adapt to the islamic cult in the not too distant future?
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