I found it disturbing that Protestants were essentially making no distinction when embracing Santorum. That recent episode here in Texas where, apparently, a bunch of pastors stood around Santorum, laid hands on him and prayed over him.
Imagine me walking into a Catholic Church and the Priest and the people therein ask me to take communion when I reject just about everything they stand for.
It’s insanity.
That’s generally what I had in mind in my response. It was the other fellows here who got so offended about it, calling me a bigot since they suddenly saw me talking about Catholic individuals as opposed to Catholicism. God forbid I’d have my own point of view that didn’t assume that all faiths are equal!
Come to think of it. It is precisely this type of mindset, this “all things are equal”, that is largely responsible for the slow death of Catholicism. As I said in that other post, the Catholic Church would be A LOT stronger if instead of worrying about getting along, they insisted on the superiority of their beliefs, enforced their own rules on their membership, and generally took into their hands the authority they claim they’ve always had.
Instead, we got people on here freaking out about a Baptist not sitting around saying nice things about them, while Homo-Commie Priests and Bishops are running things, and GOOD Bishops are generally maltreated and represent a vast minority, as the Pope looks on with his Holy impotence.
If someone wants to challenge me on it and take it so personal, I have no problem fighting back on it.
As to laying on of hands and praying for blessings for those of other faiths, I have no problem with that. When recuperating in a nursing home from surgery, I used to ask an Assembly of God minister whose fervor impressed me to pray for me. I would also pray for my room mate who was his parishioner. People of good will are likely to pray for one another's health and well-being regardless of theological differences. There is something in Scripture to the effect that people will know the Christians as the ones who love one another. Jesus wept in the Garden at Gethsemane over the fact that His flock would not be as one. As Christians, you and I are stuck with each other or ought to be.
As to "the slow death of the Catholic Church": things look different here on the inside. Be patient with us as we restore the Faith in the USA. Benedict XVI is a lot less impotent than you may imagine. Death, age, health and welcome retirements have given B-XVI the opportunity he has taken to purge the ranks of bishops in Texas and Illinois and Wisconsin and Michigan and a lot of other places. Upstate New York is next (Albany, Buffalo, Rochester all of them infested by aging miscreants). We have long suffered from many bishops (Bernardin, Mahoney, Gonzalez, Pilarczyk, Delaney and many, many others) appointed at the request of Vatican nuncio to the US Archbishop Jadot who was about as Catholic as Stalin. The Jadot generation are nearly gone. I very much trust NY Cardinal designate Timothy Dolan to wage war against Obozo when he returns from Rome this month with his red hat. He is also the only challenger ever elected president of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops over the then incumbent VP a radical of the old generation who is now finished in USCCB. I won't bother you with the details of B-XVI appointments and JP II's later appointments. Trust me that the Vatican is in the process of cleaning the stables of what we used to call AmChurch (leftists Demonrats at apparent prayer). You may well not become Catholic yourself but we are going to give you a lot better class of bishop to respect from the outside. I promise.
We will still have some Homo-Commie priests for a while but, having been smacked up side the head by the pedophile scandal, the Vatican has also tightened up considerably on the seminaries and there has been a welcome rise in vocations and quite orthodox vocations at that. The small diocese in rural Illinois where I live is blessed with an ultra-hard line bishop and dozens of seminarians and only one scandal (one too many but God isn't finished with us yet) involving a priest who was caught putting his hands all over a couple of high school coeds under his charge. He was defrocked and served several years in jail. There is no tolerance here.
I don't take or mean any of this personally. I celebrate the fact that you and I live in America where you are free to be the most Baptist fellow you know how to be and I the most Catholic fellow (by belief if not always by practice) that I know how to be. I look forward to being in solidarity with you on those many matters where we agree and to disagree respectfully when we do not.
God bless you and yours!