As long as they promote virtue and Christ more than Rome, I’m all in favor of this movement. But if it’s all about “home to Rome,” then meh ...
Let’s hear it for the Swim the Tiber merit badge.
'K?
God bless you, Theo, and have a good Sunday, my FRiend.
10 posted on 6/8/2013 10:11:19 PM by Theo: “As long as they promote virtue and Christ more than Rome, I’m all in favor of this movement. But if it’s all about 'home to Rome,' then meh ...”
I understand your point. I'm an evangelical Protestant. And as an Italian, I have specific and personal reasons to have problems with Rome.
However, let's be honest... one of the major problems with Boy Scouts, right back to Baden-Powell himself, was the undefined doctrinal character of Scouting's commitment to God. True, you couldn't be an atheist and a Scout, but it was perfectly fine to be a Unitarian or a member of a mainline liberal denomination — and that got the foot of liberalism in the door.
I see no way, in the modern American context, to have an organization survive which is committed to teaching moral principles to young people without that organization having a strong doctrinal foundation. Morality is nice, but without doctrine behind it, the question will always be “whose morality?”
That probably means the Roman Catholics have to organize their own Scouting groups, much as the Southern Baptists have their Royal Ambassadors, the Assemblies of God have their Royal Rangers, and the Calvinist Cadet Corps exist in my own circles.
Sometimes people can get along a lot better in separate organizations than trying to work together in a single non-doctrinal organization,