With God in 'mid-morph,' the pope seems worried

Daily Southtown ^ | December 28, 2006 | Bonnie Erbe

[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.

[tiki]

I would say that though they profess to believe in One God that they don't "KNOW" the God that they profess to worship. In strictly human terms, if I know of you and for some reason I think you are a mean, vindictive, hateful person and you're not, then it is my perception that is wrong. You are still you, and I know you exist but I don't know you as you truly exist. So God is God, and he remains God no matter how wrongly someone perceives Him.

[D-fendr]

Did I twist something here.

Uh, duh, yeah. Whatever you needed to in order to proclaim a false conclusion.

[kawaii]

But there's no way to God the Father except through the Son, whom they reject as a non-divine prophet.

[Uncle Chip]

Well, then my apologies. Let me make amends by posting just the pure words of the Catholic Catechism without comment:

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

[tiki]

I wasn't talking about their salvation, just their misperception of God. No matter how they believe in Him their beliefs can't change God. God IS God and there is no other God, so there cannot be any other God that they worship.

[kawaii]

Let's just post the CCC's teaching on the salvation of non-Catholics:

"Outside the Church there is no salvation"

846 ... 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

[kawaii]

At which point is what they beleive in really God?

They beleive in some non tangible single God.

They don't beleive in a Triune God. They don't beleive that he manifested himself physically. They beleive that their God gives them salvation and sexual gifts in return for murderous acts.

They beleive in some single God yes, but I'm not convinced it's the one which my Church beleives in. In fact I'm quite convinced their faith is vested in some foul Angel or Demon mascarading as God, and deceiving them away from the true God.

[tiki]

I don't disagree with you at all really, I'm just pointing out how you could come to the conclusion that they worship the One God, though they don't know Him and don't follow his precepts. As the Baptists always say, "Even Satan believes in God"

[bornacatholic]

I was making an honest effort to extinguish your ignorance about the meaning of the Catechism entry.

It appears my effort failed as you are asking the very same questions Mr. Akin's article supplies the answers to.

If appears you are not satisfied with any answers the Catholic Church or its members proffer.

So, why ask in the first place? Just simply state your beliefs that we are heretics and move on. We get it.

And, we don't care.

[kawaii]

Frankly I think he gets very well what it means he's just and is just intent on kicking sand in the Catholic Church's face...

[D-fendr]

Much better. And if someone wishes to know what the Church believes they can read the whole section and ask a qualified teacher.

'Twas you telling others what their faith is that was the objectionable part.

thanks...

[Uncle Chip]

So then does Paragraph 846 modify or negate or affirm Paragraph 841?

[kawaii]

I'm not Catholic, and don't profess the CCC personally so i'm not an authoritative source (though I think it's important in the context of the CCC to have both paragraphs out there for folks to view.

I don't know what the average Catholic thinks regarding whether the Muslims worship the same God or not. It doesn't seem to me Benedict would think so given his usualy statements toward Muslims, but on the other hand I seem to recall hearing he did help author the current CCC...

I know there are versions of the Russian Cathechism floating around which are erroneous due to mistranslations. (Or at least due to both poor translation and biases in the education of the translator generally viewed as questionable). So certainly in our church we don't view a particular Cathechism text to be infailable. We don't have anything like this in ours though...