LOL - "obscure Gita tracts." FYI, the Bhagavad Gita is one of the most widespread spiritual teachings on the planet, read, studied, accepted and practiced by over a billion people. Why, for more than two millenia thereafter some of the most brilliant and searching minds on this planet have examined this revelation that has mushroomed to all corners of the globe. Countless departments of higher education, theologians, scholars and historians of every color and stripe have examined the Bhagavad Gita. Innumerable magazines, reviews, books, treatises, journals, and articles to this day continue to examine this revealed Truth. Conversions have occurred by the galore from the very learned as have miracles of faith.
And best yet, if you study the Bhagavad Gita you can still study and learn from the Gospel of St. Luke. You don't have to so fear other ways of thinking about God that you must refer to them as "toilets," or combine any reference to them with terrorist organizations, or refer to them as vile, or genocidal barbarians, in order to try to create fear and avoidance in others, rather than welcoming rational discussion and thought.
Yes, by studying the Bhagavad Gita, you too can be free of the need to slander over a billion people across thousands of years of history to try to support a vision of absolute religious despotism that your own Church discarded hundreds of years ago as aberrant to the true faith and teachings of Jesus Christ.
With all due respect, reputable universities do not expend more than 10-minutes of classroom discussion if they discuss this tract at all on the musings of the Gita either in their religious; philosophy; or even comparative religion courses. I don’t mean to be disrespectful. This is simply a fact of life.
More time is spent on the writings of Aquinas’ and Augustine that any other theologian; scholar; and philosopher. Don’t take my word on this, go ask the chair of these departments and trying asking them about Gita and test for yourself the responses you get. I asked a friend of mine who studied comparative religions at Princeton and was told that she could not recall any extended discussion of this matter. 90% of the time was spent on Catholic dogmas; Judaism; Protestantism and some discussion on Moslem, Hinduism, and Buddhism. More was discussed on Buddhism because it is not confined simply to the Indian sub-continent.
I understand you inquiry for rational discussion and thought and this is good - but as Pope Benedict XVI (whom TIME magazine called a “walking theological encyclopaedia” Others have called him an “theological Einstein” ) states in his book “On The Way To Jesus Christ” that Catholic inquiry should not be faulted if at some point we say the search has ended and we have found the God of Creation in the Christ.
This is not a fear of reading other texts and treatises. Please remember that for centuries Catholic doctrine has been analyzed and scrutinized like no other school of thought or faith on this earth. Indeed, it was Benedict XVI who has urged that faith and reason must go together and his quoted passage from a Byzantine period on Islam led to riots not dialogue.
As a former professor of theology at Regensberg University in Germany his book is brilliant and illuminating a tour-de-force, indeed a sweeping panorama of several strands of intellectual thought on this topic from pre-Christian times.
The comment I made was not to slander a “billion” people but rather to avoid being politically correct and call a belief for what it is. The reference to “genocidal barbarians” was predicated on a news column that called Hindu massacre of Christian a “crime against humanity”
If tomorrow Catholics were to be intolerant of Hindus and start sacking their temples, as a student of constitutional history, I would be among the first to brand this as criminal and terroristic. The right to belief is absolute.