|
The Question: In his speech to U.S. bishops last week, Pope Benedict XVI said: "Any tendency to treat religion as a private matter must be resisted . . . To the extent that religion becomes a purely private affair, it loses its very soul." Do you agree or disagree? Why?
Is the Roman Catholic hierarchy structurally and systemically flawed by an abuse of authoritative power of which clerical pederasty and episcopal complicity are but one terrible manifestation?
The Question: What can Pope Benedict XVI say and do to repair the growing rifts between the Vatican, the clergy and the laity in America?
The Pope should convene the Third Vatican Council so that the hierarchy can solemnly return the gift of infallibility, and beg instead for the gift of accuracy, and maybe also for the gifts of transparency, honesty, and integrity.
The Roman Catholic Church is a hierarchy, a tradition, and a community -- these three but the greatest of these is community. And that is the root of the problem. The hierarchy has first separated itself from and then equated itself with not only the tradition in its ongoing development but even the community in its living reality. That is why one often hears that “the Church teaches” something when it only means that “the hierarchy teaches” it.
I have read all the materials and watched the video and, to be honest, I am not very interested in the subject--although I envy Kevin Sullivan that trip to Siberia.
The only thing that is very obvious is that the messianic strategy of Jesus Christ on his first visit in ancient Israel seems quite different from the one he now uses in his present return in modern Siberia.
Not only has this reincarnate Jesus Christ no memories of that first incarnation, he seems quite different in this second one.
“Sexual preferences” is simply contemporary code for lesbianism and homosexuality. The question is not asking, for example, about the “sexual preferences” of clergy who choose or are chosen for celibacy which is, after all, a “sexual preference” or, better, a “non-sexual preference.”
One verse in one psalm is the lens through which I see all else in—since I am a Christian—the Christian Bible. It is Psalm 82:5b which says, within its context, that, “injustice shakes the foundations of the earth.”
When leaders—be they Presidents or Popes—reach insecurity and uncertainty they often assert ascendancy and primacy.
If a religion changes, it may go wrong; if it does not, it must go wrong.
The reason is that change is an inevitable feature of life and conscious or deliberate change is a necessary feature of human life. Any living religion will change as it continues through history but, of course, a dead religion does not change. And, one of the ways you know a religion is dead or dying, is its refusal to change and/or its attempt to return were once it was.
Roman Catholic tradition is not exempt from change as the law of creation and creation’s God. But any religious tradition is carried by its religious community which make and remake each other in reciprocal interaction. Leaders may assist or resist that process but they cannot do it by will alone. The most serious delusion of leaders is to think that they alone are in sole charge of a community’s past, present, or future. It is ultimately the community—which is simply the incarnate and living tradition—that will determine what stays and what goes, what changes and what develops. And, for community, tradition, or hierarchy, it is ultimately impossible to hold back the inevitable future by returning to the abandoned past.
When the problem is our presence, the solution is our departure.
On the one hand, questioning is the voice of conscience and the absence of one is the death of the other. So Socrates, for example, questioned relentlessly the contemporary faith of his fellow-Athenians and died a martyr for his too-successful examinations.
The answer from within my Christian tradition is both/and rather than either/or. And, for me, no one ever expressed better than the apostle Paul that creative dialectic of “being saved” and “doing good."
I am profoundly satisfied with my present life and also profoundly surprised. But, of course, satisfaction always trumps surprise.
Yes, of course, Jesus was “a social revolutionary” but that description is as accurate as it is inadequate—like saying Mozart played the violin.
The ancient act of religious repentance is not the same as the modern art of rhetorical pseudo-apology.
The definitive discovery of Jesus remains would not change my faith in Christianity because the bodily resurrection of Jesus is a metaphorical parable about the meaning of Jesus’ life and death and not an historical account about the status of Jesus’ corpse and tomb.
The question asks “Do you believe” so I presume it is a query about religious faith. I take it to mean, therefore, “Do you believe that God will bring our world to an end?” And, from my own biblical and Christian tradition, I respond with an emphatic negative.
I do not know whether there is any discrimination against Catholics in the classic venues for discrimination such a hiring or firing, where to live, how to borrow, which houses or businesses to visit, stay, or buy, etc., etc. BUT ...
Decisions on what is natural and unnatural define our humanity, but those determinations, unfortunately, are also and always conditioned by time and place, society and religion.
For any institution or organization, for any religion or people, for any faith or nation, you must criticize the most what you love the best.
There is an intrinsic relationship-- macrocosm to microcosm—between last week’s question about the environment and this week’s question about sex. The options of “sacred” or “sinful” apply to the world and to the flesh and the lust to control one often mirrors the lust to control the other.
The answer, from the biblical tradition, is 'yes, yes, and yes again' with that 'yes' beginning from the great inaugural Parable of Creation in Genesis 1.
What Islam Really Says About Violence, Rights and Other Religions
Gomaa, Fadlallah, Mubarak, Khan, Siddiqi, Ellison, others | On Faith
Comments (13)