Jan baby this is for you.
The Catholic Church was not established by Christ himself! First of all, the Bible as we know it was put together by St. Jerome as ordered by the Emperor Constantine 200 years after Christ's death. So, technically, the "Catholic Church" did not even exist yet.
One of the problems I have with most devout Catholics is their insistence on equating God with their Church. If you look down on the Church, you look down on God. If you criticize the Church, you criticize God. I am not apprehending God and His will (or whatever). I have no contention with God. It's the Catholics I can't stand -- no offense. And yet you also say that it's a human institution so it's allowed to make mistakes. You can't have it both ways.
I don't mind inconsistencies in a religion too much, that's what creates the mystery. However, there is a fine line between inconsistency and hypocrisy. And it is a line that the Church has crossed many times.
A woman can be a saint and the mother of God but she can't be a priest? That's not an inconsistency that's what we call a double-standard.
"No man is to have sexual relations with another man; God hates that." Leviticus, 18:22 (a rather mild version you must admit) and this is the backbone of the Church's stand against homosexuality yet on the same chapter it also states not to have sex with a woman during her monthly period because she is ritually unclean. Does the Church still believe a man who had sex with a woman during her monthly period an abomination? Does the Church still consider a woman who is experiencing her monthly period unclean?
The incapacity of the Church to change is not something that should be applauded but questioned. The world changes, people change, ideas change; one hundred years ago Africans were considered sub-human; two hundred years ago a British(?) vicar postulated that by going by the Bible the Earth was created around five (or seven tops) thousand years ago; a thousand years ago people thought the moon was a lamp hung in the sky. Things must change otherwise they become stagnant, static.
I also believe that there were good reasons why certain doctrines were espoused but these were created hundreds of years ago. I also believe that the world we live in now is so vastly different from the one before that these doctrines must be reexamined to see if they are still relevant.
To steal your argument, I guess I just prefer to keep an open mind rather than flat out accept a doctrine of faith just because it's traditional.
And I categorically refuse not to use my intelligence when I deal with things especially with regards to religion and faith. It's people who blindly follow their faith and choose not to think who strap explosives to their chests and set it off in crowded malls. It's people who blindly follow their faith who perform genital mutilation on 13 year-old girls in Africa. It's people who blindly follow their faith who think that those that don't follow their faith are damned and so their lives aren't worth anything.
By the way, birth control means control. When the population spikes on either end (overpopulation, negative population) then there is no control.
I did not give up my faith, just my faith in the Catholic Church. The dogmatics of the faith make-up the Catholic Church. It's what makes it different from the Anglicans, the Episcopalians, the Methodists, the Mormons. It's why people choose to belong in different religions because they cannot agree with the dogma of the other religions.
"What does the beliefs of the dogmatics in the Church have anything to do [with] your faith?" Nothing. I believe with or without the dogmatics of the Church. I just don't agree with them. I'm not like you Jan, I have to love or at least like the institution I'm a member of and I have to agree with their tenets.
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6 comments:
Amen to that!
Hay Dios mio. *makes the sign of the cross*
:)
- J.
Hay Dios mio. *makes the sign of the cross*
:)
- J.
Okay, I was at a loss for words yesterday. You've obviously given this a lot of thought and are clearly set in your ways. My purpose in entering into this argument was never to defend the Catholic Church because whether or not you place faith in it, the Catholic Church will be around until the end of time. It has hurdled worse heresies and controversies than you mentioned and yet it has remained standing and strong in the faith. My purpose debating with you is to make you question the shallowness of YOUR faith, because the mere imperfection of the Church institution is enough to make you question the will of God.
Yes, I do not contest the facts you mentioned. Priests have committed atrocities in the name of God. Scandals and blasphemies continue to hound the Church to this very day. But the acts of these men should not bind the institution. The Church is bigger than the priests and clergy that makes it.
You demand perfection of the Church. Is it still worthy to be God's chosen Church, after all the evils it has wrought in God's name? A resounding YES!! Throughout history, God's will has always confounded people because God chose imperfect and sometimes evil men to be his chosen servants. He once chose Saul of Tarsus, a known persecutor and murderer of Christians, to be the one to preach about Jesus Christ. One of Jesus' disciples, the Gospel writer Matthew, was a publican -- a tax collector who cheated hard-working Jews of their wages, collecting more than what was due to Ceasar. In fact, God even chose the most sinful and scandalous lineage to bear his sacred Son: the line of David. David, who sent his most loyal soldier in the front line of battle to get killed so that he could marry that soldier's wife, Bathsheba, with whom he committed adultery with. That adultery begot Solomon, a blatant polygamist. I could even go higher than David and point out the widow who pretended to be a prostitute and slept with her father-in-law in order to hold him to a promise, thus giving birth to twins, one of which, Perez, became the father of David's lineage. This line is sinful and yet God chose it to bear Jesus Christ? It just shows that God works through sinful people to make his Will known to man.
The Church is against homosexuals, birth control and women priests. You call this hypocrisy? No, it's not. The church is in fact being true to itself, and although it takes the unpopular side, the church is firmly standing pat on the traditions it has held on to for the past thousand years. Why does it continue to do so? Why doesn't it change along with the times? Because the Church is not beholden to the world but to God. Because the ways of man are not always the Ways of God. God's ways are mysterious. Sometimes it appears that he chooses stupid things like sending an unwilling Jonah to preach to Nineveh, to the point where He had Jonah swallowed by a whale to convince him to preach. I mean why not send someone more willing to preach to Nineveh? Why Jonah?
Jesus himself is the Messiah, and you acknowledge that. And yet, Jesus chose a stupid way of saving the world. People of his time expected a political and war-like Messiah. Even Peter expected him to take up the sword, and topple down the firmaments of the Sanhedrin and defeat the Holy Roman Army. It would have been easier that way, right? He would have saved God's chosen race, the Jews, as Scripture prophesied he would do. But what did Jesus do? He did something stupid. He died an ignoble death, nailed to the cross like a common thief. To the people of Jesus' time, that didn't make sense. How can you save God's people by being tortured to death?? It was stupid, irrational, illogical and wasn't in keeping with the times, especially since Jesus went around saying that He was God. If he was God, how can he allow himself to be defeated so horribly? The apostles had a hard time dealing with this after Christ died. They disbanded and lost hope. They went back to being fishermen, farmers and whatever it was they did before their life with Christ.
But see, that was necessary. God's gameplan went way beyond the Jews. He was out to save the sinner... save the world. And only by Jesus' obedience and sacrifice could his plan be accomplished. How else could Jesus conquer death except by facing death Himself? How could Adam and Eve's disobedience be undone except through the obedience of the Son of Man... who is also the perfect sacrifice as the Son of God. Now can you see the mystery of God's will? Now can you see that it doesn't make any intelligent sense unless you look through eyes of faith?
God is not beholden to the times. The Church, which is its chosen instrument, through the intervention of the Holy Spirit, has chosen to reveal the will of God and that is a firm stand against homosexuality, birth control and women priests. Now you could say that how do we know that this is the will of God? I'll say that who better to determine the will of God than the Church which is the vanguard of His faith? Are YOU qualified to say what God's will is? You argue through the apprehensions of your intellect, and need I remind you that human intellect can only go so far in the universal scale of things? You believe in God and therefore you know that God's ways are bigger than ours.
If the Church is so evil, so flawed, so hypocritical then how come my friend it has grown to be as big as it is? How come despite the attrocities committed, the Church is still standing to serve God? You see the acts of evil... how can you not acknowledge the good that it has done?? Do you know of any other religion that has produced a St. Francis of Assisi, a Mother Teresa of Calcutta or a Pope John Paul II? Do you know of any other religion that has gone around the world feeding the poor, giving aid in times of calamities, educating the ignorant, sheltering the homeless and taking an active stand against the evils of the world?
Do you know of any other religion that has managed to convene all the world's leaders, all the world's religious heads all under one roof? That was what happened during John Paul II's funeral. For one glorious and rare moment in the world's history, political beliefs and religious dogmas were set aside and the world was one in mourning the loss of one of the greatest leaders the world has ever known... and he was the head of the Catholic Church. Tell me Jubal, can any other religion claim to have achieved what the Catholic Church has done? Has any Church worked for unity as much as our faith has done?
In fact, have you seen any other religious leader fight so passionately for religious tolerance and understanding like Pope John Paul II has? The Pope reached out to the Jews, reached out to the Muslims, reached out to the Buddhists, the Greek Orthodox Church. He has tacked a note inside the Mourning Wall of Jerusalem asking forgiveness for the atrocities the Catholic Church has done against the Jews. Tell me, do you know of any religious leader who would lower himself so to reach out and make peace with another?
All you see are the flawed members of the Catholic Church. How can you lose sight of its innumerable saints, in the good Catholics of today, in the corporal works of mercy it has performed all around the world? How can you forget about the anonymous nun out there feeding the poor and disease-ridden leper in the streets of India? How can you forget the Franciscan priest teaching ABCs to a poor child in Ecuador? How can you forget the aging Irish priest stationed in hot and sweltering Philippines, taking 1000 confessions every Holy Week? You turn your back on this goodness and holy work. The Word of God is alive, I tell you. Forget the past. The Church is flawed, I agree with you, but I have not lost hope. The Church is changing, but not in the way you want it to go. Do not rely on your own understanding Jubal... open your eyes to the will of God and you will see that it is good; mysterious and confounding though it be.
But why listen to the Catholic Church? Why can't you just worship God your own way and be done with it? Because God determines how you worship Him, not the other way around. He gave Moses the prescribed formula for His worship. Jesus established his own rituals that are still being followed today. These ways of worship... THESE SACRAMENTS are the crucial ways of discovering Christ. There is no other way.
Worship is sacred and personal. Its purpose is to establish a relationship between man and God. And why do we worship? Because we seek to find God and comprehend him. Because we want to deepen our relationship with Him. I see the Catholic faith as a love relationship, with God/Christ being my lover and my boss. I do not tell Him what to do, because really, who am I to impose on Him? Rather, He tells me what to do. He tells me how I can love Him, how I can get to discover Him more and more. The Sacraments are an important way of participating in His love because they are the paths through which I experience the life, death and passion of Christ. You will not find the Sacraments through any other religion. Do not turn your back on the sacraments jubes. You have to keep on practicing your faith and participating in the sacraments of the Church. It's not for the good of the Church... it's for you, so that you will discover God and Christ and get to experience Him. But this means surrendering yourself... surrendering your beliefs, surrendering your doubts, surrendering your queries. This means trusting God even if you don't understand Him, even if what He is asking of you means going against your own soul and going against what nature made you to be, just like when God asked Abraham to sacrifice his only son Isaac, after God promised Abraham that he will be the father of a people. It didn't make any sense but Abraham believed and obeyed and God applauded him for never losing faith. And look at where Abraham's faith and obedience has led him now. Abraham is the father of the Catholic Church! From him came a universal community of believers who continues to do God's work to this very day.
The Catholic Church is beautiful. Why don't you give it a second chance?
One final word: The Bible was compiled in the time of Constantine but the Catholic church existed prior to that. The Catholic Church existed even when they did not have a name... when they were not Catholics, but Christians. The Church is beyond its doctrines and dogmas. When Christ established it, it existed in the communities formed by Peter and the other 11 disciples, and even back in those times there were disagreements as to how the Church should practice its faith, thus giving rise to the Hellenist sector of the church, which produced St. Stephen, the first martyr of Christ. (The Hellenists, who were the Greek Jews who converted to Christianity, had different practices and beliefs than the Israeli Jews, hence their difference in tradition with the Israeli Christians).
I completely agree with you Jubs. The Catholic Church needs to get in touch with reality, they're outmoded and ancient. If not, how can they really be effective as an institution if they refuse to change with the times.
Hehe...I love reading your debates. You and Jan are so eloquent ;)
Maya
The whatta whatta whatta?
Roy you are too scholastic and verbose for my poor layman's brain.
-jan
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