SubscribeThey have made themselves irrelevant at best.And relevant at worst.
In ''A Church That Can and Cannot Change,'' Noonan drives home the point that some Catholic moral doctrines have changed radically. History, he concludes, does not support the comforting notion that the church simply elaborates on or expands previous teachings without contradicting them.
His exhibit A is slavery. John Paul II included slavery among matters that are ''intrinsically evil'' -- prohibited ''always and forever'' and ''without any exception'' -- a violation of a universal, immutable norm. Yet slavery in some form was accepted as a fact of life in both Hebrew and Christian Scriptures, in much Christian theology and in Catholic teaching well into the 19th century.
[Noonan] undertakes a rapid historical survey of Catholic doctrine on lending money at interest (usury), marriage, slavery, and religious freedom, showing in each case how the Vatican's position changed and explaining the principles that produced the change.More - audio link
For instance, lending money at interest was once regarded as a mortal sin, contrary to natural law ("money is barren") and contrary to the Gospel ("Lend freely, expecting nothing in return").
But today no one, not even the Vatican, disapproves of putting money is a savings account to earn interest.
For nearly two millennia, the Vatican taught that it was not sinful to own slaves. After all, the Apostle Paul approved of slavery ("slaves, stay with your masters") and actually returned a runaway slave named Onesimus to his master.
Barely a century ago, in 1890, Pope Leo XIII for the first time denounced slavery as immoral and incompatible "with the brotherhood that unites all men," a brotherhood that had previously escaped notice in Rome.
Similarly, the Vatican long taught that heretics had no religious liberty and governments should execute them, a position supported by Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, and words attributed to Jesus himself.
Only in 1964 was this position finally repudiated by the Second Vatican Council which announced that the freedom to believe was a sacred human right. A previously undetected right, apparently.
#2: Christianity? Really? Out of all the fables you can construct that could make a near-anonymous individual feel special, why this particular brand of myth? Make up whatever you want! Go nuts! You could easily go one of two tracks: Make all followers subservient and pentatent, and by their humble piousness they become holy OR claim to empower all believers, so everyone feels like a prophet or near-god.One wonders why the God in the Bible, who created and controls the entire universe, was so fixated on such a geographically limited area of this planet, and only during a very brief window of time.
To paraphrase Ghandi: “If Christians would really live according to the teachings of Christ, as found in the Bible, all of America would be Christian today"Baloney. If Christians would really live according to the teachings of Christ, Christianity would be virtually extinct today, virtually all Christians having died of hunger, thirst, or exposure.
.Like the other major groups, people who are unaffiliated with any particular religion (16.1%) also exhibit remarkable internal diversity. Although one-quarter of this group consists of those who describe themselves as either atheist or agnostic (1.6% and 2.4% of the adult population overall, respectively), the majority of the unaffiliated population (12.1% of the adult population overall) is made up of people who simply describe their religion as "nothing in particular." This group, in turn, is fairly evenly divided between the "secular unaffiliated," that is, those who say that religion is not important in their lives (6.3% of the adult population), and the "religious unaffiliated," that is, those who say that religion is either somewhat important or very important in their lives (5.8% of the overall adult population).So at best, you could say that some people (some unknown portion of that 5.8%) can't find a church structured enough for them. But the others have left traditional, structured faiths for non-affiliation.
holding doctrines that seem contradictory to the central tenets of the religion (being anti-gay, for example)The Bible is full of anti-gayness. Both the Old and the New Testament make this explicit, multiple times each, including both explicitly calling for the death of gays.
The Golden Rule and Ten Commandments are probably the most central tenetsNo, the Golden Rule is probably the most decent tenet. "Central"? Again, I don't see why. Just because you like it doesn't negate the fact that the god of the Bible is a hardcore homophobe.
I don't really understand the blind dogmatism that says that if you are moral for the WRONG REASONS that this is so terribly bad.As others have mentioned, this is the 'T' in Calvinism's TULIP. In essence, all humans are "Totally depraved" -- corrupted by sin to the point that they are incapable of being morally good without the intervention of God.
also, the idea of Jesus' divinity is as commonly held, as central, a tenet as you can find in Christianity. So the texts that contain his teachings can legitimately be read as more significant than the glosses of the other writers in the Old and New TestamentsOne of the things that he supposedly taught was that "the Law" will never change, not one jot, not one tittle.
(also, the idea of Jesus' divinity is as commonly held, as central, a tenet as you can find in Christianity. So the texts that contain his teachings can legitimately be read as more significant than the glosses of the other writers in the Old and New Testaments. The primacy of the Gospels is pretty widely accepted. Ditto the 10 Commandments, seeing as they are said to come have come directly from the horse's mouth.)I think you might want to check out three ideas called "The Canon," "Divine Inspiration," and "Inerrancy."
Don't presume I haven'tIf you didn't want me to presume that, you probably shouldn't have asked me for a cite.
I don't think I've actually said what I believe to be right. I'm talking about what positions are most commonly held.Let me get this straight.
Belief that there is a single GodHow does anti-gayness contradict that?
Jesus as both divine bring and mortal son of GodHow does anti-gayness contradict that?
Salvation and eternal life available through following teachings of Christ (not all Christians say through Christ alone)How does anti-gayness contradict that?
Bible as primary text (attitudes toward what text is vary among denominations)Certainly some portions of the Bible, at least in certain interpretations, contradict anti-gayness, but, as noted, other portions are quite explicitly and stridently anti-gay. So how does anti-gayness necessarily contradict this?
That's why I specifically pointed out that the Epistles and the references to Mosaic Law need to be viewed differently than even Genesis or Job. They're one or two steps away from actual Word of GodJob? Job is the one to take seriously? A belief-neutral ancient version of waiting for Godot with morality play bookends tacked on by later authors? That's the one to take seriously?
If you believe Jesus is divine and that salvation is through following his teachings, then a contradiction lies in any attempt to condemn another human being based upon their behavior.Again, Jesus supposedly said that the law shall not change, not one jot, not one tittle. If you want to say that Jesus is pro-gay, it seems to me that you necessarily must also say that Jesus contradicts himself. Which would be fine with me. Or, alternatively, you must give one of the standard excuses listed above, which you seemed to object to.
Seriously? You're unwilling to come out and say that you were wrong that the Ten Commandments contradict anti-gay behavior? And instead you want to hang on to a shred of it by claiming you can't quite find it, and hey, you wouldn't be relying on the original ancient text in a different language anyway?I'm also still waiting on an answer as to how anti-gayness contradicts the Ten Commandments.I'll drop it; I'm having trouble with the varying enumerations and translations. I'd be drawing on a modern transliteration, not on ancient text.
If your approach is "Here's how I construct Christianity and read the Bible and any other reading is wrong!"Actually, that strikes me more as your approach.
What is your point?My point is that it strikes me as silly to proclaim parts of the Bible as "central" and others not. I thought this was clear. It's certainly not silly to proclaim parts "decent" and others not, but that's a different matter entirely.
um....you just described the bible. the whole thing. if anything else were true, what purpose would constantinople have had for the council of nicea?Oh come on. The story of the woman taken in adultery was never part of the earliest known copies of the Gospel of John, or any other gospel, or any other book that eventually was proclaimed part of "the Bible" by the Council of Nicea, or any other book that was rejected by Nicea.
To which my response is: so?So why did you give it as a defense, like people often do?
Give what as a defense?You attempted to give Matthew 22 as a defense for the idea that anti-gayness is contradicted by the "central" tenets of the Bible. You claimed that it contradicts anti-gayness because it says to love thy neighbor; you implicitly claimed that it is a central tenet because Jesus said it, and believing the teachings of Jesus is, to you, a "central" tenet of Christianity. Hence, you attempted to use it to defend your claim that anti-gayness is contradicted by central tenets of Christianity.
"Progress toward equality did not occur when quiet civil rights supporters sat on their asses"Oh how ignorant you are.
The longer they are allowed to hijack the name, the more they own it.This is easy to forget. Remember that the gnostics and the Montanists were just different flavors of Christianity until the Council of Nicea. The Protestant church in the US is particularly vulnerable to this kind of hijacking, as it has no real ecclesiastical structure in which an idea or doctrine can be declared "aberrant" or "heretical." Book sales and number of viewers effectively simulate the ecclesiastical structure, and as the inmates seize control of the cultural megaphones...
There are obviously great herds of self-identified Christians, and I guess most of them probably do at least nominally believe in some vague "Jesus is the Son of God who died for my sins and rose again" general stuff, but what I'd like to see is a survey that just presents people with unidentified actual Christian teaching and see how many actually buy it.George Barna and his Barna Research Group do a lot of this. They take flack inside the church for being the bearers of bad news, and they take flack from outside the church for, well, treating lots of interesting sociological data as an evangelism battle plan. But they do gather that kind of stuff.
...Christianity (or any other religion) in that sense can become just a dimly-lit reflecting pool, wherein people see what they want to see.
I'm not sure whether you know this, but in both Catholicism and Judaism and in some forms of Protestant Christianity, it doesn't matter how many rules you take away - you retain your religious identity in the eyes of the church's theological leadership.
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The end grammar America?
posted by dgaicun at 7:06 PM on April 4, 2009 [1 favorite]