AHHH!
What drives me crazy is that the disciple descibed as Jesus' closest, who was the person to discover the tomb empty, was MARY OF MAGDALA. Of course, she was ignored and James and Peter fought over who would carry on as "imam-caliph", if you will pardon my misuse of the terms. The Church made sure to conflate her with a different Mary, a prostitute who came to Jesus for healing, just to seal the deal.
Grr.
Christianity
What will religion look like in the future?
Movement asks 'what was Jesus really trying to tell us?'
By Graeme Morton, Calgary HeraldApril 26, 2009
To Borrow that old Bob Dylan line, for Christianity in 2009, the times they are a changin'. Almost 700 Calgarians packed the St. Francis High School gym last week to hear Father Richard Rohr, an eloquent voice in the Emerging Church movement, offer one vision of what spirituality and religion might look like in the years to come.
Rohr, a Franciscan priest, popular author and speaker, says the grassroots changes starting to stir in Christianity represent a new style of reformation on a global scale.
"The emerging church is still at the movement level," Rohr told the Calgary audience. "Thankfully, there are no neon signs announcing an 'Emerging Church head office.' But there is this amazing consensus developing among Christians around the world about perhaps what Jesus was really saying to us."
Rohr is optimistic this new, evolving church will develop without the violence that marked the birth of past spiritual turning points in history.
"Religious movements often begin when people think they are leaving something corrupt or wrong, that mindset that other people or faiths must be inferior to us," says Rohr. "Christians are starting to say there's got to be a better way to do things."
Rohr says the emerging church doesn't want to sweep away the existing Christian world, but merely to deepen the spiritual experience of believers in an ecumenical setting.
"Our individual churches and denominations mothered us and we honour that," says Rohr. "But we have to accept that there has been a negative side to every faith. In this emerging church movement, we are rejoicing that the cup is half full, but that there's still a lot of work to be done."
Rohr described four pillars that characterize the emerging church, including what he terms "honest Jesus scholarship," an emphasis on practising personal contemplation, social justice initiatives and the formation of cross-denominational groups to translate this vision into reality.
Rohr says the last pillar, the creation of ecumenical groups for study, prayer and action, is the one still in its relative infancy.
"Belief systems by themselves don't ask much for conversion of us. But if you're down there on the streets, working shoulder to shoulder with society's poor and marginalized, that's when we profoundly change. And we don't need to leave our existing churches to make this happen."
Until recently, the scholarship and interpretation of the scriptures has been a domain dominated by "white, over-educated males," Rohr says. That created a limited view of Christ's message to the world, a scenario Rohr symbolized as, "sometimes you can't see what you haven't been told to look for."
The advent of feminist perspectives on faith and the liberation theology movement from developing nations has been a breath of fresh air for modern Christianity, Rohr reasons.
"Too often in the past, scripture has been used to try to change other people, instead of being used to change ourselves," Rohr says. He lauded liberation theology's imperative to look at what scriptures ask of individuals and communities to change practically and locally, instead of operating on a lofty, theoretical plane. Rohr says the increased interest in, and swelling numbers of Christians exploring and embracing contemplative prayer is pivotal to the vitality of an emerging church. He founded the Center for Contemplation and Action, based in Albuquerque, N. M., in 1987.
"Contemplation changes people at the deepest level; it gives you the tools to live a much richer life," says Rohr. "You understand that prayer can be practised at any time, in any place. I've suggested we as a church should close down all our programs for a couple of years and simply teach people how to pray."
Rohr says the emerging church is developing a strong consensus on the importance of reclaiming a passionate social justice advocacy.
"Too often, Christianity has been a 'prosperity faith' in the past. But we are seeing the importance of a simplicity of lifestyle and a lack of emphasis on material possessions and power. Jesus gloried with being with the 'little people' of his time, not the power brokers," says Rohr.
Rohr is unabashedly liberal in much of his world view, spawning a backlash on some conservative religious websites and blogs where he has been called everything from "new age" to "a filthy theologian" for his stance on faith and homosexuality. He was quick to poke some gentle fun at himself and his Catholic faith, noting he's increasingly being asked by evangelical Christian groups in the U. S. to speak on contemplative prayer.
"They usually want me to wear my (long, brown) Franciscan robes. They think I'm something from the 13th century, so I can tell them almost anything," Rohr says, with a chuckle.
[email protected]
© Copyright (c) The Calgary Herald
Movement asks 'what was Jesus really trying to tell us?'
By Graeme Morton, Calgary HeraldApril 26, 2009
To Borrow that old Bob Dylan line, for Christianity in 2009, the times they are a changin'. Almost 700 Calgarians packed the St. Francis High School gym last week to hear Father Richard Rohr, an eloquent voice in the Emerging Church movement, offer one vision of what spirituality and religion might look like in the years to come.
Rohr, a Franciscan priest, popular author and speaker, says the grassroots changes starting to stir in Christianity represent a new style of reformation on a global scale.
"The emerging church is still at the movement level," Rohr told the Calgary audience. "Thankfully, there are no neon signs announcing an 'Emerging Church head office.' But there is this amazing consensus developing among Christians around the world about perhaps what Jesus was really saying to us."
Rohr is optimistic this new, evolving church will develop without the violence that marked the birth of past spiritual turning points in history.
"Religious movements often begin when people think they are leaving something corrupt or wrong, that mindset that other people or faiths must be inferior to us," says Rohr. "Christians are starting to say there's got to be a better way to do things."
Rohr says the emerging church doesn't want to sweep away the existing Christian world, but merely to deepen the spiritual experience of believers in an ecumenical setting.
"Our individual churches and denominations mothered us and we honour that," says Rohr. "But we have to accept that there has been a negative side to every faith. In this emerging church movement, we are rejoicing that the cup is half full, but that there's still a lot of work to be done."
Rohr described four pillars that characterize the emerging church, including what he terms "honest Jesus scholarship," an emphasis on practising personal contemplation, social justice initiatives and the formation of cross-denominational groups to translate this vision into reality.
Rohr says the last pillar, the creation of ecumenical groups for study, prayer and action, is the one still in its relative infancy.
"Belief systems by themselves don't ask much for conversion of us. But if you're down there on the streets, working shoulder to shoulder with society's poor and marginalized, that's when we profoundly change. And we don't need to leave our existing churches to make this happen."
Until recently, the scholarship and interpretation of the scriptures has been a domain dominated by "white, over-educated males," Rohr says. That created a limited view of Christ's message to the world, a scenario Rohr symbolized as, "sometimes you can't see what you haven't been told to look for."
The advent of feminist perspectives on faith and the liberation theology movement from developing nations has been a breath of fresh air for modern Christianity, Rohr reasons.
"Too often in the past, scripture has been used to try to change other people, instead of being used to change ourselves," Rohr says. He lauded liberation theology's imperative to look at what scriptures ask of individuals and communities to change practically and locally, instead of operating on a lofty, theoretical plane. Rohr says the increased interest in, and swelling numbers of Christians exploring and embracing contemplative prayer is pivotal to the vitality of an emerging church. He founded the Center for Contemplation and Action, based in Albuquerque, N. M., in 1987.
"Contemplation changes people at the deepest level; it gives you the tools to live a much richer life," says Rohr. "You understand that prayer can be practised at any time, in any place. I've suggested we as a church should close down all our programs for a couple of years and simply teach people how to pray."
Rohr says the emerging church is developing a strong consensus on the importance of reclaiming a passionate social justice advocacy.
"Too often, Christianity has been a 'prosperity faith' in the past. But we are seeing the importance of a simplicity of lifestyle and a lack of emphasis on material possessions and power. Jesus gloried with being with the 'little people' of his time, not the power brokers," says Rohr.
Rohr is unabashedly liberal in much of his world view, spawning a backlash on some conservative religious websites and blogs where he has been called everything from "new age" to "a filthy theologian" for his stance on faith and homosexuality. He was quick to poke some gentle fun at himself and his Catholic faith, noting he's increasingly being asked by evangelical Christian groups in the U. S. to speak on contemplative prayer.
"They usually want me to wear my (long, brown) Franciscan robes. They think I'm something from the 13th century, so I can tell them almost anything," Rohr says, with a chuckle.
[email protected]
© Copyright (c) The Calgary Herald
-
From_Alamut
- Posts: 666
- Joined: Tue Jan 22, 2008 8:22 am
Re: Christianity
Pope Benedict XVI Islam controversy
The Pope Benedict XVI Islam controversy arose from a lecture delivered on 12 September 2006 by Pope Benedict XVI at the University of Regensburg in Germany. The pope, speaking in German, quoted an unfavorable remark about Islam made in the 14th century by a Byzantine emperor. As the English translation of the pope's lecture disseminated across the world, many Islamic politicians and religious leaders protested irately against what they said was an insulting mischaracterization of Islam.[1][2] Mass street protests were mounted in many Islamic countries. In an act identified by the Pope as "their[The Muslims'] attempt to cover up the many controversial commands in the Qur'an", the Pakistani parliament unanimously called on the Pope to retract "this objectionable statement".[3] The pope maintained that the comment he had quoted did not reflect his own views, and he offered an apology to Muslims.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pope_Bened ... ontroversy
The Pope Benedict XVI Islam controversy arose from a lecture delivered on 12 September 2006 by Pope Benedict XVI at the University of Regensburg in Germany. The pope, speaking in German, quoted an unfavorable remark about Islam made in the 14th century by a Byzantine emperor. As the English translation of the pope's lecture disseminated across the world, many Islamic politicians and religious leaders protested irately against what they said was an insulting mischaracterization of Islam.[1][2] Mass street protests were mounted in many Islamic countries. In an act identified by the Pope as "their[The Muslims'] attempt to cover up the many controversial commands in the Qur'an", the Pakistani parliament unanimously called on the Pope to retract "this objectionable statement".[3] The pope maintained that the comment he had quoted did not reflect his own views, and he offered an apology to Muslims.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pope_Bened ... ontroversy
-
shiraz.virani
- Posts: 1256
- Joined: Thu May 28, 2009 2:52 pm
Gay rights? Female clergy? Not in Africa. An ex-archbishop from B.C. explains why
'If they want to be Biblical literalists, then who are we to tell them they can't be?'
By Douglas Todd, Vancouver SunSeptember 19, 2009
Douglas Hambidge has worked in Africa for the past decade for free. 'You don't have to take the Bible literally to take it seriously. You teach the meaning of the text, not the factuality,' he says.
Photograph by: Ian Smith, Vancouver Sun, Vancouver Sun
Given his 82 dynamic years in Britain, Canada and, more recently, Africa, the "retired" Anglican archbishop for the Lower Mainland area has developed a strong perspective from which to understand the grim battle tearing through the global Anglican communion.
The day after he ended his 25 years of service as the archbishop for the Lower Mainland region in 1993, Douglas Hambidge jumped on a plane to lend a hand to the growing church in Africa, which is now home to more than half of the world's 70 million Anglicans.
Since then, he has been keeping one foot in the well-off, educated Anglican Church of Canada and the other foot in the poor, often-illiterate Anglican church in Africa.
With his dual outlook, Hambidge may have developed a better overview of his denomination's conflict over same-sex blessings than almost any of us.
His perspective is sobering, although with glimmers of hope.
Before we get to the hopeful part, however, we first need to look at the reality of modern-day Africa, where Hambidge says Western concepts like blessing homosexual relationships and allowing female clergy are in most places simply non-starters.
The rights of homosexuals, and in some cases women, are not even issues wafting in the African wind in many countries, regardless of whether the African is Muslim, Roman Catholic, Anglican or anything else.
To sense just how different a typical African churchgoer is from one in Canada, Hambidge says he once attended a gathering in England where a prominent African Anglican bishop said of homosexuality: "There is no such thing in Africa."
If you are wondering, as I was, which side the retired B.C. archbishop thinks is right and wrong regarding the explosive same-sex blessing issue that is disrupting the Canadian church, Hambidge declines to show his full colours.
That's probably smart, since the current Vancouver-area bishop, Michael Ingham, is judged a liberal lightening rod on the issue, which many African Anglican bishops, and some in North America, are seizing on to campaign for the creation of an entire new arm of Anglicanism, one decidedly more conservative.
Hambidge -- who lives with his wife, Denise, in Tsawwassen, attends the "middle-of-the-road" All Saints Anglican Church in Ladner and regularly travels to preach and talk about his new book on Christian stewardship, titled The Word -- thinks Africans should decide the issue of same-sex blessings on their own.
Africans, he said, don't need a bunch of white Christians from outside the continent to tell them, yet again, what is best for them. The colonial days should be over.
Hambidge's experience of Africa centres on relatively stable Tanzania, where he was invited in the 1990s to be president of the Anglican seminary in Dar Es Salaam.
However, in the past decade, he has also taught African bishops about administrative issues in Malawi and Uganda. All for no salary, while Denise helped out as a much-appreciated nurse.
Hambidge's description of mass poverty throughout most of Africa reveals much about why the viewpoints of highly educated Westerners, including Anglicans, often just don't pick up any traction there.
It is hard for a Westerner such as myself to imagine that most African Christians worship in mud-brick buildings while standing or sitting on a dirt floor.
It's also difficult to envision that the cinder-block Anglican seminary Hambidge led in Dar Es Salaam had virtually no books, particularly good ones, in its library.
When Hambidge suggested to the regional bishop the title of a book he thought each one of the seminary's roughly 50 students should have, he was told it was impossible.
"Each copy would cost a minimum of two months' wages."
With such a dire lack of resources and many Africans' fear of challenging those they see as authorities, Hambidge said African Christians are highly vulnerable to the "junk" theology with which many Western Christian missionaries are flooding the continent.
The kind of Christian titles that find their way even into Anglican seminaries in Africa, he said, are by fundamentalist American televangelists such as Jimmy Swaggart, who was disgraced, among other things, on sexual grounds.
Partly as a result of such limited education, Hambidge said, Biblical literacy is rampant in Africa.
It first took hold, in large part, with British and other European missionaries in the 1900s.
Hambidge constantly meets African Anglican clergy who take every word of the Bible as literal fact. They won't address a variety of issues, including homosexuality or female priests, because they believe the Bible explicitly forbids them for all time.
Literal-minded Western Christian missionaries also have brought to Africa what Hambidge sees as an unhealthy emphasis on attaining individual salvation in heaven rather than building a communitarian "kingdom of God" on earth.
The missionary viewpoint, in addition, stresses total rejection of indigenous African spiritual customs, which Hambidge said most African Muslim, Catholic and Anglican clergy continue to dismiss as evil "heathenism."
Hambidge, instead, likes to teach that "you don't have to take the Bible literally to take it seriously.
"You teach the meaning of the text, not the factuality."
What should educated white Anglicans, or anyone else from the West, do about the African church situation?
The short answer to Hambidge is: Next to nothing.
"If they want to be Biblical literalists, then who are we to tell them they can't be?"
In other words, whites can't continue to tell Africans what's best for them. Non-Africans have to live with Africans' choices -- while being available to help if called upon by Africans themselves.
What if a hands-off approach means that Anglican African bishops continue their concerted efforts to start their own arm of Anglicanism?
"If people want to do that, they can try," he said. "We are not a monolithic church. That's our boast."
Even though Hambidge doesn't think the same-sex blessing controversy needs to be a "communion-breaking issue," he could tolerate an official split.
"The kingdom of God is eternal, not the Anglican communion," he said.
It wouldn't be the first time in history that a new branch of Christendom has formed.
"I don't think God will lose any sleep over it," he said with a smile.
What, ideally, does Hambidge hope will happen some day for African Christians, and Africans in general?
He imagines a time when more Africans follow the lead of Canada's aboriginals, many of whom in recent decades, with Anglican and other Christians' support, adapted the most positive aspects of their traditional spirituality to fit the best of Christianity.
While embracing such things as totem poles and sacred blankets, Hambidge said, many Canadian aboriginals have recognized their ancient traditions often overlap with Christianity.
"They're realizing in many ways they say the same thing."
In the end, Hambidge says the way forward for African Christians, and all Africans, is to start to take more pride in themselves and the positive aspects of their own traditions.
For a white archbishop from the West, it seems like a fair-enough dream.
© Copyright (c) The Vancouver Sun
http://www.vancouversun.com/life/rights ... story.html
'If they want to be Biblical literalists, then who are we to tell them they can't be?'
By Douglas Todd, Vancouver SunSeptember 19, 2009
Douglas Hambidge has worked in Africa for the past decade for free. 'You don't have to take the Bible literally to take it seriously. You teach the meaning of the text, not the factuality,' he says.
Photograph by: Ian Smith, Vancouver Sun, Vancouver Sun
Given his 82 dynamic years in Britain, Canada and, more recently, Africa, the "retired" Anglican archbishop for the Lower Mainland area has developed a strong perspective from which to understand the grim battle tearing through the global Anglican communion.
The day after he ended his 25 years of service as the archbishop for the Lower Mainland region in 1993, Douglas Hambidge jumped on a plane to lend a hand to the growing church in Africa, which is now home to more than half of the world's 70 million Anglicans.
Since then, he has been keeping one foot in the well-off, educated Anglican Church of Canada and the other foot in the poor, often-illiterate Anglican church in Africa.
With his dual outlook, Hambidge may have developed a better overview of his denomination's conflict over same-sex blessings than almost any of us.
His perspective is sobering, although with glimmers of hope.
Before we get to the hopeful part, however, we first need to look at the reality of modern-day Africa, where Hambidge says Western concepts like blessing homosexual relationships and allowing female clergy are in most places simply non-starters.
The rights of homosexuals, and in some cases women, are not even issues wafting in the African wind in many countries, regardless of whether the African is Muslim, Roman Catholic, Anglican or anything else.
To sense just how different a typical African churchgoer is from one in Canada, Hambidge says he once attended a gathering in England where a prominent African Anglican bishop said of homosexuality: "There is no such thing in Africa."
If you are wondering, as I was, which side the retired B.C. archbishop thinks is right and wrong regarding the explosive same-sex blessing issue that is disrupting the Canadian church, Hambidge declines to show his full colours.
That's probably smart, since the current Vancouver-area bishop, Michael Ingham, is judged a liberal lightening rod on the issue, which many African Anglican bishops, and some in North America, are seizing on to campaign for the creation of an entire new arm of Anglicanism, one decidedly more conservative.
Hambidge -- who lives with his wife, Denise, in Tsawwassen, attends the "middle-of-the-road" All Saints Anglican Church in Ladner and regularly travels to preach and talk about his new book on Christian stewardship, titled The Word -- thinks Africans should decide the issue of same-sex blessings on their own.
Africans, he said, don't need a bunch of white Christians from outside the continent to tell them, yet again, what is best for them. The colonial days should be over.
Hambidge's experience of Africa centres on relatively stable Tanzania, where he was invited in the 1990s to be president of the Anglican seminary in Dar Es Salaam.
However, in the past decade, he has also taught African bishops about administrative issues in Malawi and Uganda. All for no salary, while Denise helped out as a much-appreciated nurse.
Hambidge's description of mass poverty throughout most of Africa reveals much about why the viewpoints of highly educated Westerners, including Anglicans, often just don't pick up any traction there.
It is hard for a Westerner such as myself to imagine that most African Christians worship in mud-brick buildings while standing or sitting on a dirt floor.
It's also difficult to envision that the cinder-block Anglican seminary Hambidge led in Dar Es Salaam had virtually no books, particularly good ones, in its library.
When Hambidge suggested to the regional bishop the title of a book he thought each one of the seminary's roughly 50 students should have, he was told it was impossible.
"Each copy would cost a minimum of two months' wages."
With such a dire lack of resources and many Africans' fear of challenging those they see as authorities, Hambidge said African Christians are highly vulnerable to the "junk" theology with which many Western Christian missionaries are flooding the continent.
The kind of Christian titles that find their way even into Anglican seminaries in Africa, he said, are by fundamentalist American televangelists such as Jimmy Swaggart, who was disgraced, among other things, on sexual grounds.
Partly as a result of such limited education, Hambidge said, Biblical literacy is rampant in Africa.
It first took hold, in large part, with British and other European missionaries in the 1900s.
Hambidge constantly meets African Anglican clergy who take every word of the Bible as literal fact. They won't address a variety of issues, including homosexuality or female priests, because they believe the Bible explicitly forbids them for all time.
Literal-minded Western Christian missionaries also have brought to Africa what Hambidge sees as an unhealthy emphasis on attaining individual salvation in heaven rather than building a communitarian "kingdom of God" on earth.
The missionary viewpoint, in addition, stresses total rejection of indigenous African spiritual customs, which Hambidge said most African Muslim, Catholic and Anglican clergy continue to dismiss as evil "heathenism."
Hambidge, instead, likes to teach that "you don't have to take the Bible literally to take it seriously.
"You teach the meaning of the text, not the factuality."
What should educated white Anglicans, or anyone else from the West, do about the African church situation?
The short answer to Hambidge is: Next to nothing.
"If they want to be Biblical literalists, then who are we to tell them they can't be?"
In other words, whites can't continue to tell Africans what's best for them. Non-Africans have to live with Africans' choices -- while being available to help if called upon by Africans themselves.
What if a hands-off approach means that Anglican African bishops continue their concerted efforts to start their own arm of Anglicanism?
"If people want to do that, they can try," he said. "We are not a monolithic church. That's our boast."
Even though Hambidge doesn't think the same-sex blessing controversy needs to be a "communion-breaking issue," he could tolerate an official split.
"The kingdom of God is eternal, not the Anglican communion," he said.
It wouldn't be the first time in history that a new branch of Christendom has formed.
"I don't think God will lose any sleep over it," he said with a smile.
What, ideally, does Hambidge hope will happen some day for African Christians, and Africans in general?
He imagines a time when more Africans follow the lead of Canada's aboriginals, many of whom in recent decades, with Anglican and other Christians' support, adapted the most positive aspects of their traditional spirituality to fit the best of Christianity.
While embracing such things as totem poles and sacred blankets, Hambidge said, many Canadian aboriginals have recognized their ancient traditions often overlap with Christianity.
"They're realizing in many ways they say the same thing."
In the end, Hambidge says the way forward for African Christians, and all Africans, is to start to take more pride in themselves and the positive aspects of their own traditions.
For a white archbishop from the West, it seems like a fair-enough dream.
© Copyright (c) The Vancouver Sun
http://www.vancouversun.com/life/rights ... story.html
Pope with Horns...
Why does the current Pope [Benedict 16th] look so evil?
Maybe it's just his appearance but I don't trust this pope. I have a cousin that is scared of him and can't even see him on TV.
This is based upon Aristotle's principle that the soul is the form of the body, so what is in the soul appears on the body (particularly the face) - this metaphysic was reiterated by St. Thomas Aquinas.
I think, with a certain subtlety of discernment, a person's character can be seen on his face.
Benedict is totally unlike John Paul II who had such a look of peace on his face, and whose being was radiated by the Holiness of God. Benedict just doesn't have that gentle look that people are so used to seeing in Pope John Paul II. May God rest him in peace!
In addition, Benedict is not tactful or diplomatic like his predecessors.
I studied the bible and it points to the papal church as being the Antichrist system, the whore in the book of Revelation. I just used to like John Paul better, I miss him!
http://www.moillusions.com/2006/05/pope ... usion.html
Maybe it's just his appearance but I don't trust this pope. I have a cousin that is scared of him and can't even see him on TV.
This is based upon Aristotle's principle that the soul is the form of the body, so what is in the soul appears on the body (particularly the face) - this metaphysic was reiterated by St. Thomas Aquinas.
I think, with a certain subtlety of discernment, a person's character can be seen on his face.
Benedict is totally unlike John Paul II who had such a look of peace on his face, and whose being was radiated by the Holiness of God. Benedict just doesn't have that gentle look that people are so used to seeing in Pope John Paul II. May God rest him in peace!
In addition, Benedict is not tactful or diplomatic like his predecessors.
I studied the bible and it points to the papal church as being the Antichrist system, the whore in the book of Revelation. I just used to like John Paul better, I miss him!
http://www.moillusions.com/2006/05/pope ... usion.html
-
haroon_adel
- Posts: 125
- Joined: Tue Mar 18, 2008 8:55 am
- Location: USA
Re: Pope with Horns...
Wow! that's the most briliant idea I have ever seen in my entire life, to judge someone from the appearance. Wow, you must be real smart and intellegent. Way to go.Biryani wrote:Why does the current Pope [Benedict 16th] look so evil?
Maybe it's just his appearance but I don't trust this pope. I have a cousin that is scared of him and can't even see him on TV.
This is based upon Aristotle's principle that the soul is the form of the body, so what is in the soul appears on the body (particularly the face) - this metaphysic was reiterated by St. Thomas Aquinas.
I think, with a certain subtlety of discernment, a person's character can be seen on his face.
Benedict is totally unlike John Paul II who had such a look of peace on his face, and whose being was radiated by the Holiness of God. Benedict just doesn't have that gentle look that people are so used to seeing in Pope John Paul II. May God rest him in peace!
In addition, Benedict is not tactful or diplomatic like his predecessors.
I studied the bible and it points to the papal church as being the Antichrist system, the whore in the book of Revelation. I just used to like John Paul better, I miss him!
http://www.moillusions.com/2006/05/pope ... usion.html
I am not too much into christianity (I do respect the faith, don't get me wrong) or pope either. But for someone to judge anyone, by appearance, I guess its jsut too dumb. But you.....Wow! Mind blowing. Especially, that story of nephew of yours. Wow, that's amazing.
Speaking of Christianity, I greatly admire Archbishop of Canterbury, The Most Reverend and Right Honourable Rowan Williams…What a balanced gentleman He is.
In November 2007, the Archbishop gave an interview for Emel magazine, a lifestyle magazine celebrating contemporary British Muslim culture. Williams condemned the United States and certain Christian groups for their role in the Middle East. He was greatly critical of the United States, the aggressions against Iraq, and Christian Zionists, yet made "only mild criticisms of the Islamic world. He claimed "the United States wields its power in a way that is worse than Britain during its imperial heyday." He compared Muslims in Britain to the Good Samaritans, praised Muslim salah ritual of 5 prayers a day, but said in Muslim nations, the "present political solutions aren't always very impressive.
He contrasted U.S. unfavorably with how the British Empire governed India. “It is one thing to take over a territory and then pour energy and resources into administering it and normalizing it. Rightly or wrongly, that’s what the British Empire did — in India, for example. It is another thing to go in on the assumption that a quick burst of violent action will somehow clear the decks and that you can move on and other people will put it back together — Iraq, for example."
He went on to suggest that the West was fundamentally adrift: “Our modern western definition of humanity is clearly not working very well. There is something about western modernity which really does eat away at the soul.”
In November 2007, the Archbishop gave an interview for Emel magazine, a lifestyle magazine celebrating contemporary British Muslim culture. Williams condemned the United States and certain Christian groups for their role in the Middle East. He was greatly critical of the United States, the aggressions against Iraq, and Christian Zionists, yet made "only mild criticisms of the Islamic world. He claimed "the United States wields its power in a way that is worse than Britain during its imperial heyday." He compared Muslims in Britain to the Good Samaritans, praised Muslim salah ritual of 5 prayers a day, but said in Muslim nations, the "present political solutions aren't always very impressive.
He contrasted U.S. unfavorably with how the British Empire governed India. “It is one thing to take over a territory and then pour energy and resources into administering it and normalizing it. Rightly or wrongly, that’s what the British Empire did — in India, for example. It is another thing to go in on the assumption that a quick burst of violent action will somehow clear the decks and that you can move on and other people will put it back together — Iraq, for example."
He went on to suggest that the West was fundamentally adrift: “Our modern western definition of humanity is clearly not working very well. There is something about western modernity which really does eat away at the soul.”
-
haroon_adel
- Posts: 125
- Joined: Tue Mar 18, 2008 8:55 am
- Location: USA
abhey hey murghy!!!! go take care of your biryani.Biryani wrote:Speaking of Christianity, I greatly admire Archbishop of Canterbury, The Most Reverend and Right Honourable Rowan Williams…What a balanced gentleman He is.
In November 2007, the Archbishop gave an interview for Emel magazine, a lifestyle magazine celebrating contemporary British Muslim culture. Williams condemned the United States and certain Christian groups for their role in the Middle East. He was greatly critical of the United States, the aggressions against Iraq, and Christian Zionists, yet made "only mild criticisms of the Islamic world. He claimed "the United States wields its power in a way that is worse than Britain during its imperial heyday." He compared Muslims in Britain to the Good Samaritans, praised Muslim salah ritual of 5 prayers a day, but said in Muslim nations, the "present political solutions aren't always very impressive.
He contrasted U.S. unfavorably with how the British Empire governed India. “It is one thing to take over a territory and then pour energy and resources into administering it and normalizing it. Rightly or wrongly, that’s what the British Empire did — in India, for example. It is another thing to go in on the assumption that a quick burst of violent action will somehow clear the decks and that you can move on and other people will put it back together — Iraq, for example."
He went on to suggest that the West was fundamentally adrift: “Our modern western definition of humanity is clearly not working very well. There is something about western modernity which really does eat away at the soul.”
October 21, 2009
Vatican Bidding to Get Anglicans to Join Its Fold
By RACHEL DONADIO and LAURIE GOODSTEIN
VATICAN CITY — In an extraordinary bid to lure traditionalist Anglicans en masse, the Vatican said Tuesday that it would make it easier for Anglicans uncomfortable with their church’s acceptance of female priests and openly gay bishops to join the Roman Catholic Church while retaining many of their traditions.
Anglicans would be able “to enter full communion with the Catholic Church while preserving elements of the distinctive Anglican spiritual and liturgical patrimony,” Cardinal William J. Levada, the prefect for the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, said at a news conference here.
It was unclear why the Vatican made the announcement now. But it seemed a rare opportunity, audaciously executed, to capitalize on deep divisions within the Anglican Church to attract new members at a time when the Catholic Church has been trying to reinvigorate itself in Europe.
The issue has long been close to the heart of Pope Benedict XVI, who for years has worked to build ties to those Anglicans who, like conservative Catholics, spurn the idea of female and gay priests.
Catholic and Anglican leaders sought on Tuesday to present the move as a joint effort to aid those seeking conversion. But it appeared that the Vatican had engineered it on its own, presenting it as a fait accompli to the Most Rev. Rowan Williams, archbishop of Canterbury and the spiritual head of the Anglican Communion, only in recent weeks. Some Anglican and Catholic leaders expressed surprise, even shock, at the news.
The move could have the deepest impact in England, where large numbers of traditionalist Anglicans have protested the Church of England’s embrace of liberal theological reforms like consecrating female bishops. Experts say these Anglicans, and others in places like Australia, might be attracted to the Roman Catholic fold because they have had nowhere else to go.
If entire parishes or even dioceses leave the Church of England for the Catholic Church, experts and church officials speculated, it could set off battles over ownership of church buildings and land.
Pope Benedict has said that he will travel to Britain in 2010.
In the United States, traditionalist leaders said they would be less inclined than their British counterparts to join the Catholic Church, because they have already broken away from the Episcopal Church and formed their own conservative Anglican structures (though some do allow women to be priests).
The Vatican’s announcement signals a significant moment in relations between two churches that first parted in the Reformation of the 16th century over theological issues and the primacy of the pope.
In recent decades, the Anglican Communion and the Roman Catholic Church have sought to heal the centuries of division. Some feared that the Vatican’s move might jeopardize decades of dialogue between Catholics and Anglicans by implying that the aim was conversion.
The Very Rev. David Richardson, the archbishop of Canterbury’s representative to the Vatican, said he was taken aback.
“I don’t see it as an affront to the Anglican Church, but I’m puzzled by what it means and by the timing of it,” he said. “I think some Anglicans will feel affronted.”
The decision creates a formal universal structure to streamline conversions that had previously been evaluated case by case. The Vatican said that it would release details in the coming weeks, but that generally, former Anglican prelates chosen by the Catholic Church would oversee Anglicans, including entire parishes or even dioceses, seeking to convert.
Under the new arrangement, the Catholic practice that has allowed married Anglican priests to convert and become Catholic priests would continue. (There have been very few such priests.) But only unmarried Anglican bishops or priests could become Catholic bishops.
Cardinal Levada acknowledged that accepting large numbers of married Anglican priests while forbidding Catholic priests to marry could pose problems for some Catholics. But he argued that the circumstances differed.
Under the new structure, former Anglicans who become Catholic could preserve some elements of Anglican worship, including hymns and other “intangible” elements, Archbishop J. Augustine Di Noia, the Vatican’s deputy chief liturgical officer, said at the news conference.
Cardinal Levada said that the Vatican had acted in response to many requests from Anglicans since the Church of England ordained women in the 1990s, and, more recently, when it faced what he called “a very difficult question” — the ordination of openly gay clergy and the celebration of homosexual unions.
He said that 20 to 30 bishops and hundreds of other people had petitioned the Vatican on the matter in recent years.
In the United States, disaffected conservatives in the Episcopal Church, the American branch of Anglicanism, announced in 2008 that they were reorganizing as the Anglican Church in North America.
Bishop Martyn Minns, a leader of that group, welcomed the pope’s decision. “It demonstrates his conviction that the divisions in the Anglican Communion are very serious and these are not things that are going to get papered over,” he said.
However, both Bishop Minns and Archbishop Robert Duncan, primate of the Anglican Church in North America, said that they did not expect many conservative Anglicans to accept the offer because the theological differences were too great.
“I don’t want to be a Roman Catholic,” said Bishop Minns. “There was a Reformation, you remember.”
In Britain, the Rev. Rod Thomas, the chairman of Reform, a traditionalist Anglican group, said, “I think it will be a trickle of people, not a flood.”
But he said that a flood could in fact develop if the Church of England did not allow traditionalists to opt out of a recent church decision that women could be consecrated as bishops.
Some said the move would probably not win over traditionalist Anglicans in Africa.
“Why should any conservative break away from a church where the moral conservatives represent the overwhelming mass of opinion, such as in Nigeria?” said Philip Jenkins, a professor at Pennsylvania State University and an expert in the Catholic Church’s history in Africa and Asia.
The plan was announced at simultaneous news conferences at the Vatican and in London.
The Vatican’s archbishop of Westminster, Vincent Nichols, and Archbishop Williams of the Anglican Church issued a joint statement in which they said that the new structure “brings to an end a period of uncertainty for such groups who have nurtured hopes of new ways of embracing unity with the Catholic Church.”
In London, Archbishop Williams minimized the impact of the announcement on relations between the two churches. “It would not occur to me to see this as an act of aggression or a statement of no confidence, precisely because the routine relationships that we enjoy as churches will continue,” he said.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/21/world ... nted=print
Vatican Bidding to Get Anglicans to Join Its Fold
By RACHEL DONADIO and LAURIE GOODSTEIN
VATICAN CITY — In an extraordinary bid to lure traditionalist Anglicans en masse, the Vatican said Tuesday that it would make it easier for Anglicans uncomfortable with their church’s acceptance of female priests and openly gay bishops to join the Roman Catholic Church while retaining many of their traditions.
Anglicans would be able “to enter full communion with the Catholic Church while preserving elements of the distinctive Anglican spiritual and liturgical patrimony,” Cardinal William J. Levada, the prefect for the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, said at a news conference here.
It was unclear why the Vatican made the announcement now. But it seemed a rare opportunity, audaciously executed, to capitalize on deep divisions within the Anglican Church to attract new members at a time when the Catholic Church has been trying to reinvigorate itself in Europe.
The issue has long been close to the heart of Pope Benedict XVI, who for years has worked to build ties to those Anglicans who, like conservative Catholics, spurn the idea of female and gay priests.
Catholic and Anglican leaders sought on Tuesday to present the move as a joint effort to aid those seeking conversion. But it appeared that the Vatican had engineered it on its own, presenting it as a fait accompli to the Most Rev. Rowan Williams, archbishop of Canterbury and the spiritual head of the Anglican Communion, only in recent weeks. Some Anglican and Catholic leaders expressed surprise, even shock, at the news.
The move could have the deepest impact in England, where large numbers of traditionalist Anglicans have protested the Church of England’s embrace of liberal theological reforms like consecrating female bishops. Experts say these Anglicans, and others in places like Australia, might be attracted to the Roman Catholic fold because they have had nowhere else to go.
If entire parishes or even dioceses leave the Church of England for the Catholic Church, experts and church officials speculated, it could set off battles over ownership of church buildings and land.
Pope Benedict has said that he will travel to Britain in 2010.
In the United States, traditionalist leaders said they would be less inclined than their British counterparts to join the Catholic Church, because they have already broken away from the Episcopal Church and formed their own conservative Anglican structures (though some do allow women to be priests).
The Vatican’s announcement signals a significant moment in relations between two churches that first parted in the Reformation of the 16th century over theological issues and the primacy of the pope.
In recent decades, the Anglican Communion and the Roman Catholic Church have sought to heal the centuries of division. Some feared that the Vatican’s move might jeopardize decades of dialogue between Catholics and Anglicans by implying that the aim was conversion.
The Very Rev. David Richardson, the archbishop of Canterbury’s representative to the Vatican, said he was taken aback.
“I don’t see it as an affront to the Anglican Church, but I’m puzzled by what it means and by the timing of it,” he said. “I think some Anglicans will feel affronted.”
The decision creates a formal universal structure to streamline conversions that had previously been evaluated case by case. The Vatican said that it would release details in the coming weeks, but that generally, former Anglican prelates chosen by the Catholic Church would oversee Anglicans, including entire parishes or even dioceses, seeking to convert.
Under the new arrangement, the Catholic practice that has allowed married Anglican priests to convert and become Catholic priests would continue. (There have been very few such priests.) But only unmarried Anglican bishops or priests could become Catholic bishops.
Cardinal Levada acknowledged that accepting large numbers of married Anglican priests while forbidding Catholic priests to marry could pose problems for some Catholics. But he argued that the circumstances differed.
Under the new structure, former Anglicans who become Catholic could preserve some elements of Anglican worship, including hymns and other “intangible” elements, Archbishop J. Augustine Di Noia, the Vatican’s deputy chief liturgical officer, said at the news conference.
Cardinal Levada said that the Vatican had acted in response to many requests from Anglicans since the Church of England ordained women in the 1990s, and, more recently, when it faced what he called “a very difficult question” — the ordination of openly gay clergy and the celebration of homosexual unions.
He said that 20 to 30 bishops and hundreds of other people had petitioned the Vatican on the matter in recent years.
In the United States, disaffected conservatives in the Episcopal Church, the American branch of Anglicanism, announced in 2008 that they were reorganizing as the Anglican Church in North America.
Bishop Martyn Minns, a leader of that group, welcomed the pope’s decision. “It demonstrates his conviction that the divisions in the Anglican Communion are very serious and these are not things that are going to get papered over,” he said.
However, both Bishop Minns and Archbishop Robert Duncan, primate of the Anglican Church in North America, said that they did not expect many conservative Anglicans to accept the offer because the theological differences were too great.
“I don’t want to be a Roman Catholic,” said Bishop Minns. “There was a Reformation, you remember.”
In Britain, the Rev. Rod Thomas, the chairman of Reform, a traditionalist Anglican group, said, “I think it will be a trickle of people, not a flood.”
But he said that a flood could in fact develop if the Church of England did not allow traditionalists to opt out of a recent church decision that women could be consecrated as bishops.
Some said the move would probably not win over traditionalist Anglicans in Africa.
“Why should any conservative break away from a church where the moral conservatives represent the overwhelming mass of opinion, such as in Nigeria?” said Philip Jenkins, a professor at Pennsylvania State University and an expert in the Catholic Church’s history in Africa and Asia.
The plan was announced at simultaneous news conferences at the Vatican and in London.
The Vatican’s archbishop of Westminster, Vincent Nichols, and Archbishop Williams of the Anglican Church issued a joint statement in which they said that the new structure “brings to an end a period of uncertainty for such groups who have nurtured hopes of new ways of embracing unity with the Catholic Church.”
In London, Archbishop Williams minimized the impact of the announcement on relations between the two churches. “It would not occur to me to see this as an act of aggression or a statement of no confidence, precisely because the routine relationships that we enjoy as churches will continue,” he said.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/21/world ... nted=print
October 25, 2009
Op-Ed Contributor
Rock of Ages, Cleft by the Pope
By A. N. WILSON
London
THE images and clichés came spluttering out of the laptops of church people and religious affairs correspondents on Tuesday: The pope has parked his tanks on the Church of England’s lawn; Rome has made a hostile takeover bid for Canterbury. It is understandable if people are at a loss for words, since the move has been made so decisively and so without warning. Even the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, knew nothing of the plan until a few days ago.
What has happened? Basically, it seems that Pope Benedict XVI has offered disgruntled Anglicans the opportunity to come over to Roman Catholicism en masse. Such an arrangement already exists in America. Anglicans who dislike the way they see things going in their own church (female bishops, gay bishops, gay female bishops — take your pick) are allowed to regroup within the Church of Rome. Although their priests will need to be retrained and re-ordained, they will be able to continue to use their traditional rites and Prayer Books, and to stay together as congregations.
There is talk in England of as many as 1,000 clergy members taking this offer. Even allowing for the numerical exaggeration, which always occurs when enemies of liberalism congregate, this is a huge potential figure. Let us say 500 Anglican priests and perhaps 10 bishops joined the new arrangement. Let us suppose they took with them plausible congregations. This would deliver a body blow not just to the Church of England, but to that whole intricately constructed and only semi-definable phenomenon, the British Establishment.
The numbers of practicing Catholics in England is greater than the number of practicing Anglicans. Within a generation, there will probably be more Muslims than practicing Anglicans in the British Isles. Britain will no longer be able to endure the absurdity of the laws relating to the religion of the monarch, the Act of Settlement and Royal Marriages Act, which among other things forbid the sovereign to marry a Catholic. Or the Coronation Oath, which promises to uphold the Protestant religion.
Britain has gone through a truly prodigious change in the last 30 years. It has moved from being a largely white culture with Christianity as its background religion to being a completely secular, multicultural society. The ease and good humor with which this revolution has occurred has made Britain — and especially London — an amazingly interesting place to be right now. A genial secularized liberalism is the new norm. It might be difficult to define it, but you feel when its codes are infringed, as with the controversies over “faith schools” that teach creationism, or with the misgivings felt by many secular politicians about such issues as the wearing of the burqa.
The moderate right at present in power in France talks freely of dissuading women from wearing a body covering like the burqa because to do so is un-French. In Britain, there is a much more tolerant attitude toward all faiths and none, with a great deal of rather likable muddle about where a decent liberal person should stand on such a matter. Maybe it’s just as British to wear a black bag over your head as to wear one of the bizarre outfits you still see in the enclosure at Royal Ascot.
In such a climate, the Church of England had no chance at all of surviving. It was bound to go, and it was just waiting, historically, for some catalyst to bring it to an end. That catalyst has been provided by the somewhat unlikely controversy over female bishops.
It is a strange breaking point, since there have been female priests for years. But conservative Anglicans object that other episcopal churches in the world — the Copts, Russian Orthodox, Roman Catholics — do not accept female bishops. Anglicans have believed since the Reformation that although the Church of England had separated itself from Rome, it retained the historic episcopate, descended from Christ’s apostles. As a result, there are now Anglican bishops who, because they are women, are not recognized as bishops by all Anglicans, let alone the other apostolic churches.
As a result, England’s church has managed an “Alice in Wonderland” situation in which those who do not like female bishops (or the bishops who ordained them) can owe obedience to so-called Flying Bishops, upholders of the traditional faith who “fly” from parish to parish, regardless of the boundaries of diocese. These bishops, and others who think as they do, have been prime movers in shaping the Vatican’s new offer.
How will it all work? Will the English Catholics, always hard pressed for cash, be in a position to take over the running of our medieval churches? What will happen to the cathedrals? As fewer and fewer real Christians exist in England, will the church buildings be taken over by some secular conservation group like the National Trust? Probably. And for the 55 million or so Britons who don’t regularly attend services — some 90 percent of the population — it is all rather unimportant.
But it is nevertheless a landmark. The Church of England has been the religious expression of that independent national identity which signaled the rise of Britain as a significant world power. Hatched by Henry VIII and nurtured by his daughter Elizabeth I, the Church of England was an expression of that combination of tolerance and arrogance that marked the English governing class. It sat light to doctrine, and tried to accommodate many. But while that seemed a gentle thing to do, it did so because it actually laid claim to governing and controlling all.
Now, as the pope looks to put an end to this facet of Britain’s character, there are ghosts smiling a little ruefully. For one, the Duchess of Windsor (a k a Wallis Warfield Simpson of Baltimore), denied the opportunity of being queen because the Church of England disapproved of divorce. The Catholic recusants, who huddled in priest-holes rather than acknowledge the monarch as supreme governor of the church, will be smiling a little grimly, too. In time to come, I confidently predict, there will be others smiling ruefully, too — such as the “liberal” Anglicans left behind, who will watch a pope (I guess 20 years from now) ordaining women to the Catholic priesthood.
Although it will be a sad day for those Anglicans who have reached a parting of the ways, for Britain itself, the pope’s maneuver is actually good news. It will formally bring to an end the idea of the Established Church, and of the monarch as that Establishment’s symbol and head. Whatever our private religious allegiances, we Britons no longer want to force our royal heads of state to jump through those impossible hoops. The paradox is that a move by a conservative pope to ease the tender consciences of conservative-minded Anglicans will actually be a move toward the complete secularization of Britain, and an acceptance of its new multicultural identity.
A. N. Wilson is the author, most recently, of the novel “Winnie and Wolf.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/25/opini ... nted=print
Op-Ed Contributor
Rock of Ages, Cleft by the Pope
By A. N. WILSON
London
THE images and clichés came spluttering out of the laptops of church people and religious affairs correspondents on Tuesday: The pope has parked his tanks on the Church of England’s lawn; Rome has made a hostile takeover bid for Canterbury. It is understandable if people are at a loss for words, since the move has been made so decisively and so without warning. Even the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, knew nothing of the plan until a few days ago.
What has happened? Basically, it seems that Pope Benedict XVI has offered disgruntled Anglicans the opportunity to come over to Roman Catholicism en masse. Such an arrangement already exists in America. Anglicans who dislike the way they see things going in their own church (female bishops, gay bishops, gay female bishops — take your pick) are allowed to regroup within the Church of Rome. Although their priests will need to be retrained and re-ordained, they will be able to continue to use their traditional rites and Prayer Books, and to stay together as congregations.
There is talk in England of as many as 1,000 clergy members taking this offer. Even allowing for the numerical exaggeration, which always occurs when enemies of liberalism congregate, this is a huge potential figure. Let us say 500 Anglican priests and perhaps 10 bishops joined the new arrangement. Let us suppose they took with them plausible congregations. This would deliver a body blow not just to the Church of England, but to that whole intricately constructed and only semi-definable phenomenon, the British Establishment.
The numbers of practicing Catholics in England is greater than the number of practicing Anglicans. Within a generation, there will probably be more Muslims than practicing Anglicans in the British Isles. Britain will no longer be able to endure the absurdity of the laws relating to the religion of the monarch, the Act of Settlement and Royal Marriages Act, which among other things forbid the sovereign to marry a Catholic. Or the Coronation Oath, which promises to uphold the Protestant religion.
Britain has gone through a truly prodigious change in the last 30 years. It has moved from being a largely white culture with Christianity as its background religion to being a completely secular, multicultural society. The ease and good humor with which this revolution has occurred has made Britain — and especially London — an amazingly interesting place to be right now. A genial secularized liberalism is the new norm. It might be difficult to define it, but you feel when its codes are infringed, as with the controversies over “faith schools” that teach creationism, or with the misgivings felt by many secular politicians about such issues as the wearing of the burqa.
The moderate right at present in power in France talks freely of dissuading women from wearing a body covering like the burqa because to do so is un-French. In Britain, there is a much more tolerant attitude toward all faiths and none, with a great deal of rather likable muddle about where a decent liberal person should stand on such a matter. Maybe it’s just as British to wear a black bag over your head as to wear one of the bizarre outfits you still see in the enclosure at Royal Ascot.
In such a climate, the Church of England had no chance at all of surviving. It was bound to go, and it was just waiting, historically, for some catalyst to bring it to an end. That catalyst has been provided by the somewhat unlikely controversy over female bishops.
It is a strange breaking point, since there have been female priests for years. But conservative Anglicans object that other episcopal churches in the world — the Copts, Russian Orthodox, Roman Catholics — do not accept female bishops. Anglicans have believed since the Reformation that although the Church of England had separated itself from Rome, it retained the historic episcopate, descended from Christ’s apostles. As a result, there are now Anglican bishops who, because they are women, are not recognized as bishops by all Anglicans, let alone the other apostolic churches.
As a result, England’s church has managed an “Alice in Wonderland” situation in which those who do not like female bishops (or the bishops who ordained them) can owe obedience to so-called Flying Bishops, upholders of the traditional faith who “fly” from parish to parish, regardless of the boundaries of diocese. These bishops, and others who think as they do, have been prime movers in shaping the Vatican’s new offer.
How will it all work? Will the English Catholics, always hard pressed for cash, be in a position to take over the running of our medieval churches? What will happen to the cathedrals? As fewer and fewer real Christians exist in England, will the church buildings be taken over by some secular conservation group like the National Trust? Probably. And for the 55 million or so Britons who don’t regularly attend services — some 90 percent of the population — it is all rather unimportant.
But it is nevertheless a landmark. The Church of England has been the religious expression of that independent national identity which signaled the rise of Britain as a significant world power. Hatched by Henry VIII and nurtured by his daughter Elizabeth I, the Church of England was an expression of that combination of tolerance and arrogance that marked the English governing class. It sat light to doctrine, and tried to accommodate many. But while that seemed a gentle thing to do, it did so because it actually laid claim to governing and controlling all.
Now, as the pope looks to put an end to this facet of Britain’s character, there are ghosts smiling a little ruefully. For one, the Duchess of Windsor (a k a Wallis Warfield Simpson of Baltimore), denied the opportunity of being queen because the Church of England disapproved of divorce. The Catholic recusants, who huddled in priest-holes rather than acknowledge the monarch as supreme governor of the church, will be smiling a little grimly, too. In time to come, I confidently predict, there will be others smiling ruefully, too — such as the “liberal” Anglicans left behind, who will watch a pope (I guess 20 years from now) ordaining women to the Catholic priesthood.
Although it will be a sad day for those Anglicans who have reached a parting of the ways, for Britain itself, the pope’s maneuver is actually good news. It will formally bring to an end the idea of the Established Church, and of the monarch as that Establishment’s symbol and head. Whatever our private religious allegiances, we Britons no longer want to force our royal heads of state to jump through those impossible hoops. The paradox is that a move by a conservative pope to ease the tender consciences of conservative-minded Anglicans will actually be a move toward the complete secularization of Britain, and an acceptance of its new multicultural identity.
A. N. Wilson is the author, most recently, of the novel “Winnie and Wolf.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/25/opini ... nted=print
-
From_Alamut
- Posts: 666
- Joined: Tue Jan 22, 2008 8:22 am
Re: Christianity
When President Barack Obama gave a speech in Turkey last week in which he assured the Muslim world that America is a not a Christian nation but a nation of citizens, Fox News and former Miss America Gretchen Carlson at "Fox and Friends" used the speech as another opportunity to question President Obama's regard for Christianity instead of seeing the historical parallel to the 1797 Treaty of Tripoli is which US President John Adams and a unanimous US Senate declared that "...the government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian Religion..."
The Fox News clips in this video come from the "Fox and Friends" program broadcast on April 8, 2009.
The images of the Treaty of Tripoli in this video come from the two Library of Congress webpages at http://memory.loc.gov/ll/llsp/002/000...
and at http://memory.loc.gov/ll/llsp/002/000...
Reference
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OEF2-a6QBx8
________________________________________________________
On this channel, the truth reveal that Obama is a Muslim....
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SVn59TC2 ... re=related
The Fox News clips in this video come from the "Fox and Friends" program broadcast on April 8, 2009.
The images of the Treaty of Tripoli in this video come from the two Library of Congress webpages at http://memory.loc.gov/ll/llsp/002/000...
and at http://memory.loc.gov/ll/llsp/002/000...
Reference
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OEF2-a6QBx8
________________________________________________________
On this channel, the truth reveal that Obama is a Muslim....
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SVn59TC2 ... re=related
Better get blogging, Pope urges priests
From Herald News Services
January 24, 2010
For God's sake, blog! Pope Benedict told priests on Saturday, saying they must learn to use new forms of communication to spread the Gospel.
In his message for the Roman Catholic Church's World Day of Communications, the Pope, who is 82 and known not to love computers or the Internet, acknowledged priests must make the most of the "rich menu of options" offered by new technology.
"Priests are thus challenged to proclaim the Gospel by employing the latest generation of audiovisual resources -- images, videos, animated features, blogs, websites -- which, alongside traditional means, can open up broad new vistas for dialogue, evangelization and catechesis," he said.
Priests, he said, had to respond to the challenge of "today's cultural shifts" if they wanted to reach young people. But he warned priests not to strive to become stars of new media.
After decades of being wary of new media, the Vatican has decided to dive in head first. Last year, a new Vatican website, www.pope2you. net, went live, offering one application called "The Pope meets you on Facebook," and another allowing the faithful to read the Pope's speeches on their iPhones.
© Copyright (c) The Calgary Herald
http://www.calgaryherald.com/story_prin ... 8&sponsor=
From Herald News Services
January 24, 2010
For God's sake, blog! Pope Benedict told priests on Saturday, saying they must learn to use new forms of communication to spread the Gospel.
In his message for the Roman Catholic Church's World Day of Communications, the Pope, who is 82 and known not to love computers or the Internet, acknowledged priests must make the most of the "rich menu of options" offered by new technology.
"Priests are thus challenged to proclaim the Gospel by employing the latest generation of audiovisual resources -- images, videos, animated features, blogs, websites -- which, alongside traditional means, can open up broad new vistas for dialogue, evangelization and catechesis," he said.
Priests, he said, had to respond to the challenge of "today's cultural shifts" if they wanted to reach young people. But he warned priests not to strive to become stars of new media.
After decades of being wary of new media, the Vatican has decided to dive in head first. Last year, a new Vatican website, www.pope2you. net, went live, offering one application called "The Pope meets you on Facebook," and another allowing the faithful to read the Pope's speeches on their iPhones.
© Copyright (c) The Calgary Herald
http://www.calgaryherald.com/story_prin ... 8&sponsor=
Keeping the faith in a turbulent sea of scandal
By Paula Arab, Calgary HeraldApril 8, 2010
The year 2010 will go down in history as an uncomfortable time to be a Catholic. I imagine others, like me, are questioning their consciences, and wondering whether or not to continue supporting a Church that for decades has allowed itself to become a sanctuary for pedophiles; an enabler in the abuse of children.
Catholics today share the collective guilt over the greater sin -- the coverup by bishops and cardinals, and their failure to adequately address the welfare of victims.
But leaving is not the answer. This is a golden opportunity to demand the cleansing of the filth, and participate in the revival of a better, stronger organization, an organization that meets the spiritual needs of its followers.
I am one Catholic who is glad the scandal has risen to the top of the hierarchy. The stench has filled up St. Peter's Square. The Vatican has nowhere to run, and top leaders have no choice but to smell the rot and do something about it.
This is a chance, finally in my lifetime, for a rebirth of the outdated structure of the Roman Catholic Church. It needs to return to its roots to find its future; to focus and reorganize itself so it better reflects the values upon which Jesus founded the world's largest Christian religion.
Once a Catholic can get past the seemingly sacrilegious act of questioning the infallibility of the Pope, one realizes the true leader of the Church is Christ, not a human being.
The foibles of man may have brought down the basilica, but the teachings of Jesus and a return to the love and compassion he preached, might be enough to rebuild a healthier, stronger cathedral that serves its people.
Ironically, the sex abuse scandal shaking the Church has unfolded over the Easter season, the holiest time of the religious calendar. Like spring, this holy season symbolizes the purging of the old, a death and ultimate new life.
It's my favourite time of year, reminding me why I will always believe in my religion.
Several years ago, away from my family, I spent Easter with one of my oldest and dearest friends. He is a homosexual who left the Catholic Church years earlier because he felt he was no longer welcome. I desperately wanted him to come to mass with me that evening, and tried to persuade him he was wrong. I told him the message I have always received was that Jesus loved us all, and that I believed in my heart the Church had a place for my friend. We agreed to disagree, but in the end he surprised me. He came to the service, explaining he did so only because he knew how much it meant to me to attend Easter mass. And that evening, the priest surprised us both. He gave a sermon that almost seemed to speak directly to us. It still brings tears to my eyes to remember how clearly and eloquently the priest described the isolation my friend was feeling. Then he stressed that everyone was welcome in his church, but most especially those who felt uncomfortable to be there, like they didn't belong.
Religion is a highly personal subject, open to interpretation and sometimes wrongful assumptions. Unfortunately, priests who are able to stay focused on their role as spiritual leaders aren't always easy to find.
A good priest offers his congregation spiritual renewal every Sunday, with an inspiring sermon that makes them contemplate how to be a better person that week. He offers direction, and a message that's relevant. If it isn't, it will eventually echo off the walls of an empty church.
The Vatican, with its refusal to recognize birth control, ordain women priests, or allow married men to enter the priesthood, is exceedingly distancing itself from the daily lives of ordinary people. And its ongoing defence of leaders who did nothing to stop criminals from wearing the collar or redress the abuse, is driving good Catholics away.
With all due respect to Calgary Bishop Fred Henry, he's too concerned with controversial politics. Average Catholics don't need Henry to dictate whether or not it's moral to use funds from charity casinos and bingos to raise badly needed revenue for schools. Neither do they want him to weigh in on women's health, equating a cervical cancer vaccination program for 10-year-old girls to the sins of premarital sex.
Give it a rest.
There are far greater spiritual holes in our lives to be filled, that provide an excellent opportunity for Church leaders to make themselves relevant. We live in a time of much anxiety, suffering and loneliness.
Jesus taught us to be concerned with today only, and let God take care of the rest. He taught us how to live in the moment, to be kind and loving to others, and to be peacemakers. Jesus loved children most of all.
Pedophilia might always be with our society, but it doesn't have to be synonymous with the Catholic Church.
[email protected]
© Copyright (c) The Calgary Herald
http://www.calgaryherald.com/story_prin ... 1&sponsor=
By Paula Arab, Calgary HeraldApril 8, 2010
The year 2010 will go down in history as an uncomfortable time to be a Catholic. I imagine others, like me, are questioning their consciences, and wondering whether or not to continue supporting a Church that for decades has allowed itself to become a sanctuary for pedophiles; an enabler in the abuse of children.
Catholics today share the collective guilt over the greater sin -- the coverup by bishops and cardinals, and their failure to adequately address the welfare of victims.
But leaving is not the answer. This is a golden opportunity to demand the cleansing of the filth, and participate in the revival of a better, stronger organization, an organization that meets the spiritual needs of its followers.
I am one Catholic who is glad the scandal has risen to the top of the hierarchy. The stench has filled up St. Peter's Square. The Vatican has nowhere to run, and top leaders have no choice but to smell the rot and do something about it.
This is a chance, finally in my lifetime, for a rebirth of the outdated structure of the Roman Catholic Church. It needs to return to its roots to find its future; to focus and reorganize itself so it better reflects the values upon which Jesus founded the world's largest Christian religion.
Once a Catholic can get past the seemingly sacrilegious act of questioning the infallibility of the Pope, one realizes the true leader of the Church is Christ, not a human being.
The foibles of man may have brought down the basilica, but the teachings of Jesus and a return to the love and compassion he preached, might be enough to rebuild a healthier, stronger cathedral that serves its people.
Ironically, the sex abuse scandal shaking the Church has unfolded over the Easter season, the holiest time of the religious calendar. Like spring, this holy season symbolizes the purging of the old, a death and ultimate new life.
It's my favourite time of year, reminding me why I will always believe in my religion.
Several years ago, away from my family, I spent Easter with one of my oldest and dearest friends. He is a homosexual who left the Catholic Church years earlier because he felt he was no longer welcome. I desperately wanted him to come to mass with me that evening, and tried to persuade him he was wrong. I told him the message I have always received was that Jesus loved us all, and that I believed in my heart the Church had a place for my friend. We agreed to disagree, but in the end he surprised me. He came to the service, explaining he did so only because he knew how much it meant to me to attend Easter mass. And that evening, the priest surprised us both. He gave a sermon that almost seemed to speak directly to us. It still brings tears to my eyes to remember how clearly and eloquently the priest described the isolation my friend was feeling. Then he stressed that everyone was welcome in his church, but most especially those who felt uncomfortable to be there, like they didn't belong.
Religion is a highly personal subject, open to interpretation and sometimes wrongful assumptions. Unfortunately, priests who are able to stay focused on their role as spiritual leaders aren't always easy to find.
A good priest offers his congregation spiritual renewal every Sunday, with an inspiring sermon that makes them contemplate how to be a better person that week. He offers direction, and a message that's relevant. If it isn't, it will eventually echo off the walls of an empty church.
The Vatican, with its refusal to recognize birth control, ordain women priests, or allow married men to enter the priesthood, is exceedingly distancing itself from the daily lives of ordinary people. And its ongoing defence of leaders who did nothing to stop criminals from wearing the collar or redress the abuse, is driving good Catholics away.
With all due respect to Calgary Bishop Fred Henry, he's too concerned with controversial politics. Average Catholics don't need Henry to dictate whether or not it's moral to use funds from charity casinos and bingos to raise badly needed revenue for schools. Neither do they want him to weigh in on women's health, equating a cervical cancer vaccination program for 10-year-old girls to the sins of premarital sex.
Give it a rest.
There are far greater spiritual holes in our lives to be filled, that provide an excellent opportunity for Church leaders to make themselves relevant. We live in a time of much anxiety, suffering and loneliness.
Jesus taught us to be concerned with today only, and let God take care of the rest. He taught us how to live in the moment, to be kind and loving to others, and to be peacemakers. Jesus loved children most of all.
Pedophilia might always be with our society, but it doesn't have to be synonymous with the Catholic Church.
[email protected]
© Copyright (c) The Calgary Herald
http://www.calgaryherald.com/story_prin ... 1&sponsor=
Choose Your Own Jesus
Here’s a striking passage — an aside, really — from Adam Gopnik’s New Yorker essay on the continuing (and continuing, and continuing) quest for the historical Jesus:
James Tabor, a professor of religious studies, in his 2006 book “The Jesus Dynasty,” takes surprisingly seriously the old Jewish idea that Jesus was known as the illegitimate son of a Roman soldier named Pantera—as well attested a tradition as any [emphasis mine — RD], occurring in Jewish texts of the second century, in which a Jesus ben Pantera makes several appearances, and the name is merely descriptive, not derogatory.
The whole problem with two centuries worth of historical Jesus scholarship is summed up in those seven words: “As well attested a tradition as any.” Because obviously if you don’t mind a little supernaturalism with your history, a story about Jesus being a Roman soldier’s bastard that dates from the second century — and late in the second century, at that — is dramatically less “well attested” than the well-known tradition (perhaps you’ve heard of it) that Jesus was born of a virgin married to Joseph the carpenter, which dates from the 70s or 80s A.D. at the latest, when the Gospels of Luke and Matthew were composed. Bracket the question of miracles, and there’s really no comparison: Giving the Roman soldier story equal weight with the accounts in Matthew and Luke is like saying that a tale about Abraham Lincoln that first surfaced in the 1970s has just as much credibility as a story that dates to the 1890s (and is associated with eyewitnesses to Lincoln’s life).
Now of course what Gopnik means by “well attested” is “well attested and non-miraculous,” which is fair enough so far as it goes. But this no-miracles criterion is why the historical Jesus project is such a spectacular dead end — because what would ordinarily be the most historically-credible sources for the life and times of Jesus Christ are absolutely soaked in supernaturalism, and if you throw them out you’re left with essentially idle speculations about Jesus ben Pantera and other phantoms that have no real historical grounding whatsoever.
Think about it this way: If the letters of Saint Paul (the earliest surviving Christian texts, by general consensus) and the synoptic gospels (the second-earliest) didn’t make such extraordinary claims about Jesus’s resurrection, his divinity, and so forth, no credible historian would waste much time parsing second-century apocrypha for clues about the “real” Jesus. They’d thank their lucky stars that the first-century Christians were such talented narrative writers, and spend most of their time trying to reconcile the discrepancies and resolve the contradictions in Matthew, Mark and Luke, while arguing amongst themselves about how much historical weight to give to the events and sayings recorded in John’s gospel. The gospel of Thomas would attract some modest attention; the later “lost gospels,” very little, save as evidence of how intra-Christian debates developed long after Jesus’s death. For the most part, the argument over how the Nazarene lived and died would revolve around competing interpretations of the existing Christian canon, and the rough accuracy of the synoptic narrative would be accepted by the vast majority of scholars.
In the event, the synoptic gospels and Saint Paul’s epistles do make absolutely extraordinary claims, and so modern scholars have every right to read them with a skeptical eye, and question their factual reliability. But if you downgrade the earliest Christian documents or try to bracket them entirely, the documentary evidence that’s left is so intensely unreliable (dated, fragmentary, obviously mythological, etc.) that scholars can scavenge through it to build whatever Jesus they prefer — and then say, with Gopnik, that their interpretation of the life of Christ is “as well attested” as any other. Was Jesus a wandering sage? Maybe so. A failed revolutionary? Sure, why not. A lunatic who fancied himself divine? Perhaps. An apocalyptic prophet? There’s an app for that …
But this isn’t history: It’s “choose your own Jesus,” and it’s become an enormous waste of time. Again, there’s nothing wrong with saying that the supernaturalism of the Christian canon makes it an unreliable guide to who Jesus really was. But if we’re honest with ourselves, then we need to acknowledge what this means: Not the beginning of a fruitful quest for the Jesus of history, but the end of it.
http://douthat.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/0 ... n&emc=tyb1
Here’s a striking passage — an aside, really — from Adam Gopnik’s New Yorker essay on the continuing (and continuing, and continuing) quest for the historical Jesus:
James Tabor, a professor of religious studies, in his 2006 book “The Jesus Dynasty,” takes surprisingly seriously the old Jewish idea that Jesus was known as the illegitimate son of a Roman soldier named Pantera—as well attested a tradition as any [emphasis mine — RD], occurring in Jewish texts of the second century, in which a Jesus ben Pantera makes several appearances, and the name is merely descriptive, not derogatory.
The whole problem with two centuries worth of historical Jesus scholarship is summed up in those seven words: “As well attested a tradition as any.” Because obviously if you don’t mind a little supernaturalism with your history, a story about Jesus being a Roman soldier’s bastard that dates from the second century — and late in the second century, at that — is dramatically less “well attested” than the well-known tradition (perhaps you’ve heard of it) that Jesus was born of a virgin married to Joseph the carpenter, which dates from the 70s or 80s A.D. at the latest, when the Gospels of Luke and Matthew were composed. Bracket the question of miracles, and there’s really no comparison: Giving the Roman soldier story equal weight with the accounts in Matthew and Luke is like saying that a tale about Abraham Lincoln that first surfaced in the 1970s has just as much credibility as a story that dates to the 1890s (and is associated with eyewitnesses to Lincoln’s life).
Now of course what Gopnik means by “well attested” is “well attested and non-miraculous,” which is fair enough so far as it goes. But this no-miracles criterion is why the historical Jesus project is such a spectacular dead end — because what would ordinarily be the most historically-credible sources for the life and times of Jesus Christ are absolutely soaked in supernaturalism, and if you throw them out you’re left with essentially idle speculations about Jesus ben Pantera and other phantoms that have no real historical grounding whatsoever.
Think about it this way: If the letters of Saint Paul (the earliest surviving Christian texts, by general consensus) and the synoptic gospels (the second-earliest) didn’t make such extraordinary claims about Jesus’s resurrection, his divinity, and so forth, no credible historian would waste much time parsing second-century apocrypha for clues about the “real” Jesus. They’d thank their lucky stars that the first-century Christians were such talented narrative writers, and spend most of their time trying to reconcile the discrepancies and resolve the contradictions in Matthew, Mark and Luke, while arguing amongst themselves about how much historical weight to give to the events and sayings recorded in John’s gospel. The gospel of Thomas would attract some modest attention; the later “lost gospels,” very little, save as evidence of how intra-Christian debates developed long after Jesus’s death. For the most part, the argument over how the Nazarene lived and died would revolve around competing interpretations of the existing Christian canon, and the rough accuracy of the synoptic narrative would be accepted by the vast majority of scholars.
In the event, the synoptic gospels and Saint Paul’s epistles do make absolutely extraordinary claims, and so modern scholars have every right to read them with a skeptical eye, and question their factual reliability. But if you downgrade the earliest Christian documents or try to bracket them entirely, the documentary evidence that’s left is so intensely unreliable (dated, fragmentary, obviously mythological, etc.) that scholars can scavenge through it to build whatever Jesus they prefer — and then say, with Gopnik, that their interpretation of the life of Christ is “as well attested” as any other. Was Jesus a wandering sage? Maybe so. A failed revolutionary? Sure, why not. A lunatic who fancied himself divine? Perhaps. An apocalyptic prophet? There’s an app for that …
But this isn’t history: It’s “choose your own Jesus,” and it’s become an enormous waste of time. Again, there’s nothing wrong with saying that the supernaturalism of the Christian canon makes it an unreliable guide to who Jesus really was. But if we’re honest with ourselves, then we need to acknowledge what this means: Not the beginning of a fruitful quest for the Jesus of history, but the end of it.
http://douthat.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/0 ... n&emc=tyb1
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From_Alamut
- Posts: 666
- Joined: Tue Jan 22, 2008 8:22 am
Church plans Quran-burning event
By Lauren Russell, CNN
July 31, 2010 12:50 a.m. EDT
http://www.cnn.com/2010/US/07/29/florid ... index.html
By Lauren Russell, CNN
July 31, 2010 12:50 a.m. EDT
http://www.cnn.com/2010/US/07/29/florid ... index.html
Hope this event does not happen.
If the Quran- burning event take place in Florida, then Muslims will not tolerate it and become silent, they will also burn Bible that is for sure and thus.......? I do not know what will be happen afterward and when will be it stop being an Ismaili I do not like this happen but we never know that makes me worry.
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From_Alamut
- Posts: 666
- Joined: Tue Jan 22, 2008 8:22 am
Re: Hope this event does not happen.
Sermon from Sunday, August 29; 11 am service
Preaching: Rev. Deborah C. Lindsay on Islamophobia
Across America today, we are seeing an increase in fear and suspicion of people of Muslim faith. Rev. Deborah Lindsay reflects on the urgent need for understanding and peace-making, and she says a true Christian message is one of respect and understanding for all people of all faiths and traditions. After all, we are ALL created in the image of God.
Click the player below to start the stream and view this sermon.
http://www.fcchurch.com/worship/broadca ... rder-video
Preaching: Rev. Deborah C. Lindsay on Islamophobia
Across America today, we are seeing an increase in fear and suspicion of people of Muslim faith. Rev. Deborah Lindsay reflects on the urgent need for understanding and peace-making, and she says a true Christian message is one of respect and understanding for all people of all faiths and traditions. After all, we are ALL created in the image of God.
Click the player below to start the stream and view this sermon.
http://www.fcchurch.com/worship/broadca ... rder-video
A bishop, a nun, a hospital and a holy war.
January 26, 2011
Tussling Over Jesus
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
The National Catholic Reporter newspaper put it best: “Just days before Christians celebrated Christmas, Jesus got evicted.”
Yet the person giving Jesus the heave-ho in this case was not a Bethlehem innkeeper. Nor was it an overzealous mayor angering conservatives by pulling down Christmas decorations. Rather, it was a prominent bishop, Thomas Olmsted, stripping St. Joseph’s Hospital and Medical Center in Phoenix of its affiliation with the Roman Catholic diocese.
The hospital’s offense? It had terminated a pregnancy to save the life of the mother. The hospital says the 27-year-old woman, a mother of four children, would almost certainly have died otherwise.
Bishop Olmsted initially excommunicated a nun, Sister Margaret McBride, who had been on the hospital’s ethics committee and had approved of the decision. That seems to have been a failed attempt to bully the hospital into submission, but it refused to cave and continues to employ Sister Margaret. Now the bishop, in effect, is excommunicating the entire hospital — all because it saved a woman’s life.
Make no mistake: This clash of values is a bellwether of a profound disagreement that is playing out at many Catholic hospitals around the country. These hospitals are part of the backbone of American health care, amounting to 15 percent of hospital beds.
Already in Bend, Ore., last year, a bishop ended the church’s official relationship with St. Charles Medical Center for making tubal ligation sterilizations available to women who requested them. And two Catholic hospitals in Texas halted tubal ligations at the insistence of the local bishop in Tyler.
The National Women’s Law Center has just issued a report quoting doctors at Catholic-affiliated hospitals as saying that sometimes they are forced by church doctrine to provide substandard care to women with miscarriages or ectopic pregnancies in ways that can leave the women infertile or even endanger their lives. More clashes are likely as the church hierarchy grows more conservative, and as hospitals and laity grow more impatient with bishops who seem increasingly out of touch.
Catholic hospitals like St. Joseph’s that are evicted by the church continue to operate largely as before. The main consequence is that Mass can no longer be said in the hospital chapel. Thomas C. Fox, the editor of National Catholic Reporter, noted regretfully that a hospital with deep Catholic roots like St. Joseph’s now cannot celebrate Mass, while airport chapels can. Mr. Fox added: “Olmsted’s moral certitude is lifeless, leaving no place for compassionate Christianity.”
To me, this battle illuminates two rival religious approaches, within the Catholic church and any spiritual tradition. One approach focuses upon dogma, sanctity, rules and the punishment of sinners. The other exalts compassion for the needy and mercy for sinners — and, perhaps, above all, inclusiveness.
The thought that keeps nagging at me is this: If you look at Bishop Olmsted and Sister Margaret as the protagonists in this battle, one of them truly seems to me to have emulated the life of Jesus. And it’s not the bishop, who has spent much of his adult life as a Vatican bureaucrat climbing the career ladder. It’s Sister Margaret, who like so many nuns has toiled for decades on behalf of the neediest and sickest among us.
Then along comes Bishop Olmsted to excommunicate the Christ-like figure in our story. If Jesus were around today, he might sue the bishop for defamation.
Yet in this battle, it’s fascinating how much support St. Joseph’s Hospital has had and how firmly it has pushed back — in effect, pounding 95 theses on the bishop’s door. The hospital backed up Sister Margaret, and it rejected the bishop’s demand that it never again terminate a pregnancy to save the life of a mother.
“St. Joseph’s will continue through our words and deeds to carry out the healing ministry of Jesus,” said Linda Hunt, the hospital president. “Our operations, policies, and procedures will not change.” The Catholic Health Association of the United States, a network of Catholic hospitals around the country, stood squarely behind St. Joseph’s.
Anne Rice, the author and a commentator on Catholicism, sees a potential turning point. “St. Joseph’s refusal to knuckle under to the bishop is huge,” she told me, adding: “Maybe rank-and-file Catholics are finally talking back to a hierarchy that long ago deserted them.”
With the Vatican seemingly as deaf and remote as it was in 1517, some Catholics at the grass roots are pushing to recover their faith. Jamie L. Manson, the same columnist for National Catholic Reporter who proclaimed that Jesus had been “evicted,” also argued powerfully that many ordinary Catholics have reached a breaking point and that St. Joseph’s heralds a new vision of Catholicism: “Though they will be denied the opportunity to celebrate the Eucharist, the Eucharist will rise out of St. Joseph’s every time the sick are healed, the frightened are comforted, the lonely are visited, the weak are fed, and vigil is kept over the dying.”
Hallelujah.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/27/opini ... emc=tha212
January 26, 2011
Tussling Over Jesus
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
The National Catholic Reporter newspaper put it best: “Just days before Christians celebrated Christmas, Jesus got evicted.”
Yet the person giving Jesus the heave-ho in this case was not a Bethlehem innkeeper. Nor was it an overzealous mayor angering conservatives by pulling down Christmas decorations. Rather, it was a prominent bishop, Thomas Olmsted, stripping St. Joseph’s Hospital and Medical Center in Phoenix of its affiliation with the Roman Catholic diocese.
The hospital’s offense? It had terminated a pregnancy to save the life of the mother. The hospital says the 27-year-old woman, a mother of four children, would almost certainly have died otherwise.
Bishop Olmsted initially excommunicated a nun, Sister Margaret McBride, who had been on the hospital’s ethics committee and had approved of the decision. That seems to have been a failed attempt to bully the hospital into submission, but it refused to cave and continues to employ Sister Margaret. Now the bishop, in effect, is excommunicating the entire hospital — all because it saved a woman’s life.
Make no mistake: This clash of values is a bellwether of a profound disagreement that is playing out at many Catholic hospitals around the country. These hospitals are part of the backbone of American health care, amounting to 15 percent of hospital beds.
Already in Bend, Ore., last year, a bishop ended the church’s official relationship with St. Charles Medical Center for making tubal ligation sterilizations available to women who requested them. And two Catholic hospitals in Texas halted tubal ligations at the insistence of the local bishop in Tyler.
The National Women’s Law Center has just issued a report quoting doctors at Catholic-affiliated hospitals as saying that sometimes they are forced by church doctrine to provide substandard care to women with miscarriages or ectopic pregnancies in ways that can leave the women infertile or even endanger their lives. More clashes are likely as the church hierarchy grows more conservative, and as hospitals and laity grow more impatient with bishops who seem increasingly out of touch.
Catholic hospitals like St. Joseph’s that are evicted by the church continue to operate largely as before. The main consequence is that Mass can no longer be said in the hospital chapel. Thomas C. Fox, the editor of National Catholic Reporter, noted regretfully that a hospital with deep Catholic roots like St. Joseph’s now cannot celebrate Mass, while airport chapels can. Mr. Fox added: “Olmsted’s moral certitude is lifeless, leaving no place for compassionate Christianity.”
To me, this battle illuminates two rival religious approaches, within the Catholic church and any spiritual tradition. One approach focuses upon dogma, sanctity, rules and the punishment of sinners. The other exalts compassion for the needy and mercy for sinners — and, perhaps, above all, inclusiveness.
The thought that keeps nagging at me is this: If you look at Bishop Olmsted and Sister Margaret as the protagonists in this battle, one of them truly seems to me to have emulated the life of Jesus. And it’s not the bishop, who has spent much of his adult life as a Vatican bureaucrat climbing the career ladder. It’s Sister Margaret, who like so many nuns has toiled for decades on behalf of the neediest and sickest among us.
Then along comes Bishop Olmsted to excommunicate the Christ-like figure in our story. If Jesus were around today, he might sue the bishop for defamation.
Yet in this battle, it’s fascinating how much support St. Joseph’s Hospital has had and how firmly it has pushed back — in effect, pounding 95 theses on the bishop’s door. The hospital backed up Sister Margaret, and it rejected the bishop’s demand that it never again terminate a pregnancy to save the life of a mother.
“St. Joseph’s will continue through our words and deeds to carry out the healing ministry of Jesus,” said Linda Hunt, the hospital president. “Our operations, policies, and procedures will not change.” The Catholic Health Association of the United States, a network of Catholic hospitals around the country, stood squarely behind St. Joseph’s.
Anne Rice, the author and a commentator on Catholicism, sees a potential turning point. “St. Joseph’s refusal to knuckle under to the bishop is huge,” she told me, adding: “Maybe rank-and-file Catholics are finally talking back to a hierarchy that long ago deserted them.”
With the Vatican seemingly as deaf and remote as it was in 1517, some Catholics at the grass roots are pushing to recover their faith. Jamie L. Manson, the same columnist for National Catholic Reporter who proclaimed that Jesus had been “evicted,” also argued powerfully that many ordinary Catholics have reached a breaking point and that St. Joseph’s heralds a new vision of Catholicism: “Though they will be denied the opportunity to celebrate the Eucharist, the Eucharist will rise out of St. Joseph’s every time the sick are healed, the frightened are comforted, the lonely are visited, the weak are fed, and vigil is kept over the dying.”
Hallelujah.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/27/opini ... emc=tha212
"They Killed Him Not": The Crucifixion in Shi'a Isma'ili Islam
By: Khalil Andani
Complete article (PDF) has been posted at Ismailimail.
http://ismailimail.wordpress.com/2011/0 ... ili-islam/
By: Khalil Andani
Complete article (PDF) has been posted at Ismailimail.
http://ismailimail.wordpress.com/2011/0 ... ili-islam/
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shiraz.virani
- Posts: 1256
- Joined: Thu May 28, 2009 2:52 pm
Again the above interpretation might be true or false depending on how you interpret the verse....but certainly khalil andani missed a very vital point and that is taking the whole verse and not just the portion of it .....heres the whole aayat , let the viewers decide for themselves"They Killed Him Not": The Crucifixion in Shi'a Isma'ili Islam
By: Khalil Andani
Complete article (PDF) has been posted at Ismailimail.
http://ismailimail.wordpress.com/2011/0 ... ili-islam/
4:156-157
And because of their saying: We slew the Messiah, Jesus son of Mary, Allah's messenger - they slew him not nor crucified him, but it appeared so unto them; and lo! those who disagree concerning it are in doubt thereof; they have no knowledge thereof save pursuit of a conjecture; they slew him not for certain. But Allah took him up unto Himself. Allah was ever Mighty, Wise
It is either that
1] nobody was crucified
2] H.Isa[as] was crucified but because of god's decree
3] Another person was crucified instead of H.Isa[as]
4] H.Isa[as] was crucified but did not die
5] H.Isa[as] was not crucified and therefore not killed
6] It was not clear whether he died or not [as quran says "they did not kill him with certainty"]
7] Also the bible does not support the crucifixion [remember when H.Isa[as] shouted "my god, my god why have you forsaken me" which shows that he was crucified against his will and not voluntarily as many christians believe !!!]
Hermann Stieglecker summarizes:
“The idea of the Christians, that God could have humiliated himself to such a degree, that his enemies, the vulgarest mob, could mock, deride and illtreat him like an idiot or a fool and that he eventually suffered the most shameful and painful death like a criminal between two real criminals, that is an outrageous disgrace ...”
October 17, 2011
The Evangelical Rejection of Reason
By KARL W. GIBERSON and RANDALL J. STEPHENS
Evangelical Christianity need not be defined by the simplistic theology, cultural isolationism and stubborn anti-intellectualism that most of the Republican candidates have embraced.
Quincy, Mass.
THE Republican presidential field has become a showcase of evangelical anti-intellectualism. Herman Cain, Rick Perry and Michele Bachmann deny that climate change is real and caused by humans. Mr. Perry and Mrs. Bachmann dismiss evolution as an unproven theory. The two candidates who espouse the greatest support for science, Mitt Romney and Jon M. Huntsman Jr., happen to be Mormons, a faith regarded with mistrust by many Christians.
The rejection of science seems to be part of a politically monolithic red-state fundamentalism, textbook evidence of an unyielding ignorance on the part of the religious. As one fundamentalist slogan puts it, “The Bible says it, I believe it, that settles it.” But evangelical Christianity need not be defined by the simplistic theology, cultural isolationism and stubborn anti-intellectualism that most of the Republican candidates have embraced.
Like other evangelicals, we accept the centrality of faith in Jesus Christ and look to the Bible as our sacred book, though we find it hard to recognize our religious tradition in the mainstream evangelical conversation. Evangelicalism at its best seeks a biblically grounded expression of Christianity that is intellectually engaged, humble and forward-looking. In contrast, fundamentalism is literalistic, overconfident and reactionary.
Fundamentalism appeals to evangelicals who have become convinced that their country has been overrun by a vast secular conspiracy; denial is the simplest and most attractive response to change. They have been scarred by the elimination of prayer in schools; the removal of nativity scenes from public places; the increasing legitimacy of abortion and homosexuality; the persistence of pornography and drug abuse; and acceptance of other religions and of atheism.
In response, many evangelicals created what amounts to a “parallel culture,” nurtured by church, Sunday school, summer camps and colleges, as well as publishing houses, broadcasting networks, music festivals and counseling groups. Among evangelical leaders, Ken Ham, David Barton and James C. Dobson have been particularly effective orchestrators — and beneficiaries — of this subculture.
Mr. Ham built his organization, Answers in Genesis, on the premise that biblical truth trumps all other knowledge. His Creation Museum, in Petersburg, Ky., contrasts “God’s Word,” timeless and eternal, with the fleeting notions of “human reason.” This is how he knows that the earth is 10,000 years old, that humans and dinosaurs lived together, and that women are subordinate to men. Evangelicals who disagree, like Francis S. Collins, the director of the National Institutes of Health, are excoriated on the group’s Web site. (In a recent blog post, Mr. Ham called us “wolves” in sheep’s clothing, masquerading as Christians while secretly trying to destroy faith in the Bible.)
Mr. Barton heads an organization called WallBuilders, dedicated to the proposition that the founders were evangelicals who intended America to be a Christian nation. He has emerged as a highly influential Republican leader, a favorite of Mr. Perry, Mrs. Bachmann and members of the Tea Party. Though his education consists of a B.A. in religious education from Oral Roberts University and his scholarly blunders have drawn criticism from evangelical historians like John Fea, Mr. Barton has seen his version of history reflected in everything from the Republican Party platform to the social science curriculum in Texas.
Mr. Dobson, through his group Focus on the Family, has insisted for decades that homosexuality is a choice and that gay people could “pray away” their unnatural and sinful orientation. A defender of spanking children and of traditional roles for the sexes, he has accused the American Psychological Association, which in 2000 disavowed reparative therapy to “cure” homosexuality, of caving in to gay pressure.
Charismatic leaders like these project a winsome personal testimony as brothers in Christ. Their audiences number in the tens of millions. They pepper their presentations with so many Bible verses that their messages appear to be straight out of Scripture; to many, they seem like prophets, anointed by God.
But in fact their rejection of knowledge amounts to what the evangelical historian Mark A. Noll, in his 1994 book, “The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind,” described as an “intellectual disaster.” He called on evangelicals to repent for their neglect of the mind, decrying the abandonment of the intellectual heritage of the Protestant Reformation. “The scandal of the evangelical mind,” he wrote, “is that there is not much of an evangelical mind.”
There are signs of change. Within the evangelical world, tensions have emerged between those who deny secular knowledge, and those who have kept up with it and integrated it with their faith. Almost all evangelical colleges employ faculty members with degrees from major research universities — a conduit for knowledge from the larger world. We find students arriving on campus tired of the culture-war approach to faith in which they were raised, and more interested in promoting social justice than opposing gay marriage.
Scholars like Dr. Collins and Mr. Noll, and publications like Books & Culture, Sojourners and The Christian Century, offer an alternative to the self-anointed leaders. They recognize that the Bible does not condemn evolution and says next to nothing about gay marriage. They understand that Christian theology can incorporate Darwin’s insights and flourish in a pluralistic society.
Americans have always trusted in God, and even today atheism is little more than a quiet voice on the margins. Faith, working calmly in the lives of Americans from George Washington to Barack Obama, has motivated some of America’s finest moments. But when the faith of so many Americans becomes an occasion to embrace discredited, ridiculous and even dangerous ideas, we must not be afraid to speak out, even if it means criticizing fellow Christians.
Karl W. Giberson is a former professor of physics, and Randall J. Stephens is an associate professor of history, both at Eastern Nazarene College. They are the authors of “The Anointed: Evangelical Truth in a Secular Age.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/18/opini ... emc=tha212
The Evangelical Rejection of Reason
By KARL W. GIBERSON and RANDALL J. STEPHENS
Evangelical Christianity need not be defined by the simplistic theology, cultural isolationism and stubborn anti-intellectualism that most of the Republican candidates have embraced.
Quincy, Mass.
THE Republican presidential field has become a showcase of evangelical anti-intellectualism. Herman Cain, Rick Perry and Michele Bachmann deny that climate change is real and caused by humans. Mr. Perry and Mrs. Bachmann dismiss evolution as an unproven theory. The two candidates who espouse the greatest support for science, Mitt Romney and Jon M. Huntsman Jr., happen to be Mormons, a faith regarded with mistrust by many Christians.
The rejection of science seems to be part of a politically monolithic red-state fundamentalism, textbook evidence of an unyielding ignorance on the part of the religious. As one fundamentalist slogan puts it, “The Bible says it, I believe it, that settles it.” But evangelical Christianity need not be defined by the simplistic theology, cultural isolationism and stubborn anti-intellectualism that most of the Republican candidates have embraced.
Like other evangelicals, we accept the centrality of faith in Jesus Christ and look to the Bible as our sacred book, though we find it hard to recognize our religious tradition in the mainstream evangelical conversation. Evangelicalism at its best seeks a biblically grounded expression of Christianity that is intellectually engaged, humble and forward-looking. In contrast, fundamentalism is literalistic, overconfident and reactionary.
Fundamentalism appeals to evangelicals who have become convinced that their country has been overrun by a vast secular conspiracy; denial is the simplest and most attractive response to change. They have been scarred by the elimination of prayer in schools; the removal of nativity scenes from public places; the increasing legitimacy of abortion and homosexuality; the persistence of pornography and drug abuse; and acceptance of other religions and of atheism.
In response, many evangelicals created what amounts to a “parallel culture,” nurtured by church, Sunday school, summer camps and colleges, as well as publishing houses, broadcasting networks, music festivals and counseling groups. Among evangelical leaders, Ken Ham, David Barton and James C. Dobson have been particularly effective orchestrators — and beneficiaries — of this subculture.
Mr. Ham built his organization, Answers in Genesis, on the premise that biblical truth trumps all other knowledge. His Creation Museum, in Petersburg, Ky., contrasts “God’s Word,” timeless and eternal, with the fleeting notions of “human reason.” This is how he knows that the earth is 10,000 years old, that humans and dinosaurs lived together, and that women are subordinate to men. Evangelicals who disagree, like Francis S. Collins, the director of the National Institutes of Health, are excoriated on the group’s Web site. (In a recent blog post, Mr. Ham called us “wolves” in sheep’s clothing, masquerading as Christians while secretly trying to destroy faith in the Bible.)
Mr. Barton heads an organization called WallBuilders, dedicated to the proposition that the founders were evangelicals who intended America to be a Christian nation. He has emerged as a highly influential Republican leader, a favorite of Mr. Perry, Mrs. Bachmann and members of the Tea Party. Though his education consists of a B.A. in religious education from Oral Roberts University and his scholarly blunders have drawn criticism from evangelical historians like John Fea, Mr. Barton has seen his version of history reflected in everything from the Republican Party platform to the social science curriculum in Texas.
Mr. Dobson, through his group Focus on the Family, has insisted for decades that homosexuality is a choice and that gay people could “pray away” their unnatural and sinful orientation. A defender of spanking children and of traditional roles for the sexes, he has accused the American Psychological Association, which in 2000 disavowed reparative therapy to “cure” homosexuality, of caving in to gay pressure.
Charismatic leaders like these project a winsome personal testimony as brothers in Christ. Their audiences number in the tens of millions. They pepper their presentations with so many Bible verses that their messages appear to be straight out of Scripture; to many, they seem like prophets, anointed by God.
But in fact their rejection of knowledge amounts to what the evangelical historian Mark A. Noll, in his 1994 book, “The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind,” described as an “intellectual disaster.” He called on evangelicals to repent for their neglect of the mind, decrying the abandonment of the intellectual heritage of the Protestant Reformation. “The scandal of the evangelical mind,” he wrote, “is that there is not much of an evangelical mind.”
There are signs of change. Within the evangelical world, tensions have emerged between those who deny secular knowledge, and those who have kept up with it and integrated it with their faith. Almost all evangelical colleges employ faculty members with degrees from major research universities — a conduit for knowledge from the larger world. We find students arriving on campus tired of the culture-war approach to faith in which they were raised, and more interested in promoting social justice than opposing gay marriage.
Scholars like Dr. Collins and Mr. Noll, and publications like Books & Culture, Sojourners and The Christian Century, offer an alternative to the self-anointed leaders. They recognize that the Bible does not condemn evolution and says next to nothing about gay marriage. They understand that Christian theology can incorporate Darwin’s insights and flourish in a pluralistic society.
Americans have always trusted in God, and even today atheism is little more than a quiet voice on the margins. Faith, working calmly in the lives of Americans from George Washington to Barack Obama, has motivated some of America’s finest moments. But when the faith of so many Americans becomes an occasion to embrace discredited, ridiculous and even dangerous ideas, we must not be afraid to speak out, even if it means criticizing fellow Christians.
Karl W. Giberson is a former professor of physics, and Randall J. Stephens is an associate professor of history, both at Eastern Nazarene College. They are the authors of “The Anointed: Evangelical Truth in a Secular Age.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/18/opini ... emc=tha212
Secret £14million Bible in which 'Jesus predicts coming of Prophet Muhammad' unearthed in Turkey
Vatican 'wants to see' 1,500-year-old ancient script
Has been hidden by Turkish state for 12 years
Handwritten in gold-lettered Aramaic
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... urkey.html
Vatican 'wants to see' 1,500-year-old ancient script
Has been hidden by Turkish state for 12 years
Handwritten in gold-lettered Aramaic
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... urkey.html
I agree with Shiraz - I believe (and I could be wrong) that there is a KIM farman of Imam Sultan Mohammed Shah that talks about Issa - and how he was not crucified. Whilst I think Khalil overall does good stuff - this is a stretch even for him, esp since it contradicts a farman.shiraz.virani wrote:Again the above interpretation might be true or false depending on how you interpret the verse....but certainly khalil andani missed a very vital point and that is taking the whole verse and not just the portion of it .....heres the whole aayat , let the viewers decide for themselves"They Killed Him Not": The Crucifixion in Shi'a Isma'ili Islam
By: Khalil Andani
Complete article (PDF) has been posted at Ismailimail.
http://ismailimail.wordpress.com/2011/0 ... ili-islam/
4:156-157
And because of their saying: We slew the Messiah, Jesus son of Mary, Allah's messenger - they slew him not nor crucified him, but it appeared so unto them; and lo! those who disagree concerning it are in doubt thereof; they have no knowledge thereof save pursuit of a conjecture; they slew him not for certain. But Allah took him up unto Himself. Allah was ever Mighty, Wise
It is either that
1] nobody was crucified
2] H.Isa[as] was crucified but because of god's decree
3] Another person was crucified instead of H.Isa[as]
4] H.Isa[as] was crucified but did not die
5] H.Isa[as] was not crucified and therefore not killed
6] It was not clear whether he died or not [as quran says "they did not kill him with certainty"]
7] Also the bible does not support the crucifixion [remember when H.Isa[as] shouted "my god, my god why have you forsaken me" which shows that he was crucified against his will and not voluntarily as many christians believe !!!]
Hermann Stieglecker summarizes:
“The idea of the Christians, that God could have humiliated himself to such a degree, that his enemies, the vulgarest mob, could mock, deride and illtreat him like an idiot or a fool and that he eventually suffered the most shameful and painful death like a criminal between two real criminals, that is an outrageous disgrace ...”
Shams
The Nuns and the God Within
By ROSS DOUTHAT
What the controversy over the Vatican and American nuns says about the state of American religion.
Along with the death of Charles Colson, the other significant religion story to break during the time I took off for book promotion was the controversy over the Vatican’s investigation into the theological drift of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, a group that includes the leadership of the majority of America’s orders of nuns. The controversy has mostly been framed in the press as the latest round in a debate running back to the Second Vatican Council – yet another clash between “Spirit of Vatican II” American Catholics and a more conservative hierarchy in Rome, with familiar flashpoints, a familiar cast of characters, and the same basic political and theological issues at stake. And it is that, in part: If you read the Vatican “doctrinal assessment” of the LCWR, you’ll find echoes of the debates that have divided American Catholicism since the 1960s — women’s ordination, human sexuality, how great a stress to place on Catholic social teaching versus the dogmatic aspects of the faith, and the broader question of where authority ultimately resides within the church.
But you’ll also find something else as well, which I think is important to understanding our current religious moment. The main thing that the Vatican assessment is concerned with — the first “area of concern” cited, and the issue that the document returns to later on — is the LCWR’s potential drift not just away from Rome’s views of doctrine and authority, but from historic Christianity itself. What does this mean in practice? Well, the Vatican references “addresses given during LCWR annual assemblies,” taking particular note of a talk given by Sister Laurie Brink which described “moving beyond the Church, even beyond Jesus” toward a religious model that “in most respects is Post-Christian” as one of the options being explored by female religious communities facing decline or extinction. Brink’s talk, as its defenders have pointed out, was more descriptive than prescriptive, but a variant on the phenomenon she was describing finds pretty obvious expression in, say, the keynote speaker at this year’s LCWR conference, Barbara Marx Hubbard, whose theology emphasizes the idea that human beings are about to take a quantum leap in spiritual evolution from “homo sapiens” to “homo universalis,” a leap in which the powers available to Jesus of Nazareth after his resurrection become available to everyone else as well. Here are some quotations from Hubbard’s description of how her own religious perspective relates to a more traditional Christianity:
Jesus said, “These and even greater works shall you do.” We may actually be on the threshold of those abilities that Christ was able to do and that He foresaw as possibilities for us all. Specifically, the ability to use conscious intent, perhaps in conjunction with scientific and technological capacities, will allow us to create bodies sensitive to thought. We may find ourselves transforming the human body from its physical, animal, degenerating phase to a regenerating and evolving phase.
… Although we may never know what really happened, we do know that the story told in the Gospels is that Jesus’ resurrection was a first demonstration of what I call the post-human universal person. We are told that he did not die. He made his transition, released his animal body, and reappeared in a new body at the next level of physicality to tell all of us that we would do what he did. The new person that he became had continuity of consciousness with his life as Jesus of Nazareth, an earthly life in which he had become fully human and fully divine. Jesus’ life stands as a model of the transition from Homo sapiens to Homo universalis …
… Now millions of earthly humans from every spiritual tradition, from many social movements and scientific lineages of human inquiry, are evolving to the stage at which they recognize their soul, their higher self. They are becoming willing, even passionately desire, to be one with that Self. And as a critical mass of humans evolving toward their new capacities arise, humanity will undergo an unprecedented shifting in our entire way of being on this planet.
To return to Sr. Brink’s framework, I’m not sure I would actually describe this kind of theology as having moved entirely “beyond Jesus,” since Hubbard seems very interested in casting the post-resurrection Jesus of Nazareth as an ideal type for her vision of humanity’s spiritual evolution. She has this interest in common with many of the popular contemporary spiritual writers, from James Redfield to Deepak Chopra to Eckhart Tolle to Paulo Coelho, who focus on what my book calls the quest for “the God Within”; indeed, the way that these figures almost always try to appropriate the life and message of Jesus rather than rejecting it outright is one reason why I find it more useful to describe the current American religious landscape as “heretical” than “post-Christian.”
But whatever else it is, Hubbard’s message is clearly post-Catholic, in a way that’s qualitatively different from a liberal Catholicism that wants the Church to ordain women and focus more on social justice but accepts the basic story of the gospels and the basic parameters of the Nicene Creed. And while the liberal Catholic/conservative Catholic divide will no doubt remain important, I suspect that the religious trends that a figure like Hubbard embodies — which lead further away from core Christian ideas without shaking off the Christian influence entirely — may be more important to the future of American religion than the more familiar post-1960s story that the press has been telling about the nuns and the Vatican these last few weeks.
http://douthat.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/0 ... y_20120508
By ROSS DOUTHAT
What the controversy over the Vatican and American nuns says about the state of American religion.
Along with the death of Charles Colson, the other significant religion story to break during the time I took off for book promotion was the controversy over the Vatican’s investigation into the theological drift of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, a group that includes the leadership of the majority of America’s orders of nuns. The controversy has mostly been framed in the press as the latest round in a debate running back to the Second Vatican Council – yet another clash between “Spirit of Vatican II” American Catholics and a more conservative hierarchy in Rome, with familiar flashpoints, a familiar cast of characters, and the same basic political and theological issues at stake. And it is that, in part: If you read the Vatican “doctrinal assessment” of the LCWR, you’ll find echoes of the debates that have divided American Catholicism since the 1960s — women’s ordination, human sexuality, how great a stress to place on Catholic social teaching versus the dogmatic aspects of the faith, and the broader question of where authority ultimately resides within the church.
But you’ll also find something else as well, which I think is important to understanding our current religious moment. The main thing that the Vatican assessment is concerned with — the first “area of concern” cited, and the issue that the document returns to later on — is the LCWR’s potential drift not just away from Rome’s views of doctrine and authority, but from historic Christianity itself. What does this mean in practice? Well, the Vatican references “addresses given during LCWR annual assemblies,” taking particular note of a talk given by Sister Laurie Brink which described “moving beyond the Church, even beyond Jesus” toward a religious model that “in most respects is Post-Christian” as one of the options being explored by female religious communities facing decline or extinction. Brink’s talk, as its defenders have pointed out, was more descriptive than prescriptive, but a variant on the phenomenon she was describing finds pretty obvious expression in, say, the keynote speaker at this year’s LCWR conference, Barbara Marx Hubbard, whose theology emphasizes the idea that human beings are about to take a quantum leap in spiritual evolution from “homo sapiens” to “homo universalis,” a leap in which the powers available to Jesus of Nazareth after his resurrection become available to everyone else as well. Here are some quotations from Hubbard’s description of how her own religious perspective relates to a more traditional Christianity:
Jesus said, “These and even greater works shall you do.” We may actually be on the threshold of those abilities that Christ was able to do and that He foresaw as possibilities for us all. Specifically, the ability to use conscious intent, perhaps in conjunction with scientific and technological capacities, will allow us to create bodies sensitive to thought. We may find ourselves transforming the human body from its physical, animal, degenerating phase to a regenerating and evolving phase.
… Although we may never know what really happened, we do know that the story told in the Gospels is that Jesus’ resurrection was a first demonstration of what I call the post-human universal person. We are told that he did not die. He made his transition, released his animal body, and reappeared in a new body at the next level of physicality to tell all of us that we would do what he did. The new person that he became had continuity of consciousness with his life as Jesus of Nazareth, an earthly life in which he had become fully human and fully divine. Jesus’ life stands as a model of the transition from Homo sapiens to Homo universalis …
… Now millions of earthly humans from every spiritual tradition, from many social movements and scientific lineages of human inquiry, are evolving to the stage at which they recognize their soul, their higher self. They are becoming willing, even passionately desire, to be one with that Self. And as a critical mass of humans evolving toward their new capacities arise, humanity will undergo an unprecedented shifting in our entire way of being on this planet.
To return to Sr. Brink’s framework, I’m not sure I would actually describe this kind of theology as having moved entirely “beyond Jesus,” since Hubbard seems very interested in casting the post-resurrection Jesus of Nazareth as an ideal type for her vision of humanity’s spiritual evolution. She has this interest in common with many of the popular contemporary spiritual writers, from James Redfield to Deepak Chopra to Eckhart Tolle to Paulo Coelho, who focus on what my book calls the quest for “the God Within”; indeed, the way that these figures almost always try to appropriate the life and message of Jesus rather than rejecting it outright is one reason why I find it more useful to describe the current American religious landscape as “heretical” than “post-Christian.”
But whatever else it is, Hubbard’s message is clearly post-Catholic, in a way that’s qualitatively different from a liberal Catholicism that wants the Church to ordain women and focus more on social justice but accepts the basic story of the gospels and the basic parameters of the Nicene Creed. And while the liberal Catholic/conservative Catholic divide will no doubt remain important, I suspect that the religious trends that a figure like Hubbard embodies — which lead further away from core Christian ideas without shaking off the Christian influence entirely — may be more important to the future of American religion than the more familiar post-1960s story that the press has been telling about the nuns and the Vatican these last few weeks.
http://douthat.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/0 ... y_20120508
The tension between nuns and the Catholic Church's male hierarchy has roots in the 19th century.
May 15, 2012
Nuns on the Frontier
By ANNE M. BUTLER
Fernandina Beach, Fla.
THE recent Vatican edict that reproached American nuns for their liberal views on social and political issues has put a spotlight on the practices of these Roman Catholic sisters. While the current debate has focused on the nuns’ progressive stances on birth control, abortion, homosexuality, the all-male priesthood and economic injustice, tension between American nuns and the church’s male hierarchy reaches much further back.
In the 19th century, Catholic nuns literally built the church in the American West, braving hardship and grueling circumstances to establish missions, set up classrooms and lead lives of calm in a chaotic world marked by corruption, criminality and illness. Their determination in the face of a male hierarchy that, then as now, frequently exploited and disdained them was a demonstration of their resilient faith in a church struggling to adapt itself to change.
Like other settlers in the West, Catholic nuns were mostly migrants from Europe or the American East; the church had turned to them to create a Catholic presence across a seemingly limitless frontier. The region’s rocky mining camps, grassy plains and arid deserts did not appeal to many ordained men. As one disenchanted European priest, lamenting the lack of a good cook and the discomfort of frontier travel, grumbled, “I hate the long, dreary winters of Iowa.”
Bishops relentlessly recruited sisters for Western missions, enticing them with images of Christian conversions, helpful local clergymen and charming convent cottages. If the sisters hesitated, the bishops mocked their timidity, scorned their selfishness and threatened heavenly retribution.
The sisters proved them wrong. By steamboat, train, stagecoach and canoe, on foot and on horseback, the nuns answered the call. In the 1840s, a half-dozen sisters from Notre Dame de Namur, a Belgian order, braved stormy seas and dense fog to reach Oregon. In 1852, seven Daughters of Charity struggled on the backs of donkeys across the rain-soaked Isthmus of Panama toward California. In 1884, six Ursuline nuns stepped from a train in Montana, only to be left by the bishop at a raucous public rooming house, its unheated loft furnished only with wind and drifting snow.
These nuns lived in filthy dugouts, barns and stables, hoped for donations of furniture, and survived on a daily ration of one slice of bread or a bowl of onion soup along with a cup of tea. They made their own way, worked endless hours, often walked miles to a Catholic chapel for services, and endured daunting privations in housing and nutrition.
There appeared to be no end to what was expected of the sisters. In 1874, two Sisters of the Holy Cross, at the direction of Edward Sorin, the founder of the University of Notre Dame, opened a Texas school and orphanage in a two-room shack with a leaky dormitory garret that the nuns affectionately labeled “The Ark.” The brother who managed the congregation’s large farm informed the sisters, who were barely able to feed and clothe the 80 boarders, that he could not give the school free produce — though they could buy it at a discount. The sisters also did 18 years of unpaid housekeeping work on a farm run by the men.
Sisters adapted to these physical, spiritual and fiscal exploitations with amazingly good humor. Still, they chafed against their male superiors’ unreasonable restrictions and harsh dictates. When they directly questioned policy, bishops and priests moved to silence them. A single protest could draw draconian reprisals on an entire congregation.
In 1886, four Texas priests demanded that Bishop John C. Néraz replace a superior, Mother St. Andrew Feltin, saying that she had “spread gossip” and warned her sisters “to beware of priests.”
Bishop Néraz threatened the sisterhood with disbandment and removed Mother St. Andrew from office. He hounded her for years, disciplined other nuns she had befriended, suspended her right to the sacraments, warned other bishops not to grant her sanctuary, undercut her efforts to enter a California convent and even urged her deportation to Europe. Finally, Mother St. Andrew laid aside her religious clothing, returned to secular dress and cared for her widowed brother’s children.
Six years after Bishop Néraz died, Mother St. Andrew petitioned her congregation for readmission. Donning her habit, she renewed her vows amid a warm welcome from sisters who understood too well what she had suffered.
Then as now, not all priests and bishops treated sisters badly, though the priests who reached out to nuns in a spirit of appreciation, friendship and equality could not alter the church’s institutional commitment to gender discrimination. And, as now, some bishops, dismissive of the laity, underestimated the loyalty secular Catholics felt for their nuns.
In the case of Mother St. Andrew, tenacity and spirituality triumphed over arrogance and misogyny. The Vatican would do well to bear this history in mind as it thinks through the consequences of its unjust attack on American sisters.
Anne M. Butler, a professor emerita of history at Utah State University, is the author of the forthcoming book “Across God’s Frontiers: Catholic Sisters in the American West, 1850-1920.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/16/opini ... h_20120516
May 15, 2012
Nuns on the Frontier
By ANNE M. BUTLER
Fernandina Beach, Fla.
THE recent Vatican edict that reproached American nuns for their liberal views on social and political issues has put a spotlight on the practices of these Roman Catholic sisters. While the current debate has focused on the nuns’ progressive stances on birth control, abortion, homosexuality, the all-male priesthood and economic injustice, tension between American nuns and the church’s male hierarchy reaches much further back.
In the 19th century, Catholic nuns literally built the church in the American West, braving hardship and grueling circumstances to establish missions, set up classrooms and lead lives of calm in a chaotic world marked by corruption, criminality and illness. Their determination in the face of a male hierarchy that, then as now, frequently exploited and disdained them was a demonstration of their resilient faith in a church struggling to adapt itself to change.
Like other settlers in the West, Catholic nuns were mostly migrants from Europe or the American East; the church had turned to them to create a Catholic presence across a seemingly limitless frontier. The region’s rocky mining camps, grassy plains and arid deserts did not appeal to many ordained men. As one disenchanted European priest, lamenting the lack of a good cook and the discomfort of frontier travel, grumbled, “I hate the long, dreary winters of Iowa.”
Bishops relentlessly recruited sisters for Western missions, enticing them with images of Christian conversions, helpful local clergymen and charming convent cottages. If the sisters hesitated, the bishops mocked their timidity, scorned their selfishness and threatened heavenly retribution.
The sisters proved them wrong. By steamboat, train, stagecoach and canoe, on foot and on horseback, the nuns answered the call. In the 1840s, a half-dozen sisters from Notre Dame de Namur, a Belgian order, braved stormy seas and dense fog to reach Oregon. In 1852, seven Daughters of Charity struggled on the backs of donkeys across the rain-soaked Isthmus of Panama toward California. In 1884, six Ursuline nuns stepped from a train in Montana, only to be left by the bishop at a raucous public rooming house, its unheated loft furnished only with wind and drifting snow.
These nuns lived in filthy dugouts, barns and stables, hoped for donations of furniture, and survived on a daily ration of one slice of bread or a bowl of onion soup along with a cup of tea. They made their own way, worked endless hours, often walked miles to a Catholic chapel for services, and endured daunting privations in housing and nutrition.
There appeared to be no end to what was expected of the sisters. In 1874, two Sisters of the Holy Cross, at the direction of Edward Sorin, the founder of the University of Notre Dame, opened a Texas school and orphanage in a two-room shack with a leaky dormitory garret that the nuns affectionately labeled “The Ark.” The brother who managed the congregation’s large farm informed the sisters, who were barely able to feed and clothe the 80 boarders, that he could not give the school free produce — though they could buy it at a discount. The sisters also did 18 years of unpaid housekeeping work on a farm run by the men.
Sisters adapted to these physical, spiritual and fiscal exploitations with amazingly good humor. Still, they chafed against their male superiors’ unreasonable restrictions and harsh dictates. When they directly questioned policy, bishops and priests moved to silence them. A single protest could draw draconian reprisals on an entire congregation.
In 1886, four Texas priests demanded that Bishop John C. Néraz replace a superior, Mother St. Andrew Feltin, saying that she had “spread gossip” and warned her sisters “to beware of priests.”
Bishop Néraz threatened the sisterhood with disbandment and removed Mother St. Andrew from office. He hounded her for years, disciplined other nuns she had befriended, suspended her right to the sacraments, warned other bishops not to grant her sanctuary, undercut her efforts to enter a California convent and even urged her deportation to Europe. Finally, Mother St. Andrew laid aside her religious clothing, returned to secular dress and cared for her widowed brother’s children.
Six years after Bishop Néraz died, Mother St. Andrew petitioned her congregation for readmission. Donning her habit, she renewed her vows amid a warm welcome from sisters who understood too well what she had suffered.
Then as now, not all priests and bishops treated sisters badly, though the priests who reached out to nuns in a spirit of appreciation, friendship and equality could not alter the church’s institutional commitment to gender discrimination. And, as now, some bishops, dismissive of the laity, underestimated the loyalty secular Catholics felt for their nuns.
In the case of Mother St. Andrew, tenacity and spirituality triumphed over arrogance and misogyny. The Vatican would do well to bear this history in mind as it thinks through the consequences of its unjust attack on American sisters.
Anne M. Butler, a professor emerita of history at Utah State University, is the author of the forthcoming book “Across God’s Frontiers: Catholic Sisters in the American West, 1850-1920.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/16/opini ... h_20120516
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shiraz.virani
- Posts: 1256
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September 18, 2012
A Faded Piece of Papyrus Refers to Jesus’ Wife
By LAURIE GOODSTEIN
CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — A historian of early Christianity at Harvard Divinity School has identified a scrap of papyrus that she says was written in Coptic in the fourth century and contains a phrase never seen in any piece of Scripture: “Jesus said to them, ‘My wife ...’ ”
The faded papyrus fragment is smaller than a business card, with eight lines on one side, in black ink legible under a magnifying glass. Just below the line about Jesus having a wife, the papyrus includes a second provocative clause that purportedly says, “she will be able to be my disciple.”
The finding was made public in Rome on Tuesday at the International Congress of Coptic Studies by Karen L. King, a historian who has published several books about new Gospel discoveries and is the first woman to hold the nation’s oldest endowed chair, the Hollis professor of divinity.
The provenance of the papyrus fragment is a mystery, and its owner has asked to remain anonymous. Until Tuesday, Dr. King had shown the fragment to only a small circle of experts in papyrology and Coptic linguistics, who concluded that it is most likely not a forgery. But she and her collaborators say they are eager for more scholars to weigh in and perhaps upend their conclusions.
Even with many questions unsettled, the discovery could reignite the debate over whether Jesus was married, whether Mary Magdalene was his wife and whether he had a female disciple. These debates date to the early centuries of Christianity, scholars say. But they are relevant today, when global Christianity is roiling over the place of women in ministry and the boundaries of marriage.
The discussion is particularly animated in the Roman Catholic Church, where despite calls for change, the Vatican has reiterated the teaching that the priesthood cannot be opened to women and married men because of the model set by Jesus.
Dr. King gave an interview and showed the papyrus fragment, encased in glass, to reporters from The New York Times, The Boston Globe and Harvard Magazine in her garret office in the tower at Harvard Divinity School last Thursday.
She repeatedly cautioned that this fragment should not be taken as proof that Jesus, the historical person, was actually married. The text was probably written centuries after Jesus lived, and all other early, historically reliable Christian literature is silent on the question, she said.
But the discovery is exciting, Dr. King said, because it is the first known statement from antiquity that refers to Jesus speaking of a wife. It provides further evidence that there was an active discussion among early Christians about whether Jesus was celibate or married, and which path his followers should choose.
“This fragment suggests that some early Christians had a tradition that Jesus was married,” she said. “There was, we already know, a controversy in the second century over whether Jesus was married, caught up with a debate about whether Christians should marry and have sex.”
Dr. King first learned about what she calls “The Gospel of Jesus’s Wife” when she received an e-mail in 2010 from a private collector who asked her to translate it. Dr. King, 58, specializes in Coptic literature, and has written books on the Gospel of Judas, the Gospel of Mary of Magdala, Gnosticism and women in antiquity.
The owner, who has a collection of Greek, Coptic and Arabic papyri, is not willing to be identified by name, nationality or location, because, Dr. King said, “He doesn’t want to be hounded by people who want to buy this.”
When, where or how the fragment was discovered is unknown. The collector acquired it in a batch of papyri in 1997 from the previous owner, a German. It came with a handwritten note in German that names a professor of Egyptology in Berlin, now deceased, and cited him calling the fragment “the sole example” of a text in which Jesus claims a wife.
The owner took the fragment to the Divinity School in December 2011 and left it with Dr. King. In March, she carried the fragment in her red handbag to New York to show it to two papyrologists: Roger Bagnall, director of the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World, at New York University, and AnneMarie Luijendijk, an associate professor of religion at Princeton University.
They examined the scrap under sharp magnification. It was very small — only 4 by 8 centimeters. The lettering was splotchy and uneven, the hand of an amateur, but not unusual for the time period, when many Christians were poor and persecuted.
It was written in Coptic, an Egyptian language that uses Greek characters — and more precisely, in Sahidic Coptic, a dialect from southern Egypt, Dr. Luijendijk said in an interview.
What convinced them it was probably genuine was the fading of the ink on the papyrus fibers, and traces of ink adhered to the bent fibers at the torn edges. The back side is so faint that only five words are visible, one only partly: “my moth[er],” “three,” “forth which.”
“It would be impossible to forge,” said Dr. Luijendijk, who contributed to Dr. King’s paper.
Dr. Bagnall reasoned that a forger would have had to be expert in Coptic grammar, handwriting and ideas. Most forgeries he has seen were nothing more than gibberish. And if it were a forgery intended to cause a sensation or make someone rich, why would it have lain in obscurity for so many years?
“It’s hard to construct a scenario that is at all plausible in which somebody fakes something like this. The world is not really crawling with crooked papyrologists,” Dr. Bagnall said.
The piece is torn into a rough rectangle, so that the document is missing its adjoining text on the left, right, top and bottom — most likely the work of a dealer who divided up a larger piece to maximize his profit, Dr. Bagnall said.
Much of the context, therefore, is missing. But Dr. King was struck by phrases in the fragment like “My mother gave to me life,” and “Mary is worthy of it,” which resemble snippets from the Gospels of Thomas and Mary. Experts believe those were written in the late second century and translated into Coptic. She surmises that this fragment is also copied from a second-century Greek text.
The meaning of the words, “my wife,” is beyond question, Dr. King said. “These words can mean nothing else.” The text beyond “my wife” is cut off.
Dr. King did not have the ink dated using carbon testing. She said it would require scraping off too much, destroying the relic. She still plans to have the ink tested by spectroscopy, which could roughly determine its age by its chemical composition.
Dr. King submitted her paper to The Harvard Theological Review, which asked three scholars to review it. Two questioned its authenticity, but they had seen only low-resolution photographs of the fragment and were unaware that expert papyrologists had seen the actual item and judged it to be genuine, Dr. King said. One of the two questioned the grammar, translation and interpretation.
Ariel Shisha-Halevy, an eminent Coptic linguist at Hebrew University in Jerusalem, was consulted, and said in an e-mail in September, “I believe — on the basis of language and grammar — the text is authentic.”
Major doubts allayed, The Review plans to publish Dr. King’s article in its January issue.
Dr. King said she would push the owner to come forward, in part to avoid stoking conspiracy theories.
The notion that Jesus had a wife was the central conceit of the best seller and movie “The Da Vinci Code.” But Dr. King said she wants nothing to do with the code or its author: “At least, don’t say this proves Dan Brown was right.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/19/us/hi ... d=tw-share
A Faded Piece of Papyrus Refers to Jesus’ Wife
By LAURIE GOODSTEIN
CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — A historian of early Christianity at Harvard Divinity School has identified a scrap of papyrus that she says was written in Coptic in the fourth century and contains a phrase never seen in any piece of Scripture: “Jesus said to them, ‘My wife ...’ ”
The faded papyrus fragment is smaller than a business card, with eight lines on one side, in black ink legible under a magnifying glass. Just below the line about Jesus having a wife, the papyrus includes a second provocative clause that purportedly says, “she will be able to be my disciple.”
The finding was made public in Rome on Tuesday at the International Congress of Coptic Studies by Karen L. King, a historian who has published several books about new Gospel discoveries and is the first woman to hold the nation’s oldest endowed chair, the Hollis professor of divinity.
The provenance of the papyrus fragment is a mystery, and its owner has asked to remain anonymous. Until Tuesday, Dr. King had shown the fragment to only a small circle of experts in papyrology and Coptic linguistics, who concluded that it is most likely not a forgery. But she and her collaborators say they are eager for more scholars to weigh in and perhaps upend their conclusions.
Even with many questions unsettled, the discovery could reignite the debate over whether Jesus was married, whether Mary Magdalene was his wife and whether he had a female disciple. These debates date to the early centuries of Christianity, scholars say. But they are relevant today, when global Christianity is roiling over the place of women in ministry and the boundaries of marriage.
The discussion is particularly animated in the Roman Catholic Church, where despite calls for change, the Vatican has reiterated the teaching that the priesthood cannot be opened to women and married men because of the model set by Jesus.
Dr. King gave an interview and showed the papyrus fragment, encased in glass, to reporters from The New York Times, The Boston Globe and Harvard Magazine in her garret office in the tower at Harvard Divinity School last Thursday.
She repeatedly cautioned that this fragment should not be taken as proof that Jesus, the historical person, was actually married. The text was probably written centuries after Jesus lived, and all other early, historically reliable Christian literature is silent on the question, she said.
But the discovery is exciting, Dr. King said, because it is the first known statement from antiquity that refers to Jesus speaking of a wife. It provides further evidence that there was an active discussion among early Christians about whether Jesus was celibate or married, and which path his followers should choose.
“This fragment suggests that some early Christians had a tradition that Jesus was married,” she said. “There was, we already know, a controversy in the second century over whether Jesus was married, caught up with a debate about whether Christians should marry and have sex.”
Dr. King first learned about what she calls “The Gospel of Jesus’s Wife” when she received an e-mail in 2010 from a private collector who asked her to translate it. Dr. King, 58, specializes in Coptic literature, and has written books on the Gospel of Judas, the Gospel of Mary of Magdala, Gnosticism and women in antiquity.
The owner, who has a collection of Greek, Coptic and Arabic papyri, is not willing to be identified by name, nationality or location, because, Dr. King said, “He doesn’t want to be hounded by people who want to buy this.”
When, where or how the fragment was discovered is unknown. The collector acquired it in a batch of papyri in 1997 from the previous owner, a German. It came with a handwritten note in German that names a professor of Egyptology in Berlin, now deceased, and cited him calling the fragment “the sole example” of a text in which Jesus claims a wife.
The owner took the fragment to the Divinity School in December 2011 and left it with Dr. King. In March, she carried the fragment in her red handbag to New York to show it to two papyrologists: Roger Bagnall, director of the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World, at New York University, and AnneMarie Luijendijk, an associate professor of religion at Princeton University.
They examined the scrap under sharp magnification. It was very small — only 4 by 8 centimeters. The lettering was splotchy and uneven, the hand of an amateur, but not unusual for the time period, when many Christians were poor and persecuted.
It was written in Coptic, an Egyptian language that uses Greek characters — and more precisely, in Sahidic Coptic, a dialect from southern Egypt, Dr. Luijendijk said in an interview.
What convinced them it was probably genuine was the fading of the ink on the papyrus fibers, and traces of ink adhered to the bent fibers at the torn edges. The back side is so faint that only five words are visible, one only partly: “my moth[er],” “three,” “forth which.”
“It would be impossible to forge,” said Dr. Luijendijk, who contributed to Dr. King’s paper.
Dr. Bagnall reasoned that a forger would have had to be expert in Coptic grammar, handwriting and ideas. Most forgeries he has seen were nothing more than gibberish. And if it were a forgery intended to cause a sensation or make someone rich, why would it have lain in obscurity for so many years?
“It’s hard to construct a scenario that is at all plausible in which somebody fakes something like this. The world is not really crawling with crooked papyrologists,” Dr. Bagnall said.
The piece is torn into a rough rectangle, so that the document is missing its adjoining text on the left, right, top and bottom — most likely the work of a dealer who divided up a larger piece to maximize his profit, Dr. Bagnall said.
Much of the context, therefore, is missing. But Dr. King was struck by phrases in the fragment like “My mother gave to me life,” and “Mary is worthy of it,” which resemble snippets from the Gospels of Thomas and Mary. Experts believe those were written in the late second century and translated into Coptic. She surmises that this fragment is also copied from a second-century Greek text.
The meaning of the words, “my wife,” is beyond question, Dr. King said. “These words can mean nothing else.” The text beyond “my wife” is cut off.
Dr. King did not have the ink dated using carbon testing. She said it would require scraping off too much, destroying the relic. She still plans to have the ink tested by spectroscopy, which could roughly determine its age by its chemical composition.
Dr. King submitted her paper to The Harvard Theological Review, which asked three scholars to review it. Two questioned its authenticity, but they had seen only low-resolution photographs of the fragment and were unaware that expert papyrologists had seen the actual item and judged it to be genuine, Dr. King said. One of the two questioned the grammar, translation and interpretation.
Ariel Shisha-Halevy, an eminent Coptic linguist at Hebrew University in Jerusalem, was consulted, and said in an e-mail in September, “I believe — on the basis of language and grammar — the text is authentic.”
Major doubts allayed, The Review plans to publish Dr. King’s article in its January issue.
Dr. King said she would push the owner to come forward, in part to avoid stoking conspiracy theories.
The notion that Jesus had a wife was the central conceit of the best seller and movie “The Da Vinci Code.” But Dr. King said she wants nothing to do with the code or its author: “At least, don’t say this proves Dan Brown was right.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/19/us/hi ... d=tw-share
September 19, 2012
Mr. and Mrs. Jesus Christ?
By JAMES MARTIN
AT an academic conference in Rome on Tuesday, Karen L. King, a church historian at Harvard Divinity School, presented a finding that, according to some reports, threatened to overturn what we know about Jesus, as well as the tradition of priestly celibacy. She identified a small fragment of fourth-century papyrus that includes the words, “Jesus said to them, ‘My wife...’ ” Another clause appears to say, “she will be able to be my disciple.” Some experts have concluded that the manuscript, written in Coptic, is authentic.
But does this mean that Jesus was married? Probably not. And will this fascinating new discovery make this Jesuit priest want to rush out and get married? No.
It is more likely that Jesus was celibate. Remember that Dr. King’s papyrus dates from the fourth century — roughly 350 years after Jesus’s life and death. The four familiar Gospels, on the other hand, were written much closer to the time of Jesus, only a few decades away from the events in question. They have a greater claim to accuracy — even if the new manuscript is, as has been surmised, a copy of an earlier, second-century text. The Gospel of Mark, for example, was written around A.D. 70, only about 40 years after the crucifixion.
And what do the Gospels say? For one thing, the Gospel of Mark describes Jesus, who had settled in the town of Capernaum, on the Sea of Galilee, as receiving a surprise visit from his family, who had come from his hometown, Nazareth. “A crowd was sitting around him; and they said to him, ‘Your mother and your brothers and sisters are outside, asking for you.’ ” Why no mention of a wife?
The Gospel of Matthew, written only 15 or 20 years after Mark, recounts how the people of Nazareth were shocked by Jesus’ preaching. “Is not this the carpenter’s son?” they asked about their former neighbor. “Is not his mother called Mary? And are not his brothers James and Joseph and Simon and Judas? And are not all his sisters with us?” At this time, Jesus is presumably around 30 years old. Again, in this long catalog of his relatives, why no mention of a wife?
And why, with so many women present at the crucifixion (various Gospels include Jesus’ mother, Mary Magdalene, another woman named Mary, Salome and “the women who followed him from Galilee”), is Jesus’ wife omitted?
The silence in the Gospels about a wife (and children) in this context most likely indicates that Jesus did not have a wife and children during his public ministry, or in his past life in Nazareth.
What about the most popular candidate for the role: Mary Magdalene? Could she have been Jesus’ wife, as supposed by Dan Brown’s novel “The Da Vinci Code”? (By the way, I’m not equating Dr. King’s careful scholarship with the novels of Mr. Brown, though the conclusions some might draw are similar.) Mr. Brown’s hypothesis fails by another criterion: Mary would have been referred to, like every other married woman in the Gospels, by her husband’s name. She would have been identified not as “Mary Magdalene” but almost certainly as “Mary, the wife of Jesus.”
Why might Jesus have remained unmarried? Jesus, who knew the fate of other prophets, may have intuited that his public life would prove dangerous and end violently, a burden for a wife. He may have foreseen the difficulty of caring for a family while being an itinerant preacher. Or perhaps he was trying to demonstrate a kind of single-hearted commitment to God.
The Rev. John P. Meier, a professor of theology at the University of Notre Dame who is widely considered the dean of historical studies of Jesus, favors that last explanation in “A Marginal Jew,” his monumental study. “The position that Jesus remained celibate on religious grounds,” he concluded after sifting through the evidence, is “the more probable hypothesis.”
Dr. King herself cautioned that the papyrus fragment did not constitute proof of Jesus’ marital status. But it may represent evidence of a debate among the early Christian community (say, from the second to fourth centuries) over whether Jesus was married.
What if corroborating evidence of marriage is found from an earlier date? What if scholars unearth a first-century papyrus with additional lines from, say, the Gospel of Mark, which states unequivocally that Jesus was married? Would I stop believing in Jesus, or abandon my vows of chastity?
No and no.
It wouldn’t upset me if it turned out that Jesus was married. His life, death and, most important, resurrection would still be valid. Nor would I abandon my life of chastity, which is the way I’ve found to love many people freely and deeply. If I make it to heaven and Jesus introduces me to his wife, I’ll be happy for him (and her). But then I’ll track down Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, who wrote so soon after the time of Jesus, and ask them why they left out something so important.
The Rev. James Martin, a Jesuit priest, is a contributing editor to the Catholic magazine America and the author of “Between Heaven and Mirth: Why Joy, Humor, and Laughter Are at the Heart of the Spiritual Life.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/20/opini ... y_20120920
Mr. and Mrs. Jesus Christ?
By JAMES MARTIN
AT an academic conference in Rome on Tuesday, Karen L. King, a church historian at Harvard Divinity School, presented a finding that, according to some reports, threatened to overturn what we know about Jesus, as well as the tradition of priestly celibacy. She identified a small fragment of fourth-century papyrus that includes the words, “Jesus said to them, ‘My wife...’ ” Another clause appears to say, “she will be able to be my disciple.” Some experts have concluded that the manuscript, written in Coptic, is authentic.
But does this mean that Jesus was married? Probably not. And will this fascinating new discovery make this Jesuit priest want to rush out and get married? No.
It is more likely that Jesus was celibate. Remember that Dr. King’s papyrus dates from the fourth century — roughly 350 years after Jesus’s life and death. The four familiar Gospels, on the other hand, were written much closer to the time of Jesus, only a few decades away from the events in question. They have a greater claim to accuracy — even if the new manuscript is, as has been surmised, a copy of an earlier, second-century text. The Gospel of Mark, for example, was written around A.D. 70, only about 40 years after the crucifixion.
And what do the Gospels say? For one thing, the Gospel of Mark describes Jesus, who had settled in the town of Capernaum, on the Sea of Galilee, as receiving a surprise visit from his family, who had come from his hometown, Nazareth. “A crowd was sitting around him; and they said to him, ‘Your mother and your brothers and sisters are outside, asking for you.’ ” Why no mention of a wife?
The Gospel of Matthew, written only 15 or 20 years after Mark, recounts how the people of Nazareth were shocked by Jesus’ preaching. “Is not this the carpenter’s son?” they asked about their former neighbor. “Is not his mother called Mary? And are not his brothers James and Joseph and Simon and Judas? And are not all his sisters with us?” At this time, Jesus is presumably around 30 years old. Again, in this long catalog of his relatives, why no mention of a wife?
And why, with so many women present at the crucifixion (various Gospels include Jesus’ mother, Mary Magdalene, another woman named Mary, Salome and “the women who followed him from Galilee”), is Jesus’ wife omitted?
The silence in the Gospels about a wife (and children) in this context most likely indicates that Jesus did not have a wife and children during his public ministry, or in his past life in Nazareth.
What about the most popular candidate for the role: Mary Magdalene? Could she have been Jesus’ wife, as supposed by Dan Brown’s novel “The Da Vinci Code”? (By the way, I’m not equating Dr. King’s careful scholarship with the novels of Mr. Brown, though the conclusions some might draw are similar.) Mr. Brown’s hypothesis fails by another criterion: Mary would have been referred to, like every other married woman in the Gospels, by her husband’s name. She would have been identified not as “Mary Magdalene” but almost certainly as “Mary, the wife of Jesus.”
Why might Jesus have remained unmarried? Jesus, who knew the fate of other prophets, may have intuited that his public life would prove dangerous and end violently, a burden for a wife. He may have foreseen the difficulty of caring for a family while being an itinerant preacher. Or perhaps he was trying to demonstrate a kind of single-hearted commitment to God.
The Rev. John P. Meier, a professor of theology at the University of Notre Dame who is widely considered the dean of historical studies of Jesus, favors that last explanation in “A Marginal Jew,” his monumental study. “The position that Jesus remained celibate on religious grounds,” he concluded after sifting through the evidence, is “the more probable hypothesis.”
Dr. King herself cautioned that the papyrus fragment did not constitute proof of Jesus’ marital status. But it may represent evidence of a debate among the early Christian community (say, from the second to fourth centuries) over whether Jesus was married.
What if corroborating evidence of marriage is found from an earlier date? What if scholars unearth a first-century papyrus with additional lines from, say, the Gospel of Mark, which states unequivocally that Jesus was married? Would I stop believing in Jesus, or abandon my vows of chastity?
No and no.
It wouldn’t upset me if it turned out that Jesus was married. His life, death and, most important, resurrection would still be valid. Nor would I abandon my life of chastity, which is the way I’ve found to love many people freely and deeply. If I make it to heaven and Jesus introduces me to his wife, I’ll be happy for him (and her). But then I’ll track down Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, who wrote so soon after the time of Jesus, and ask them why they left out something so important.
The Rev. James Martin, a Jesuit priest, is a contributing editor to the Catholic magazine America and the author of “Between Heaven and Mirth: Why Joy, Humor, and Laughter Are at the Heart of the Spiritual Life.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/20/opini ... y_20120920