Saturday

The Religion WAR (01-19)

Reading between the lines, thinking outside the box, and seeing the forest...
 
 
 
 
 
     Benedict XVI's video message to the people of Russia gave viewers a look at the "warmhearted" Pope of "great dignity," affirmed the Russia specialist for Aid to the Church in Need. He gave this analysis of the response to a documentary that aired in Russia. The documentary included a personal message from the Pope to all Russians.
    The specialist said the film brought the Holy Father closer to many of the Russian people. Viewers saw the Pope as "a person of great dignity and at the same time kind, and [having a] warmhearted personality," he said.
 
    Benedict XVI is encouraging the participants in interreligious dialogue to cross the bridges that have been built by decades of focus on friendship and tolerance, contended Cardinal Tauran, the president of the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue.
    He affirmed this when he opened a 5-day conference in Nairobi on "Formation in Interreligious Dialogue in Sub-Saharan Africa." The conference brought together bishops and heads of interreligious dialogue departments of the Church in Africa, as well as representatives of other religions.
    He said that dialogue of theological discourse has often been postponed for the future. But, he said, "in the pontificate of Pope Benedict XVI, that future is now." "The perceptible direction of Pope Benedict XVI is that, building on what his predecessors have put in place, he is now leading the Church to cross that bridge. Whereas other highlighted the common elements we share, he wants to emphasize, by use of reason, the distinctiveness of the Christian faith."
 
    The primary challenge that most Protestants have with the office of the Pope is the doctrine of papal infallibility and the role that tradition plays in establishing the doctrine of the Catholic church. Papal infallibility is especially challenging for Protestants in light of the number of contradictions in Catholic councils over the years.
(Reader response: The pope)
(Catholic response: Why we have a pope)
 
    For the Church to communicate its message, it must take into account how it is perceived by others and how it is portrayed by the media, said the president of the Pontifical Council for Social Communications.
    Archbishop Celli affirmed this when he delivered the first keynote address at the European Communication Summit. He began his address saying he was struck by the "negative assumption of religion being associated with conflict" reflected in the theme he was asked to speak about.
    The title of his talk was "The Return of Religions: Communicating Faith in the 21st Century" with three sub-themes on religious conflicts, the search for meaning, and how religious leaders communicate.
(And: Full text of address)
 
    European Christians and Muslims are intensifying dialogue and planning future encounters focused on building bridges between their faiths. The Committee for Relations With Muslims in Europe, established by the Conference of European Churches and the Council of European Bishops' Conferences, met in Hungary. A number of Muslim guests participated in the meeting and the group jointly worked on preparations for a Christian-Muslim conference scheduled for October.
 
 
 
    Islam expert Dietrich Reetz of Berlin's Center for Modern Oriental Studies speaks to Spiegel about Muslims in Germany, social tensions and the prospects for dialogue between the communities.
 
 
 
Muslim Martin Luthers
    Leading Muslim scholars are laying the theological foundations for a "Euro-Islam" which would reconcile their religion with the challenges of modernity. But just how compatible is Islam with secular Western values?
 
    The Salesians are aiming to have a greater impact on Europe, particularly by finding new ways of evangelizing youth. The religious community has launched "Project Europe," with the aim of leading the continent back to its Christian roots. "Project Europe" responds to desires expressed by Benedict XVI when he received the chapter fathers in audience March 30.
 
    There was a time after the fall of Communism when small Protestant congregations blossomed here in southwestern Russia, when a church was almost as easy to set up as a general store. Today, this industrial region has become emblematic of the suppression of religious freedom under President Vladimir Putin.
    Just as the government has tightened control over political life, so, too, has it intruded in matters of faith. The Kremlin's surrogates in many areas have turned the Russian Orthodox Church into a de facto official religion, warding off other Christian denominations that seem to offer the most significant competition for worshipers.
    They have all but banned proselytizing by Protestants and discouraged Protestant worship through a variety of harassing measures, according to dozens of interviews with government officials and religious leaders across Russia.
    On local television last month, the city's chief Russian Orthodox priest, who is a confidant of the region's most powerful politicians, gave a sermon that was repeated every few hours. His theme: Protestant heretics.
    "We deplore those who are led astray — those Jehovah's Witnesses, Baptists, evangelicals, Pentecostals and many others who cut Christ's robes like bandits, who are like the soldiers who crucified Christ, who ripped apart Christ's holy coat."
 
 
 
    As a child, Klaus Schmidt used to grub around in caves in his native Germany in the hope of finding prehistoric paintings. Thirty years later, representing the German Archaeological Institute, he found something infinitely more important -- a temple complex almost twice as old as anything comparable on the planet.
    "This place is a supernova", says Schmidt, standing under a lone tree on a windswept hilltop 35 miles north of Turkey's border with Syria. "Within a minute of first seeing it I knew I had 2 choices: go away and tell nobody, or spend the rest of my life working here."
    Behind him are the first folds of the Anatolian plateau. Ahead, the Mesopotamian plain, like a dust-colored sea, stretches south hundreds of miles to Baghdad and beyond. The stone circles of Gobekli Tepe are just in front, hidden under the brow of the hill.
    Compared to Stonehenge, they are humble affairs. None of the circles excavated (4 out of an estimated 20) are more than 30 meters across. What makes the discovery remarkable are the carvings of boars, foxes, lions, birds, snakes and scorpions, and their age.
    Dated at around 9,500 BC, these stones are 5,500 years older than the first cities of Mesopotamia, and 7,000 years older than Stonehenge.
 
 
 
    Daniel Radosh new book, Rapture Ready! Adventures in the Parallel Universe of Christian Popular Culture, takes readers on a trip to the parallel universe of Christian pop culture -- be prepared for a very weird, tame ride.
 
    For a society accustomed to the likes of Paris Hilton and Lindsay Lohan, the images of the women from the polygamist compound in Texas are almost shocking in their understatement. And while no one would accuse the women of making a fashion statement, the pioneer-style outfits are a rare example of how in an age of overexposure, modesty, too, can give pause.
 
    Oprah is pushing her New Age philosophy on the public, and the Church and other media is pushing back.
 
    Loveable x-stripper turned evangelist, Heather Veitch starts a ministry to help women in the sex industries. Heather calls her group JC's Girls and starts taking the team to strip clubs and porn conventions for outreach to lap dancers, hookers and porn queens.
    Ironically, the sex industry welcomes JC's Girls but powerful forces in the Christian Church refuse to tolerate Heather's "immoral ministry." Heather receives hate mail and death threats accusing her of being a fame seeking "Fake" and "Whore" who is "Softening the Gospel."
 
Pot warns about the kettle...
    A major Pentecostal denomination released a paper Tuesday stating the church's position on the apostolic movement that included a warning on false prophets.
 
 
 
    Whatever one's religious denomination, a careful, dispassionate analysis of the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth compels the conclusion that Jesus was an uncompromising political libertarian.
    Libertarianism is of course not a faith or a creed, but rather a political theory for organizing civilized society. The written record provides strong, unambiguous support for the fact that Jesus was a political libertarian who very likely had an Austrian understanding of money.
    He taught the Golden Rule and believed all individuals, including state actors, must observe it and must make reparations for violating it. He believed that taxation was theft and a violation of individual private property rights.
    He believed in wise, calculated, and non-violent civil disobedience. He believed that neither the state nor any collective group has a role in punishing or enforcing victimless crimes. Finally, he believed in sound money. One does not have to accept any particular Christian creed to know that politically, Jesus was a libertarian.
 
    There has been much talk of late about the supposed doomsday prediction of December 21, 2012 as reflected in the Mayan long calendar. This apocalyptic date of December 21, 2012 is also supposedly found in Hopi myths, the I-Ching, Aztec writings, Egyptian hieroglyphs, Roman Oracles, writing of Seneca Elders, the chief Shaman of the Cherokee Tribe in NC, and even the writings of Nostradamus.
 
    Good news for rational, level-headed Virgoans everywhere: just as you might have predicted, scientists have found astrology to be rubbish. Its central claim - that our human characteristics are moulded by the influence of the Sun, Moon and planets at the time of our birth - appears to have been debunked once and for all and beyond doubt by the most thorough scientific study ever made into it.
    Dr Dean said the consistency of the findings weighed heavily against astrology. "It has no acceptable mechanism, its principles are invalid and it has failed hundreds of tests. But no hint of these problems will be found in astrology books which, in effect, are exercises in deception."
    [WAR: This study is great ammunition against astrology, but the nuclear bomb that completely destroys it is the heavenly precession of the equinoxes (which also happens to be the key to understanding the correct Biblical calendar). Astologers lie about where the Sun, Moon and planets are in the heavens, so how can they possibly tell the truth about someone's personality?!]
 
    Is it possible that a donated heart could transfer feelings from one person to another? Most conventional surgeons would quickly say no. But from the anecdotal experience noted in this case, it surely seems possible. And it's not only feelings that seem to be transferred. Memories, habits, personalities, and some even say parts of the soul, may also be transferred.
 
 

posted by The Daily Warrior | 11:57 AM