ALW said:
I would love to read some of these. Could you PM me a source?
Even from my perspective I can see that. I have visited very welcoming Churches and also very cold ones. I can easily see how some of the most devout Christians could be turn away from thier own religion in some cases.
Signifigant concept. I do wonder what would be considered spiritual priorities.
It would have been 30 odd years ago that I read an anecdote in the Reader's Digest by woman who had lived in India as a child.
One day, she and her brother were chased by a gang of monkeys along a country road near their village or town, and ran towards a Hindu yogi, who had apparently sat in the same posture by the roadside for decades - 30 or 40 years, I think.
She said that he didn't eat or drink, nor had done so for as long as he had sat there. My memory in the matter may not be 100% on that subject, but I believe so.
Many people who fancy themselves as scientists discount anything they are unfamiliar with or can't explain, as nonsense. They should be called nescientists, since their interest in truth is arbitrarily and venally circumscribed to what they believe might profit them in their careers. Someone ridiculed them as "scientismificists", or some such. But even that flatters them. Our word, "science", is derived from the Latin, "scientia", which means simply "knowledge". But similar "impossible" fasts by Catholic mystics is too well documented for me to ignore.
Incidentally, some other neuroscientists, on the basis of their observations, have been positing that the senses, such as sight, may not be dependent on the brain. I remember reading that there was an Italian girl, I believe, who was technically totally blind in both eyes, and yet was able to see. Also, they reject the notion that near-death experiences are due to oxygen starvation, as that would entail a total loss of memory, while many subjects are able to describe in detail the conversations of the medical staff and the clothes warn by visiting relatives in the waiting area, they had not seen recently or at the time of the accident or crisis.
My godfather, who had been a veterinarian in India, was once on a train there, when he saw a yogi being ejected from the train because he didn't have a ticket. They couldn't start the train, or identify the source of the problem, even after the most thorough search. So, they invited the swami onto the train again, and set off without any further problem. And he knew of countless such incidents.
I also read recently, I believe about the extraordinary fast of a yogi, and a posture maintained for many years. I believe it was in a newspaper.
As regards churches where the people are rather cold and unfriendly, and others where they are warm and welcoming ones, I wouldn't doubt that, but I have also felt that in connection with buildings, the interior of houses. But I was talking, rather, of the legalism that infected the institutional Roman Catholic church for so long. And the transformation of "ambition" from what I believeSt james described as a singularly pernicious vice, into virtually the soverign virtue. At least if the allocation of the seats of honour at papal coronations has been anything to go by. Of course it is justified as being "for the glory of God", not wordly motives.
I'm not suggesting that someone with the worldly intelligence and hopefully underlying wisdom to become a good brain surgeon or rocket scientist should seek unskilled employment; although I wouldn't try to discourage them either if I thought they had a vocation to do so, and it would make them happier.
Unfortunately, when a major correction takes place in the Church, the baby can be thrown out with the bath-water. So the problem today is, rather, excessively liberal priests who go to the other extreme. Sometimes, it is good men who have been misled by those they themselves should have been leading. But I believe it's a kind of excessive and misdirected apology for the sometimes horrifically distorted witness of the institutional Church in the past. But, we also know that "all things work together for good to them that love God".
I have been privileged to know many, many priests since I formally came back to the church, who lead lives of tremendous and genuine love and self-denial. That's not to say that I think the culture itself has not been sorely affected in some important respects by the traditions of men. But I don't want to go into that here, as I feel sure they will remedy them before too long.
On the other hand, there are those who are excessively liberal, and dismiss even Christ's most explicit, emphatic and repeated teachings, simply to obtain a cheap popularity. The net effect is that, by their "magnanimous" indulgence, they pose as someone more compassonate and holy than Christ. If you are in doubt, good priests don't try to explain away Christ's explicit, emphatic teachings, however, tentatitively and sensitively they confirm them to you.
As regards spiritual priorities, Christ spoke very simply, plainly and emphatically on this subject - despite his teachings having been largely overlaid by the traditions of men.
There is only one proper ambition for a Christian: to be a man or woman of prayer; to lead a devout life. To come to the aid of the orphan and the widow, i.e. the poor; and to keep oneself uncontaminated by the world. We either love money and despise God, or we despise God and love money. We have to live as though this is a place of pilgrimage, of passage, an ante-room of Heaven, which is our true home.
I have to tell you that that well and truly knocks the "American Dream" on the head. Unless, of course, you can achieve it, while earnestly helping to change the structures that keep the poor, poor; indeed, render them ever poorer and poorer - until, as still happens now in parts of the world, parents have to watch their children dying of starvation in front of their eyes. All, so that we may enjoy a paradise of material affluence.
This doesn't mean that globalisation is appropriate. No, if the poor are to be enriched in other parts of the world by our richest fellow-citizens, the onus must not fall on the poorer folk here, but on those same richest ones. Indeed, as well as many of our families becoming increasingly insecure in terms of their employment/unemployment and accommodation, we now have the Third-World on our own doorstep, in our own countries, and the first priority of the rich should be the security and dignity of the disadvantaged in their own country, right across the spectrum. Prioritising the most homeless, then the unemployed, then the poorly paid. The value of wage packets has fallen dramatically in recent decades and needs to be redressed, while the structures that keep those in the world we continue to economically oppress also need to be rectified.
The social policy of the Roman Catholic church is clear on this fundamental
point: capital, industry, work are made for man, to serve man; not the other way around, as our bottom line would have it.
A young chap, Forseti, I believe, raised the question of the salvation or otherwise of the Good Samaritan. Well, Forseti, although Christ's apochryphal anecdote or parable of Lazarus is closely associated with it, there is only one actual description of the Last Judgment in scripture, and that was given by Chrsit himself. The Son of God, in person. The passage is found in Matthew, and in it, Christ stipulates one sole ultimate criterion: the practical help we give to those in need. To dispel the kinds of doubt you raise, he goes so far as to recount in his description of the last Judgment, that many "good Samaritans" will claim that they don't even know Christ... Read Christ's response. Then those who failed to act like the Good Samaritan are roundly condemned by Christ for their callousness to those in need, and scorned by him for their insincere salutations, "Lord, Lord...".
"Love", as Christ observed in connection with Mary Magdalene, "covers a multitude of sins"; but neverthe less, already convinced Chrisitians should not see a a green light for succumbing into the ways of the world. That would constitute the very serious and dangerous sin of presumption.
Incidentally, we also know that all good things come from God, so the gift of healing that non-Christians often have, must be God-given. There is a Maori or part Maori woman (now retired because of problems in her own family), who is a healer, and believes her gift came via her great-grandfather, who was a tribal healer. She cured breaks in the bones of a world-champion speedway rider here in the UK. The hospital surgeons were astonished, because they said it wasn't possible for them to have healed so quickly - I think 48 hours. But the X-rays showed they'd healed completely. He had apparently been given to believe that he had no chance of making the world championship, as captain of the British team, in two or three days' time.
I hope this helps with your questions, ALW and Forseti. Sorry for getting your name wrong, Forseti.
well said
