Reach Out and Touch Faith
laphamsquarterly.org
laphamsquarterly.org
Reminded about talking to some people in Mexico who explained to me that from some point of view there is not that much difference between the human sacrifice as was practiced by say Aztecs there and the human sacrifice performed upon Jesus.
The Pope and Cardinals would really prefer it if people would pray to a nice abstract God in a nice abstract sort of way, but superstitious common people really want to be able to have a nice neat physical object that they can entreat for the safe return of car keys and the like, and these two streams reach an uneasy compromise at the local priest's level.
Additionally they have exhumated his body and cut pieces for reliquaries.
Recently retired bishop of Cracov[^2] and former personal sectretary of Polish Pope Jan Paul II keeps a vial with blood of Jan Paul II (taken from his body on a deathbed) and used that as source of influence.
It all happens in XXI century and by people who are the top of hierarchy of Catholic Church in Poland. So this idolatory is deeply rooted at highest level of hierachy.
Beliefs and practices concerning relics, excluding uninformed superstitious ones, relate to the concept of instrumentality in the οἰκονομία (economy, dispensation) of salvation, predicated on the Incarnation. See also 2 Kings 13:21, Acts 5:15, Acts 19:12, and the Relics[+] article in the 1913 Catholic Encyclopedia.
If I keep a picture of my wife in my pocket, I'm not worshipping her. If I keep a lock of her hair in a locket around my neck, I'm not committing idolatry. If I worshipped the lock of her hair, that'd be idolatry.
I certainly don't mean to justify modern organized religion, but it seems without a strong sense of symbolism and a bit of superstition to hold it in place, it's hard to get anyone to subscribe to your cause.
We see this kind of dramatic rhetoric everywhere we turn as people vie for our attention and support, irrespective of the organization. How are we supposed to protect the masses from such a profound system of control without engaging in symbolic gestures ourselves?
A piece of wood or a nail which were supposedly taken from the real Crusifixion - this is pure idolatry. Ditto for the blood of a former Pope, pieces of body, etc.
The Catholic belief is that all the observable properties of the bread and wine remain (the "accidents", philosophical term; in modern terms, its chemical properties and so on) while the "substance" (another philosophical term — think essence, what it truly is objectively) has been changed into the sacred humanity of Jesus Christ. Since his humanity is forever united to his divinity from the time his human nature was conceived in his mother's womb, the "whole Jesus," God himself, is present under what are only the appearances of bread and wine following the consecration.
In a hymn[+] attributed to St. Thomas Aquinas, it is explained in this way:
"Hidden God, devoutly I adore Thee, truly present underneath these veils... Not to sight, or taste, or touch be credit, hearing only do we trust secure; I believe, for God the Son has said it — Word of truth that ever shall endure. On the cross was veiled Thy Godhead's splendor, here Thy manhood lies hidden too; unto both alike my faith I render."
The "God has said it" phrase is in reference to the bread of life discourse in the Gospel of John, chapter 6, as well the Last Supper accounts in the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke.
[+] http://www.preces-latinae.org/thesaurus/Hymni/AdoroTe.html
I'm very familiar with the Catholic belief system, I was an unwilling participant in the Catholic church for my entire childhood and have members of the clergy in my family.
She wouldn't accept that the wine and bread are believed to remain the same chemically (a cop-out to evade criticism from modern science), and pushing it any further would have invited a punishment or beating, so I let her have it.
Like I said, people see what they want to see. As Eckhart Tolle puts it, “Man made God in his own image.”
"The moral virtue by which a person is disposed to render to God the worship and service he deserves. It is sometimes identified with the virtue of justice toward God, whose rights are rooted in his complete dominion over all creation. Religion is also a composite of all the virtues that arise from a human being's relationship to God as the author of his or her being, even as love is a cluster of all the virtues arising from human response to God as the destiny of his or her being. Religion thus corresponds to the practice of piety toward God as Creator of the universe. (Etym. probably Latin religare, to tie , fasten, bind, or relegere, to gather up, treat with care.)"
http://www.catholicculture.org/culture/library/dictionary/in...
The virtue proper is in many respects the very opposite of superstition; like any virtue, it must be cultivated in a personal and deliberate manner and is ultimately a matter of interior orientation.
I'm sorry for your bad experiences and your feeling forced to participate in the Catholic Faith. Many Catholics I know, from very young to very old, love Christ and His Church, and I know more than several who have sacrificed much to become Catholic. I'm not trying to convince you of anything, but just keep in mind that your personal experiences may not encompass the whole reality of the Church.
I was consistently top of the class in my religious studies and by no coincidence the only one who didn't identify as a Christian.
My understanding of the Catholic faith, Abrahamic religions in general, and their pagan origins, stems from a historic and analytic approach to theology and my personal experiences simply reaffirm what I understand the Catholic Church to be. A system of control that operates via moral gatekeeping, social defamation, and historically threats of violence.
The Church was the embodiment of anti-science dogma for centuries, the bastion of bloody wars of conquest, and is responsible for destroying the lives of countless individuals to remain in power and stave off any changes to the socioeconomic status quo.
The Church you think you support and the Church as it is are two separate things, and you cannot see the forest for the trees when you are in the thick of it.
This isn't the kind of discussion the mods like on HN and I don't wish to be chastised, so let's not discuss further.
You're right, HN is not the place for an extended discussion of these matters. In a polite way, I would note that I believe some of the latent assertions in your previous reply are not factual, based on my own studies of the Church's history, including the bright spots as well the ugly sores. I wish you all the best, and if you'd ever like to discuss any of the points further, feel free to send me an email.
Doesn't seem so. As far as we can see, the Church all this time has been actively encouraging and cultivating people's superstitions and the lowest emotions like fear, xenophobia, etc. and exploiting it for power and monetization.
i'm kind of lost where to start. How about selling indulgences for example?
For more information, see the Indulgences[1] article in the 1913 Catholic Encyclopedia.
For the disciplines in effect at present, see Pope Paul VI's 1967 Constitution Indulgentiarum Doctrina[2].
[1] http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/07783a.htm
[2] https://w2.vatican.va/content/paul-vi/en/apost_constitutions...
And then, of course, there is all the stuff about their shady bank, who had to be dragged kicking and screaming into compliance with transparency laws (still not there), and all the stuff about their activities in the ‘70s (Roberto Calvi etc etc).
The Church monetises quite a lot in my book. One of the reasons for current internal unrest is precisely the fact that this new pope doesn’t look as interested in the monetisation efforts as his predecessors, and that donations from the US (which had become, it is estimated, the pre-eminent source of cash over the last century) are drying up.
Besides the tax thing, they get paid unofficial rent for weddings taking place in their churches (yes of course they are just tax-free "offerings" after the ceremony, but not paying will have consequences).
They sell ex-voto (you pay to light candles to your preferred saint), especially the old will likely do it every week or even every day. They also sell images of saints and various paraphernalia, as any religion will - I bought a sticker from a Japanese Shinto shrine to protect my electronics and it seems to work! :D
At Easter and Christmas priests are supposed to go blessing every house, and obviously they won't leave empty-handed (this varies a lot depending on the town and the physical condition of a priest). They often bring calendars to sell on those occasions. To be fair, this is again something that pretty much every sizeable European religion does, as far as I know.
Kids are required to follow weekly indoctrination courses to prepare for holy communion and so on. Obviously they are not free (unless the area is really poor). No course, no ceremony.
In summer, they organise childcare while schools are closed. Because of their legal status, all their workforce is made of unpaid volunteers, but the Church still gets paid a fee. Again because of their status, stuff like their kitchens is not required to follow all rules that private businesses would have to, in terms of respecting hygiene standards and so on. This allows them to undercut and monopolize the childcare market, and to keep the youth close and indoctrinated.
Procedure is the same for pilgrimages of old people to Lourdes, Medjugorie, Petralcina and so on - they organise them because they make money for both shrines and local parish thanks to volunteer workforce. Officially, top Church hierarchies will publicly disdain such activities in public declarations, but then they close one eye (or both) because they generate money.
There is probably more, but I have not really been close to that world for some time now so I probably forget some. The Catholic Church in UK has a lighter approach, because they are a minority (at least for now), so they only really fundraise for specific causes and don't push the superstition buttons too much. If I were Pope-Emperor of the world, the first thing I'd do would be to impose antitrust legislation on religions...
NB: Not the person you replied to.