Good will to all men? Not from the grumpy atheists! (Thank God not all atheists are grumpy but there sure seems to be a lot of them)
Why is it that so many in the atheist community cannot bring themselves to get past their anger whenever they engage in discussions? The language of many of their contributions in public debate is laced with invective and dripping with sarcasm and bile. There are exceptions of course, but they tend to fall more into the category of being the 'exception that proves the rule' when compared to the hostility of many of today's atheist posters. Comment offered by the theists in the public square is often depicted as being 'malicious' or 'venomous' and intended to enslave the 'feeble minded and weak' by those who post. Nothing could be further from the truth. Venom is something that is oriented to death. Christians are oriented in a 180 degree different direction. We speak not to the culture of death that grips our world but rather for the culture of life and light which ends with the gift of eternal life. For example, the Catholic Church in its hum...
As a conservative Protestant, I agree with many points the writer makes in this article, even if philosophy is a troubling and hard to understand subject.
ReplyDeleteThe conservative wing of Christianity (Catholic & Protestant) needs to sit back and see that they have become Pharisees and fundamentalists in many ways. Legalism and lack of love are creating too many barriers within the church. However, having said that, we need to stand firm on core doctrines such as the virgin-birth, the resurrection, creation and the truth of God's Word, in other words sort out the chaff from the wheat.
I.e. Pope Paul's encyclical on sexuality has been decreed not only as bad theology, but too restrictive by many respected leaders both Catholic and Protestant. The Scriptures are full of the beauty of sex between a married man and his wife. Sexuality is gift from God and needs to treated as such.
Cliff conservative-liberal Lutheran.
"Church leaders have in effect agreed that the right to follow one’s conscience includes the right of dissident Catholics to remain members of the Church."
ReplyDeleteSounds like a cafeteria Catholic. I thought this sort of picking and choosing was frowned upon. The author sounds like a liberal Catholic who's staying in a troubled relationship with the goal of reforming the Church. We all know how that ends?
Hope you had a good Easter and can get some rest after your busy weekend. I'll have you know that I attended a Church over the weekend. But before you get your hopes up it was to attend a rather uneven presentation of Mozart's Requiem performed on Good Friday in a local Church by a local choral society. As someone who know this piece by heart I am a bit more critical than most but gave them a standing ovation for their attempt to tackle such a challenging piece. They also performed Ave Verum Corpus, perhaps the most sublime 43 bars of music ever written and did it beautifully.