Word: likenesses
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...thought of it as an imperialistic arrogance - that they wanted to overpower people. My experience with evangelism was something very different. They felt that they could do something about the eternal suffering of others. I came to see evangelism instead as a kind of empathy. That made me feel like there was something in it I could respect. (See the top 10 Jesus films of all time...
...what point did you no longer feel like an outsider? Jerry Falwell's death. I felt unexpectedly saddened. In my [nonreligious] world people were celebrating, people were exuberant. I felt that he wasn't being fairly represented. I'd grown this affinity for him simply by being intoxicated by his charisma. That sadness was unacceptable to show to people from my world because it seemed like it might suggest that I was supporting Jerry Falwell. (See the top 10 religion stories...
...Like most Catholics, I appreciate Benedict's efforts to confront the abuse scourge. But Rome's moral fallibility (reminder: it didn't definitively disavow slavery until 1888) is particularly apparent when it tries to downplay the scandal by insisting that clergy in the 1960s and 70s were susceptible to the era's liberal mores, or that the rate of pedophilia among its ranks is no larger than that of society in general. Those arguments - We're no worse than the rest of you! - effectively surrender claims to moral superiority, let alone divine direction. As a Catholic, I believe...
...Catholic Church is capable of tremendous good, as I was reminded recently while watching Catholic Relief Services work in Haiti. But a lot of Catholics feel like the Whos right now: the main symbol of our religion - the Church - has been stolen from us through its forfeiture of moral authority. The silver lining is that we're left to ponder our religion sans church, to define our faith not via hoary doctrine but via our own reason, which is how Catholicism is supposed to be practiced anyway. (Yes, despite the Vatican's warnings, it's safe to try theology...
...hate the fact that it takes a scandal like this to see the forest of religion from the trees of the church. But if Catholics are tired of their church embarrassing their religion, then they've got to quit indulging the priesthood's belief that its earthly power somehow matters as much as Jesus' teachings - one of the most important of which is that earthly power isn't what matters. Just as "packages, boxes or bags" didn't matter that much to the Whos. Dr. Seuss knew better. So should...