04-05-2004, 12:07 PM
You may find it interesting that in Italy, as of 1998, where I encountered some of the most casual and self confident Catholics I have ever met, the Jehovah's Witnesses and United Church of Christ have active, and successful, evangelical movements that are apparently effective. I wonder who they are finding, other than the two Jehovah's Witnesses who rang the buzzer to my house one fine Sunday Morning in 1997. (After I gifured out what they wanted and who they were, I was appalled. Here I was, safe from such evangelizing, over 4000 miles away from The Church of What's Happening Now, and lo!, I found that "you can run but you can't hide.")
Right in the Pope's back yard. Strikes me as odd, but perhaps not so, depending on what people are looking for from their Faith, or from their religion.
Religion as a bumper sticker or as a way to draw attention to one's self strikes me as just the sort of hypocrisy that the scriptural comments of Jesus decry.
Faith worn as comfortably as one's own skin, where the example exceeds the rhetoric, seems to me to fit the the base doctrine better, but I am biased in that regard, and technically a Pagan, heretic, etc.
As to doctrine and dogma, indeed, I find that after each CCD class, I have any number of discussions with my kids on the points raised in Scripture, which funnily enough they still have not covered in class. *shakes head.* You'd think that after all these years, that would at least have improved. My wife was similarly handicapped by that "education" until she reached adulthood and the age of inquiry.
Right in the Pope's back yard. Strikes me as odd, but perhaps not so, depending on what people are looking for from their Faith, or from their religion.
Religion as a bumper sticker or as a way to draw attention to one's self strikes me as just the sort of hypocrisy that the scriptural comments of Jesus decry.
Faith worn as comfortably as one's own skin, where the example exceeds the rhetoric, seems to me to fit the the base doctrine better, but I am biased in that regard, and technically a Pagan, heretic, etc.
As to doctrine and dogma, indeed, I find that after each CCD class, I have any number of discussions with my kids on the points raised in Scripture, which funnily enough they still have not covered in class. *shakes head.* You'd think that after all these years, that would at least have improved. My wife was similarly handicapped by that "education" until she reached adulthood and the age of inquiry.
Cry 'Havoc' and let slip the Men 'O War!
In War, the outcome is never final. --Carl von Clausewitz--
Igitur qui desiderat pacem, praeparet bellum
John 11:35 - consider why.
In Memory of Pete
In War, the outcome is never final. --Carl von Clausewitz--
Igitur qui desiderat pacem, praeparet bellum
John 11:35 - consider why.
In Memory of Pete