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After Dialogue: looking back, looking ahead
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16 years 2 months ago
Roman Catholicism is desperate to offer to all people the means to find God and achieve "salvation". The trouble is that it has yet to recognize that it is not the path on which all peoples can walk never the less want to walk on their journey to God, and that this too is good. It has recognized the first, but not the later - it is too insecure. Our efforts at spreading the word have come from fear rather than joy, fear that if you don't believe you won't be saved instead of joy in the lived way of the Risen Lord, and because of that fear, there has been a quiet desperation in Roman Catholicism's relationship with other faiths, a fear that if we truly live as if their path to God is good, that perhaps ours isn't so wonderful, and ours doesn't feel wonderful when it is lived out of fear.
16 years 3 months ago
Interesting points and good insights. Was re-reading T. Cahill's new book - Miedeval Transitions. One chapter makes the historical case for Gregory the Great and his openness to acculturation e.g. use of the Christmas Tree (Germanic pagan rite); Easter (god of spring symbolized by rabbits and eggs); Yule Logs (Norman pagan rites) etc. The Church absorbed these pagan rites and re-interpreted with Catholic liturgy and theology; thus, expanding the Church in the early Middle Ages. We seem to have lost the spirit of Gregory the Great with what appears to be a fixation on "relativity."
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