Posted on 09/12/2006 7:43:15 AM PDT by Alex Murphy
For a second I thought the headline read "LSD Church."
I read the same thing and presumed that the "2001 census" was conducted by the Republic of Slovakia and not the U.S. State Department. The categories come from Slovakia, don't they?
Nothing new here, just Slovak bishops, they who signed petition are mentioned by name.
Does the AP report correctly communicate the gist of the message? The quotes seemed chopped up.
The best thing (if this church is established) would be for them to get their converts from the muslim population.
That would explain a lot.
I'm not an expert from Slovak language but I think that it is the same. There is no quotes in Slovakian text, they wrote that bishops signed petition with appeal to not sign mormon application and not betray Catholic church.
Aryan Brothers?
800,000?
Could you provide more info on this?
Of course the Church of Jesus Christ is interested in converts. It will not however proselytize in contradiction to the government or laws. It will get it's toe in the door and eventually leverage it wide open.
What the Church did with Viet Nam is a good example. Viet Nam wouldn't allow missionaries in the 1980's. So the church helped with some disasters; shipping food, welfare and medical supplies for a few years. Then when the government warmed up to Mormons a bit the Church got permission to send in Church Service Missionaries (Retired Doctors, Nurses, Farmers, Engineers etc.). Of course after a few years of that the government opened up to Proselytizing missionaries.
Slovakia will eventually open up. Maybe they just need a little more schmoozing like Viet Nam did ;-)
One thing about the law I do find troubling.
"Nonregistered religious groups may not build public places of worship or conduct legally valid religious ceremonies such as weddings."
In other words the 100 Mormons are not free to fully practice their Faith publicly in Slovakia such as Marraige by a Bishop of their faith or have their own Public place of worship.
My local Branch unit just went through the process of getting permission to enlarge our building to full size. We were required to have 95 people a week for a period of 6 months in attendance. I am guessing the Slovkian Saints want their own building. I live in a predominately Catholic town (small town). They just enlarged their Church also. I am grateful I live in a land of Religous Freedom.
I see. Thank you for the information. I think you mean the group that would commonly be called the Socians in western Europe.
Stanislas Kot wrote a book about the Socians in Poland called (surprise), Socinianism in Poland (Starr King Press, 1957). You can pick up a copy at Amazon.com for $15 if you're interested.
Oh, I nearly forgot to mention. The Poles did persecute the Socians. Although the Poles often were more tolerant than other Europeans, it is a modern myth that the Poles did not dissident persecute religious groups in modern times. If you read Stanislas Kot's book, for instance, you'll see that the Polish Sejm of the 1650's expelled the Socians from Poland by law. For this to happen the veto of the Socian delegate to the Sejm had to be specifically ignored. It was. The Sejm also banned the teaching or spreading of Socinian beliefs and anyone who did could be executed.
Sounds like persecution to me.
At least the Sejm gave them a three year grace period to sell their property and leave their native country before they would be arrested.
But then again, the grace period was decreased to two years.
And then the Socinians were told they could avoid all these troubles if they converted to the Catholic faith by middle of 1660 (I believe that was the year). Otherwise they had to leave.
But in any case, it looks like the Socinians were most definitely persecuted.
The Socinians were the same group you were talking about. It's just a different name.
I agree that Poland was a relative paradise in terms of religious freedom in the modern period. A nice by-product of the influence of Pawel Wlodkowic (Paulus Wladimiri) I suppose!
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Catholics are not as likely to visit "Protestant" threads. When Protestants visit "Catholic" threads, they are sometimes quite disruptive.
This has not been my experience, so it looks like this another one of those things that depends on one's perspective.
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