Prop. 8 divides Bay Area Catholics

San Francisco Chronicle ^ | 11/22/8 | Matthai Kuruvila

[MarkBsnr]

***I was raised in the RCC, and can’t say I was impressed by what I saw in either the Diocese of Rockville Centre or the Diocese of Palm Beach. There are some great Fathers and Brothers in the various orders (even the Jesuits), but the Eurocrats really need to reform the ossified structure. In this case, it is not so much theological as it is organizational.
I could talk your ear off about the subject but I am very tired. I am happy that things are working out at your Diocese, considering the horror stories I keep hearing from relatives and other Freepers.***

Actually they are not working out in my diocese that well. The Bishop is a weenie and after coming in with much fanfare, has been sublimated into the lavender mafia. I am taking the example of the Orthodox. The bishop is responsibile to the laity as well as the clergy. The laity (aside from the Baby Boomer revolution theology / guitar Mass / Wiccan nun group) is getting highly irritated with the pansy leadership in our diocese.

The change that occurred was not the change that was required.

[Zionist Conspirator]

What has happened to the Catholic Church and to other churches and religions as well is that it has become the victim of what I call the "non-fundamentalist view of religion."

There was a time when people thought that their religious beliefs were true, that is, factual, just as "2+2=4" is factual or that "oaks come from acorns" is factual. But over the past century or so (and perhaps longer than that) religion has become not so much a belief system about factual spiritual reality as an aspect of "ethnoculture." If one is born into a Catholic family or ethnic group (ie, Irish, Italians), then one is entitled to consider oneself a "Catholic in good standing" regardless of whether one agrees with the Church on any number of issues. And since religion is merely ethnocultural rather than factual, it doesn't need to hold to any one position permanently but can "evolve" and "develop" along with the rest of life.

This is the great divide between Fundamentalist and non-Fundamentalist religion. Fundamentalist religion regards itself as factual, and "facts are stubborn things." Non-Fundamentalist religion regards itself as ethno-cultural, or at least highly allegorical so that it need not commit itself to any permanent standards.

The first "Fundamentalist Protestants" were intellectuals and professors at places like Princeton. Nowadays the term "Fundamentalist" has literally become an ethnic slur, referring not to any theological position (else it would be used to describe inner city African-American women) but the rural poor white Anglo-Saxon and Anglo-Celtic ethnic group. And this has in large part happened because churches that used to be Fundamentalist (in that they regarded themselves as factually true) have tried to make themselves "respectable" by continually taking pot shots at "Fundamentalism" as something "other" and foreign.

Time to reclaim the "f"-word, ladies and gentlemen!