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The Church--Looking Beyond
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The Church--Looking Beyond  This is a photo of Oakland's new Roman Catholic Cathedral. It now fills a space, once used as a parking lot, that overlooks Oakland's Lake Merritt. The Cathedral and piazza completes a plaza devoted to Kaiser Permanente. So we have a place for physical healing as well as spiritual healing. I am surprised at how often the question of religion shows up on an adult website devoted to sexual content and physical connection. Questions about God, the afterlife, and so on. The Church in recent years has been beset with profound questions. Roman Catholic Clergy have been attacked for allowing pedophiles to continue as clergy, continue molesting, and being protected by the Roman Catholic Organization. And I have to say, in all my years of living in Catholic Institutions, no one bothered me and I never heard it happening from other residents. The Jews now question whether Pope Pius XII--Pope from 1939 to 1958--should be honored as a Saint since he failed to speak forcefully against the Nazis. The Nazi Genocide of the Jews is another profound burden the Roman Catholic Church must sustain on its shoulders. The spiritual writing of the 20th Century comes from places like Sobibor, Dachau, Auschwitz, Maidenek, Treblinka. Anne Frank, Victor Frankl, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Primo Levi, Elie Wiesel are the<b> writers </font></b>speaking to the modern spiritual climate. Not Thomas Merton, St. Augustine, Thomas A Kempis. The chroniclers of the German atrocities implicitly, and silently, raise that question: If you were in Germany, during the war--are you certain that you would do the right thing? The answer sadly would be no. No one can be certain. The Nazi Genocide of the Jews forces us to realize that the questions about God, judgment, the soul, eternity are not just idle speculation of ivory tower theologians. The common person must give these weighty matters due and proper consideration. The evening news presents on a regular basis people who do profound evil, who must be imprisoned for the remainder of their lives; and who must burn in the fires of eternal damnation. And someone might eventually point out, that no individual controls the discourse about God, judgment, the soul, eternity. After all, those prisoners, those Nazis, are under the impression that there is no God who judges the eternal soul. While those victims must believe that there is judgment--the alternative is to complete the work of the Nazis--killing the Jews and killing the Jewish God of judgment finishes what the Nazis started. That's a profound statement to make. No individual owns that discourse about God. That is faith that is needed for all of us. Roman Catholicism/Christianity suggests that God only works in this Christian manner. Buddhists, Muslims, Hindu, are dismissed because they do not follow the prescribed Christian process. Plain logic tells us God must be more generous than that. [Read Hans Kung On Being A Christian.] It is in the Passion narrative where we find the full import of sin as Betrayal--Betrayal from Judas, Peter, Christ. Each recognized that betrayal and only Judas failed for he could not believe in the depth of generosity that the crucifixion would mean. That we are here on such a site, suggests a celebration of the sexual life. We are both sexual beings and spiritual beings. There is no easy/ready resolution. Our education tells us the questions, the spiritual dimension is as real as the sexual dimension. And in case your wondering, my application for sainthood was lost in the mail. It was very hard getting three references. |
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I'm GLAD I'm spiritual and don't follow any religion     ---------------------Dennis US ARMY (RETIRED) AND YOUR FRIEND  I never mean to offend(blog or comment) anyone ,If I do contact me please. Please check out my blog Harley-Davidson Drive(19harley86)
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