I talked to a Catholic priest at the Parliament who’d said something like, “there was a girl I know who started out Christian, but had a really bad experience with Christianity, but then found something spiritually appealing in a Hindu temple, and I encouraged her to find God in Hinduism”, or something like that.
It’s very relevant to me in discussing the value of religions that this is NOT Catholic doctrine. I’m pretty sure that this is a heresy, in that it contradicts a core tenet of Christian doctrine: the exclusivity of Christ.
A key component of Christian theology, since the at least shortly after the crucifixion, is that salvation is found uniquely through Jesus Christ.
Now, I’ve read books about the Christian / Jewish mystical traditions that state otherwise: putting forward that Jesus was not the Messiah but a Messiah. I agree that some religious people have ever expressed that perspective. (I think, for some meanings of Messiah, it’s even true. )
The most charitable interpretation is that state of affairs is this is the secretesoteric meaning, accessible only to elite elite initiates (and/or repeatedly rediscovered by mystics), as distinct from the simple stories taught to the masses. But even that interpretation is a stretch: beliefs like this one are explicitly heretical to the explicit, enforced (though less so than in previous eras, see my other comment), doctrine of the organized religions. Proponents of those views were often excommunicated for expressing them.
That’s pretty cruxy for me with regards to my attitudes about religion. I believe there are a few religious pluralists, and I probably like, and maybe agree, with a lot of them. But the thing that they’re doing, which we both think is cool, is generally expressly forbidden/denied by institutionalized religion (at least in the West—I don’t know enough about non-Abrahamic institutionalized religions to say one way or the other).
My read of your statements is that they’re they’re giving too much credit to the Catholic Priesthood, and the Mormon priesthood, and the community of Protestant ministers, because there are a tiny number of religious pluralists who are expressing views and attitudes that those much larger organizational structures explicitly deny.
It seems like you’re doing the opposite of throwing out the baby with the bathwater—refusing to throw out old, dirty, bathwater because...there’s a small chunk of soap, in it or something. (I’m aware I’m staining the analogy). If your message was “hey: there’s some useful soap in this bathwater—we should take it out and use it”, I would be sympathetic. But your rhetoric reads to me as much more conciliatory than that, “yeah this bathwater isn’t perfect, but it’s actually pretty good!”
This is admittedly in the connotation, not the detonation. I expect we agree about most of the facts on the ground. But my impression of your overall attitude is that it’s not accurately representing organized religions as a class in their actual expressed views and their actual behavior and impacts on the world.
I don’t know much about religion, but my impression is the Pope disagrees with your interpretation of Catholic doctrine, which seems like strong counterevidence. For example, seethis quote:
“All religions are paths to God. I will use an analogy, they are like different languages that express the divine. But God is for everyone, and therefore, we are all God’s children.… There is only one God, and religions are like languages, paths to reach God. Some Sikh, some Muslim, some Hindu, some Christian.”
The pluralism and the diversity of religions, colour, sex, race and language are willed by God in His wisdom, through which He created human beings. This divine wisdom is the source from which the right to freedom of belief and the freedom to be different derives. Therefore, the fact that people are forced to adhere to a certain religion or culture must be rejected, as too the imposition of a cultural way of life that others do not accept.
An organisation such as the Catholic Church primarily wants to perpetuate its own existence, so of course the official doctrine is that they are The One True Church.
An individual Catholic, on the other hand, might genuinely believe that the benefits of religion are also available from other suppliers.
But by believing that they automatically become not Catholic any more, according to the definition of Catholic given by the Catholic Boss who is also the only one with the right to make the rules. If they state that openly they are liable to be excommunicated, though of course most of the times no one will care (even in much darker times the Inquisition probably wouldn’t come after every nobody who said something blasphemous once).
Possibly similar dilemma with e.g. UK political parties, who generally have a rule that publicly supporting another party’s candidate will get you expelled.
An individual party member, on the other hand, may well support the party’s platform in general, but think that that one particular candidate is an idiot who is unfit to hold political office—but is not permitted to say so,
(There is a joke about the Whitby Goth Weekend that everyone thinks half the bands are rubbish, but there is no consensus on which half that is. Something similar seems to hold for Labour Party supporters.)
Well, perhaps, but due to global commerce I can just go to the store and buy a bar of soap much more easily.
And perhaps you are fond of that particular type of soap and it’s a bit harder to find the specific type that you’re looking for but it’s still not really worth saving the old bathwater for it, instead of just looking for that specific type of soap?
It’s very relevant to me in discussing the value of religions that this is NOT Catholic doctrine. I’m pretty sure that this is a heresy, in that it contradicts a core tenet of Christian doctrine: the exclusivity of Christ.
A key component of Christian theology, since the at least shortly after the crucifixion, is that salvation is found uniquely through Jesus Christ.
Now, I’ve read books about the Christian / Jewish mystical traditions that state otherwise: putting forward that Jesus was not the Messiah but a Messiah. I agree that some religious people have ever expressed that perspective. (I think, for some meanings of Messiah, it’s even true. )
The most charitable interpretation is that state of affairs is this is the secret esoteric meaning, accessible only to elite elite initiates (and/or repeatedly rediscovered by mystics), as distinct from the simple stories taught to the masses. But even that interpretation is a stretch: beliefs like this one are explicitly heretical to the explicit, enforced (though less so than in previous eras, see my other comment), doctrine of the organized religions. Proponents of those views were often excommunicated for expressing them.
That’s pretty cruxy for me with regards to my attitudes about religion. I believe there are a few religious pluralists, and I probably like, and maybe agree, with a lot of them. But the thing that they’re doing, which we both think is cool, is generally expressly forbidden/denied by institutionalized religion (at least in the West—I don’t know enough about non-Abrahamic institutionalized religions to say one way or the other).
My read of your statements is that they’re they’re giving too much credit to the Catholic Priesthood, and the Mormon priesthood, and the community of Protestant ministers, because there are a tiny number of religious pluralists who are expressing views and attitudes that those much larger organizational structures explicitly deny.
It seems like you’re doing the opposite of throwing out the baby with the bathwater—refusing to throw out old, dirty, bathwater because...there’s a small chunk of soap, in it or something. (I’m aware I’m staining the analogy). If your message was “hey: there’s some useful soap in this bathwater—we should take it out and use it”, I would be sympathetic. But your rhetoric reads to me as much more conciliatory than that, “yeah this bathwater isn’t perfect, but it’s actually pretty good!”
This is admittedly in the connotation, not the detonation. I expect we agree about most of the facts on the ground. But my impression of your overall attitude is that it’s not accurately representing organized religions as a class in their actual expressed views and their actual behavior and impacts on the world.
I don’t know much about religion, but my impression is the Pope disagrees with your interpretation of Catholic doctrine, which seems like strong counterevidence. For example, seethis quote:
And this one:
Semi-related ACX post that came out today: Against The Cultural Christianity Argument.
“Thou shalt have no other Schelling points before me” is a pretty strong attractor for (at least naive) coordination tech.
An organisation such as the Catholic Church primarily wants to perpetuate its own existence, so of course the official doctrine is that they are The One True Church.
An individual Catholic, on the other hand, might genuinely believe that the benefits of religion are also available from other suppliers.
But by believing that they automatically become not Catholic any more, according to the definition of Catholic given by the Catholic Boss who is also the only one with the right to make the rules. If they state that openly they are liable to be excommunicated, though of course most of the times no one will care (even in much darker times the Inquisition probably wouldn’t come after every nobody who said something blasphemous once).
Possibly similar dilemma with e.g. UK political parties, who generally have a rule that publicly supporting another party’s candidate will get you expelled.
An individual party member, on the other hand, may well support the party’s platform in general, but think that that one particular candidate is an idiot who is unfit to hold political office—but is not permitted to say so,
(There is a joke about the Whitby Goth Weekend that everyone thinks half the bands are rubbish, but there is no consensus on which half that is. Something similar seems to hold for Labour Party supporters.)
I think there is rather a lot of soap to be found… but it’s very much not something you can find by taking official doctrine as an actual authority.
Well, perhaps, but due to global commerce I can just go to the store and buy a bar of soap much more easily.
And perhaps you are fond of that particular type of soap and it’s a bit harder to find the specific type that you’re looking for but it’s still not really worth saving the old bathwater for it, instead of just looking for that specific type of soap?
I suspect this issue can be side-stepped if you point to some “pluralist (neo)-Hinduism” that makes Jesus an avatar of Vishnu.