Yajnarthat-karmano-nyatra lokoyam karmabandhanah;
Tadartham karma kaunteya muktasangah samachara."The world is bound by actions other than those performed for the sake of sacrifice; therefore, Arjuna, son of Kunti, perform action for that sake -- for sacrifice alone -- free from attachment."
-- Bhagavad Gita 3:9
The Divine Liturgy, the Eucharistic Sacrifice, is the Christian Form of the Ancient Yajna, the Timeless Tantra, the Primal Puja.
This week, Anne Rice is taking questions from Beliefnet Community members. Check it out, and join in--there is still time to set up your profile, join the group, and ask Ms. Rice a question.-- Patton Todd, "Text Messages"The best part of the exchange so far, in my opinion:From member Zero-Equals-Infinity:Is your return to Christianity an appeal of the forms and narrative, or is a return to the 'beliefs,' and if it is the latter, would you please expand upon how the beliefs that were let go in your college years came to be relevant and vital again? I ask this, because like you, I shed my beliefs in Christianity in my college years, and while I appreciate many aspects of the varieties of Christian tradition, I find the hurdles of literalism and exclusivism which seem to pervuade Christianity intellectually difficult.Anne Rice's response:Zero Equals Infinity --- You have asked an elegant question and made an elegant statement. I'm impressed. My return of faith was just that: faith in the existence of God came back to me. Some have said this is a Gift from God, and I would have to say that it feels that way. But I had been asking for faith for a long time. As I said above, I let go of all the sociological and theological questions that were tormenting me. I fell into a great "unknowing." I realized God knew. Some one really was in charge, and some one really knew why evil was allowed to exist and why people suffered. I didn't have to know in order to declare my love for God. So I let the questions go and I let the contradictions go. I returned to the Roman Catholic church and vowed to stay out of the controversies amongst Catholics. I went back to pray, to talk to God in a sacred space, to be with other believers, and I vowed not to argue with anybody about anything. It's hard to live this way. Christians are a people who love to discuss their faith. I want to embrace my fellow believers and non believers. I do not need to theologize or teach or preach. That's how I see it. Of course I saw God in the universe. I saw Him everywhere. My faith was visceral.
All Things Considered, October 24, 2008 · Religious language trips off Barack Obama's tongue as if he were a native of the Bible Belt.
From the moment he emerged on the national scene, he has spoken to believers in a language few Democrats have mastered: the language of the Bible and of a personal relationship with God.
Sometimes he shares his adult conversion story, describing how he knelt beneath the cross at his Chicago church: "I felt I heard God's spirit beckoning me," he says. "I submitted myself to his will, and dedicated myself to discovering his truth and carrying out his works."
Sometimes he speaks of sin and personal responsibility: "When a gangbanger shoots indiscriminately into a crowd because he feels someone has disrespected him," he told a group of religious progressives in 2006, "We've got a moral problem. There's a hole in that young man's heart."
And sometimes he borrows code words, not from hymns, but from Christian rock star Michael W. Smith, such as when he proclaimed at the 2004 Democratic National Convention, "We worship an awesome God in the blue states!"
It is this ease with religion that has helped Obama win over voters of various religious stripes — including Catholics who traditionally have voted Republican....
Consider the following proposition as a key to understanding the Catholic-Christian approach to theology:
The proper Catholic-Christian answer to any theological question is always
"both/and," rather than "either/or."At first glance, this might seem ridiculous or contradictory. Isn't God absolute? Isn't there just one truth, as opposed to error? Indeed, this proposal does not imply that a statement and its direct negation are both true ("A is B" and "A is not B"). It would obviously be false to claim, for example, that "God is Love" and "God is not Love," or "Jesus is divine" and "Jesus is not divine."
However, just as every coin has both a "heads" and a "tails" side, just as every battery has both a "positive" and a "negative" terminal, and just as the earth has both a North Pole and a South Pole, so also there are always (at least) two "sides" or "poles" to the Catholic-Christian answer to any theological question. These opposite poles often seem far apart and difficult to hold together. It is rarely easy to understand and balance both sides of an issue, just as we can't easily see both sides of a coin at the same time (without a mirror, at least!). Yet the "opposite" sides are seldom really "contradictions," even if there may be some strong "tensions" between them.
For example, Christians believe that Jesus is both God and human. To a non-Christian, this might seem ridiculous. Even for a Christian, it is hard to understand or explain. How can anything or anyone be both divine and human? Or how can God be both transcendent and immanent? Or how can the Bible be both the Word of God and human literature? Can both creation and evolution be true somehow? Can both science and religion be reconciled? The Catholic answer to all these questions is YES, both the one side and its opposite not only can, but must be held together in tension, even if they seem to be contradictory, in order to understand the whole truth, the whole of the complex reality.
"We declare, pronounce, and define that the doctrine which holds that the most Blessed Virgin Mary, in the first instance of her conception, by a singular grace and privilege granted by Almighty God, in view of the merits of Jesus Christ, the Savior of the human race, was preserved free from all stain of original sin, is a doctrine revealed by God and therefore to be believed firmly and constantly by all the faithful." [See here for background; see also Timothy G. McCarthy. The Catholic Tradition: The Church in the Twentieth Century. 2nd Edition. Chicago: Loyola Press, 1998, 373.]The Immaculate Conception of Mary is a profound doctrine. Within it are hidden the foundations and implications of Christian Avataric Non-Dualism.
The speaker was Patricia Fresen, a bishop in the Roman Catholic Womenpriests movement. The day, Nov. 11; the occasion, a jubilant ceremony at a Jewish synagogue, during which Fresen would ordain two women -- the latest of a series of such ceremonies, aimed at helping women to fulfill what they say is their calling: to serve the church as Catholic priests.
Fresen, presider and homilist at the event, is a former Dominican nun of 45 years and a former seminary professor in South Africa. As a native English-speaker, she oversees the movement’s formation program for candidates in English-speaking countries and has quickly become its best-known bishop in the United States.
Though still a small organization, Roman Catholic Womenpriests has grown exponentially since it began just five years ago with the ordination of the so-called Danube Seven -- seven women ordained on a boat on the Danube River in 2002. The growth -- its leading edge in North America -- has surprised some, met expectations of others, and is clearly worrying some members of the church hierarchy.
“We have a lot of new applicants,” Fresen said in an interview the week before the ordinations. “I now have five assistant program coordinators, and we can barely keep up. It has amazed me. We never thought it would take off like this.”
Given the international dimensions of the movement and the increasing frequency of ordinations, tracking the numbers has been a bit tricky, but Bridget Mary Meehan, U.S. spokeswoman, finds it “a nice problem to have.” By Fresen’s count, since those first ordinations in 2002, 50 people -- including six men -- have been ordained, bringing the total to 37 in the United States and Canada and 50 worldwide. Leaders report that another hundred or so have entered the movement’s formal pre-ordination training program. In the United States, the rising numbers prompted a decision last fall to divide the country into five regions to deal more effectively with the demand.
Matthew 16:15-18:The Orthodox, the Catholic, and the Protestant differ on the significance of this passage. Specifically, the Catholic believes that this passage conferred upon Peter an authority given to him and him alone, an authority that contained within it, in seed form, universal papal jurisdiction and papal infallibility. The Orthodox maintain, one, that the papal office is not equivalent to Peter the Apostle, and, two, that the Bishop of Rome (the "Roman" Pope, not to be confused with the Pope who is Bishop of Alexandria) is "one among equals", lacking both the power to coerce other bishops (a power that is part of universal papal jurisdiction notions) and the guarantee of papal infallibility. And Protestants side with the Orthodox, in general.
He said to them, "But who do you say that I am?" Simon Peter said in reply, "You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God." Jesus said to him in reply, "Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah. For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my heavenly Father. And so I say to you, you are Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church, and the gates of the netherworld shall not prevail against it.
[Beliefnet:]In your work you often point to contradictions between the church’s rules and the Bible’s teachings. Do you have anything to say about a hypocrisy there?
[Paul Coelho:]I only can say about my religion and being a Catholic. I am a Catholic because I choose to be a Catholic. And then I go to the Mass because I choose. It is out of my free will. But then, when sometimes I see the human touch [in] the sacred rituals, you say, oh, my God, that’s not exactly what Jesus said. Jesus was much more open and--he was full of joy of living. Because he was the one who was always traveling, surrounded by women, drinking wine. You know, having fantastic conversations with his disciples.
In my church, now more than before, they are going against the natural flow of humankind. This new pope is a disaster, to put it plainly…. I’m not going to defend a pope that is against, for example, condoms. I’m not going to defend a pope that thinks that we still are in the medieval times and that the Catholic faith is the only one to be right. And then you ask, why do you consider to be Catholic if you don’t agree with this pope and many priests and bishops? I say because, well, my religion is more important than the men that are trying to guide it.
But the ritual of the Mass and the words of Christ--well, we’ll survive this pope. The Mass is a mystery. And for me, it is the most perfect ritual.
Vatican City - US President George W Bush drew gasps at the Vatican on Saturday by referring to Pope Benedict XVI as "sir" instead of the expected "His Holiness", pool reporters said.They could clearly hear the US leader say "Yes, sir" when the pope asked him if he was going to meet with officials of the lay Catholic Sant'Egidio community at the US embassy later during his visit.
In fact, if you really wanted to supercharge the nation, you’d fill it with college students who constantly attend church, but who are skeptical of everything they hear there. For there are at least two things we know about flourishing in a modern society.
First, college students who attend religious services regularly do better than those that don’t. As Margarita Mooney, a Princeton sociologist, has demonstrated in her research, they work harder and are more engaged with campus life. Second, students who come from denominations that encourage dissent are more successful, on average, than students from denominations that don’t.
This embodies the social gospel annex to the quasi-religious creed: Always try to be the least believing member of one of the more observant sects. Participate in organized religion, but be a friendly dissident inside. Ensconce yourself in traditional moral practice, but champion piecemeal modernization. Submit to the wisdom of the ages, but with one eye open.
[by] Raimon PanikkarIs there Christ after Christendom and Christianity?
Sunrise would not be dawn if nothing preceded it, nor would sunset be twilight if it did not yield to something else. They mutually suppose each other but are not identical. It is in this sense that I speak not of the sunset of Christianity but of the dawn of Christianness. "Behold! I am making all things new!" (Rev. 21:5)
The word "Christian" may be the adjective of Christendom (a civilization), of Christianity (a religion), or of Christianness (a personal -- not individualistic spirituality). During the period of so-called Christian culture in medieval Europe, it was almost impossible to be Christian without belonging to Christendom. And until quite recently it was very difficult to profess oneself a Christian without confessing the Christian creed (Christianity). Today, however, there are more and more people who consider the possibility of being Christian as a personal attitude, even without belonging to Christendom or totally adhering to doctrinal dogmas of Christianity, insofar as the former represents institutional structures and the latter a special doctrinal set-up. I am not speaking of an individualistic position but of a personal attitude, keeping in mind that "person" always implies community. Christian commitment is indeed ecclesial, but this word is not simply a synonym for an established organization. Ecclesia (church), strictly speaking, implies an organism, and an organism requires a soul, a life. An organization only requires an idea, a reason for its existence....
Christianness is a new but also an ancient form of Christic existence. It was known from the beginning to many mystics and contemplatives but was unable to take a sociological form -- that is, the ecclesial shape that is now becoming visible. It implies a state of awareness and life manifest in a twofold liberation. This means, first, liberation from a fixed and determined political order, which until recently was regarded as indispensable for the practice of "Christian values" (Christendom). It is also a liberation from identifying being Christian with the acceptance of a determined series of Christian doctrines (Christianity). In other words, this new Christic self-understanding does not find itself linked to any determined political order or with a fixed intellectual system. Christianness is neither a new political form nor a new intellectual creed; it is a commitment which, although it needs specific expressions and a concrete political order to manifest itself, does not identify itself with any of these things.
