And the acts of the glorious Conquistadores, the crusaders, the Spanish inquisition, the settling of the Americas, the destruction wrought upon hapless peoples around the world and many many more instances, are great examples of how Christians believe in the ‘love’ of Christ…
You are, no doubt, a lover of Christianity, and history tells me, your desire to kill and enslave has not ebbed…Your vision is now set upon the Muslims after having annihilated countless lives…
Your generalizations of Christians and Christianity ar breathtakingly simplistic and spiteful.
Muslim history, the state of Islam and the extremism that has spread from wahabiville throughout the globe could allow me to make similar hateful generalizations such as your own imperfect religion seems to be the philosophy intent on annihilating countless lives these days while majority of Muslims waller in uneducation, poverty and the inability to live peaceably amongst non-Muslims.
My opinions seem thorny to many…Behind the warm, fuzzy exterior is a tough sphere which changes shape…That sphere are my opinions…When some try touch it, it becomes a glow and when others try to touch it, it spikes their hand…
You have on many occassions caused a glow too…
Well, the concept of the American civil war, to me personally, represents something quite noble…It was brother against brother and father against son for a belief…They were willing to lay down their lives for an ideology and something they believed in…They did it with duty and discipline and nearly a million men died…
They were willing to sacrifice themselves for some principle they believed in…True, many atrocities were committed, but the goal was, to implement something higher than themselves at the cost of even their own lives…This to me, is very glorious…
But then, there is another instance in which the same mentality was applied somewhere else…Germany during the Nazis…
The Germans, at that time were the most advanced and disciplined people of their time…They were extremely hard workers and very educated…As Germany’s graph rose, so did its people’s arrogance and patriotism…
Every German youth was indoctrinated to be the perfect Aryan, and to abolish and erase from view all that was non-German or Aryan…
The Fatherland needed soldiers, and every good Aryan boy, who was honest, hard working and loyal, signed up for the greater good of humanity to bring the good word of Nazism to other, oppressed people…
Of course the pesky Jews had to be taken care of first, hence started the extermination…
The books try to paint the Nazis as a godless entity, but that is false…The Germans were very religious Christians…The rings of the SS bore the words “Gott Mit Uns”, meaning God with us or God is with us…
So you see, sometimes thorns have a reason to be there…History…
Lajawab - just one flaw in your history, the German Nazi philosophy was based on a system that did not allow religion - especially Catholics. I am going to print the quote from a catholic site, then two others.
And if you are talking about some Shah aiding the Nazis, what do you see wrong with that? At that time, Muslims needed to make an alliance for their survival, so they did it with the Nazis…(Not that I approve of it, coz what happens if you die for Nazism?)…
And aren’t the present day alliances that our leaders are doing with America, isn’t that the same? Well, Husseini promised to be the biggest arm of the Nazis in Asia…Didn’t Musharraf say the same thing to the US?
Let it go Minah…Yesterday’s Germany is fast being emulated in today’s America…
He(as) is not a “sword-wielding killer” in Quran, that is a tale cooked up by some half-witt mullahs. You taking mullahs’ version Islam is like me learning about Christianity from KKK. No where in Quran does it say that he will return for a masacre.
Seminole How conveniently you forget that Jesus [Peace be upon him] did promise to bring the sword to the world; He will be brandishing the same sword which he had picked up earlier.
"Do not think that I came to bring peace on the earth; I did not come to bring peace, but a sword. “For I came to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law; and a man’s enemies will be the members of his household.” (Matthew 10:34 - 36)
“Do you suppose that I came to grant peace on earth? I tell you, no, **but rather division; for from now on five members in one household will be divided, three against two, and two against three…” ** (Luke 12:51 - 52)
"And He said to them, “But now, let him who has a purse take it along, likewise also a bag, and let him who has no sword sell his robe and buy one.” (Luke 22:36)
Lajawab - as far as US emulating, I agree we are getting darn close to a Nazi nation in our dealings with other nations.
But my points were brought up in direct counter point to your throwing Nazi Germany in my face. The German swaztika, symbol of the Nazi party was a symbol used by practioners of an ancient Celtic religion (I know the roots are in Indian culture, I am talking later history). Nazi Germans were religious, but pagans, not christians and most definitely not Catholics.
Now when I bring up Muslim involvement, you say it was because they had to.
Pope Pius was said to be sympathetic to the Nazi's. Husseini was the same, put the excuse of survival aside, he was in the inner circle. Looks like Nazi philosophy hit both of us.
I'll let it go, but please, no more of the pointing a finger with a dubious claim when history shows mistakes were made on both sides, neither has cleaner hands than the other.
There was very little religious involvelment in WWII so, It was all about power and territory… We can safely leave it out while talking about Christianity or Islam…
Back to topic, few interesting extract regarding your comment ‘Roman catholics more standardized and centralized’ religion
Read the complete article here
quote—
**Christianity faces day of judgment **
Martin Wainwright
Friday September 7, 2001
The Guardian
'My parish church is so cold, damp and little attended that I always wear my thickest coat - why, there are even fungi growing in great numbers round the communion table."
That was not Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor but a friend of Tennyson’s in 1843, when Christianity’s official hold over Britain looked every bit as shaky as the Catholic leader fears it is today.
But in spite of history’s catalogue of empty churches and hopeless priests, the cardinal’s warning that Christianity “has now almost been vanquished” is not being brushed aside as just the umpteenth re-run of a 2,000-year-old story.
Cardinal Murphy-O’Connor, the Archbishop of Westminster, told a conference of priests on Wednesday that Christianity was being pushed to the margins of society by New Age beliefs, the environmental movement, the occult and the free-market economy. The influence of Chris tianity on modern culture and intellectual life had been hugely diminished, he said.
Even believers who back the Archbishop of Canterbury George Carey’s view yesterday that it is “an exhilarating time to be a Christian” share the cardinal’s alarm at the relentless fall in church membership - often in contrast to other faiths’ success in winning new recruits.
“In the case of Islam - Britain’s fastest-growing religion - I think a sense of tradition and certainty is an important part of the appeal,” said Sayed Ameli, head of the interfaith department of the British Islamic Centre. “**When I talk to converts from Christianity, they talk of their unease that so many changes are happening in the churches. They say: ‘There is too much modernisation in the Catholic church’ or, if they were Protestants, ‘we could no longer feel a proper sense of religion’.” **
A Policy Studies Institute survey of religion’s importance to different faith communities offers similar evidence, recording a 75% “very important” rating among British Muslims compared to 11% of white Anglicans. Tariq Moddod, of Bristol University, who conducted the research, said: “The exception in Christianity was among churches like the Seventh Day Adventists or the New Protestant churches which are mostly Afro-Caribbean or South Indian. The New Protestants had a ‘very important’ rating of 71%.”
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Dr Ameli, who is preparing for interfaith sessions on the family and the Bible with mixed groups of Muslims and evangelical Christians, agreed. He said: **"One different but encouraging message from converts to Islam is that they didn’t just want a ‘Sunday religion’. They wanted something that would involve them and purify them all the time. **
**“I do not say this in a hostile way to Christianity, because an ‘everyday religion’ is one of the many things which Islam, Christianity and Judaism can all share. We have much to discover about that and about the effect on all of us of secularisation and the idea that religion is just a ‘childish thing’.” **
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— unquote
One important thing disappearing is, certain degree of control/authority people want their religion to have on their lives. Which has almost disapeared in most of the secular societies. But judaism and Islam still have (to some extent ) this authority over its followers.
I will assert again, Roman Catholics have a more standardized and centralized religion meaning that the incidences in that story would NEVER have happened in Catholicism. You still have not disproved that.
Churches have a format they must follow laid out by the Vatican. There is no deviation from certain things. A child doesn't recieve communion until he understand what Christ died for and why. That is standard, meaning in America it is taught the same as in Romania, the same as in Russia, the same as in Australia, the same as in Ireland.......... The worldwide churches of the Catholic faith condemn witchcraft as a sin. It has been a sin since the beginning. This is standard, taught everywhere.
I am talking about teachings, not about how people feel about their religion.
*One other thing, all Catholics are Christians, but not all Christians are Catholics. Protestants are definitely not Catholics. All have different philosophies. The Roman Catholic Church is the only standardized christian church in existence (standardized, meaning the same thing is taught in individual churches worldwide as mandated by the Vatican).
All these side issues are interesting and intriquing, however...................
Code_Red - I have given examples and I have also explained how this claim is utterly ridiculous, but for some reason this total line of BS is allowed to stay.
As I explained earlier, I would not be upset about a conversion to Islam or about a man's journey to a faith, any faith. A man's journey to forming a relationship with God is always a beautiful thing in any religion. My problem is that this particular story gives a false impression of the Catholic religion and it's practices and tolerances. The story is patently untrue in this regard (my sympathies to the man who posted this). Wouldn't you feel the same if someone likened Islam to a pagan worshiping culture (which is exactly what happened here)?
Minah, Lajo speaks thru his ass. Ask him is he sees suicide bombings as Islamically sanctioned, as the suiciders say Allah-o-Akbar before blowing themselves up. His equating Nazis with Christianity is similar to saying that Pakistanis killing 3 million Bengalis was to honor Islam and Allah. According to Lajo’s theory, it was. I am sure he was very happy to see 3 Million Bengalis killed in the name of his Allah :swt:
How many times does a person need to repeat that the author is simply mentioning his experiences growing up in Venezuela, regardless of how strong or weak their Catholicism was ???
And yes, I have been to Venezuela myself, and what he says about that country is fully true, including the presence of witchcraft and everything else...
And how much do I have to assert they were not Catholic, or are you just using this term because you don't understand what a christian is?
There are different sects of christian religion that deal with witchcraft, talking in tongues, etc, but they are NOT Catholics, regardless of what you write. A very dark and cruel time in history, the Catholic Church burned/drowned/killed anyone they even suspected as a witch or practicing idolatry in any way, through out history. It is a sin. period, no exceptions.
Using Catholic as a term for christian is illiterate to say the very least and definitely insulting in this particular case.
First, miss/mrs. minah was certain that the author was a "charlatan" and the whole book was false... Now, since that theory has been disproven, she is deciding who is Christian and who is not... similar to the Protestants who criticize the book, claiming that my father was a "pagan Catholic" and that "Catholics know nothing about Christ" and "Catholics are not Christians"...
So from this, I guess all Christians have given themselves the power of deciding who is a Christian and who is not... well, actually it is quite good, since at the end of the day, none of them are going to reach salvation by the different testimonies they give against one another :)
