Another wild night at St. Rose of Lima. Who’d have thought a priests’ retirement home could be the epicenter of such theological vigor! Heck, we never even got to our readings.
So, here's some of what we did talk about: Why did God choose the Jews? Typical arguments of atheists. The current Catholic priests/bishops scandals. How many Catholics and Protestants are there in the world? And, what is faith vs trust vs belief?
One good story was about a lawyer acquaintance of a member Taylor who tried telling Taylor that her friend’s (a she) legal troubles were because God must have willed it. Taylor said her friend’s troubles were not God’s will but her own choices since humans have free will. The lawyer then apparently blamed women in general since Eve ate from the apple thereby causing the fall of man! Taylor replied that Eve came from Adam’s rib, so the problem had to originate with Adam. Wow. We discussed several more possible responses (and many laughs) to the lawyer’s misinformed comments. Fyi - God didn't actually kick them out of the Garden until Adam threw Eve and God under the bus when he replied, “The woman whom you put here with me—she gave me fruit from the tree, so I ate it.” (Gen 3:12)
Another member (btw, are we members, or bible study associates, or what?) asked: Why did God choose the Jews? Well, first of all, "Jews" didn't exist yet at the time of Abraham (that name came later). Second, God chose Abraham because of his incredibly faithful responses. If someone else named Bob had responded the way Abraham did, then Bob would have been chosen and we'd be asking why the Bobbites were the chosen people.
One must also remember that these "chosen ones" actually had it much harder than everyone else. The requirements of God's commandments were enough to make most people run away and hide. The real function of the chosen people was to prepare the world for arrival of God to undo the Fall of Man, and to extend his heavenly invitation to the entire human race. God had to start somewhere, and he chose someone who had lots and lots and lots of faith; which itself is a very intentional message. If you think of how money is the currency for acquiring anything and everything in this world. Well, faith is the currency in the spiritual domain. The more faith you develop, the more you get. Without faith, your spirituality (and relationship with God) stays locked in a box.
We then looked at some charts on World Religions. Christianity is the largest (2.3 billion), followed by Islam (1.8 billion), Hindus (1.1 billion), Buddhists (.5 billion), and Jews (.01 billion. Within Christianity, Catholics are the largest at 1.3 billion. Protestants .9 billion, Orthodox .3 billion, Other .1 billion.
We then discussed the current abuse scandal going on with Catholic priests and bishops. A couple of key points to be made here:
1) The Catholic Church's teaching about this is the same as Jesus. To quote Jesus:
"If anyone causes one of these little ones who believe in me to stumble, it would be better for them to have a large millstone hung around their neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea." (Matt 18:6.)
Jesus also says that for those with greater responsibilities, more will be expected; which simply means negligent bishops have an even bigger problem than priests. This is the official teaching of Jesus and the Church.
2) The true definition of the “Church” is the body of followers of Christ. By definition, then, willful abusers and their willful accomplices are no longer followers of Christ; they have automatically excluded themselves, regardless of whether they were caught or removed.
3) As sad and pathetic and painful as the scandals have been, we all ended up reaffirming that our faith in the Church and our relationship with God have never been dependent on fallen clergy.
4) A positive reminder: Let us not forget that 95% of the 400,000 priests or bishops in the world are not part of this scandal. They are busy dedicating their entire humble lives to helping others. These guys are suffering rather poor treatment as a result of the 5%, which makes them even greater heroes.
Lastly, we started talking about faith, but we didn’t finish so we will pick this up next week:
o What is faith?
o What’s the difference between faith and belief, and between faith and trust?
o What is hope?
God bless,
Ron
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