Benedict XVI on God’s punishment

Church of Santa Sabina 

The Catholic NewsService reporting on Pope Benedict’s homily for the first day of Lent at Rome’s Church of Santa Sabina was filled with some incredibly dark images based on his  frequent literal   rather then interpretative interpretation of Scripture.

In his opening remarks the Pope said . . .   "In the Catholic liturgy, ashes are "one of those material signs that bring the cosmos into the liturgy," he said. They recall both the fact that God created human beings out of the dust of the earth and breathed divine life into them, but also that after Adam and Eve sinned, God cursed the ground and made it bring forth thistles and thorns.  Only by giving this passage a simple literal interpretation could any  reader deduce that it was God who cursed the ground.  Again in clear contradiction of scripture should we not recall that at the end of the sixth day “God looked at everything he had made, and he was very pleased”!  Could it be this passage marks the very first time man tried to create God in his image?

Speaking about the sins of Adam and Eve, Benedict went on to say. . .  “while God punishes people for their sins, his punishment is ‘medicinal’ because God is good and loving' . . . This was followed by an even more challenging theological interpretation as Benedict announced that . . . ‘God sent his son ‘to our earth devastated by sin so that we, prodigal sons and daughters, could return repentant and redeemed by his mercy to our true homeland" in heaven” . . .          

The Pope’s reference to God’s punishment reminds this blogger that our Pope is not only a  theologian with dark fundamentalist (Jansemism) views which sets back Catholicism centuries to the days of the Inquisition, crusades, witch-hunts, and the persecution of Jews but also why he is able to justify his unusual focus on the sexual sins of so many these days.  Our God does not punish, reward, demand, or play favourites - we do.  

The Pope's further suggestion that . . .  "God sent his son was because “our earth was devastated by sin”  . . . . offers yet another clear contradiction.  It ignores  Jesus’ message “I came so that you might have life to be lived in all its fullness’!  (John 10:10) God sent his son because he loves all of his creation.  No greater sacrifice could be made than to die for another, i.e., us!  The Pope’s fear based message is hardly likely to heal anyone’s image of a loving God.  His Augustinian view of the world makes a mockery of God’s unconditional love. (readers may be interested to learn that St. Augustine is Benedict's favourite Saint). BTW the word 'bless' and variations thereof appears more than 85 times in the book of Genesis.   Should that not tell us something about the true nature of God?  

Let us celebrate Lent with the knowledge that God does not punish, reward, demand or send anyone to hell.  God is only interested in blessing us.  Perhaps we could open our hearts to his many blessings and spend the next forty days reflecting on Jesus’ rejection of the only Satan that exists and that is our EGO. Of course as anyone knows that takes true humility and a change of heart. 

the culture that allows sex abuse to happen

There have been numerous occasions throughout this blog that I have spoken out about the Catholic Church’s struggle with the ongoing sexual abuse crisis, as well as its growing militant attitude on abortions and other areas of human sexuality such as homosexuality, celibacy, condoms masturbation, same-sex marriage, partcularly when they are expressed in absolute terms.

Why does a religion remain so fearful about a gift from God when those sexual abuse issues are clearly threatening to destroy the very fabric of the institution?  THE TRUTH NEEDS TO BE TOLD. When will the hierarchy finally accept its duplicity in creating a culture that allowed the sexual abuse to bring so much pain and suffering in the world? THE TRUTH NEEDS TO BE TOLD. Why does the church still remain in denial? THE TRUTH NEEDS TO BE TOLD.  Considering the recent advances to help us break through a better understanding of human behaviour why does our Church still rely on theological definitions established by St. Augustine in the fourth century A.D.- especially in light of his own struggle with sexuality.  The Church continues to uphold its traditions as unchangeable and from an exclusive patriarchal point of view.  God, on the other hand moves with us through time, even though his unconditional love for humankind remains unchanged. God meets us where we are – not where others would have us be. Does the Church truly believe that God does not play a role in the discoveries in science and human understanding?  Surely, the revelations made known by individuals such as Galileo made this all too painfully clear? THE TRUTH NEEDS TO BE TOLD.

Most religions today, particularly those with a fundamentalist background, appear unable or unwilling to accept change and will quickly condemn anyone with different views. Christians do well to recall the price Jesus paid for attempting to introduce change in his community.

There are a few people who have the strength and courage to challenge our beliefs and understandings.  This week one such person spoke up at a gathering on April 4 at Marquette University Law School, Milwaukee - his name is Archbishop  Diarmuid Martin of Dublin, Ireland.  Here follows his complete address as it appears on the Archdiocese of Dublin website.  A condensed version is also  available on the National Catholic Reporters website of April 5th.      For full video of Martin's talk, visit the page on the Marquette University Web site.  The two day conference took place under the banner 'Restorative Justice Initiative' includes many speakers, including several victims of sexual abuse as well as Archbishop Martin.  

Having read and watched significant portions of this debate I am encouraged by the positive approach to this crisis which continues to impact our society at large. THE TRUTH NEEDS TO BE TOLD.

On being a Cafeteria Catholic

"Cafeteria Christianity" according to the definition by Wikipedia is a derogatory term used by some Christians, and others, to accuse other Christian individuals or denominations of selecting which Christian doctrines they will follow, and which they will not. In more complimentary terms I like to think of it as Jesus inviting everyone to come and eat with him regardless of their particular beliefs or disposition. Jesus accepts us to come and eat as we are not as others would have us be.

Michael Coren is a well known British born Canadian Radio & TV personality hosting his own daily talk show on the Global network. Brutally honest, spiritual, strong-minded, author, compassionate, opinionated, ethical, witty, confident, are just a few of the self appointed attributes taken from his own website.

As a writer he is a frequent contributor to Canada’s conservative religious newspaper ‘The Catholic Register’. Michael’s entries consistently display a heavy Catholic apologetic emphasis - often quick to condemn those who fall short of his idea of what it means to be Catholic . This week’s uncompromising essay ‘On ‘Cafeteria Catholicism’ is his latest damning contribution. This article is a typical expression of a fundamentalist understanding of what it means to be a Christian and or a Catholic. You could be forgiven for believing that the two terms are necessarily synonymous. In the case of Mr. Coren the Catholic Church is God and all other churches using the words of Pope Benedict “are not Churches in the proper sense and that non-Christians are seriously deficient in terms of access to the means of salvation.” Catholic or otherwise this supremist attitude is hardly likely to bring reconciliation among the world’s competing religions. More importantly it completely contradicts a God who loves all humankind unconditionally. What follows is his article to the Catholic Register which appeared on line together with my posted response.

On 'cafeteria Catholicism'
Written by Michael Coren Wednesday, 03 November 2010 10:43

In mid-October I was part of a panel at a Toronto university discussing how the world views the Church. It was all pretty good stuff with some faithful and successful Catholic writers on the platform. The academic present, however, was not known to me. But her views were. Not that I had ever heard of the woman before; what I mean is that her opinions on Catholicism were entirely typical of an attitude that has caused colossal damage to the Church in recent years. While discussing abortion, for example, she said that there were “gradations” within Catholicism and implied that supporting the rights of the unborn or promoting their slaughter were various and valid Roman Catholic positions.I asked her if she liked Jews. 

Read the rest here

My Response:

Reading this self righteous and sad article one can clearly hear the mobs gathered once again to witness the fires licking at the bodies of thousands of innocent heretics being burned at the stake. One can hear the instructions from the Inquisitor to ratchet up the ‘strappado’ and other instruments of torture as they try to unmask those wrongly accused of “treason against God”. There is the voice of Pope Innocent VIII condemning those blameless victims who supposedly had ‘blasphemously rejected the Faith’ and were now accused of witchcraft to be drowned or burned at the stake without trial. Again, we can hear the echoes of crowds chanting “Christ-killers” against our Jewish brethren. Hear the miserable shouts from those accusing others of their sins at the expense of their own. Here then is the new Inquisitor ready to condemn anyone who dares to challenge an institution mired in the cover-up of sexual abuse - the institution that wants to return to darker ages rather than embrace the God of the present the God who loves his children unconditionally. A God who invites all to come and eat at his table.

Liberal Catholics

When I started a spiritual journey via the Catholic faith, more than twenty five years ago, it never once occurred to me that I would one day be labelled a ‘liberal Catholic’. Labels are dangerous. Labels allow people to be lumped into one category with the immediate loss of their unique personality. It is always easier to dislike a group than an individual. Historically persecutions have always been aimed at groups rather than individuals – heretics, mystics, witches, gays, Jews, etc.

Wikipedia the online encyclopedia for the masses describes Liberal Christians as follows:

Traditionalist or Fundamentalist Catholics

Traditionalist or Fundamentalist Catholics are Roman Catholics who believe that there should be a restoration of many or all of the liturgical forms, public and private devotions and presentations of Catholic teachings which prevailed in the Catholic Church before the Second Vatican Council (1962–65). They are most commonly associated with an attachment to the Mass liturgy in general use in that time period (often called the Tridentine Mass, the Traditional Mass or the Latin Mass), but their theological and practical concerns are broader in scope and in some cases go so far as to consider the present-day Church teaching heretical.
Traditionalist Catholics lay stress on strict following of customs prevailing immediately before the Second Vatican Council, such as: abstaining from meat on Fridays, kneeling to receive Communion directly in the mouth, women wearing a head-covering in church, frequent confession, prayers such as the Stations of the Cross and the Rosary, fasting from midnight before receiving Holy Communion. These practices are of course not confined to traditionalists: many mainstream Catholics also follow them.

Conservatism in Catholicism primarily refers to the upholding of the Catholic Church official teachings concerning the sanctity of marriage, the prohibition of artificial birth control, the sanctity of life from conception to natural death, the importance of traditional male clergy, prohibitions on divorce and homosexuality, and other similar theological and moral matters.
All core traditional beliefs of conservative Christians can be found in the three creedal statements, i.e. Apostles' Creed, and Nicene Creed.
Liberal versus Conservative

The liberal Roman Catholic understands ecumenism as welcoming and exploring God through ongoing dialogue with other world faiths while Traditional Roman Catholics prefer to limit their understanding of God, and therefore ecumenism, to the tenets dictated by Church hierarchy. The liberal Roman Catholic understands and accepts personal responsibility by claiming primacy of the Freedom of Conscience guaranteed under Canon Law, while the Traditional Roman Catholic is more likely to defer personal responsibility by more rigorously accepting Church teachings in favour of the Freedom of Conscience. Accordingly a liberal Catholic is more likely to view his beliefs and God as the natural result of evolution wich brings both change and growth, while his counterpart prefers to define his beliefs based on past history and repetitive rituals.

Sadly as these labels indicate, Catholics today find themselves strongly divided by these two polarities. Roman Catholicism unlike most other Christian faiths is centralized and presided over by a pope and an episcopal hierarchy. Under Pope’s John Paul II and particularly Benedict XVI leadership of the Church has shown a more definite conservative trend or attitude. Today, Roman Catholics appear to be deeply divided between those who accepted the changes implemented by Vatican II (1962-65) and those who still hold strong to the values of the Council of Trent (1545-63).

Conservatives in recent years have adopted a more militant position in response to demands for change from their progressive or liberal brothers and sisters. Recent examples of such militanchy are Bishops who publically deny individuals their right to receive communion due to their political positions. While still other Bishops have dismissed Catholic professionals due to their refusal to interpret abortion in strict and absolute terms, etc. And, so the battle lines are drawn.

The most sensitive issues dividing the two groups are: abortion, homosexuality, birth control, same-sex marriage, celibacy, population, and women as ordained members of the clergy.

As the demands for even greater adherence to Catholic Orthodoxy are being made by the current Roman Catholic hierarchy, led by Pope Benedict XVI ,the only losers are likely those liberals who continue to hope for change. This is unlikely to happen until the present regime dies out or the Roman Catholic Church finally collapses under the weight of its heavy handed approach to oust the remaining liberals.

Perhaps the most shameful result underlying these issues is the debate held by both as to who today is the authentic Roman Catholic - this attitude is hardly one that would be ascribed to Jesus Christ. It is a wall that must be brought down if Catholics, liberal or conservative, are to be united as living examples of their faith. So far the Vatican has not shown any interest in doing so.

Liberal Christians tend to regard the Bible as the record of human doings composed of humans encountering the Divine within their specific historical context. They often interpret passages of the Bible as being less a record of actual events, but rather stories illustrating how to live ethically and authentically in relation to God. Some might, for instance, see Christ's death and resurrection in terms not of actual physical reanimation, but in terms of the good news of Jesus' teaching: that God's children are no longer slaves to the power of death.

Some professional exegetes consider the Bible, to a greater or lesser degree, to be a document of its time, taking on attitudes which may not be God's. While they may hold the document as sacred and most certainly as central to Christianity, they are also aware of the historical and cultural context in which it was originally written through archaeological and from critical study. Some scholars feel that in addition to its spiritual components, portions of the text merely reflect the human authors' beliefs and feelings about God at the time of its writing, and their cultural sensibilities. The influence of such persons may reflect a heightened spiritual consciousness, or may simply represent people attempting to explain the world as best they could give the tools of the time. Such scholars purport that passages in scripture related to slavery, war, genocide, female marginalization, and sex between men may not necessarily be about God's wishes, but rather about the predominant culture's opinions at the time of the passage's writing.
Liberal Christianity, sometimes called liberal theology, is an umbrella term covering diverse, philosophically and biblically informed religious movements and ideas within Christianity from the late 18th century and onward. The word "liberal" in liberal Christianity does not refer to a progressive political agenda or set of beliefs, but rather to the manner of thought and belief associated with the philosophical and religious paradigms developed during the Age of Enlightenment.

Pearls before swine

Five students at Carleton University were recently arrested for attempting to display graphic anti-abortion posters on the Ottawa campus. Academia suffered a further blow when a Catholic professor at the secular University of Illinois decided to introduce his students to the Catholic position on homosexuality. The students rebelled and the professor was subsequently dismissed. Both events took place at about the same time a gay Rutgers University student committed suicide after being secretly taped, by his room- mates having gay sex in a dorm room. According to US newspapers this is the fifth suicide of a gay person in less than a month. Some people have said that these issues raise serious concerns about how institutions of higher learning need to deal with the highly charged matters. Perhaps so, but I suggest that these issues should raise serious concerns about how religious institutions need to accept responsibility for some of these irresponsible and tragic results!

Pro-life groups have raised the bar, with the support of their religious institutions, to such a level that it has become not only militant but actually anti-Christian. Lawyers representing the students at Carleton University say they will defend their cases under ‘freedom of speech’ act. But what exactly are they defending other than the right to earn a buck? The shock value of the pornographic display of bloodied fetus is hardly going to attract people they are hoping to convince. If such displays were indeed effective; wars would have ended at the first sight of blood.

As for the professor at the University of Illinois, this was simply a case of the student teaching the teacher – Love is greater than hatred! Bigotry, regardless of its support from a religious institution, has no place in this world. It is time to stop ‘scapegoating’ and take responsibilities for our actions and words. As a (former) Catholic I call on Pope Benedict XVI to repent for his misplaced stance on both homosexuality and abortion by accepting responsibility for the untold pain and suffering he continues to bring to bear on its victims.

In recent days I have received a considerable amount of criticism from people who still want to defend their religious institution on all costs. Not surprisingly they all speak with the same rigid and puritanical tone, more defiantly known as absolutism. Absolutist see everything in black and white. Here follows an example based on an the findings of a well known Catholic Professor of Ethics: A young woman is bi-polar, manic depressive and her psychotic condition pregnant in spite of her best efforts. Lithium would devastate the cardiovascular system of the fetus and probably already has. She aborts.

And here as the response to that case from a Catholic absolutist: Caution – graphic description

Abortion is never permitted. If the fetus dies as a result of the chemo, then the principle of double-effect comes into play. It is permissible to give chemo to a pregnant woman as long as she is informed. In the case of uterine cancer, it is also licit to remove the diseased organ (resulting in the undesired but subsequent death of the fetus)

The Catholic professor prefaced his defense for abortion in such difficult cases as follows:

Moral matters are complicated. As Thomas Aquinas said moral matters involve "an infinity of diverse circumstances" (quasi infinitae diversitates). Take abortion, for example. Now there is a complicated issue full of "diverse circumstances" and it is wise as the bishops say not to imagine that bishops are experts on all such matters or "even that it is their mission." Playing at being infallible is not in the bishops' job description.

It is recognized that when issues such as abortion, euthanasia, homosexuality, same-sex marriage, etc. are presented in an unfiltered fashion on a public forum they are likely to provoke a variety of unpredictable results. In that case presenters must take in consideration Jesus’ warning ‘Do not give what is holy to dogs; and do not throw your pearls before swine, or they will trample them under foot and turn and maul you. Matthew 7:6

My understanding of this challenging statement is simply this:

When Jesus spoke to the people of his time and culture he did so using terms that they as landowners, vintners, farmers etc. would have been completely familiar with. Hence, he spoke of vineyards, fruit, seeds, land, pigs, swine etc. The word swine today is often used in derogative terms. However, in the time of Jesus, a largely agricultural society, would have understood swine strictly as animals which will eat anything that is tossed to them. So it is important to understand this passage not in literal terms but rather in an interpretive and historical fashion. When Jesus said “Do not give what is holy to dogs, etc. he is reminding his audience that not everyone is ready to hear the message of forgiveness, etc., without a prior understanding of God’s unconditional love.

Fundamentalist and absolutist have had their day - and the only way,beyond is to replace it with the unconditional love God which rains upon all.

Fundamentalism

Religious fundamentalism involves above all else a desire for certainty and the power to enforce that certainty over others. Fundamentlists like order, conformity, and the absence of opposition, and they are willing to do battle royal to achieve this state of affairs in their culture.

Catholicism: The Original Fundamentalism

Catholicism has been engaged in something like a holy war for most of its history. Heretics abounded in the medieval period (Cathars, Waldensians, Free Spirits, etc.), and were invariably harshly dealt with by the Church authorities, who permitted no challenge whatsoever to their power base. (Catharism, or Albigensianism, which flourished in the south of France from the llth to the 14th centuries, even became the subject of a full-blown, and ultimately successful, crusade against its domain.) Then, in the early 16th century, the Reformation came on the scene, setting in motion a long-running conflict with the Protestant movement: a conflict which continues, if only rarely in violent form (as in Northern Ireland), into our own century. (Each side is still competing with the other for converts, with American Protestant evangelicalism latterly making inroads into traditional Catholic strongholds in South America.) The Reformation generated a Counter-Reformation on the part of Catholicism, which was reasonably successful in stemming the advance of Protestantism throughout Europe, and even winning back territory from Protestant control (France reverting to Catholicism after being on the brink of going Protestant, as a case in point). Having weathered the crisis, Catholicism consolidated its position as a major world religion with an aggressive recruiting policy and a practised ability to exercise tight control over the lifestyles of its adherents: 'Once a Catholic always a Catholic', as the popular saying goes.

Despite the development of Protestantism, Catholicism continues to regard itself as not just the only true Christianity, but the only true religion [Dominus Iesus- 2000]. Over the years it has amassed a battery of doctrines to reinforce its claims to this exalted status. Papal infallibility is a latter-day addition to its authority, although the Church hierarchy had never been in much doubt over the tightness of its actions before (as Jonathan Riley-Smith has drily noted, '[f]or most of its 2,000-year history the papacy has not been in the forefront of reform'). Vatican pronouncements are handed down as law, whether on the subject of contraception, [abortion], priestly celibacy, or women priests - to name some of the most contentious issues on its current agenda. While a certain amount of debate is permitted to take place on such topics, it's at a rarefied level in the hierarchy where the laity have little input and decisions tend towards the very conservative. Catholicism has a very strong sense of history, and is more concerned to preserve traditional authority than to respond to cultural change. Considerable pressure has been exerted over the issues mentioned above - contraception, priestly celibacy, women priests - but so far to little avail. As far as the hierarchy are concerned, these are matters of dogma on which only they have the right to pronounce, and they expect their pronouncements to be followed to the letter. Doctrine wins out over the social cost of the Church's ban on birth control in poorer areas of the world (South America, for example), even though the improvement in the quality of life that a change in policy would bring seems obvious to everyone except the Catholic authorities. Although Christian fundamentalism is traditionally associated with Protestantism, it's worth remembering that it has no monopoly on that attitude.

Here follow some other provocative insights from Stuart Sim from his book fundamentalistWorld.

• Religious fundamentalism's great selling point is that it provides a sense of security for believers in what has become an ever more disorienting world, but it does so at the expense of cultivating an intolerance of others which can have devastating effects on global politics.
  

  • The more militant religious fundamentalism becomes the more likely it is to create clashes between rival belief systems.
  • Christian doctrine notwithstanding, there will be little forgiveness of sins, if those sins concern the fundamentals of belief.
  • What fundamentalism involves above all else is a desire for certainty and for the power to enforce that certainty over others. Fundamentalists like order, conformity, and the absence of opposition, and they are willing to do battle royal to achieve this state of affairs in their culture.
    
  • what fundamentalist share is a burning conviction of the rightness of their beliefs and the necessity to impose them on the rest of us.

  
  

  
  

  • Once doctrine, always doctrine, is the immutable fundamentalist law; the script must be followed regardless of who suffers (it's their fault anyway).
    
    

    Fundamentalism by far is not the inclusive domain of some Catholics. It is also found in many sectors of our world religions, for example:
    

    Muslim Fundamentalism

    Muslim fundamentalism is an enormously simple, powerful, earthy, sometimes cruel, absorbing, socially fortifying movement, which gives a sense of direction and orientation to millions of men and women, many of whom live lives of bitter poverty and are subject to harsh oppression. It enables them to adjust to a new anonymous mass society by identifying with the old, long-established High Culture of their own faith, and explaining their own deprivation and humiliation as a punishment for having strayed from the true path, rather than a consequence of never having found it. – Ernest Gellner

    
    

    
    

    
    

    
    

    JEWISH FUNDAMENTALISM

    It stresses the obligatory salvation of the Jews and their return to Israel as a precondition for the establishment of the Kingdom of God on the Davidic throne of Jerusalem. These events, foretold by the prophets Daniel and Ezekiel and the last book of the Christian Scriptures, Revelation, create a rigorous framework within which all fundamentalists can understand past and future history, not as a purposeless record, but as a statement of divine will and a preparation for His eventual triumph over the forces of the Antichrist in the coming conflict known as the Tribulation.

    This brief summary is by no means a complete history of religious fundamentalism. No religion is exempt according to Sim. Nor is fundamentalism restricted to religion. Stuart Sim's book also describes how fundamentalism impacts us through politics and the economy. This well researched book helps us to better understand and reject the negative forces often present in this violent world in which we live. It is no news to anyone that a widespread spiritual awakening is currently taking place - one that has two distinct aspects. On one side, we find a resurgence of religious fundamentalism that embraces a historic view derived from the Middle Ages - a literalist belief that proclaims this world to be the kingdom of a remote transcendent authoritarian father-God, alternately wrathful and beneficent . . . On the other side and in opposition to this view, we have the spiritually awakened and expanded perspective of the secular humanist who perceive an omnipresent, immanent Divine Presence of Creative Force existing within all creation, one that is benevolent, life enhancing and life sustaining. (Mind Before Matter)

    
    

    
    

    
    

Several Years ago I came across the brilliant little book 'Fundamentalistworld –The New Dark Age of Dogma', written by Stuart Sim, Icon Books, U.K., 2004. This thought provoking book provides an in-depth analysis on FUNDAMENTALISM and how it impacts our world politically and religiously. I sincerely hope it will cause readers to renew their personal convictions and beliefs against the Creator of all humankind – and thereby come to embrace and project a love that is totally unconditional and all inclusive.

On the Bible

We often read the Bible as though it were a fixed definition of God. Nothing could be further from the truth. The Bible is the story of people’s experience of God through the ages. It is the story of God’s response to our individual needs.

As we read the Bible with open hearts and minds we will discover that the Word therein is alive and directed at our lives as it was for all those who heard it before us. When we read it carefully we will discover that Abraham’s story is also our story. So too are the stories of Sarah, Joseph, Moses, Ruth, Isaac and so forth. Each character has a unique experience of God which in turn has a profound effect on their lives and on those who cross their paths. When we choose to dialogue with God through his Word we too will experience his unique presence in our lives and recognize him immediately in others, past and present.

If we choose to live our lives without this personal relationship we will only ‘experience’ his influence from the point of view of others. More importantly, we will fail to grasp his great unconditional love for us. When we read the Bible as a historical novel and ‘study’ it without entering into the hearts and minds of the people involved (which is really you) it will dry up and no longer serve our lives. As a consequence God will often appear impersonal, indifferent, and at times extremely harsh and judgmental.

A new relationship needs to be established. A new vision is required. The Bible is a rich treasure field, spanning time and creation, for those seeking friendship, peace, joy and healing. Each story is unique. Each Biblical character is a diamond in the rough until it is polished with your heart and mind. When we experience the Bible in this way and recognize his loving presence in his ongoing creation we will discover that still another and most beautiful chapter to the Bible is yet to be written – and that is the story of your life!

In the meantime, one ideal way to help us read the Bible more interpretively would be to discern its intent with the help or guidance of the Spirit. Another, helpful way, would be to reflect on the following anonymous article published by the Catholic New Times some time ago entitled:‘Dear Dr, Laura.

(Laura Schlesinger is an open line "ex­pert" in the U.S. The most widely heard talk show host in the country and armed with a degree in physiology, she has consistently demonized homo­sexual people, calling them "biological errors" and "sexual deviants .'For years Schlesinger credited her strict Jewish background as the basis for her harsh stands. She always quoted the Hebrew Bible as the basis of her anti-homosexual stands. Recently she shocked her listeners by openly breaking with her ultra-orthodox religion. The following letter to the good doctor pokes fun at her fundamentalist stance.)

Dear Dr. Laura:

Thank you for doing so much to educate people regarding God's Law. I have learned a great deal from your show and try to share that knowledge with as many people as I can. When someone tries to defend the homosexual lifestyle, for exam­ple, I simply remind them that Leviticus 18:22 clearly states it to be an abomination. ... End of debate. I do need some advice from you, however, regarding some other elements of God's Law and how to follow them:

1. When I burn a bull on the altar as a sacrifice, I know it creates a pleasing odour for the Lord — Lev. 1:9. The problem is my neighbours. They claim the odour is not pleasing to them. Should I smite them?
2. I would like to sell my daughter into slavery, as sanctioned in Exodus 21:7. In this day and age, what do you think would be a fair price for her?

3. I know that I am allowed no contact with a woman while she is in her period of menstrual undeanliness — Lev. 15: 19-24. The problem is, how do I tell? I have tried asking, but most women take offence.
4. Lev. 25:44 states that I may indeed possess slaves, both" male and fe­male, provided they are purchased from neighbouring nations. A friend of mine claims that this applies;to Mexicans, but not Canadians. Can you clarify? Why can't I own Cana­dians?
5. I have a neighbour who insists on working on the Sabbath. Exodus 35:2. The passage clearly states he should be put to death. Am I morally obligated to kill him myself?
6. A friend of mine feels that even though eating shellfish is an abomi­nation — Lev. 11:10. it is a lesser abomination than homosexuality. I don't agree. Can you settle this? Are there 'degrees' of abomination?

7. Lev. 21:20 states that I may not approach the altar of God if I have a defect in my sight. I have to admit that I wear reading glasses. Does my vision have to be 20/20, or is there some wiggle room here?

8. Most of my male friends get their hair trimmed, including the hair around their temples, even though this is expressly forbidden by Zev. J 27. How should thev die?

9. I know from Lev. 11:6-8 that touching the skin of a dead pig makes me unclean, but may I still play football if I wear gloves?

10. My uncle has a farm. He violates Lev.19:19 by planting two different crops in the same field, as does his wife by wearing garments made of " two different kinds of thread (cotton/polyester blend). He also tends to curse and blaspheme a lot. Is it really necessary that we go to all the trouble of getting the whole town together to stone them? — Lev. 24:10-16. Couldn't we just burn them to death at a private familv affair like we do with people who sleep with their in-laws? (Lev. 20:14)

I know you have studied these things extensively and thus enjoy considerable expertise in such matters, so I am confident you can help. Thank you again for remind­ing us that God's word is eternal and unchanging.

Your adoring fan, Jim