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Old 02-29-2004, 10:57 AM   #4 (permalink)
SecretMethod70
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Since you started out saying that you're "ignorant," let me try and educate you with the limited knowledge I do have.

Quote:
For an example the question in the catholic religion if you don’t believe in Jesus you are going to hell.
As a practicing Catholic and a person who is presently takling a class on Catholic theology, I can tell you that this is 100% absolutely, positively false. Many Christian religions do believe this, and probably almost all did at some point. However, today it comes down to how literal the interpretation of the Bible is. Many more fundamental religions still believe that you must be Christian to "go to Heaven" (which is a bad phrase to use anyways), however since the Second Vatican Council in the early 1960's, the Catholic Church has held that a person can be "saved" no matter what their religion is, although they do hold that the Catholic Church holds the fullness of God's truth while all other religions do not have the fullness, but do have real truth nonetheless.

Putting on my fundamentalist hat, yes the Bible does say, when interpreted literally, that one must believe in Jesus Christ as your savior in order to be "saved." Again, it all comes down to how strictly you interpret text.

So, that pretty much addresses your entire post until the Islam part (which I can't speak for). One point though is that, the thing you like in Islam that all religions essentially worship the same God, is basically speaking what Catholicisms holds to - that all religions are formed in some part by God's revealing himself to humans, just that Catholicism is the fullness of those revelations.

The best I can say, without meaning to pass judgement, is that if the person who told you you were going to Hell was Catholic, they really know very little about the faith that they think they believe in. I could go on a huge rant about this, but people today take almost no initiative to actually understand their own religion and, thus, either reject it based on things they don't understand or misunderstand, or they follow strange things that they THINK they're supposed to but they're not (like believing non-Catholics go to Hell which, again, is so far from what the Catholic Church actually teaches it;s not even funny).

Unfortunately, humans will never be perfect and there will always be people who either choose not to seek definitive understanding of what their faith does and doesn't teach, or simply choose to ignore it for a more egotistical method of "believing."

Even more unfortunate is that people have experiences like TheKak where even the people that should know and should discuss these things with those who ask don't really explain or perhaps even understand themselves. Point being, the "flaw" in most religions comes from the people within them warping and/or not understanding the religion rather than the religion itself.

EDIT: Just did a quick google seach and found a random article that I think lays it out pretty well, so I'll quote the relevant section:

Quote:
What ... Vatican II [does not say] is that only those people who are formal members of the Catholic Church can be saved, or that all other religions are simply false. Vatican II constructed what might be called a system of overlapping circles the fullness of truth in the Catholic Church, other Christian bodies sharing some of that truth but not all, non-Christian bodies possessing some truth but missing the Gospel. Judaism is the beneficiary of direct revelation from God. Non-Christian religions posses truth by virtue of the human desire to know God and the human ability to discover certain truths by reason.

Thus the appropriate Catholic attitude toward other religions is not contempt but a somewhat measured respect acknowledging what is true, honoring those who live their faith, but also recognizing the inadequacies of those religions.

The point most likely to be misunderstood is the principle ... "Outside the Church there is no salvation". Once again it does not mean that everyone must belong to the Church formally. What it does mean is not only that the fullness of divine truth is found in the Catholic Church but that everyone who is saved, no matter what their faith, is saved by the grace of God made available to the human race by Jesus Christ. Christians may be able to learn from the teachings of Buddha, and following those teachings may bring one closer to God, but Buddha cannot save, only Christ can.
Just so that's not misunderstood, I'm just going to reiterate that, for Catholics, that's not to say Buddhists can't be "saved," but that is to say that the Buddha (or Mohhamed, or whatever) is not the being that does the saving.

EDIT2: And, just cause I hate seeing misunderstanding, an example of where the idea that one must be Christian comes from is this line from the Bible, said by Jesus: "I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me"

A fundamentalist looks at that line and says that one must be Christian. The Catholic Church looks at that line and says that, while one may be "saved" in any religion, Jesus is the one that does the saving even if they don't acknowledge Him.
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Last edited by SecretMethod70; 02-29-2004 at 11:21 AM..
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