[Magdalen] 239th year since the birth of the United States of America as ...

[James Oppenheimer-Crawford]

With the rise of non-denoms, we have an aggressive in-your-face
know-nothing attitude.  A lot of folks very seriously believe that the RCC
is not Christian.

I think several things are involved here.

1. Their faith is fully in the Bible alone.  They reject all other
traditions.  The RCC obviously disagrees. They have to have something to
say to counter the obvious questions.

2. The RCC is really, really big.  To these little non-denoms, the RCC
looks like the giant dragon. It's easy to style oneself as a dragon-slayer
or at least a dragon-denier, but the fact is that the RCC can be pretty
daunting in its sheer size.

3. The non-denoms have carved out a very tiny piece of holy writ, and they
are quite expert in reading it in its literal sense.  However, attempting
to see the nuances in scripture requires an enormous amount of study and
time and effort.  That in itself is a huge encouragement for the simpler
folk to stick to the Bible only, and solely in literal terms. However, if
one were to add in all of the writings of the Church Fathers, suddenly the
entire nature of holy writ is extremely different.  The non-denom is -- on
some level -- acutely aware that they know nothing of this apparently vast
body of religious text.  Two choices seem to present themselves: They can
either totally reinvent themselves by dipping into the writings of the
Church Fathers, and learning what they have to say; or they can decide that
they decline to make the effort, viewing it as just too much for them. If,
however, they opt for this approach, then they have to show that this vast
array of texts is rubbish, or they end up looking like lazy pastors who
can't or won't do the work to get familiar with the basics on which
orthodox Christianity is founded.

The only thing I can imagine is that these folks are simply overwhelmed by
the very idea that they might need to become familiar with a huge array of
texts, and so they assume they can never achieve competency in that area.
In order to continue to appear respectable, they have developed ways of
justifying their rejection of the Church Fathers and all Traditions.  Note
that their arguments don't have to convince anyone outside their following;
they only need to put together something that is good enough to work with
their little group, most of whom have next to no background in these
matters, and have no idea what is at stake.  It's pretty easy to convince
folks that the RCC not only is mistaken, but is just plain evil in turning
away from "obvious" truth as found in the Bible.

I hear this comparison all the time, and too often it goes utterly
unchallenged, and if challenged, the pat response is that the writer has no
understanding of the truth of the Gospel due to a wrong-headed view of
revealed scripture.

This toxicity has even seeped into some areas of mainline faith.  We
dismiss it at our Faith's peril. These folks believe they are at war with
mainline Christianity, and they expect a long, bloody battle, and don't
care if they win, so long as they stay true to their own pseudochristian
cause.

James W. Oppenheimer-Crawford
*“A life is like a garden. Perfect moments can be had, but not preserved,
except in memory. LLAP**”  -- *Leonard Nimoy

On Fri, Jul 3, 2015 at 1:33 PM, Cantor03--- via Magdalen <
magdalen at herberthouse.org> wrote:

>
>
>
> > To  that I would add that many non Christians and agnostic or atheists
> have  behavior that aligns with what IS Christian behavior but short of
> ascent
> to  Christ and or God and that is right up there as the same for me. Too
> many who  identify as Christian are not contributing those ideals to
> American
> society  today>>>>>
>
> I caught a small segment of that television program, "Marriage Boot
> Camp," a week ago, and was startled to hear one woman say that
> she thought she was "marrying a Christian, but he turned out to
> be Roman Catholic" (!)
>
> Where do they find these goons?
>
>
>
> David Strang.
>