This is going to seem ungenerous at best. But. Part of the difficulty in engaging someone over the issue of the "truth" of their faith can be frustrating, especially when they leave the path of the rational, the demonstrable, the philosophical, the metaphorical, often ending up with a claim that…
According to this article by the NYT: A former deputy director of the White House office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives is charging that many members of the Bush administration privately dismiss its conservative Christian allies as “boorish” and “nuts.” The former deputy director, David Kuo, an evangelical Christian conservative,…
The other day, two nice ladies of the Jehovah’s Witnesses knocked on my door. This was, in fact, their third visit. On the previous two, they had spoken with my wife, who was polite and nice and somehow left them with the idea that they had a potential convert here. They had left literature and apparently decided to return. This time, they got me.
I don’t like proselytes. I don’t like telemarketers either. I see them as essentially of the same species of intrusive “you don’t know what you want because you don’t know what I’ve got to sell you” school of bullying. I don’t like aggressive salesmen. If I’m wandering through a store, and someone approaches with a polite “Are you finding everything okay? My name’s Mike, if you have any questions…” That’s fine. If I have questions, I’ll go find Mike or whoever and ask. If I don’t, and he approaches again, my inclination is to leave. He’s stepped over the line as far as I’m concerned. Telemarketing is worse–I’m not even in their showroom–and religious proselytes are from one of the circles of hell.
Here’s the deal: to knock on your door and present you with salvation, they have to make a basic assumption–that you have no clue about the nature of reality and even if you think you do, you’re wrong, because they know the skinny on god’s plan. In other words, they have to assume you’re stupid, ignorant, or tacitly in league with evil.
If …
On a lark, I looked up celibacy as it pertains to Roman Catholic priests. OK, not on a lark. I am a recovering Catholic, 35 years in remission. But back to my story. I had heard that many priests are actually married. I wanted to know more. Here’s what about.com has to say:
…You aren’t likely to hear a great deal about married Roman Catholic priests, but they do exist. First there are the priests who are part of the Eastern Catholic Churches, also known as the Eastern Rite, who can be found in places like the Czech Republic, Hungary, Slovakia, the Ukraine, and other nations along the border between Western and Eastern Christianity. These churches are under the jurisdiction of the Vatican and they recognize the authority of the pope; however, their practices and traditions are much closer to those of the Eastern Orthodox Churches, and one of those traditions is allowing priests to marry.
They are Roman Catholic priests and many are married – so many, in fact, that some estimates place their number at around 20% of all Roman Catholic priests in the world. This would mean that 20% of all Roman Catholic priests are officially and legally married, even though celibacy continues to be a requirement. But marriage is not limited to priests who are part of the Eastern Catholic Churches – we can also find about 100 Catholic priests in America who are married and who are part of the Western Catholicism that comes
You can learn the following things and much more in this article by New York Magazine: He’s the eleventh of eleven children. Every night, he would listen to “The Ballad of Davy Crockett” before going to bed and it would make him cry. He studied philosophy in college. His favorite…