Subjective Ecumenism
Fr. Kenneth Allen notices part of a article in the USCCB site's news section.
"The texts of our respective scriptural revelations, Biblical and Qur'ânic, complete in divine terms what reason begins in its human quest for perfection."
He goes on to say in response:
The reason this statement bothers me on the Bishop's site, is that it implies that our texts are of equal value in terms of Divine Revelation.
But the Koran explicitly denies the Divinity of Jesus Christ, as well as the virgin birth. So how can we possibly view them as equal?
I agree that is phrasing is nothing but subjective terming. The Qur'an is not a revelation since the term is used for what has been revealed by God. There are truths in the Qur'an since parts adhere to natural law and the fact that Islam is truly a heresy that took parts of Christian teaching intermixed with other beliefs. To say that the Qur'an "complete in divine terms" is just plain crap since it is not a completion but a perversion of revealed truths.
During the week the Bishop's rejected a proposal yesterday to develop a pastoral statement on how Catholics should study the Bible. So on one had the Qur'an is raised up to seemingly equal standing and on the other plans for a pastoral statement are scrapped. The reason for the scrapping is that some Bishop's argued that we did not need another statement from the Bishop's to do something that the Church has always promoted and is specifically recommended. The Catechism quotes St. Jerome's statement "ignorance of scripture is ignorance of Christ." I am rather partial to the argument made by some in the Bishop's conference about a mountain of statements that are never read and ignored and that this pastoral letter was not needed. I just wish that this silly statement on the Qur'an had been subjected to the same restriction and had never met printer's ink.
The statement on the Midwest Regional Dialogue Of Christians And Muslims Meets also mentions "The participants welcomed Fr. Francis Tiso, associate director of the Secretariat for Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops to his first meeting at ISNA headquarters." This appears to be the same Fr. Francis Tiso who is a Tibetan Buddhist scholar and who also said after investigating claims about a a Tibetan lama's body disappearing seven days after death.
Fr. Francis said that the meaning of the Rainbow Body is beyond that of a yogic attainment. It is ultimately a manifestation of compassion, of a real bodhisattva's ability to show people that the path is worth taking, that the sacrifices are worth it, and that their endeavor has universal power to reach out beyond the confines of the body or time.
Fr. Francis encountered writings of early fathers of the Christian church and in the early Buddhist canon that described humans as originally beings of light. He says that this and the Tibetan experiences suggest that the doctrine of resurrection of the body might refer not to a fleshly but a luminous reality, an interpretation that agrees more with the descriptions in I and II Corinthians. He said that the Rainbow Body shows the possibilities inherent in the human body, which seems to be a distillation apparatus into which all the energies of the universe flow in the direction of enlightenment.
A new age site speaks favorably of Fr. Tiso's book CHRIST IN BUDDHA NATURE: TWO WORLDS-ONE HEART
If you have ever struggled with the dilemma of reconciling Buddhist philosophy with Christian theology, you will find yourself quickly absorbed in this rich and informative conversation with Father Francis Tiso, scholar, poet, artist, musician, botanist, alchemist, exorcist, mystic and gourmet cook - a Renaissance man in the truest sense of the term.
So if this information on Fr. Tiso is accurate is it any surprise that with him and others of like minds directly working for the USCCB that such subjective news releases get written?
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Gnosticism is alive and well - it is indeed thriving - among many Catholic teachers in the schools, and now among advisers to bishops. Great stuff!!
There is increasing evidence in priests and bishops' homilies "smudging" the bodily Resurrection of Christ with terms like "transformation", "spiritual body", or who state that the great discovery by Christians is that we have a spiritual existence after death, as if Jews and pagans didn't already have such ideas.
Add to the above, the proliferation of candles burnt to no particular image or sign (perhaps a piece of coloured cloth draped symbolically over a table) at many Catholic "spiritual" centering meetings - and lo! Gnosticism.
Very dangerous indeed.
Now (as ever) is certainly the time to stand up for being a Catholic.
If we're truly given the fullness of truth (which we are,) then it's a huge responsibility. Tho, with grace we bear it nobly. And of course, we must give no truck to Islam. (The militants might put a bomb in it...)
The Quran in fact does teach the virginal conception and birth of Jesus.
As for the other comments, one can only wonder whether you are willing to examine what other people say without imposing an a priori point of view on what they are saying. My research on what the Tibetan Buddhists, and others, have to say is just that: research. There is no claim made that some larger truth is established by this research. A great deal of careful examination has to be done to work with this material. It is interesting that scientists and atheists have also objected to this research. Where at one time people were admired for exploring unknown regions of the earth, it seems that today even to undertake an inquiry on a difficult topic automatically raises objections. Are we going back to some primitive state of the human mind, in which we find our horizons growing smaller and smaller, our view of life more and more limited? Are we retreating to our caves, certain that other cave dwellers are "out to get us"? Do we call them names from the mouths of our caves, and then quickly retreat into the shadows where no one can see us, where no dialogue is possible?
Secularism and relativism are decrepit and foolish, but so is fear of other persons and their discoveries.