@ vanderheyden:

Where you wrote: "Any interpretation will do. As long as I don't have to take this litteraly [sic]"; evidently, you inisist that God's Word must conform to your own preferences.  How can you therefore understand God's meaning?  God is willing to lead you to know and understand the Truth, but he is not willing for you to dictate what is Truth.

@ logicalman:

Hundreds of years after Moses wrote the book of Exodus, Jeremiah wrote:

"In those days they shall say no more, The fathers have eaten a sour grape, and the children's teeth are set on edge.  But every one shall die for his own iniquity:.." (Jer. 31:29, 30a).

Indeed, the Bible has more to say, and important, concerning vanderheyden's prejudiced 'question'.  Nevertheless, your answer is at best misleading; as is, also, your statement that, "Now there're only two commandments:..".  For, none knows what "love" is, in truth, without knowing the Word of God.

In every meaningful discussion involving Christianity, it is imperative to distinguish genuine--that is, Biblical--Christianity from every pretender to that name.  Here is but one important example.  Recently, I asked a very young boy if God could hear his prayers.  "Yes", he said.  I then asked him to pray as quietly as he could, and yet loudly enough so that God could still hear him pray.  As he barely whispered his prayer, his younger sister sat within three or four feet of him, listening attentively.  When he finished praying, I asked his sister if she could hear the words her brother had just prayed.  "Some of them", she answered.  I then asked the boy if he was certain that God had heard his whispered prayer.  "Yes, Sir", he confidently said.

Now, Catholicism insists that one can and should pray to various 'saints'.  What must such 'saints' be, if they are capable to hear the whispered prayers of a child?  Must not they be many gods?  Catholicism is a syncretism of polytheism all dressed up in pseudo-Christian garb.

How can anyone hope to rightly understand Christianity's role in society, apart from knowing what is--and isn't Christian?  The Touchstone of Christianity is the Bible itself--the revealed Word of God.  And, no, the Bible does not lend itself to as many 'interpretations' as there are individuals who read it.  God, in his Word, reveals Truth to those who come to him with an open mind and a sincere heart, who honestly and earnestly seek to know the living God.  Without the Bible, there were no 'Christianity'.  With the Bible, Christianity is what God says it is.

the problem is that christian beliefs can be used for all kinds of causes. The mad french leftist l'Abbé Pierre was a christian but his brand of christianity doesn't have anything to do with the conservatism of christian groups in Britain for example. Was he less of christian because he was a leftist ?

Fjordman:
"I have heard Catholics claim that Multiculturalism and Political Correctness are tied to Protestant culture."

that's because they have never been to France. In the most politically correct and masochistic nation of Europe being a catholic and a nationalist or patriot is the worst thing one can be. And yet lots of frenchmen still consider themselves catholic

Fjordman:
"It can’t all be related to Christianity, can it?"

no it's racial. You could turn South Korea into a christian nation and you wouldn't be able to fill them with racial guilt by yelling 'Racism!' and push them to abolish their borders. During the Cold War the leftists in our countries poisoned our minds in a more subtle and destructive manner than the leftists on the other side of the iron curtain did to their own populations.

The soviet tyranny was brutal but stupid, only fear made it survive for so long. Our liberal tyranny is soft and clever, it makes us feel morally good every time we kill ourselves little by little and worse we think we're free or like to pretend that we are even though our countries are being turned into anti-western tyrannies. We have been led to feel - not to believe, this isn't a rational thought - that our survival is a sin. 

In slavic countries right now you'll have a hard time making them swallow multiculturalism and mass immigration of non-europeans. They lived under soviet regimes and yet they're culturally and nationally healthier than us.

Vanishing America:
"We know that our forefathers did not believe Christianity commanded them to be pacifists, or to erase borders and nations."

that's because back in those days we were more than christians, we didn't put christian feelings above all other considerations, we were men not simply adherents to a religion. All western peoples had a collective consciousness that included religion but a lot of other things too.

People who only see the world through the lens of religion are incomplete and dangerous for their own kind. If you believe the only thing that matters is if you believe in Jesus then millions of mexicans are our brothers by virtue of their cultural catholicism. But you don't want to live among mexicans and you realize that by experiencing their presence as a real ethnic group that behaves in a certain manner, not by pretending that our souls are equal in the eyes of God.

It's unfortunate that this "debate" festers, since it has been addressed and resolved, most recently by Charles Maurras and Julius Evola last century. It is only the prejudice of modern thought that either marginalizes them as thinkers or else lacks the categories in which to understand them.

The Catholic Church, at its height in the late Middle Ages, was a continuation and completion of classical Greek and Roman civilization. Out of a cacophony of dozens of competing pseudo-Christian sects, the Church was able to organize them and restrain their worse elements, primarily by the way of Roman administration and Greek thought.

One can choose to see this as an "adulteration" of the faith with pagan beliefs. Or, like a Maurras or an Evola, one can instead choose to see in that its strength. But, by what standard is this an "adulteration"? There is none. The Church claims infallibility ... therefore, "Christianity" is whatever the Church says it is. There is no other standard for secularists or protestants to judge it by.

The protestants invented the standard "Sola Scriptura", but the incoherency of this is too obvious to go into. In the futile attempt to recover a "primitive" and "non-pagan" Christianity, they merely "Judaized" the faith ... a movement that the "Scriptures" themselves warned against.

Modern thought is merely secularized protestant theological categories. It has insinuated itself everywhere, even into the Church itself, so that the post-Vatican II Church is barely recognizable.

It is a fine intellectual mess we've gotten ourselves into. The solution is a recovery of the past (the Middle Ages) ... not to return to it, but to build on it. The alternatives of scientific materialism or a return to Odinism are scarcely credible.

Extremely well written, mary jo anderson. I sometimes wonder what Jesus would have said about "human rights". Do they exist? Surely, in the parable concerning the sowing of seeds, He meant equality is not possible in this world. He was asked the question, Why are some born into wealth and health and others into poverty and disease? How does the Catholic Church regard such a pervasive and, I think, bankrupt dream which, to me, fuels endless anarchy and rage. The US Constitution mentions rights as those "endowed by the Creator."

Human Rights Activism is at the root of state dependency and cynicism. Human Rights Activism is precisely what feeds that decay because it encourages passive, state-dependent groups who compete for victimhood and therefore excuse themselves from responsibility for their own lives. Its patronizing, which is morally corrupting for those being patronized and for others who must constantly self-censor reality.

The Catholic Church knows war is sometimes necessary --Pope Benedict said:

At Caen, France (Normandy) June 5, 2004, then Josef Ratzinger analyzed the morality fighting World War II. Ratzinger noted that life under Nazism as "a dominion of lies." "No one could confide in anyone else, because everyone, in a way, had to protect himself under a mask of lies that, on the one hand, served the purpose of self-defense but tended, on the other hand, to strengthen the power of evil....

Thus it was necessary for the whole world to intervene in order to break the cycle of criminality and to reestablish liberty and law. ..

"We Germans too give thanks that liberty and law were restored to us through that military operation. If ever in history there was a just war, this was it: the Allied intervention ultimately benefited also those against whose country the war was waged."

* * Cannot make it much clearer than that.

Blogger Charlemagne notes he is a "Westerner"--Amen.

But never forget that there is no such thing as "The West" without Christianity.

We cannot permit true Christian principles to be corrupted by PC ravings. While Christians are indeed obligated to charity for the sake of the poor and the oppressed it is the obligation of the Christian--not the state.

Jesus never taught the Apostles to lobby the Pharisees or the Romans for welfare programs, universal health care or pork barrel policies on behalf of the poor--in fact, the opposite. He told his Apostles, "Feed them yourselves."

Laggard modernist Christians prefer to "let the government do it" rather than address the legitimate needs of those poor within their communities. When the government does it, they become a vote buying monster--offering more free programs under the justification of multicultural programs.

The New Testament clearly states that a man ought to work for a living--earn his keep. Policies and philosophies that foster the welfare state or socialism are patently UN-Christian.

The basic Catholic principle is subsidiarity--that is, that problems should be solved at the lowest possible level--in the family (Your brother's out of work? YOU help him, not Uncle Sam), the neighborhood, (your neighbor's house burned down--the neighborhood
works together, not the government), etc. In this way, the STATE does not become your god.

As for war and the morality of fighting/soldiering .... please note that Jesus did not instruct the Roman Centurion to put down his
army commission and become a pacifist. No, Jesus admired the Centurion for his understanding of authority, and healed the Centurion's slave as requested by the Centurion.

The Catholic Church has always recognized the contribution of soldier saints-- St. Ignatius Loyola, St. Joan of Arc, St. Longinus, St. Sebastian, St. Ladislas, St. John of Capsitrano, St. Louis, St. George...and in honor of the title of this blog, let us recall the Catholic King of Poland who fought off the Ottoman scourge at Vienna, JAN SOBIESKI!

Recall also that the military orders of Knights of the Holy Sepulchre, Knights of Santiago, Knights Templar, Knights of Malta--all the military orders--were instituted to address in a military manner the injustices
heaved upon the West by Islam.

Resist the revisionist history that would denude Christianity of its rightful understanding of defending the defenseless from demonic evil ...such as jihad.

Pope Benedict on jihad:

""An absolute pacifism that denies the law any and all coercive measures would be capitulation to injustice, would sanction its seizure of power, and would abandon the world to the dictates of violence."

8/29/2007 4:59 PM