Monday, February 18, 2008

I woke up early this morning with a couple of thoughts:

I feel inspired as a Catholic to speak about Catholic principles to persons of other faiths. I felt that I could encourage them to adopt these practices in their personal practice of their religion. I thought that they could benefit from this greatly (maybe not fully, but greatly) and that Christ's Church would benefit from it.

This would serve Catholicism in that it would present these principles as great practices first for those people where there at and then they might wish to become Catholic. Or perhaps someday these practices would grow so prevalent within those groups that there wouldn't be so much separating us and we would come together.

This idea came from the fact that this is the way it worked for me. I was over there believeing in everything that held me back before and then I realized one day "whats holding me back?".

My other thought was about the common obstacles people have to religion:

rites
rote
rules & regulations

rites - These are the sacraments and practices.
rote - This is the language they use to express their ideas based on their interpritations of their sacred texts. If you don't use this language you are nudged to do so before you can be considered credible or before a dialog can ensue.
rules - These are the requirements to be initiated.
regulation - These are their doctrines and theology.

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