Us Catholic Leadership Invites Hindu Leader

[mortify]

[img]http://mangalorean.com/images/news/46649-RajanZed.jpg[/img]

[b]US Catholic leadership invites Hindu leader[/b]
27 Apr 2008
[url="http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Indians_Abroad/US_Catholic_leadership_invites_Hindu_lea/articleshow/2987587.cms"]Link to article[/url]

[color="#0000FF"]WASHINGTON: Acclaimed Hindu and Indo-American leader, [b]Rajan Zed,[/b] has been invited by US Catholic leadership for improving [b]Hindu-Catholic relations[/b].

In a communiqué, [b]Reverend Francis V Tiso[/b], [b]Associate Director Interreligious Relations in United States[/b] (US) Conference of Catholic Bishops, wrote to Zed, "... I would like to meet with you to discuss possibilities for improving Hindu-Catholic relations... please come for a visit to our Secretariat for Ecumenical and Inter-religious Affairs."

Catholic Diocese of Reno recently awarded a special certificate to Zed for "vibrant interfaith communication".

Rajan [b]Zed has read the historic first Hindu prayer in United States Senate in Washington DC in July last year[/b], besides first Hindu prayers in Nevada, California, New Mexico, Colorado, Utah, Washington, Arizona Senates, Nevada Assembly and Arizona House of Representatives during the last few months. [/color]


I don't suppose the Director of Intereligious Relations will be inviting this fellow into the Catholic Church, will he?

And as an aside, what is Rajan praying to?

Edited April 29, 2008 by mortify

[CatherineM]

I think Hindus have more than one god.

[zwergel88]

Hinduism is cool beans. It sounds like an awesome idea to improve Hindu-Catholic relations, but I think Hindus already love everyone.

[cathoholic_anonymous]

[quote name='CatherineM' post='1513581' date='Apr 29 2008, 05:51 AM']I think Hindus have more than one god.[/quote]

Funnily enough, roughly 80% of Hindus are monotheists. I was surprised to discover that. I taught in a Hindu school in Nepal for a while, and the headmaster explained to me that as they believe that God is too vast for the human mind to grasp, Hindus break Him into different 'facets' to make prayer easier. When the students at the school prayed to Saraswati as goddess of wisdom and education, they weren't perceived her as a separate entity from Ganesh, the god of generosity, and so on. A large minority of Hindus do take a polytheistic approach, though.

The thing that seriously troubled me about Hinduism when I was in Nepal was the belief in karma - this idea that every person gets his just desserts for every action performed, good or bad. It does not leave much room for mercy or redemption, which are central to our own faith, and it means that some of poorest people in Nepal (which is the world's second-poorest country anyway) get blamed for their own suffering because the rationale is that they must have done something to deserve it.

[mortify]

That's interesting Cathanonymous, I actually heard the same from a Hindu friend. I wonder if Hindu-monotheism is just a response to Western influences.

And can we really say they are worshiping God?

[Kitty]

[quote name='mortify' post='1513870' date='Apr 29 2008, 10:53 AM']And can we really say they are worshiping God?[/quote]

They might be. Who knows, Catholicism might be the religion that's not "true", while another one like Hinduism is. That would be really weird, but it could happen.

[StColette]

[quote name='Kitty' post='1513901' date='Apr 29 2008, 11:29 AM']Who knows, Catholicism might be the religion that's not "true", while another one like Hinduism is. That would be really weird, but it could happen.[/quote]


No it couldn't.

[Kitty]

[quote name='StColette' post='1513907' date='Apr 29 2008, 11:35 AM']
No it couldn't.[/quote]

Yeah, it could. Do you have proof it couldn't happen?

[ardillacid]

Have you read any Hindu sacred texts?

[StColette]

[quote name='Kitty' post='1513918' date='Apr 29 2008, 11:40 AM']Yeah, it could. Do you have proof it couldn't happen?[/quote]

Considering that the Church has always taught that the Church is the one true Church and that it holds the fullness of faith. It’s a teaching of the Church and it is to be believed and held true by its members. How could someone have faith and belief in something and at the same time have this thought that it may not be true. It would be like believing in God and then at the same time going “but there’s a possibility that He doesn’t exist”.

I'm going to stop debating because debate does not belong in Open Mic

[Aloysius]

if one is agnostic, one may say "either hinduism or Catholicism might end up being the religion that's right in the end"

if one is Catholic, one may not say that. it borders on apostasy.

on purely scientific or philosophical grounds, you could say something like "I might be wrong, if I am then prove me wrong, but until and unless you prove me wrong, I shall propose what I believe as being true and what you believe as thusly being false insofar as it contradicts what I have proposed as true"... it sounds like that's more the road you were looking for and it just came out inadvertently to sound like you didn't actually believe in the truth of your own faith ... but the point is: all Catholics have backbones that hold that what they believe is true. If you do not hold that backbone, you do not have the Divine Gift of Faith which would mean you aren't Catholic by belief.

on another note: Hindus do not believe in the same God as us. Muslims do not believe in the same God as us and nor do Jews, but they direct their worship towards the God of Abraham and as such basically aim their prayers at the same God but the God which they believe in is substantially different.

Hindus to an even smaller degree might kind of almost direct their worship towards our God if they're like "I'm directing this towards the One Creator" and also in the sense that they might hold Jesus as a manifestation of God (though in a blasphemous way as they believe Him to be a reincarnation of Krishna)... but it is a much tinier degree to which they are directing their prayers towards the same God.

and all the directing in the world doesn't get me to call the Muslim conception of Allah the same as the One True Triune God. they direct towards "the God of Abraham" and this is a point of agreement in that we call upon all people to direct their prayers towards that particular God, but they also direct it towards a merciless god and a god whose will is not based upon logic and order as part of its nature but rather logic and order are based upon his will and as such it is an entirely different god that they know.

if some vision of God appeared to you right now and told you to steal your neighbor's chickens, as a Christian you would be able to say "get thee behind me Satan" and know that this is not God. If Allah appeared to a Muslim and said the very same thing, then as it was God's will for those particular chickens to be stolen he could submit to it. that's one main difference, another is mercy... which is akin to what is being said about karma in hinduism... the main missing aspect which is essential to God's nature which means that the gods believed even by fellow monotheists are not truly the same as the One True God is mercy.

and yes, I should know better than to bring up all this debateable jargon in open mic...

[Thy Geekdom Come]

[quote name='Kitty' post='1513918' date='Apr 29 2008, 11:40 AM']Yeah, it could. Do you have proof it couldn't happen?[/quote]
The wonderful thing about the Christian faith is that the proof is in the pudding. One believes because one has encountered Jesus Christ, and ever since He ascended, that normally happens through encountering Him in His Church. Thus, the Church is the bulwark of truth (1 Tim 3:15). Now, one could pop up with all sorts of theories that seem to contradict Christian faith or prove it untrue, but all these are based on faulty logic (and have been proven faulty). Ultimately, however, the faith must be repeatedly reaffirmed and defended through each generation. Our faith tells us that there is no possible way Christianity is wrong, but the burden is not on us to propose and defeat every conceivable objection to our faith before we accept it as objectively and universally true; this is because Christianity is not a belief in a wide and varied number of doctrines, but in a Person, the Person of Jesus Christ, and all that is a part of Him.

So, in short, in order to prove (I assume you mean empirically) that it couldn't happen, we would have to argue an infinite number of possibilities before accepting the truth of the Christian faith. There are almost no philosophers who have ever taught that you could never know the truth (which would be essentially the same as saying that you have to defeat an infinite number of challenges before you could accept something as true); the vast majority of philosophers, and all reputable philosophers, said that a thing should be excepted as true when it stands to reason, not when it is scrupulously and empirically proven.

The Christian faith is reasonable. It is also the only faith that is reasonable. I can find a hundred different reasons to prove how each and every other religion is false, but none to disprove Christianity.

God bless,

Micah

[Madame Vengier]

Hinduism is an interesting religion. And they are very peaceful people, the Hindus. You don't hear about Hindus screaming about death and destruction and how they are going to take over the world (yeah, I'm looking at you, Islam).

It's good to keep in mind that many of these polytheistic religions were here long, long, long before Christianity and furthermore, Christianity doesn't have the monopoly on the revelation of our One True God. That belongs to Judaism. Since these religions were here way before God revealed himself in his fullness in the Person of Jesus Christ, it is fair to say that the Hindus, the Buddhists, etc were doing the best they could to understand and explain the realities of human existence...indeed, of the existence of all created things. They did not have the benefit of the revelation that came with the Holy Spirit, so they were really doing the best they could to make sense of everything around them. This is how they wound up with so many types of gods, just trying to explain everything. God has endowed human beings with a deep need "to know" and before Revelation humans were just struggling to put names and ideas to the realities that they knew in their hearts. They were actually quite devout in their quest for understanding the divine. For example, many pagan religions were worshipping the sun and offering human sacrifices to appease what they thought was the god of the sun. In contrast the Hindus and the Buddhists and the Shintos were more faithful in their response to the natural law written in every human heart...well, they did the best they could under the circumstances.

[Madame Vengier]

And BTW, Jews most certainly DO believe in the same God as Christians do. They simply don't believe in Jesus, the Messiah. The God of Abraham IS the God of the Christians. We share a part of Salvation history with the Jews. This is why our Faith tradition is called "Judeo-Christian". If the Jews worshipped a different God than we do, then we would not be called Judeo-Christian. Their sacred scriptures are part of our sacred scriptures, their prophets are our prophets, their holy land is our holy land. Our Jesus, the Messiah, was a Jew who most certainly was a faithful Jew. The One True God revealed himself to the Jews--to Moses--in the burning bush. That is our God! This is salvation history.

[b]Aloysius[/b], I really wish you would stop saying things that are flat-out not true. You are the one to always spout off to everyone else how they are wrong--and you never manage to do so in less than 5 paragraphs--but for all your preaching you fail to even see your own errors. And in the case of your FALSE statements that Jews don't worship the same God as Christians, your error is heretical.

Please straighten out your theology.

Edited April 29, 2008 by Madame Vengier

[zwergel88]

I agree that it is ridiculous to not acknowledge the fact that Muslims. Christians, and Jews worship the same God. This is pretty self-evident. But in the sense, that there is only one God, doesn't everyone in the world pray to the same God? It's not as if their are different gods out their that one may pray to.

[CatherineM]

I imagine that no matter which god people pray to our Father probably is the one receiving the messages. Our pastor is from India, I'm going to have to ask him what his opinion is about the monotheism in Hindu being from western influence. I will admit to knowing very little about the faith. I thought when I first moved here that the Sikhs were part of Hindu, and was quickly informed they were different. They are kind of yin and yang. The Sikhs here actually get to carry these large ceremonial daggers to school with them.

[Aloysius]

They direct their prayers towards the correct God, but they believe in a different one in the case of Muslims. In the case of Jews, there are two religions: Old Testament Judaism, which is part of our history, and Talmudic Judaism which is not the same thing, but rather the creation of Rabbis at the Council of Jamnia which in effect established a competing religion with Christianity. Catholic theology considers the Catholic Church to be the true continuation of the Jewish religion whereas talmudic Judaism is not... however, they maintain a recognition for the one true God whom they know only partially... the only false additions they have made to their belief is the emphatic stated denial that He could be a Trinity. whereas Muslims, on the other hand, have added many false beliefs about God to the point where though they direct their worship towards the same God, the god which they believe in and formulate in their theology is an entirely different thing than the God which Christians believe in fully and Jews believe in partially.

so as one point of clarification: when I say "nor do Jews", I meant more in the sense that the God they believe in is an incomplete version. all the while I made a distinction between what they believe in and who they direct their worship towards; the former is different than as but the latter is the same.

I'd like to see you find another phatmasser who agrees with your statement that I am always preaching about how everyone else is wrong... I have received not just a few PMs of praise for how fairly I tend to treat most topics (I don't let it get my head big haha)... of course, this particular topic my position is not the most popular one around these parts, but I believe I've earned the respect of most people who disagree with my position who have taken the time to discuss these things with me. I always give every side a fair go... sorry if my posts are too long for you, sometimes they spiral out of control.

the simplistic statement "they worship the same God" is accurate in that they direct worship towards the same God.

honestly, though, it's gotten to the point where it seems like many Catholics would say that if someone said "Hail, oh brilliant spaghetti monster, the One and Only God" they would say "see, this person believes in the same God as us because they believe in a one and only God"

no. if they direct their worship towards "the one and only God" I am willing to say with St. Paul that they worship what they do not know, they direct their worship towards the same God. But I will not say they believe in the same God.

[Aloysius]

[quote name='CatherineM' post='1514027' date='Apr 29 2008, 02:33 PM']I imagine that no matter which god people pray to our Father probably is the one receiving the messages. Our pastor is from India, I'm going to have to ask him what his opinion is about the monotheism in Hindu being from western influence. I will admit to knowing very little about the faith. I thought when I first moved here that the Sikhs were part of Hindu, and was quickly informed they were different. They are kind of yin and yang. The Sikhs here actually get to carry these large ceremonial daggers to school with them.[/quote]
monotheism did evolve in hinduism over a long period of time, and it may be slightly due to Western influences though I tend to believe it probably would have developed independently in the evolution of their religion. Of course, there are still many poor hindus who still believe polytheistically. I believe monotheism many began to become a popular interpretation of the many gods that had evolved around localities around the start of the first millenium but don't quote me on that.

I have read the theory that all religions likely began as localistic monotheisms "ie Apollo is the god of this town in Greece, Krishna is the god of this town in India; and the people of those towns only acknowledge that one god" and polytheism evolves as an amalgamation of all those gods into one large cosmic system to unite...and then the real test of uniting peoples in a real communion comes by trying to unite them all under one ultimate God. Hinduism is kind of like the slacker in that department in that it didn't really do any work to iron out the different gods but evolved into saying "well, all these different gods are different manifestations of the one true God" and that monotheistic belief has grown in popularity over time

[Aloysius]

Madame, you'd probably be interested in then Cardinal Ratzinger's book, Truth and Tolerance, which really goes into a great analogy between pre-Christian Judaism and all the continuing non-Christian religions in the world today... the difference of course being that pre-Christian Judaism had direct Divine revelation but there are still nice theological parallels. great read, great insights.

[Madame Vengier]

[quote name='Aloysius' post='1514045' date='Apr 29 2008, 12:50 PM']so as one point of clarification: when I say "nor do Jews", I meant more in the sense that the God they believe in is an incomplete version.[/quote]

You were wrong, period. Jews worship THE SAME GOD as we do. This "incomplete version" (a ridiculous choice of words) that you speak of is only that they do not accept the Trinity. That is a Christian revelation. But they worship the same God now as they did at the inception of their covenant with that same God.

Don't try to re-word it.