Re: CHAT: Religions (was: Visible planets)

--- Ray Brown <ray.brown@...> wrote:
> On Wednesday, November 12, 2003, at 05:01 PM,
> John Cowan wrote:
>
> > Costentin Cornomorus scripsit:
> >
> >> While [the Ainulindale] may be "compatible"
> in some strange
> >> sense, it's not Catholocism.
>
> As the events in JRRT's works are supposed to
> have taken place some
> millennia before the birth of Christ, one could
> hardly expect
> Catholicism.  I first read the LotR some years
> before I converted
> to Catholicism or even had any inkling of doing
> so; but even then,
> in my late teens, I saw echoes of JRRT's
> Catholicism pervading the
> books.  He was, in fact, a devout Catholic.
Certainly there are echos. We even studied the
first part of Silmarilion in an adult catachesis
class. In part for its beauty, in part because
himself was a devout Catholic and it shows.
Nevertheless, it doesn't jive in its particulars
with Catholic teaching (i.e., what's in
scripture). If it meshed that strongly, you'd
find Silmarilion in the theology or cosmology
sections of Catholic books stores and libraries;
and I'd expect it to be taught as an expression
of Catholic theology. You might even hear it
proclaimed at Mass. For all its beauty and all
its echos, I have experienced neither.

> > I mean that it's compatible in the same sense
> > that the heliocentric theory,
> > At least the second of these,
> > and perhaps even the first, are incompatible
> > with some other flavors of Christianity.
>
> Are you serious about the 1st? I know 'Merkan
> Fundamentalist are
> very 'fundamental' by UK standards - but you
> mean that some still
> hold to the geocentric theory, like the good
> ol' "Flat Earth Society"?
They are quite active, especially in trying to
get this sort of stuff taught in schools as
science. Same goes for a literal six day
creation, a young Earth, a worldwide flood, and
so forth.

Padraic.


=====
la cieurgeourea provoer mal trasfu ast meiyoer ke 'l andrext ben trasfu.


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