A Recipe for Lemonade

We develop vaccines and drug therapies because we get sick. We learn to tell the truth because lies eventually become painful. We often have better luck with younger children because we learn from our mistakes with the older ones.

We make lemonade out of lemons.

The same thing happens on a large, historical canvas.

You know what the Catholics are really good at? (Bear with me, this does relate.)

Acknowledging their shortcomings to each other. I mean the biggies no one really talks about, especially Protestants.

They do this in confession, which they consider a sacrament.[1]

Now, as I understand it (from Prof Thomas Madden, Heaven or Heresy - A History of the Inquisition), the sacrament of confession, though it already existed, gained traction during the Inquisitions, in which it served to help the Church identify heretics.

In fact, the beginning of individual confession (to a priest) roughly coincides with the beginning of the Inquisitions:

Beginnings of practicing the sacrament of penance in the form of individual confession as we know it now, i.e. bringing confession of sins and reconciliation together, can be traced back to 11th c.

In 1215 the Fourth Council of the Lateran made it canon law that every Catholic Christian goes to confession in his parish at least once a year. Source >

Unfortunate, but not surprising. One group thinks another group is coloring outside the lines, and since they can, they enforce a duty that requires everyone to admit their nonconformity.

That is a bad thing.

All groups have the right to insist that the rules of membership be followed, and certainly churches do, but not by forcing members of other groups to ignore their own rules.

But back to the lemonade: Confession to another human being is healthy and cathartic, and Protestants do it too[2], and since Protestants believe that all believers are priests, it amounts to the same thing that happens every day in a Catholic confessional.

My 2¢.

Oh, wait... I still have some change in my pocket...

cØ

 

Sometimes some things can look very much alike and be dangerously different. Mushrooms, for example.

I say this because it occurred to me while I was writing this how often those outside a religious practice discount one ritual because it looks a lot like another.

I had a sort of epiphany recently, in which I asked myself a question and then answered it.

The Question
If you believe that only belief (and not action) gets you to heaven, just what is it about belief that accomplishes this?

After all, a belief is just the connection of ideas, the soldering of some electrical pathways in the brain.

The Answer
We all travel our own path and the choices we make adjust that path; if our "soul" survives us, it continues along the same path we set in life.

That is, just as a physical path brings you to a physical destination, so too (in theory) does a spiritual path.

Whether the soul survives is another conversation, but the principle is sound.

My pocket still isn't empty...

cØ

Another epiphany: a sordid past state doesn't discount the value of a present or future state of a thing.

I have in mind unfortunate (and unfortunately long) historical episodes like the Inquisitions, Crusades, slavery, etc.

I look at the good things coming from good people and am often reminded of the bad things committed by people who preceded us and probably otherwise looked and talked and believed a lot like we do today.

Do we, as descendants of some inhumane people who committed some inhumane acts, bear any stain?

No, I don't think so, but we are susceptible to the same failings if we hold the same beliefs, enforce the same behaviors, and our brain and DNA haven't invented or evolved a way to avoid them.

Note the use of the word susceptible. It's not inescapable. But all human beings (and human social units) are capable of this. The nature of the home - private, secluded, protected - can harbor unthinkable abuse. Entire countries and political systems can extinguish millions. Being products of those those things doesn't mean we are bad like them, but we can easily repeat them; or rhyme with them, as Twain said.

cØ

[1]
I've heard lots of Catholics (on the radio) worry that their sins are always the same, and they are embarrassed that they are doing the same bad things over and over.

The common response to this is (in jest): Would you rather have some new sins to confess?

[2]
If you sit though enough Baptist services, you'll hear lots of talk about lying and stealing and movies and card playing; in some you may hear more on homosexuality, infidelity, drugs and drunkenness.

You won't hear what a priest hears from a penitent. There is something special about two human beings that can share deep shame for the sake of restoring a relationship with another person or personality (human, divine, or otherwise),

cØ

Started: 2012-08-22