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From: mat@hou5e.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.religion
Subject: Re: Views on Religions
Message-ID: <536@hou5e.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 3-Jun-83 11:00:17 EDT
Article-I.D.: hou5e.536
Posted: Fri Jun  3 11:00:17 1983
Date-Received: Wed, 8-Jun-83 23:33:47 EDT
References: ih1ap.151
Lines: 31

I hope this sort of thing isn't happening too often:

	"I glad your Catholic or I wouldn't want to live with you!" came
	from the 11 year old. When we went to a Methodist to be married he
	explained that if we continue to participate in the Catholic
	Sacrements, we are fooling ourselves. In the eyes of the Church, we
	were not married and living in sin."

First of all, if your concern is legitimacy within the Roman church, all
you need is to have an appropriate minster of the church (us. a priest)
as a witness to the ceremony.  If you are willing to accept a Methodist
minister's statement on Catholic doctrine, Ok.  I would ask SEVERAL
Catholic priessts if it mattered to me.  As to ``living in sin'' and
the Cathoic sacraments -- while there may be one position espoused by
the Vatican, it certainly insn't a universal consensus.  Most folk these
days outside, perhaps, of the Rosary Altar Society will admit that there
is a certain amount of ``posturing'' going on in Vatican statements.

As far as the 11-year old, I hope that her attitude changes.  Of course
some education is in order.  Children, especially in primary school,
tend to view everything as black-and-white or us-and-them.  And older
folk in the rather closed religious communities often involved in
teaching  probably find it easier to teach that ``they are bad guys''
than ``they don't believe exactly the same things we do''.  The latter
can easily raise questions, and there usually isn't either the time or
the manpower to answer them all properly.

In any case, let's try to increase tolerance, not intolerance, huh?

				Mark Terribile
				Duke of deNet