The danger to Western Christians doesn't come from sword-and-sandals tyrants, but from a new code of etiquette

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Loud-living-dogma said:
How about this, a Traveller, here is some more real persecution for you:

Catholic News Agency

Congresswoman blasts ‘religious bigotry’ against Knights of Columbus, Catholic…​

Democratic lawmakers are divided over questions some see as a religious litmus test applied to candidates for the federal bench. The debate has turned into a war of words between members of Hawaii’s Congressional delegation
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Ill-treatment. Imagine if a non-Christian was questioned in the same way. Those same lawmakers would lose their minds.
 
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My boss is declared atheist. Oh well he is Eastern Orthodox baptized but annoyed at his own religion like many people in Eastern Europe. We are also friends and I felt like he was disappointed when I wasn’t laughing at his jokes with Jesus so he stopped sending me those jokes. At one time our firm had a hard time, low of commissions and all that. Wasn’t it funny to hear him say “God help” when we had a potential new client?
Anyway I have a small necklace with an icon of Jesus and Mary and one day he asks me what is that, an icon? And I said yes and then he said “nice”. People can be melted when we don’t complain and run away when the world is up against us. It has always been. From the start. First against the Jews and then against the Christians. Remember the 10 happinesses Jesus presented us and see were we are better now than before when it was legal to just kill Christians because the idols were saying so etc.
 
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That kind of questioning is also contrary to the constitution, which says that there is to be no religious test for public office.
 
Interestingly, when traveling in Western Europe, slogans from the Gospel can sometimes be seen on top of beautiful university buildings.
Many of these universities are among the best.
Yet it seems to me that the foundation of Christianity is rooted in many processes of European progress.
 
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Perhaps it is time to explore more new forms of evangelistic activity adapted for modern man.
 
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I always blamed the secular world for mistreating us but I never realised that Christians are doing it to each other - like, I’m aware of Fr James Martin et al but always thought of them as outliers
 
We could learn something from the Muslims here. They don’t even apologise for terrorism. They have no interest in throwing their siblings under the bus to win brownie points from the secular world
 
I do not think that from radical Muslims have much to learn about.
Everything is just the opposite, the Europeans took up the process of integration of the Muslim community into European society. It may not be possible to change the religion of Muslims, but Western European Muslims must bring to the Islamic world a message of tolerance, peaceful co-existence, peacefulness, the ability to transform and change life for the better.
There are many features that West European Muslims can learn from Western civilization.
Life here is the university, which could give positive signals to gradual transformation of the rest of Muslim world.
 
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It was shortly before he died that Pope St John Paul II said that Catholics should be more open in wearing the symbols of their religion.
 
Cardinal Suenens , perhaps after Pope John XXIII and Pope Paul VI , the most notable bishop at the Second Vatican Council , was asked by a journalist " What do you think is the greatest obstacle to evangelization ?"

Cardinal Suenens said , " Without hesitation I answered , " The lack of faith among Christians as to what , by the grace of God , they really are . "

For me the big danger , the big problem for Western Christians is that we don’t realise , we don’t have faith in what , by God’s grace , we really are .
 
Flopfoot said:
We could learn something from the Muslims here.
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Then learn from Khaled M. Abou El Fadl, who writes:

‘The highest stage of submission is to love God more than any other, even more than oneself, and for those who achieve this lofty position of loving God absolutely and completely, they become God’s beloved, endowed with true perception, wisdom, and compassion. For human beings to love God necessarily means that they must love all that God has created and represents. It would make little sense to love God but hate God’s creatures and creation. To truly love God, one must love all human beings, whether Muslim or not, and love all living beings as well as all of God’s nature. To truly love God means that one must also detest the destruction of what God has created. For those who reach the lofty stature of being God’s beloved, their hearts will be full with love for justice, and full of compassion and love for all. As the classical scholars used to put it, if you find a man full of anger, resentment, hate, and cruelty toward human beings, animals, or nature, then know that the love of God has not entered his heart. In short, it is impossible to love God or be beloved by God and not to exhibit the characteristics of Godliness.’ (‘The Great Theft: Wrestling Islam from the Extremists’).

Islam does not sanction terrorism. Such activity is forbidden; and it makes no difference if the terrorists happen to be a Muslim.

Have a nice day.
 
This quote from the article would be funny if it weren’t so tragic:
Hirono hit back Tuesday at her fellow Hawaiian Democrat’s comments. A spokesman for the senator said Gabbard “based her misguided opinion on the far-right wing manipulation of these straightforward questions.”
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What does that even mean? It addresses nothing of substance, it simply goes to reflexive partisan blah blah blah,
We don’t have a belief problem in this country, we have a stupidity problem.
 
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Athanasiy said:
A new persecution has begun - and with it, a subtle temptation - Catholic Herald
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Some basics that occur to me:
The Church will always be persecuted by the world. It comes in various forms. We shouldn’t be surprised that Western Christianity is in turmoil. We have simply been lucky for a long time.

Satan is “the deceiver”. He has never needed a sword. His words alone bring temptation, deception, and chaos into the world.

And that leads to the problem plaguing western civilization, in my opinion, which is stupidity. “Their senseless minds were darkened”. We are so there. When we must have arguments about what a human being is, and about what a man and woman are, we have entered that zone of stupidity. And unfortunately ignorance brings suffering.
 
Christianity is not dead yet.
Its flag is still carried by various projects of mercy, from the Army of Salvation to the Sisterhood of Mercy.
Also in prestigious universities there are theological and religious studies faculties.

The Arabic, Chinese, or African student of a Western academic university will go tomorrow to transform his country.

We sometimes do not notice that invisible Christ, whо loudly operates in the western secular world.

For example, I belong to Eastern Europeans, many of us do not really understand the terms “refugees” or “immigrants in need”, but many western countries have helped millions of refugees transform their lives and gradually integrate in the west.

Yes, it is a tragedy that the masses of young people have lost their spiritual benchmark, but Christianity has not yet been forgotten and needs to search for new forms of evangelism for the modern world, and in the Western world, many universal human values can be called “Christian values”
 
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What troubles me more and more is seeing the army of hybridized pseudo Catholics which poor leadership in the Church has spawned. These hybridized Catholics are from all walks of life and places from around the globe. They very much outnumber the true Faithful where I live USA. This has been true for half a century. It seems that I will live and die in the span of this gnarly mess.
 
Once a teacher at a Biblical school said that it was in this era like never before that preachers in the style of the Prophet Elijah, in the style of John the Baptist, are needed, but there is impressive phraise on this discussion that “good lawyers are needed”, and the “holy fools”-preachers (in Slavic terminology) they frequently frighten modern people more than attract.
I like the Jesuits’ approach, There is a hope for Jesuits.
 
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Just an interesting piece of information.
I worked with a group of 15 people for 27 years. During all that time I eventually either learned or figured out most of their religions. We had a new employee one day and after my first day working with her, I knew she was a southern baptist and which church she was going to. Some of my other coworkers I NEVER learned what religion they were!
 
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