The parable of the good Samaritan: Why didn't they travel together?

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JustLamb said:
Do you not see I am trying to save the Church?
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Hmm… sounds more like you’re trying to change the Church. Luther tried that… but decided that trying to change a Church that doesn’t change its teachings wasn’t feasible. 😉
The Church is dying.
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The Church has been ‘dying’, in various times and places, since its inception.
Priest numbers are down.
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In the West? Yes. Elsewhere? Not really.
In two generations it will be gone unless it adapts.
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That’s one opinion. 🤷‍♂️
Reconciling its teachings with the secular world is the only way and that requires compromise.
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Umm… so, the Church should let its doctrine be set by the prevailing winds of culture? Am I missing something here? 🤔
 
JustLamb said:
Four people travel a road from Jerusalem to Jericho where there are robbers. Each travels separately in a short space of time.

Rather than focus on the good of the Samaritan, the outsider, why not focus on the question: Why didn’t all four travel together?
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Because they were going in different directions.

Tradition has it that the priest and Levite were going from Jericho to Jerusalem.

The man who was attacked was going from Jerusalem to Jericho.

The Samaritan wouldn’t have had business in Jerusalem, so presumably, he was headed elsewhere.

The point of the parable is this: the priest and Levite were concerned only with ritual purity laws (they didn’t want to become ritually impure and therefore, unable to perform their duties), whereas the Samaritan (who didn’t have to worry about Jewish ritual purity) was a better neighbor to the injured man.

In any case, even if they were all going in the same direction, the priest and Levite wouldn’t have traveled with the Samaritan; presumably, that close an interaction would risk ritual impurity, too…
 
JustLamb said:
Do you not see I am trying to save the Church?
The Church is dying. Priest numbers are down. The number of religious brothers and sisters has halved in 50 years.
In two generations it will be gone unless it adapts.

Reconciling its teachings with the secular world is the only way and that requires compromise.
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No. The Church is not dying.
In the first place if our numbers decrease in North American they increase in Africa, Asia, Arabia.
In the second place it is not proven that we decrease in North America.
In the third place if we were decreasing all over the world that would not mean we were about to die out. The Church has been a persecuted minority through most of its history.
In the fourth place the idea of ‘reconciling our teachings with the secular world’ is merely another way of saying we must abandon the purpose for which the Church exists.
 
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The Church of England is going through the same thing…

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That (two posts back) could be the US statistics.

If you look at the worldwide statistics in the website you cited, it looks pretty healthy.
 
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As a child loses milk teeth, we need to lose in order to gain and then grow.

We are all children of God.
 
Yes, you are right… it is US data. The introduction is misleading…

I was wrong. The Church is alive, kicking and growing from strength to strength.
 
The CARA data you linked shows the total number of priests in the world has only declined by about 4000 since the 1970s, making it essentially flat.
Where are the tables from? They are not popping up when I click that CARA link.

Edited to add, I see the clarification above…
Maybe you should go try to save the C of E. Based on your tables, it looks to be in more dire straits that the RC.
 
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Gopher wood, a Galilean carpenter…?

Noah, Shem, Ham, Japheth…?

Four…?

Four travellers…?

Four horsemen…

(And before you say it: “I don’t follow”… precisely…)

I’m out.
 
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GREAT question, Thanks!

This is a Moral STORY meant to teach an important MORAL Lesson:

One needs to understand that the SCHISM between the Jews and Samaritans was religious BELIEFS grounded… they choose NOT to believe everything that the Jewish High-priest taught, and therefore in Jewish LAWS were to be treated as though they did not even exist…

So the fact that a Samaritan WOULD overlook this and come to the aid of a Jew is a manifestation of Jesus’ Command to love your neighbor as YOURSELF.

In that time and culture this was a SHOCKING revolutionary teaching BECAUSE it demanded that the Jews look beyond Judaism as their neighbors. This COULD have in Jewish Laws permitted Jesus to be LEGALLY stoned to death.

GOd bless you,
Patrick
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Pray for the Church, live a Catholic life, be the example. Do some intro to Scripture study. Discuss Scripture in its proper context.

Save the Church with the rest of us.
 
PJM said:
In that time and culture this was a SHOCKING revolutionary teaching BECAUSE it demanded that the Jews look beyond Judaism as their neighbors
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Is Jesus’ teaching static? The simple reading that the ‘alien’ was also a good guy is fine. Yet I come here and I see Catholics bashing Protestants and Secularists who also do good. I am verbally stoned at each turn. The initial reading is only ever seen in its historical context that Jews were hypocrites.

Now read it in a contemporary context. Does it not still hold true?

Replace ‘Priest’ with ‘Catholic Archbishop’
Replace ‘Levite’ with ‘Protestant Priest’
Replace ‘Samaritan’ with ‘Atheist’
 
JustLamb said:
Gopher wood, a Galilean carpenter…?

Noah, Shem, Ham, Japheth…?

Four…?

Four travellers…?

Four horsemen…
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I said I was out and I break a promise to myself.

Gopher wood was used to build the ark. Noah built the ark,
Jesus was a carpenter. He built a spiritual ark, the kingdom, into which only a few would enter.
Only Noah, Shem, Ham and Japheth (and their wives who are one flesh with the men) entered the ark. They numbered four.
Jesus talked of four very different travellers who travelled separately. One was attacked, two did nothing, the unexpected one did something at his own expense.
They were unlike Noah, Shem, Ham, Japheth. They were disparate. They would not have been on the ark.
Had the four travellers travelled together they would have been ark worthy.
The four unrelated horsemen (colour, weapons) spread out and do their own thing. They destroy the earth. They don’t work together.

Only by working together, crossing ALL boundaries, will humanity ever enter the kingdom.

Only it’s ALL or NOBODY.
 
Because they are not so quick to judge.

Who has more of an issue: a Catholic with an atheist or an atheist with a Catholic?

Who loves his neighbour more?
 
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It’s not either/or. Not all Catholic cardinals act like the one priest in the parable; not all Protestant pastors act like the one Levite in the parable; and not all atheists act like the Good Samaritan.

In fact, if you were to seriously study cultures pre-Christian or unaffected by Christianity, you would find that many engaged in huge amounts of cruelty or just meanness. Look at the Hindu caste system which allowed people to live and die on the streets with no hope of change in their condition. Look at the Aztecs, pulling still-beating hearts out of their “sacrificial” victims. Look at the Communists and the number of deaths they caused to those who wouldn’t go along with them.

How did the Israelites treat lepers? How did the Christians (to clarify: Catholics) treat them?

The Church will not be saved by becoming something other than what it is; the Church will be saved by more Catholics becoming saints (paraphrased from something a much better Catholic than I said).
 
I don’t think you can generalize to “all atheists” or “all Catholics”.
I have friends who are atheists and anti-religion. They are nice people. They don’t hassle me and I don’t hassle them. We don’t discuss religion when we hang out. I understand why they are atheist. I don’t feel that God would exclude them from being saved.
There are other atheists and other believers who I think are real pieces of work and have to pray for patience just to be around, mostly because they never stop harping on their judgmental views.

This is about individuals, not about whether someone calls himself Christian, Muslim or atheist. Is there an atheist out there somewhere who’s a better person than me? Sure, probably, it’s a big world. But that’s not my concern. My concern is on improving myself spiritually through my Church.
 
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