This may be a bit on the philosophical or contemplative side, but I’m going to wade in with it because unity of any sort has been a conundrum to me. In any area we look at, there is, for the most part, some sort of dis-unity, be that area civil, scholasitc, sport, religious, whatever. In this consideration we also have the ideas of degree and kind.
As far as the Week of Prayer is concerned, “Christian” is a modifier of “Unity.” So here, largely, we are talking about a kind, looking for a resolution in varieties of that kind, and to some extent, degree.
I would guess that we mostly concur on what is good. It is good to act as Love. It is good to Love thy neighbor as thyself. It is good to do or not do what one would do or not do for or to oneself. Etc.
It is also good, I think we would agree, to adhere to the rules, eg Commandments and Beatitudes. It is also usually a matter of common observation, regardless of our faith, that this or that person is “good.”
Where the distinctions and disagreements seem to come, as far as I can tell, is in what a person is good according to, and how valid or true that “to” is in the eyes of others.
The evaluation of that “to” seems to come from one’s own “to,” usually a set of beliefs we necessarily aquired as we grew up. This had to be, because each one grows up in a particular circumstance as circumscribed by parents, home, and various psychological, linguistic, economic, geographic, physical, etc factors.
So these are contextual and bear on what we aquire as our world view. We could call this aquisition “content,” as we would agree, I think, that any baby put anywhere generaly would aquire the aproximate set of values of the culture it grows up in. That is to say only that we do not have Chinese babies spontanously speaking English, nor Swedish infants putting forth in Swahili. Ferel children do not put forth in any sort of language, further showing the aquisative nature of knowledge. That goes to some extenet for goodness also, as that requires perception over a comparatively wide range of awareness, some individuals in society not acheiving even that. And process of aquisition goes for other traits as well, all of which may be modified through growth and experience.
So there is no reasonable cause overall for assigning blame to most practitioners of non-Catholic ways. Indeed, this distributes over Catholics as well, a large portion of us being “cradle” Catholics. Nor is there reason to doubt the sincerity of non-Catholic practitioners, or of Catholic practitioners.
But few of us, comparatively, aquired our religion by choice, even if we think we did by the time we were Confirmed. There is such a thing as psychological momentum. Further, precious few of us have actually done the deep study required to understand some other religion, especially non-christianist religions, from the inside. Neither have we, generally, done the deep study required to see within ourselves how we aquire and sustain any belief. Indeed, for some who have done that, it is clear that most of our considerations in the area are childishly superficial.
So, what does Unity look like? Is it on the grounds of common humanity where it is perfectly clear, such as in a disaster, where we spontaneously help each other to survive, perhaps even to later prosper? We likely would not ask the person pulling us out of a burning building if it was a Shintoist sponsored pulling, Pocomaniac pulling, Cargo Cult pulling, or a Christian pulling. We would be on a far more basic ground just happy we were pulled.
But our arguments that propose that we need Christian Unity are on the grounds of intellectually and, mostly one might easily judge, emotionally associated content. That means religion is a mental structure that we somehow aquired and attached our sense of self to, distinct from what we aready are as our Nature.
At once I would expect the arguement to arise that “But that is exctly the point of religion, to redeem that nature.” But I submit that as wonderful as it is, our religion, whatever we claim for it as its source and authenticity, is not *of itself *sufficient to convince and attract the kind of adherence that would foster even Christian Unity, let alone the Unity of Mankind. Being that it is aquired content, requiring for the most part several catagories of proof to those not raised in or converted to it, it is inadaquate of itself to accomplish the task from within. One could argue that we have had at least 2000 years to do that. And yet, really, we have but a few score years and ten, if that, in the case of any individual. Yet, world wide, how many Catholics do we have, and even those are arguing amongst themselves, again based on content.
I not only submit that it will take something far more fundamental than religious affilitation to acheive Unity, but that Unity based on a proposed identitiy of the contents of faith is unacheivable, and the search for it must go to some other ground for fulfillment.
Any commments?
)? That’s how I see it going, so far… 