You know I think In am going to go back to my Craft after all. I am sorry but after a chat in a chat room I see that this whole Christianity thing is not for me. Bottom line Christians seem to live in too much fear and cannot open their minds to other people who are different.
You’re making huge generalizations about Christians, which I don’t think you would appreciate if done about Wicca.
.or maybe have had a hell of a life and make certain choices. I do not believe any religion has the right to tell a woman who has been brutalized and raped…and then conceives that she has to bear the child. I do not believe that all life is sacred. I don’t even believe everything in a human body is actually a human spirit
Well, that’s a problem. I urge you to think through why you hold this literally dehumanizing belief. On what basis does one distinguish? What is your moral basis for telling extreme racists that they are wrong in saying that Jews or black people don’t have “human spirits”? You are taking a position in order to come up with what seems to you like a compassionate position in certain extreme cases, but you’re giving up a pretty important moral principle. Do you really want to give up that principle? Do you have something better?
…but those things I believe in paganism…well they are simply accepted…and here they are probably considered heresy. Thats sad.
Well, if you are looking for a religion that will not challenge your individual beliefs, then you certainly are not looking for Catholicism. Other forms of Christianity vary. You would probably be quite comfortable in the Episcopal Church, for instance. I don’t think that is a particularly good thing, but I offer it both in the interests of giving you fair information and in the interests of not seeing you turn away from Christianity altogether!
I myself am saddened by the idea of a religion simply rubber-stamping cultural values, which it seems to me both the Episcopal Church and Wicca do. (For that matter, most religions do, including many forms of Catholicism to a great extent–but Catholic Christianity seems to me to have something else going on, struggling to survive.)
You see we Pagans (yes I just made this choice) understand one thing; your journey is yours alone and no one can do it for you
Yes, nice American individualism at work. Goes along great with capitalism and all that other good American stuff–a kind of religious consumerism. . . .
We Christians–orthodox Christians–understand that your journey is not yours alone, but is undertaken in community. I think that’s one of the major differences between orthodox Christianity and neopaganism, a difference obscured by the extent to which many versions of Christianity have sold out to American values.
How much you grow and learn is solely up to you.
Sure, you can decide how much you grow and learn. But you can decide rightly or wrongly what growing and learning are going to look like. And you need a community to decide rightly.
Your relationship with the Divine again…is 100% up to you and not to some poor fella wearing a black shirt with a while collar.
The shirt and collar are simply conventional cultural symbols of the fact that this particular person speaks with the authority of the community, an authority that Catholics believe comes from God Himself. I have problems with how this functions in Catholicism myself.
Through prayer and meditation, casting your circle and invoking (inviting) your Gods etc is how you get to know them on a personal level…and you guys say that’s a bad thing.
Well, the question is: how do you avoid simply worshiping a projection of your own desires and/or cultural values? That, from my perspective, is how Wicca may truly be harmful spiritually, or in the language of the OP, how it is “dangerous” (not a word I would choose myself, since I don’t think danger is bad–authentic holiness is very dangerous indeed).
We too understand that the most important things as a true Wicca is to Do No Harm! Not to yourself or to another living creature.
Abortion doesn’t do harm to a living creature? This doesn’t make sense. You give abortion as your major reason for backing away from Christianity (and again, there are many Christians who unfortunately agree with your view of abortion, so you should not be so hasty), and then you give your big moral principle as not doing harm to a living creature
Even if an unborn child doesn’t have a “human spirit” (I still wonder on what basis you determine this), it is certainly a living creature!
I’m not sure your historical understanding of the inquisitions is correct, but that’s probably a side issue, and certainly the death toll was in the thousands (if possibly the low thousands–it’s hard to be sure).
