Cristianismo (Continuación)

ReflexionesSocial, ,

Maybe it's being in a company of saints - a most un-Anglican communion of the like-minded. But the rhetoric of the gathering of conservative churchmen in Jerusalem seeking to wrest control of worldwide Anglicanism from the woolly nuances of Dr Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, and the wicked, gay-friendly liberalism of the Church of England and US Episcopal Church is already spiralling upwards on a vicious current of hot air.

Two days into the great realignment, we've already had the archbishops of Nigeria and Uganda denying that gays are ever persecuted in their countries - and failing to find the words to condemn the violence if they are; voices calling for biblically lethal punishment for homosexuals; and lip-smacking assertions that the old church has fallen prey to apostasy, brokenness and turmoil, in its attempt to "acquiesce to destructive modern, cultural and political dictates".…  Seguir leyendo »

ReflexionesPensamiento, Cultura y Ciencia,

Two months ago I was in Zimbabwe, to see for myself the desperate situation of so many people and to offer my support and solidarity. It was a deeply moving experience. Many of those living with HIV/Aids are now too malnourished to take the drugs they need, though they have them. I asked Sister Margaret McAllen, director of an Aids programme in Harare, what she could do. She replied: "How can we give hope to people in such a desperate situation? Through love. Change comes through love." Sister Margaret may sound like a romantic, but I know she is a very practical realist.…  Seguir leyendo »

ReflexionesPensamiento, Cultura y Ciencia,

Somewhere in the Middle East, Jesus Christ is strapped to a bench, his head wrapped in clingfilm. He furiously sucks against the plastic. A hole is pierced, but only so that a filthy rag can be stuffed back into his mouth. He is turned upside down and water slowly poured into the rag. The torturer whispers religious abuse. If you are God, save yourself you fucking idiot. Fighting to pull in oxygen through the increasingly saturated rag, his lungs start to fill up with water. Someone punches him in the stomach.

Perhaps this is how we ought to be re-telling the story of Christ's passion.…  Seguir leyendo »

ReflexionesPensamiento, Cultura y Ciencia, ,

Nothing better measures the retreat of religion in our postmodern society than the diminished intensity of the war over Christmas.

This fight — waged for decades by a dwindling band of religious insurgents against a prevailing secularist consensus — used to be fought with a real passion. People actually once got quite upset about saucy Christmas cards or television schedules that omitted even a hint of religion between the comedy classics and the game shows.

Now it just amounts to a few feeble skirmishes, a couple of barmy Christians railing outside the shopping malls, while everybody else gets on with their daily worship at the shrines of the modern trinity: shopping, eating and drinking.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoOriente Próximo, ,

Recent bombings in Iraq's Kurdish area nearly annihilated two Yazidi villages, killing hundreds of this ancient angel-revering, Indo-European religious group. The single deadliest atrocity of the Iraq conflict, it was also the latest demonstration that Iraq's non-Muslims are in danger of extinction.

Sixty years ago, Iraq's flourishing Jewish population, a third of Baghdad, fled in the wake of coordinated bombings and violence against them. Today, a handful of Jews remain. Unless Washington acts, the same fate awaits Iraq's million or so Christians and other minorities. They are not simply caught in the crossfire of a Muslim power struggle; they are being targeted in a ruthless cleansing campaign by Sunni, Shiite and Kurdish militants.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoAsia,

The Taliban's abduction of 23 South Korean Christian missionaries in Afghanistan last Thursday has put South Korea's evangelical fervor under a microscope. Despite its long-standing shamanist, Buddhist and Confucian roots, South Korea has about 12,000 missionaries in 173 countries, second only to the United States. Today, almost half of South Korea's population is Christian. I remember looking through the window of our fifth-floor apartment in Seoul as a child and finding the night sky peppered with bright-red neon crosses. When I moved to America in my teens, the first faces to greet me were those of the Korean American evangelical Christians at John F.…  Seguir leyendo »

InternacionalIglesia Católica

La publicación en Italia del esperado primer libro de Benedicto XVI ha tenido una acogida muy cálida. Se trata de una obra muy especial, tanto por el tema abordado (la figura de Jesús de Nazaret) como por tratarse del primer volumen del Papa tras su elección. En este artículo intentaré responder a cinco preguntas sobre esta obra, desde una perspectiva completamente personal: quién es el autor de este libro, cuál es el argumento del que habla, cuáles son sus fuentes, cuál es su método y qué juicio me merece.

Empezaré por lo principal. El autor de este libro es Joseph Ratzinger, que fue profesor de Teología católica en varias universidades alemanas a partir de los años 50 y que, como tal, ha seguido la evolución de la investigación histórica sobre Jesús, exploración desarrollada incluso entre los católicos en la segunda mitad del siglo pasado.…  Seguir leyendo »

InternacionalIglesia Católica,

Jesus wasn't a Christian. He was a Jew. The word Christian wasn't known until years after his death. Which means that in order to appreciate Easter in its own terms, we must think of it as Jewish. The whole purpose for which Jesus went up to Jerusalem was to celebrate the festival of Passover. The last supper was a Passover meal. And it's the symbolism of that meal that Christians must return to in order to understand the meaning of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Even in Jesus's time, the celebration of Passover was well over a thousand years old.…  Seguir leyendo »

ReflexionesPensamiento, Cultura y Ciencia, ,

This weekend, many of the world's estimated 2 billion Christians will remember and celebrate the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

While some Christians harbor doubts about Christ's actual physical resurrection, hundreds of millions believe devoutly that Jesus died and rose, thus redeeming a fallen world from sin.

Are these people a threat to reason and even freedom?

It's a question that arises from a new vogue for what you might call neo-atheism. The new atheists -- the best known are writers Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins -- insist, as Harris puts it, that "certainty about the next life is simply incompatible with tolerance in this one."…  Seguir leyendo »

ReflexionesSocial,

Media atheists are fast becoming the new best friends of fundamentalist Christians. For every time they write about religion they are doing very effective PR for a fundamentalist worldview. Many of the propositions that fundamentalists are keen to sell the public are oft-repeated corner-stones of the media atheist's philosophy of religion.Both partners in this unholy alliance agree that fundamentalist religion is the real thing and that more reflective and socially progressive versions of faith are pale imitations, counterfeits even. This endorsement is of enormous help to fundamentalists. What they are really threatened by is not aggressive atheism - indeed that helps secure a sense of persecution that is essential to group solidarity - but the sort of robustly self-critical faith that knows the Bible and the church's traditions, and can challenge bad religion on its own terms.…  Seguir leyendo »

ReflexionesPensamiento, Cultura y Ciencia, ,

'Apocalypto is unburdened by nationalist or religious piety" claimed New York's Village Voice. With this alibi, critics have allowed themselves to be won over by Mel Gibson's disgusting Mayan slasher movie. His previous film, The Passion of the Christ, was widely condemned for its anti-semitic portrait of Jews - repeating, many believed, the idea that "the Jews" were responsible for Christ's death. This interpretation was apparently confirmed by an incident last summer in which Gibson told a policeman: "Jews are responsible for all the wars in the world." In the light of this there is palpable relief that Gibson has left his religious politics at home and made Mad Max in the jungle.…  Seguir leyendo »

ReflexionesSocial, ,

"African Americans read their own collective experience into the agony and exaltation of Jesus. The story of the Christ child, blessed by God yet born in the shadow of poverty and violence, was their story. Jesus' humble birth in antiquity signified the humble origins of African peoples in modernity. In his impoverished entry into the world, Jesus turned the tables on earthly valuations. Fulfilling the promise of the oracle that celebrates his advent in a stable, the hills of the privileged and the valleys of the humble are inverted, marking the beginning of a new era.''

-- Allen Dwight Callahan, The Talking Book: African Americans and the Bible"

Great traditions are subversive.…  Seguir leyendo »

ReflexionesIslam y Mundo Árabe, ,

Amid all the useless bloodshed of the Crusades, there is one story that suggests an extended clash of civilizations between Islam and the West was not preordained. It concerns the early 13th-century friar Francis of Assisi, who joined the Fifth Crusade not as a warrior but as a peacemaker.

Francis was no good at organization or strategy and he knew it. He accepted the men and women who presented themselves as followers, befriended them and shared the Gospel with them. But he gave them little else. He expected them to live like him: rejecting distinctions of class, forgoing honors of church or king or commune, taking the words of Jesus literally, owning nothing, suffering for God’s sake, befriending every outcast — leper, heretic, highwayman — thrust in their path.…  Seguir leyendo »

ReflexionesIslam y Mundo Árabe, ,

One warning often made and systematically ignored in the hectic days before the Iraq War was that Western military action — at that time and in that way — would put Christians in the whole Middle East at risk. They would be seen as supporters of the crusading West. At the very least, some were asking, shouldn’t we have a strategy about how to handle this?

Well, we didn’t have one. And the results are now painfully adding to what was already a difficult situation for Christian communities across the region. Iraq’s Christian population is dropping by thousands every couple of months and some of their most effective leaders have been forced to emigrate.…  Seguir leyendo »

ReflexionesPensamiento, Cultura y Ciencia, , ,

Outrage is growing, we are told, against the politically correct undermining of Christmas. There is a decline in office decorations proclaiming “Merry Christmas”, for fear of offending those of other faiths, or of no faith. Christmas cards with Nativity scenes are fewer: neutral cards proclaiming “happy holidays” or “season’s greetings” are increasing. Nativity plays among schoolchildren are less frequent. Christmas is being neutralised and secularised, and some of the great and the good are most upset about it, including Gordon Brown, John Reid and several Anglican and Catholic hierarchs.

But surely it can be seen as a welcome development that so much of the claptrap built up around Christmas is fading.…  Seguir leyendo »

ReflexionesPensamiento, Cultura y Ciencia, ,

Now that 13 bishops have joined in to lend their two penn’orth to the row between Nadia Eweida and British Airways over whether or not staff should be allowed to wear a cross, you may be wondering why I have remained silent on the matter. Well, it’s because I couldn’t give a toss one way or the other (though I apologise for using the word “toss”, with its seedy connotations of Conservative Party advertising).

And yet, while I care not a jot (which is like a toss, only cuter) who wins or loses, I do find myself appalled by the Christians who are using it to suggest that their religion is under attack — for it is what they said when they got wind, back in the 11th century, that Jerusalem was overrun with jungle bunnies, and it led to the Crusades and many of our current woes.…  Seguir leyendo »

InternacionalIglesia Católica,

Por Reyes Mate, profesor del Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (EL PERIÓDICO, 11/06/06):

Ahora que ha pasado la tormenta mediática provocada por el discurso del Papa en Ratisbona, hora es de preguntarnos qué es lo que realmente dijo. El Vaticano se vio obligado a desplegar su imponente diplomacia para explicar al mundo islámico lo que no había dicho ni querido decir (que Mahoma era un terrorista), pero si queremos saber lo que dijo habrá que volver al texto.
Joseph Ratzinger --que se ha puesto por nombre el mismo del patrón de Europa, Benito o Benedicto-- quería hablar en la universidad de Ratisbona de los fundamentos y límites de esa misma Europa.…  Seguir leyendo »

InternacionalIglesia Católica

Por José Ignacio Calleja, profesor de moral social cristiana (EL CORREO DIGITAL, 08/10/06):

Resuena por doquier la pregunta del título al fondo de la polémica sobre las palabras del Papa en Rastibona (Alemania), el pasado 12 de septiembre, en la parte del discurso donde parecía acusar a Mahoma y al islamismo de haber legitimado la violencia proselitista en la forma de 'guerra santa'. Está claro que en el discurso del Papa su intención y tesis explícitas eran que la fe como propuesta sólo puede y debe apelar a la libertad y a la razón de las personas. La cita histórica, sin embargo, con la que adornaba este lugar común al cristianismo de hoy fue desafortunada, según lo han visto casi todos.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoOriente Próximo, ,

By William Darlymple, the author of From the 'Holy Mountain: A Journey in the Shadow of Byzantium' (THE GUARDIAN, 02/09/06):

Wander through the streets of Damascus this week, and you will see signs everywhere of the conflict in Lebanon. The bearded, black-turbaned Hassan Nasrallah stares out from every shop window, even in the Christian quarter. Here electric-blue neon crosses wink from the domes of the churches, and processions of crucifix-carrying boy scouts squeeze past gaggles of Christian girls heading out on the town, all low-cut jeans and tight-fitting T-shirts. The video shops are full of DVDs showing "highlights" from the war - exploding Israeli tanks and jubilant Hizbullah fighters - which sell even better than the ubiquitous pirated versions of the latest Hollywood releases, The Devil Wears Prada and The Da Vinci Code: evidence that in the contemporary Middle East you don't have to hate western culture, or even be a Muslim, to relish the bloody nose given to ill-judged Israeli and American attempts at imposing their hegemony in the region by force of invasion and cluster bombs.…  Seguir leyendo »

ReflexionesTestimonios

Por Antonio María Rouco Varela, Cardenal-Arzobispo de Madrid (ABC, 14/07/06):

Don Ángel, querido don Ángel. Así le llamábamos muchos cuando nos dirigíamos a él. Se condensaba de este modo en el trato diario y sencillo el afecto que le profesábamos como hermanos menores o hijos suyos, a la vez que mostrábamos la veneración y el respeto que nos merecía como nuestro Obispo y Pastor. ¡Un buen pastor de nuestras almas según el modelo del Pastor de los Pastores!

Don Ángel quiso vivir siempre su sacerdocio en los años largos de presbítero y en los más prolongados todavía de su episcopado, sintiendo con el Corazón de Cristo y sintiendo con su Esposa, la Iglesia.…  Seguir leyendo »