Father Hal » Religious division http://fatherhal.blogs.wesleyan.edu Catholic Chaplain Wed, 03 Mar 2010 18:14:03 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.4 en hourly 1 Divided by a common language http://fatherhal.blogs.wesleyan.edu/2009/10/29/divided-by-a-common-language/ http://fatherhal.blogs.wesleyan.edu/2009/10/29/divided-by-a-common-language/#comments Thu, 29 Oct 2009 19:19:21 +0000 hweidner http://fatherhal.blogs.wesleyan.edu/2009/10/29/divided-by-a-common-language/ icon parousiaNo, this is not about how British and American and Canadian and Irish and Welsh and Scottish English differ.
This is about the difficulty of Christians talking to each other and for people of different faiths to speak to each other.
For instance, “original sin” is a blocker. Sin means for most people something terrible someone has done. So Catholics get asked why they believe babies are morally defective or blemished! When say, something like myself, tries to say that the doctrine of original sin means that the world we orginate from  is not the world God intended…seemingly obvious enough…they don’t believe me because of the word “sin.” Then, in the best medieval tradition, the best western medieval tradition, I should say, I try to explain that what they they are confusing is this obvious condition of limitation with what is called actual sin. Actual sin is a morally, freely, chosen defective deed. This takes an informed conscience, a developed mind, a free act. (Of course, it gets worse when we talk about serious sin, venial sin, mortal sin, etc etc…because for some sin is sin and that is all that counts.)

Then I get asked if I believe that the human race is “fallen.” Well, there are Christians who interpret that word to mean to mean that all human beings are going to hell unless they explicitly accept Christ as their savior. Dr. Billy Graham was interviewed by Larry King one night and Larry King said, “Dr Graham, you preach that unless a person accepts Christ as their savior, that person is going to hell. I have not accepted Christ as my savior. Am I going to hell?” And, of course, Dr. Graham, a thorough evangelical Baptist, said, “Yes.” Larry King knew he would say that and simply moved on to the next question.
So we Catholics can say that the human race has fallen from where God intended it to be but this by no means fallen in the sense that it is on its way to hell unless an explicit act of faith in Christ is made.
So these are not complicated words but they divide us and can otherwise confuse unless we take care.

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