God is On Everyone’s Mind Lately

Talking about God and Jesus just got a little more hip, thanks to Penelope Trunk featuring some Christian bloggers on Brazen Careerist and mentioning that people of faith can be more productive. I mean, we’re all looking for the next edge right?

While George Michael said it best, “You gotta have faith," no matter what your form of worship, I think it’s critically important to know what you are talking about before you start foaming at the mouth about someone else’s religion.

Take this blogger’s denunciation of a Papal document citing a proclamation about the Catholic church being the one true church.*

While this is old news (and by old, I mean biblically so) her post was further riddled with myriad misconceptions, gross over-generalizations, and cheap sensationalism, only pointing to an unstudied defense as a self-designated “non-Jewish Calvinist follower of Christ.” (By the way, are there any Jewish Calvinists?)

Furthermore, if you are not a follower of Catholicism, why would it make you mad what the Pope says? Shouldn’t you leave that to the Catholics? I mean, as a Catholic, I didn’t get upset when my best friend, a practicing Hindu, wouldn’t allow me to eat meat at her house because she thought cows were sacred. I just kept my mouth shut and had a hamburger on my own time.

And if you must know…

*The Pope’s statement is, at its simplest, tautological: true by definition. A little history lesson will further clarify that the Catholic church (the first of its kind) was the one founded by St. Peter, who was told to do so by Jesus. There’s no controversy here. And if you happen to be a Catholic, you can think that that is really cool, you celebrate in the one and only original church. Kind of like the Original Pancake house. Sure, there are other places to get pancakes, but who wouldn't want the original? So, if you are arguing that the Catholic church is not the only path to salvation, that is one thing. But the Catholic church is, by definition, the Catholic church.