On Sun, 31 Aug 2003, gilbert wrote: > --- In [EMAIL PROTECTED], "President\(sgpiag\)" > <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > > > From the widely accepted teaching of religious > > tolerance and secularism as enshrined in the > > Constitution of India the Catholic Church has now > > shifted to preaching " Christianity as the only > > religion" and "Jesus Christ the only Saviour of all > > mankind" > > > --------------------------------------------------- > Is it your case that the churches propagation of faith is in > violation of the constitution? Please elucidate. > regards, Gilbert.
We're perhaps mixing up issues. The beliefs of the Catholic Church, or any religion, for that matter, are independent of the principles of the Constitution. Both function in separate domains. As long as religious beliefs don't violate the laws of the land, it shouldn't be an issue. (In some cases, exceptions have been made for certain religious groups, to take into account their traditional practices, and even the Portuguese-drafted, BJP-appreciated so-called Goa uniform civil code is filled with these. Christianity, like other Semitic (and Semitic-influenced) religions, is monotheistic. This would naturally include an in-built bias against other gods and deities. Hindiusm, being polytheistic, has space for literally millions of gods, and this probably explains some of the reverence displayed by non-Christians at the Mapusa church or at Old Goa. Needless to say, being monotheistic or polytheistic is an inbuilt part of a religion. To ask the Pope to accept all regions as "equal" is like asking him to knock out a main plank of his faith. Even if the one-true-religion approach might seem anachronistic in the early twentyfirst century, whether we like it or not, it's part of a belief system. On the other hand, being monotheistic doesn't make it superior to any polytheistic religion. It's just a different logic system; and we now probably can't say we don't like the way things evolved differently in different parts of the globe. One could also add that just because a religion is polytheistic doesn't necessarily make it more tolerant, or that a monotheistic one has to be necessarily intolerant. Even the Catholic Church has shown different approaches towards the 'other', during the recent different papacies of recent times. On the secular front, it would help if we re-evaluated our biases, as these have implications on issues which are not simply 'matters of faith'. FN ########################################################################## # Send submissions for Goanet to [EMAIL PROTECTED] # # PLEASE remember to stay on-topic (related to Goa), and avoid top-posts # # More details on Goanet at http://joingoanet.shorturl.com/ # # Please keep your discussion/tone polite, to reflect respect to others # ##########################################################################
