--- Victor Rangel-Ribeiro <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > >Both within and outside one's own faith, a >good Hindu is better than a not-so-good Hindu, a good >Christian better than a not-so-good Christian, a >good Hindu or a good Christian better than a >not-so-good anything else. >
I have to disagree with Victorbab here. A person who is not-so-good Hindu or Catholic, when judged from within his faith, may be good (sometimes much better) when viewed from outside it. Conversely, someone who is a good practitioner of her faith may be terrible from the outside secular viewpoint. For example, a Hindu who eats beef is a not-so-good Hindu viewed from within Hinduism. But from outside his faith he is no worse than the man who eats chicken. A Hindu who believes in the caste system is a good Hindu, but not a good citizen of secular India. A man who propagates his religious teachings that people should not use condoms or that homosexuals should be cured of their sickness, would be regarded as good only by his own faith, Catholicism, not outside it. We have seen evidence of this right in this forum. Some time ago, a few individuals in this forum decried the fact that many Catholics today are cafeteria Catholics, implying that they are bad Catholics. However, from the secular vantage point - indeed, from the perspective of modern society - there is nobody better than a person who becomes a cafeteria Catholic, cafeteria Hindu or a cafeteria Hindu and Catholic, by rejecting the bad in his/her religion and following only the good. We also have evidence here of something that is good within one religion, not within another and not outside both of them. It is again the belief in the caste system. A Catholic who believes that he does not need to get rid of the caste system, that it is just another type of innocuous identity like race, nationality, ethnicity, heritage, etc., is arguably a cafeteria Catholic who would be regarded as not-so-good almost anywhere outside his faith, except within the Hindu faith. Cheers, Santosh
