Last week, I received a print magazine from a Roman Catholic missionary order with which I have had some past association. It's not a large publication, maybe only 12 or 16 pages, but one of the articles caught my attention.
This article described a recent incident in Papua New Guinea, which has long been a major mission theater for this order of priests and brothers. In particular, it described the ordeal of two women who were accused of witchcraft by relatives of a young man who died. Purportedly, an autopsy was unable to pinpoint the cause of death. Nonetheless, it was claimed that the dead man,
after he was dead, used his cell phone to call a relative and complain that the two women had stolen his heart, causing him to die, hence the charge of witchcraft.
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| Witch ordeal |
As a result, the women were captured by a group of men and tortured to make them return the young man's heart. One woman died, though the other, who was pregnant, was able to escape to a neighboring province. There, she spent several weeks in the hospital recovering from burns and other injuries, including the loss of her unborn child.
The incident took place in a community with a large Catholic contingent; the woman, herself, was a baptized Catholic. The Catholic bishops of the region, concerned about a growing tide of sorcery beliefs and violence, even among their congregants, developed a specific, faith-based educational program in an attempt to turn back that tide.
According to the article, one of the major themes of the program was a reminder of the baptismal vows that were customarily renewed by the congregants during the Easter season. Included in that profession of beliefs were statements of the power and goodness of God and of the insidious perfidy of Satan.
At this point in my reading, I was struck by the dichotomy represented by the program's approach. In effect, the Catholic co-religionists were being asked to reject one body of mysticism and to embrace another, the basis for either being, solely, faith.
There was an element of absurdity to that notion that begged me to make one of my increasingly rare entries to my blogs.
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| The Good SamaritanJacopo Bassano, c. 1562 |
You know what? If the Catholics or the Mormons, Anglicans, Methodists, Baptists, Witnesses, Adventists or any other Christian or Muslim group wants to help their fellow men, then put down your sacred texts and put aside your proselytizing and pick up a shovel or a trowel. Dig a well, construct a road, put in a sewer. After all, when the Samaritan, in Jesus's parable, came across the injured traveler, he didn't preach to him. Instead, he treated his wounds, carried him to shelter and saw to his care.
Rather than build chapels, basilicas, temples, meeting houses or mosques, spend the money on hospitals, schools, fire stations and water treatment plants.
In other words, put your money where your mouth is.
But that ain't gonna' happen, is it?
And do you know why?
It's because the main function of any organized religion is the aggrandizement of that organization,
not the actualization of its sermonized tenets.
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