Couldn't Help Noticing

What’s The Difference?

On the same day I received October's Briefing with articles on the Reformation, I also received a packet from a Catholic charity group that promised a new and better way to pray the Rosary. Further, I also received my very own Rosary chain. The implication from this packet was that if I prayed the Rosary consistently, my prayers would be answered.

It was quite an interesting evening of discovery for me. I grew up neither Anglican nor Catholic and, therefore had limited knowledge of either Bishop Latimer's martyrdom or the Rosary. What struck me the most was the contrast in the concluding prayers of both.

According to Foxe, Hugh Latimer's final prayer was, “Father of heaven, receive my soul.”

According to my new Rosary guide, the final prayer of the Rosary is: “Hail, Holy Queen, mother of mercy, our life, our sweetness and our hope. To thee do we cry, poor banished children of Eve; to thee do we send up our sighs, mourning and weeping in this valley of tears. Turn then, most gracious advocate, thine eyes of mercy toward us, and after this our exile, show unto us the blessed fruit of thy womb, Jesus. O clement, O loving, O sweet Virgin Mary! Pray for us, O Holy Mother of God that we may be worthy of the promises of Christ” (emphases added).

As a pastor in a liberal denomination, I am told that the Reformation controversies are over and that the differences do not matter anymore. I wonder what Latimer would think of this? In whom did he commit his soul? To whom did he send up his sighs? The heavenly Father, not Mary. These prayers point out to me the very important and continued difference between Catholics and Protestants. As for me, I'll keep committing my soul to the Father in heaven.

Being responsive

For the past year or so I've been on this mailing list for an Australian science fiction fantasy convention. The other day someone posted an off-topic link about teaching Intelligent Design in schools. The reaction was immediate and predictable: the subscribers (mostly non-Christian) expressed their incredulity and outrage with remarks like, “It just goes to show we're heading back into the 1950's again” and “This is outrageous! They're just imposing their religion on these kids”.

Perhaps I should have kept my mouth shut but I chose to reply and ask why they felt the way they did. What was the problem? I got a flurry of responses, most of them fairly negative towards Christians and Christianity. Some of them were rather blunt. Some of them I thought were quite rude. I should have expected that but it still surprised me.

I decided to unsubscribe and I posted one last messsage to explain why. In it, I said that I appreciated reading the opinions of others but I did not appreciated the manner in which some of the people replied. I said that I thought there were better ways to express an opinion. I said I didn't feel welcome on the list because of what I believe.

Now I'm dealing with the aftermath—emails trickling in from perfect strangers who decided to make an issue of what I wrote. Two things in particular I found interesting:

Firstly, the attitude of my correspondents was that I shouldn't have been offended at what was written because they were not personal attacks. They were just saying negative things about Christianity, Christians, the church, etc. They had no sense of corporate identity—that something that is said against a group of people hurts them all. I suppose this is because our society is so individualistic and has little idea of allegiance to any group.

It is fair enough that people outside the body of Christ don't understand this and I am not saying that no one should say anything negative about anyone in case their minority group is offended by it. But the manner in which it is said should be gentle and loving with the other party's best interests at heart.

This leads to my second observation: Even though I had taken pains to state it simply in my email, my correspondents did not seem to make the distinction between the thing that was said and the way in which it was said; it was one and the same. They thought that my actions were contradictory: how could I say that I appreciated hearing other people's opinions and then unsubscribe from the list because I didn't like them? Again and again I had to explain to them that I wasn't unsubscribing because I didn't like what I read; I was unsubscribing because I did not take too kindly to the manner in which things were said. It is one thing to say, “I think Christians are wrong and I don't believe that there is a God”; it is quite another to say, “ Christians are fundamentalist bigots who go around shoving their religion down other people's throats”.

I'd appreciate prayer as I take the time to respond and carefully compose my replies.