Palin and the Ex-Catholic Factor

As a Catholic, Sister Mary, I'm not surprised at your reaction, for several reasons.

First, you display the typical Catholic attitude that group loyalty comes before individual faith in Christ.

Second, your comment about Jesus being a "community organizer" is asinine. Jesus did far more than "organize" a "community;" he gave his life and shed his blood to redeem humanity and atone for its sin. Without that act, any "community" he "organized" would be irrelevant.

Of course, most Catholic clergy and nuns don't understand that these days, but I digress....

Third, your inherent equation of Palin w/Pilate is equally asinine and slanderous, unless you can prove that Palin acquiesed to the execution of innocent people. Besides, in this country, governors (unlike Popes, mind you) are elected by and with the consent of the people; Roman governors were appointed by the emperor and served only at his tolerance.

Fourth, given the atmosphere of pomposity surrounding Obama's campaign, Palin was quite within rhetorical limits to use sarcasm. It's the oldest technique in the world to puncture the self-inflated balloons of the pompous.

PS: Sorry for the typo! and thus the repost.

I should note too that the Catholic Church recognized the validity of the baptism of other Christians --basically so long as they follow the form Jesus gave us in Matthew...with water...and intend to do what Jesus commanded...

We view other Christians as...well other Christians...brothers in Christ the Lord.

Let us together seek more and more to follow him and to overcome what divides us.

Praised be Jesus Christ the Lord!

Kevin

I'm not a Catholic, but adopted a child from one of Mother Theresa's Sisters of Charity orphanages in India, and helped the Sisters of St. Mary of Namur at several schools in Rwanda when I was a missionary for a Protestant church there, years ago. I attended CYO as a kid with Catholic friends, was married to an ex-Catholic, and belonged to a church that held much the same beliefs about Catholics that the Assembiles of God hold. I'm posting this message to say this: Catholics are fooling themselves if you don't think that modern fundamental Protestants don't continue to cling to pre-JFK views on Catholocism, the Pope, transubstantiation, Confession, your Bible translations, how you count the 10 Commandments (splitting one, lumping two), the Saints, the veneration of Mary, and the litany of issues about which they are taught, soul-destroying issue, by soul-destroying issue. I'm NOT trying to pick a fight. Not at all. But as a Protestant who was once a typical iconoclast, I finally came to recognize the error of "damning" everyone who didn't interpret Scripture the same way we did, observe the same day, shun the same things, follow the same ritual, etc. But it took YEARS and unusual experiences that I willingly placed myself in, in order to get to the point of breaking away for the judgmentalism that is fundamental Christianity in America.
The Assemblies of God are a LOOOONNNNG way from figuring out the meaning of "Judge not, lest ye be judged." Or "Let him who is without sin cast the first stone," and dozens of other Bible quotations that condemn judging. I don't know any more about Palin's fiath than what she has revealed. But I do no many ex-Catholics who have ended up in Fundamental Christian denominations, and ALL of them (to my memory) are anti-Catholic and especially anti-Rome. Many have very specific beliefs about what role the Catholic Church and the Vatican play in Daniel and the Revelation--and it's not a good one! They definitely do not belief that Priests have the authority from God to forgive sins (and I know that is a simplification of the real Catholic doctrine on Confession), or that ANY man (or women) can take the role of Christ vicariously (i.e., "Vicar of God," etc.).
If someone is in the Pentecostal church ... in this case meaning the Assemblies of God, they do NOT take a lenient view of what God has in store for those who ignore the parts of the Bible that they hold dear. To be blunt: No resurrection to eternity for Catholics who don't first break away from the power and sway of Rome ... effectively becoming a Protestant!--and that stance would be true for MOST Fundamentalist Christian Churches that believe the hierarchy of the Catholic church places a barrier between man and Savior, therefore, between man and God, man and Grace, man and salvation. Simple. They believe that EITHER you "eliminate the middle man" or you get sifted out of the saving process because you failed to make the right connection--which is a direct one ... Luther's "Preisthood of Believers," and all that.
The reason I'm saying this is to tell Catholics: Don't be so naive ... the fact that Palin professes to be a "Christian" does NOT make her similar to Catholics. In fact, her particular brand of Protestantism classifies you are unsaved. You would be foolish to make the assumption that just because she also opposes abortion, that she is somehow a person "like us." One of you made the comment that it was too bad that she was in favor of birth control! Hey! The rest of the world is in favor of that. That should tell you that her core beliefs that make her opposed to abortion does not come from the same place your beliefs come from.
And BTW, although--in spite of what I've said--I am also a fundamentalist (Creationist, etc.), I don't acept the idea that Catholics can't be saved. Why not? Because Christ said, "My house has many mansions. I go to prepare a place for you. If it were not true I would not have said it." I take many mansions to mean that there are different pacts and conevenants by which the Lord works to save people ... people who are exposed to the messages they hear, and not those they didn't hear [where "hear" really means "could understand, given who they were, what they knew, and their cultural lens"].
I am opposed to abortion, too. But I do NOT presume to think it is up to me or any law to make the decision for a woman. I am FOR the law allowing it, but hope no woman ever chooses to use it. And IF we allow it, we should MAKE SURE that every woman inquiring and looking into the possibilities gets a FULL education about what it means ... including the photos of the reality of the horror of abortion. But at the end of the day, it should be between the woman ... the mother ... and her God. Better that it happen in a clinic than in an alley. Who knows whether your mission work might not later bring that woman into faith? And into a state of mind to ask forgiveness. In my denomination, we believe that women who were barren on earth will have the opportunity to "raise" the babies of women not saved (and that mothers who lost their children to death, will be able to raise them in Heaven.
Thought I'd leave you with that idea.

Curtis