Spiritual but not religious, dangerous?

Gee, could there be some bias in this report?

http://www.cnn.com/2010/LIVING/personal/06/03/spiritual.but.not.religious/index.html?hpt=C1

Apparently the Catholic church does not want people to have a personal relationship with spirituality outside of the organized church. Wow, what an epiphany.

Originally posted by sonhouse
Gee, could there be some bias in this report?

http://www.cnn.com/2010/LIVING/personal/06/03/spiritual.but.not.religious/index.html?hpt=C1

Apparently the Catholic church does not want people to have a personal relationship with spirituality outside of the organized church. Wow, what an epiphany.

I think the point here is that many want to be a lone ranger and accountable to no one. The sad thing today is you cannot tell the difference between a believer in Jesus Christ and an unbeliever.

Originally posted by checkbaiter
I think the point here is that many want to be a lone ranger and accountable to no one. The sad thing today is you cannot tell the difference between a believer in Jesus Christ and an unbeliever.

I believe that for at least some, it's not so much not wanting to be accountable to anyone as it is not knowing any person or group worth of being accountable to. Let's take a well-known organization that instantly ex-communicates a nun for advocating an abortion to save a mother's life, yet lets priests accused of sexual crimes continue on for decades. They preach that only adults who are married to each other can do certain things (but are still forbidden to use birth control), yet they justify their own assaults against vulnerable youth and children. Seriously, is this a group that knows enough about justice and morality to tell me what to do? All life is precious until the moment of birth, and then too bad? Pastors of other religions engage in the same sexual misconduct while preaching Puritanism. It makes perfect sense to me that people would rather go it alone.

Originally posted by checkbaiter
I think the point here is that many want to be a lone ranger and accountable to no one.

I thought that a large part of the appeal of Christianity was the lack of accountability to fellow humans. The phrase 'I am only accountable to God' is very popular.

The sad thing today is you cannot tell the difference between a believer in Jesus Christ and an unbeliever.
Could you ever? Based on what?

Originally posted by sonhouse
Gee, could there be some bias in this report?

http://www.cnn.com/2010/LIVING/personal/06/03/spiritual.but.not.religious/index.html?hpt=C1

Apparently the Catholic church does not want people to have a personal relationship with spirituality outside of the organized church. Wow, what an epiphany.

to sonhouse

you have it the wrong way round, religous is dagerous not spiritual.

Originally posted by checkbaiter
I think the point here is that many want to be a lone ranger and accountable to no one. The sad thing today is you cannot tell the difference between a believer in Jesus Christ and an unbeliever.

If you were a follwer of Jesus,(ie. his words and spirit), and not the follower of other "church goers", would not you be also going it alone?

Originally posted by sonhouse
Gee, could there be some bias in this report?

http://www.cnn.com/2010/LIVING/personal/06/03/spiritual.but.not.religious/index.html?hpt=C1

Apparently the Catholic church does not want people to have a personal relationship with spirituality outside of the organized church. Wow, what an epiphany.

I am not sure why you pick on the Catholic Church here. The only Catholic mentioned is a Jesuit priest, Father James Martin. It must be noted that Fr Martin does not exercise any leadership in the Church. He is not a bishop or spokesman. He is in fact an American economist who generally writes on social justice issues; in no way does he speak on behalf of the Catholic Church and many times he has in fact been criticised as heterodox*.

Anyway, you clearly have not read the article because Fr Martin does not talk about organised religion (if you were in fact familiar with his other writings, you would be aware that he is in fact quite sympathetic to non-Catholic spirituality.) His criticism is merely that when people identify as spiritual, they mean only something very tenuous and non-committal. People may say that they are spiritual but at the same time feel no sense of duty to those suffering injustice. Their putative spirituality may have no impact on their life. Exactly how could you possibly disagree with that criticism?

*On this point, the description of America as a Catholic magazine is quite seriously flawed. The magazine is affiliated with the Jesuits but has been largely criticised by Catholic organisations, including the Vatican. Its editor was forced to retire some years ago for promoting religious pluralism, homosexuality and contraception. The CNN article is obviously written by a hack journalist.

Originally posted by pawnhandler
I believe that for at least some, it's not so much not wanting to be accountable to anyone as it is not knowing any person or group worth of being accountable to. Let's take a well-known organization that instantly ex-communicates a nun for advocating an abortion to save a mother's life, yet lets priests accused of sexual crimes continue on for decades. ...[text shortened]... ile preaching Puritanism. It makes perfect sense to me that people would rather go it alone.

Let's take a well-known organization that instantly ex-communicates a nun for advocating an abortion to save a mother's life

It is not quite so simple. The mother's life was not immediately in danger. Doctors only indicated that there was potential threat to her life. Death was not inevitable (if it were, the nun would have entitled to recommend the removal of the foetus.)

they justify their own assaults against vulnerable youth and children.

I haven't yet heard any Catholic leader justify abuse against children. Certainly there has been neglect and bishops and priests have failed their duties but don't exaggerate and say that the Catholic Church actually justifies this behaviour.

I am going to disengage this from just the RCC, and take that as simply the example used to get at a more general point. And for me the point is about submitting to some putative authority, regardless of what one does/can actually believe, on pain of some eventual dreadful consequence.

TW raises the notion of being accountable only to God. I know of no expression of conventional monotheism that teaches that one ought to be accountable only to God--as that individual may come to understand God. (Possible exceptions: Unitarian/Universalists; 12-Step programs such as AA.) That is precisely the kind of “spirituality” that such religions see as dangerous (if not, spiritually speaking, fatal).

Each version believes that they have certain truth propositions about the divine (god-concepts) that must be accepted if one is to claim that one is being accountable to God at all (that is, the “real god”, that is the one that conforms to their god-concepts, their theology). To the Christian, the Jew and the Muslim are not “saved”; to the Muslim, Hindus are not “saved”; etc., etc. (I’ll grant exceptions, but that is the general view--at least those “others” are “in danger”.)

The authority that such religions call for submission to is just their own (sophisticated or crude) theological construct of “God”. (And the RCC is not the worst of the bunch; perhaps once they were, but now they seem to be more in the “it’s dangerous” camp, rather than the “it’s fatal” camp. The same for the Anglicans, which I once was.)