Category: Other religions

Back in 2003, I posted a cautionary note advising people not to buy so-called “Monastery Icons” because they were made by members of a strange sect that blended Hinduism with Christianity. It changed its name several times and relocated every few years. Now they’re in California.

Just in case anyone had any lingering doubts about the nature of the group, its web site now describes them openly as a Hindu ashram. It’s good that they cleared that up.

The folks at St. John Cantius parish in Chicago must not have known about this when they presented Pope John Paul II (sorry, the newsletter link is broken now) one of the sect’s pseudo-icons.
(Update: Corrected the reference to the Holy Father; thanks to reader Hache who spotted a mistake.)

[2015 update: Now they’re in New Mexico, claiming to be Christians again, but still blending Christianity with Hindu beliefs.]

Jihad and suicide bombers, Osama bin Laden and terrorism: That image of Islam, prevalent in the West, may not be representative of the majority of Muslims in the world.
But neither is it a false image, says Archbishop Cyril Salim Bustros…

Archbishop Bustros, the eparch for Melkite Greek-Catholics in the US, gives Americans a thumbnail sketch on the relation of Islam and Christianity:

Although Islam calls itself a religion of peace, the peace it preaches is the literal interpretation of Islam, which means “surrender to the will of God.”
“The peace in Islam is based on the surrender of all people to Islam and to God’s power based on Islamic law,” Archbishop Bustros said. “They have to defend this peace of God even by force.”
Islam also is an “absolutist faith” that merges religion and politics — quite a different understanding from the Western concept of separation of church and state.
“In the Islamic conception, there is no separation between God and Caesar. Caesar is governing in the name of God,” Archbishop Bustros said. Consequently, “they don’t differentiate between the West and Christianity.”

(Hat tip to CWN.)

Anti-Western Muslims in Denmark went out of their way to foment outrage about the Mohammed cartoons published last year, distributing not just the twelve original cartoons by professional cartoonists, but three more particularly gross images not related to the newspaper caricatures.

A JW named Dorothy called me this morning to tell me helpfully that Christmas was based on Mithra-worship (not to be confused with the veneration of Mothra), that “Cornelius” (she meant Constantine) who had a vision of the Cross and conquered under that symbol never became a Christian (not quite correct there), and the holiday is based on the Saturnalia. Ho hum. I chatted with her a while, so she’d know I’d heard it all before, and gave her 1 Tim 3:15 to look up: “the Church of the living God, which is the pillar and ground of the truth”.
Is this what they do now when they can’t get into the building?

A book by Simon Wiesenthal, may he rest in peace, told about a confession with no absolution: as a concentration camp prisoner, he was called to the deathbed of a Nazi who, apparently repentant, admitted his crimes and sins against the Jewish people. The story highlights the differing approaches Judaism and Christianity give to the conflict of justice and forgiveness.