I didn’t want my 1,000th post to be about Catholicism so we’ll say instead that it is about dysfunction in religion.

Here is our starting point, a question from the Catholic Answers Forums: “How do I save my daughter from Fundamentalism?”

This may not sound like much of a problem to Pagans. From our perspective, there is little to choose between conservative Catholicism and conservative Protestantism. They are two sides of the same coin.

It’s an old tale, dating from the so-called Reformation and the subsequent “Counter” Reformation. Christianity tore Europe apart for hundreds of years with its competing doctrines. It still tears families apart. It isn’t enough to find the White Christ; you have to find the RIGHT White Christ. It isn’t enough that he lived, died, was reborn and what-not. It isn’t enough that you believed it all happened. Crazy, huh?

I have trouble understanding a religion like this, but of course, it’s not a religion at all; it’s a superstition, so perhaps my expectations are too high.

Religion is about showing proper forms of devotion. It is not about what you think about Zeus or Odin or any other god, or whether you think Zeus or Odin are the same god with different names. What is required of a functional religion is that the proper rituals are performed. It is about cultic acts, not about belief. It is not about doing or believing things out of fear of divine retribution.

I happen to think my gods are individuals and not the same as other gods. But it does not matter to me if you think Zeus is also Odin is also Juppiter Optimus Maximus or if you think Thor is Teshub. It’s not for me to say. I certainly can’t prove it one way or another so it would be rather silly to argue about it, wouldn’t it? Two people arguing about something that neither one of them can possibly know.

So how does a proper Catholic respond to the threat of protestant fundamentalism?

Coercion and punitive measures, of course.

Come on, did you think the answer would be different? We have 2,000 years of evidence and you think it’s going to be something else?

Here we go. Hold on to your hats:

1. If she is entirely independent, you are limited to prayer, sacrifice, and talking to her about religious issues when opportunities arise. If she is in any way dependent upon you, you can explain to her that, while she may be a legal adult, her dependence means that she is still subject to your authority.

2. If that is the case, you could tell her that attendance at Mass is a family responsibility and you expect her to go, even though she should not receive Communion right now. If she refuses, then draw up an “exit plan” to transition her as quickly as possible away from being financially supported by you. If she agrees to accept your authority as a condition of accepting your financial support, you should assure her that you will not force her to talk to a priest or go to religious education classes (as you would do if she were a minor instead of a legal adult). You may though point out to her that doing so on her own could make going to Mass easier to deal with because she will have a forum for asking her questions and expressing her concerns about religion.

Assuming your definition of religion is not the same as mine, does this sound like a functional religion to you?

I was forced to go to church when I was a teenager too, even though by then it was clear to me that Christianity did more harm than good, and not to put too fine a point on it, that it was a farce.

For the record, I am the father of two grown children. My daughter is at least nominally a Christian. My son is a scientist. He believes in science. Of course I would like them to both be Heathens like me. But it is their choice, not mine, what they wish to believe or not believe. I would never have dreamed of coercing them. Why would I not wish to grant my children the same freedom of thought I embraced for myself?

The amusing thing about all this is that even early Church Fathers recognized that you cannot force belief on anyone. Yet that is exactly what is being prescribed here.

I imagine being coerced to “keep the faith” will make this poor girl a loving daughter of the church, full of passion for Catholicism. Not.

If there can be any clearer argument for polytheism, I don’t know what it is. Since by definition all gods exist. it doesn’t matter which one you choose to show devotion to. It doesn’t matter what you believe about any one of them. All that matters is a proper show of devotion.

From a polytheistic perspective, imagine the question reformulated as follows:

Our daughter, age 19, has recently turned away from her Norwegian Heathen religion. refusing to attend our rituals and looking elsewhere for answers (she’s interested in Danish ideas). She is stubborn and will not speak to a priest. What do we do?

As you can see clearly now, this is no question at all, let alone a problem. The gods are still there. Thor, Odin, Freyja, Freyr and so on. But Norse Heathenism was not uniform in belief and practice in the pre-Christian world. It’s not even as if the gods in question are changing here. In the Catholic complaint it is still Jesus. I’ve never heard of a Fundamentalist who denied Jesus.

No, folks, there lies madness. Why anyone would embrace it is beyond me. We should be happy in our multiplicity of belief, in our diversity and in our embracing of the divine. When you can see the forest for the trees, you won’t nitpick about a single tree out of thousands.

In the end, it is questions like this that caused me to make my first post here one thousand entries ago. Such questions still drive me, and that is why I am still here one thousand entries later. I don’t suppose the day will ever come when that will change, however many days off I may take in between.

I think a great deal about religion, despite the fact that I don’t belong to an organized religion. Christians especially get the idea that if you’re not in Church that you’re missing out, or that you’re distancing yourself from “God” or that you’re off skating and sinning, or something. They love to say “I haven’t seen you in church lately” as though it’s an accusation of some kind. The hint is that you’ve been derelict in your duties.

It’s interesting that despite Jesus’ injunction to honor YHWH in private, Christians follow the advice of Paul instead and are all public and demonstrative. I guess we know who wears the pants in that family! But though there is nothing wrong with honoring your gods in groups, there is equally nothing wrong with doing so in private.

As we know, a great deal of Pagan worship was family-centered. You don’t have to be a priest or hold a priesthood to honor the gods. The women had their mysteries, and the men theirs. It’s all a part of honoring the divine. A Christian could sit at home and pray or read his Bible if he wanted. I don’t think he’d be less of a Christian for doing that instead of going to Church. But Church is more than a place to honor “God.” It’s designed to enforce doctrine, to make sure everybody is on the same page and part of a collective and that nobody strays into “heresy” which is really just thinking for yourself.

Without doctrine, if you’re just a “simple” polytheist, there is no possibility of heresy because there is nothing you’re required to believe. No doctrine, no dogma, no set of rules or laws. Sure, in the old days different shrines had different rules regarding how a god was to be worshiped, what you should wear, how you should purify yourself, etc, but this varied from place to place and god to god. It wasn’t something that you had to trouble yourself over on a daily basis, and especially not at home.

Religion, in my opinion, is all around us. It, like the mythical “force” of Star Wars, permeates our existence. We live in a world filled with the divine. It is all around us, in nature, in the ground, in the sky, in the flora and fauna of the natural world. It is in us. I can show devotion by going outside and touching a tree, or by leaving an offering from it, or by lighting incense on my altar indoors, or pouring a libation, or lifting my hands skyward and uttering a prayer. “Let it rain on the fields of the Athenians,” as Marcus Aurelius instructed us. A simple prayer, not of greed, but for the common good. I could also engage in magick, with a little ritual, but magick really stands outside religion, and not as part of it. Magick tends to be more self-oriented. Spells of love and wealth and so forth, or a concern for your own future manifested through Tarot, etc. The ancients understood this. They didn’t shun magick. They just knew it had its own realm of concerns. The realm of religion is to honor the gods. That, and that only.

So I added a statue of Thor to my altar recently. Does this make me more devout? No. The statue of Thor is a focus. A focus of my devotion. A way for me to honor a god. I could honor him in other ways, of course, and I do. This is just another way. That’s why people create statues of deities, after all. To honor them. It’s fine if you want to believe a spark of the god exists in the statue, or dwells in the shrine. Even the Jews thought this of their holy of holies. And why not, if the divine is around us and inside us? It does no harm to clean your statue with devotion, as the ancients once cleaned, oiled, and dressed the statues in the great temples. Again, it’s part of religion.

I don’t have to believe any particular thing as I go about my various devotions. I ask Thor to hallow my meal. I don’t thank him for providing it. He didn’t. I don’t have to worry about what I think as I do this. Thor exists and he is owed my devotion. It’s that simple. I don’t have to worry about sinning in my heart as I sit in a church pew, or about whether or not I’m sinning by not believing every word the pastor says or every word I read in the Bible in my lap. I don’t have to worry about some divine set of laws or rules that might, at any moment, send me spiraling down into the embrace of Satan if I misstep. That is a religion gone ugly. A religion used to beat people over the head or to instill obedience through fear of divine wrath.

But my gods are benign, and nature is at worst, neutral, which is exactly what you’d expect it to be. It is what it is. Just as I am what I am and the gods are what they are. Life is really simple if you don’t go out of your way to complicate it. Religion should be simple too. Why let fear and anger and doubt color something that should be beautiful? Honor the gods, honor the divine around you, and the divine within each of us. Keep it simple and you can wear religion rather than chasing after it.

The Iowa Supreme Court this morning struck down a 1998 state law that limits marriage to one man and one woman.The ruling is viewed as a victory for the gay rights movement in Iowa and elsewhere, and a setback for social conservatives who wanted to protect traditional families.

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The percentage of Americans who call themselves Christians has dropped dramatically over the past two decades, and those who do are increasingly identifying themselves without traditional denomination labels, according to a major study of U.S. religion being released today.

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A great article that tells you how to know when science is really religion in disguise

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