Come On Down

[poliphilo]

A sci-fi fantasy I'm fond of- The Saga of the Exiles- predicates an alien intervention at the beginning of the 21st century (in fact, any time now.) The aliens- who are nice chaps- allow us the join their Federation, but on certain conditions. One of the conditions is that we abandon all but one of our religions.

And we do. Just like that.

How I wish. How I wish....

For some reason the religion we choose to retain is Roman Catholicism.

A certain leeway is allowed. People are permitted to flavour their Catholicism with Zen Buddhism or Hinduism or whatever they used to adhere to. But I don't remember there being any Muslim-flavoured Catholics or Southern Baptist-flavoured Catholics.

It's a silly book.

I wonder how long it's actually going to take us to get beyond our religious differences.
How many thousands of years.

Comments

[queen-in-autumn.livejournal.com]

I think there will always be religious differences. I'm just hoping that one day we will get past our religious conflicts. (My apologies if my hair-splitting is on the wrong side of how you meant "differences.")

A primary tenet of my faith is that the Divine reaches out to all of us, within us, and that we respond to that Divine, name it, and create ritual to celebrate it, based on our culture and personality. That being the case, we will never have a single religion.

I would like to hope that one day we will all recognize and respect the Divine and the Holy within each other's faiths, but I'm afraid that there will always be the arrogant, the fearful, and the absolutist, who can not bear the idea that Mystery and Paradox are inevitable when the Human interacts with the Divine.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I entirely agree.

God has a million different names. A million million. And all of them are fitting and true.