More on Religion

This occurred to me today while shaving. Don't ask me why -- maybe I was psyching myself up for Mass, maybe it was the concert yesterday in the Episcopal church, maybe it was the conversion story that Tim told us during the intermission of a man who became Catholic because of one of the pieces (Gaude Rosa Spina, by Fawkyner) -- whatever it was, there I was, scraping my face, and a little light comes on.

{ding}

There are two religions in the history of the world that began with an acceptance of rules from God: the Jewish Religion, all the way back in the Old Testament, first with Abraham, and later with Moses, and continued with the Prophets. The only other one is the completion of the Jewish religion, the Catholic Faith, which brought all the faith and hope of the Jews for the Messiah to completion. You may say that, following this logic, there are two true Faiths, the Jewish religion and the Catholic Faith, but it's not so. The Jewish religion ended with the Messiah. The Jewish religion was built up around the anticipation of the promised Messiah. When the Messiah came, the Jewish religion was ended, and the religion established by the Messiah (who was Jesus Christ, in case you're not following this) was the True Faith, and this trumps all other faiths before then and still to come.

All other faiths began with a denial of truth. Or, in the case of modern Jews, "No, the Messiah never came. Jesus wasn't the Messiah." In the case of the Muslims, "Jesus wasn't God, but only a Great Prophet, second to our prophet." In the case of the Eastern Orthodox Rites (which have valid orders, so their sacraments are real), "Jesus did not make Peter the head of the church, and thus, the Pope is not the head of the church, but all the bishops are instead when gathered together in council, as it was with the apostles." In the case of the countless variations on Christianity, "Oh, I accept Jesus as my personal Lord and Savior, but..." and then the buts go all over the place, usually focused on something along the lines of: "but I don't believe that you have to belong to one religion to go to heaven; I believe instead that any religion that asks you to be good will get you there."

Of course, my thoughts on this are far from complete, and I'm certainly not the only person to have ever thought this. I'm sure if you do a minimal amount of searching, you'll find much better sources than I. You might even prove me wrong on my points about other religions. But you can't prove me wrong about the position of the Catholic Church as the religion established by Jesus Christ, and therefore the only Faith that can grant salvation to mankind.

Just my $0.02...