Communion only to Christians

[superstring01]

How does that matter? Isn't religious ritual about community? I am invited for all my friends pujas and religious celebrations, the pujaris give all of us the prasad which is the blessed offering from the temple . I read the prayers, participate in the worship etc. I don't have to believe in it to enjoy it. e.g. when I went to Shirdi, I went with a friend and we did all the commercial stuff, getting the thali and scarf and head dress and coconut, plus the wreath, saw the "temple" and the samadhi [Sai Baba's grave], and brought back prasad for all our friends.

The belief is that you cannot accept it if you do not believe in it totally. Sort of sacrilegious to some. Personally, I don't understand why you would want to even eat some gross unleavened bread and sub-standard wine (I took communion for over a decade) just to pretend that you are cannibalizing the flesh of a dead man.

But, like you with the Holy Communion, I guess, I'm a bit miffed that I can't go on Haj. I just want to see the people in a place and time from which I am directly forbidden.

~String

 

[Bells]

The reasoning behind a holy wafer and an unholy shudra is exactly the same. Anyway, I hope that a few years down the road, people can go to Mecca or the Fire Temple while untouchables don't have to worry about sitting outside the classroom. And I hope that Christianity evolves to the point where people are worth more than a wafer.

One never knows.

The wafer itself is a part of the beliefs of some Christians. It is a personal belief and a ritual, one that my mother partakes in every week while my father does not, even though both are Catholic. Denigrating it or using deceipt to take it and then denigrate it is akin, to Catholics at least, to having someone turn up in a bikini at a Mosque, eating a bacon sandwich. It's just something you don't do out of respect for the people who go there to worship.

I don't protest about not being able to go or experience the Haj, simply because I respect the people's right to their beliefs. Just as when I have visited Mosques and Synagogues and other temples for example, I make sure to adhere to their religious rules upon entering it. It is a sign of respect for the beliefs of others. I would not, for example, take kindly to someone walking into a Mosque with a bacon sandwich, just as I don't take kindly to someone taking the communion wafer and then spitting it out, taking a photo of it and publishing it in the paper in a story about illegal conversions.

I think that's what you can't seem to grasp. For you it is just a wafer and now, something you seem to think is discriminatory. I have seen people of other faiths take communion in a Catholic Church and not a single eyelid was batted by the priest or anyone else in the Church. Just as I have seen Catholics refuse to take communion and instead prefer to have a blessing instead.

But that little wafer is the embodiment of Catholic faith and belief. When they give it to you, they say 'the body of Christ', to which you reply 'amen'. It is a ritual for the greater majority of Catholics who do take it and for those of other religions where the communion is a part of one's ritual of worship. To them it is more than just "a wafer".

 

[Giambattista]

“ Originally Posted by S.A.M.
How does that matter? Isn't religious ritual about community? I am invited for all my friends pujas and religious celebrations, the pujaris give all of us the prasad which is the blessed offering from the temple . I read the prayers, participate in the worship etc. I don't have to believe in it to enjoy it. e.g. when I went to Shirdi, I went with a friend and we did all the commercial stuff, getting the thali and scarf and head dress and coconut, plus the wreath, saw the "temple" and the samadhi [Sai Baba's grave], and brought back prasad for all our friends.

Sai Baba is dead???? GOD MAN? Who materializes trinkets and ash for people?

More seriously, aren't Hindus pretty open to begin with? I mean, they have hundreds (maybe thousands?) of gods and are pretty open-ended spiritually.
Though I wonder... you must be more liberal as a Muslim cuz participating in Hindu religious traditions doesn't seem like something that would be smiled upon by alot of people, Muslim or Christian or whatever. I guess I don't know. I often tend to think of practitioners from the "old" countries to be more conservative in their views, I guess. I don't have any other real reason to be thinking that way. I'm such an ignorant American (<-- Joke?)

The belief is that you cannot accept it if you do not believe in it totally. Sort of sacrilegious to some. Personally, I don't understand why you would want to even eat some gross unleavened bread and sub-standard wine (I took communion for over a decade) just to pretend that you are cannibalizing the flesh of a dead man.

But, like you with the Holy Communion, I guess, I'm a bit miffed that I can't go on Haj. I just want to see the people in a place and time from which I am directly forbidden.

~String

I attended a Catholic mass once. Even though it was as part of my church youth group, we were not allowed to take Communion. We were not Christian enough for the Church, apparently.

You've obviously sworn off the religion, huh? Were you Catholic? I never got to drink wine. We had grape juice at our church. I just drank some too just now. Organic grape juice. Pretty tasty.

I have no problem with spirituality, but I am kind of bothered by rituality. I never really understood Holy Communion. It always seemed like a pointless routine. But that's just me.

So you're not allowed to go on a Hajj journey? And why not? Why not take a secret Hajj?

 

[Michael]

You can't "desecrate" anything in Mecca, nothing there is holy. But if we want to talk desecration, then the Sauds top the list for what they have done to historical sites there.

I agree with the second statement, but, as to the first, I suppose it depends on who you talk to and what they think is "holy".

 

[Giambattista]

What have the Sauds done?

 

[Doreen]

So there are people who want to go to church, listen to stuff they don't believe in, wait in line, then kneel in line to get a quarter sized tasteless wafer of bread in their mouths and a spritz of wine. This very oppressed group isn't hungry or they could be across town getting a free meal from some christian run shelter. So they have some other deep need to participate in a ritual that means nothing to them and is not really a social christian event, of which there are quite a few they would be welcome to participate in.

This has suddenly gotten high up on my list of international concerns. The fucking sectarian Xtians. How dare they withhold those wafers.

I think there is something to this micomanagement of other people's religions. I have a chronic case of athelete's foot and I have shoe inserts that keep me from getting arch pain. OK, I'm no Muslim, but they keep denying me entrance into their mosques, unless I suffer the consequences of going in barefoot. I just wanna be social.

They are discriminating against the handicapped!

 

[S.A.M.]

So there are people who want to go to church, listen to stuff they don't believe in, wait in line, then kneel in line to get a quarter sized tasteless wafer of bread in their mouths and a spritz of wine. This very oppressed group isn't hungry or they could be across town getting a free meal from some christian run shelter. So they have some other deep need to participate in a ritual that means nothing to them and is not really a social christian event, of which there are quite a few they would be welcome to participate in.

Yes of course. I used to go for Christmas mass every year once upon a time. And I go for every puja I am invited to. There is a custom in Mumbai of walking to the Ganesh temple in Dadar every Monday night. For the special puja Tues day morning. Thousands of people do it and they all get the special offering at the temple. At the Mount Mary novena every Wednesday, people of all faiths light candles in the church, I even do it for people who are not close by and send in requests. Just as thousands of people visit the mosque at Haji Ali and put flowers on the grave of a Muslim saint. Sai Baba himself was of indeterminate religious belief. He was a Muslim saint who is today worshipped by Hindus. So when we visit his shrine at Shirdi, I go to see the solar power operated kitchens which supply food for all the devotees and tourists who visit him. I am not a devotee but I always go to get the offerings

 

[Doreen]

So you used to go for mass, but you didn't get the wafer I guess. If you live in the US maybe there's a class actions suit in it for you.

My brother wanted to get circumsized because his girlfriend thinks foreskins are ooky, but the god damn mo-hail wouldn't perform the ritual since he wasn't Jewish.

He even offered him a big tip - no puns intended - since he realized it would be more work for the mo-hail than an infant's penis presents. But no dice.

I can't believe how stingy the religious are.

A lot of these groups won't even let you become a priest or an imam if you're not a believer.

Some religions even reject marriage outside the religion, talk about anal.

The whole thing really dwarfs issues like peace or hunger.

Sure the polytheists don't discriminate, they can't even keep track of their own gods and goddesses. Every now and then they kill a bunch of muslims in India and for some Muslims this make them wary of coming out for the free offerings. But the occasional sectarian violence is offset by the pastries.

 

[S.A.M.]

Marie Antoinette had the right idea: Let them eat pastries. If they had listened to her, there wouldn't have been a revolution. Pastries can offset a lot of bad feelings. People who get prasad don't demolish mosques

 

[Doreen]

SAI BABA, by the way, was very generous with his goodies, puns INTENDED.

http://www.saibaba-x.org.uk/6/saisex1.htm

Yet another guru with sex scandals. I dunno this getting to order everyone around seems to get out of hand....

or into hand.

But I am glad he was generous with the donations of his followers whom he sexually abused.

 

[S.A.M.]

Different Sai Baba, that guy is just cashing in on the name

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sai_Baba_of_Shirdi

This one, even I like.

 

[Doreen]

Marie Antoinette had the right idea: Let them eat pastries. If they had listened to her, there wouldn't have been a revolution. Pastries can offset a lot of bad feelings. People who get prasad don't demolish mosques

Of, course she never said that. But she certainly was a scapegoat, one of those prisoner royals. She certainly got her wafers.

 

[Doreen]

Different Sai Baba, that guy is just cashing in on the name

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sai_Baba_of_Shirdi

This one, even I like.

Oh, that guy, apologies. Yeah, he seems nice. Maybe the fact that he was syncretic made him not care about who got the good stuff. Syncretism being something that the big religions tend to frown on. I knew we would get to an important topic if I just kept flailing about.

I mean all religions are syncretic in the past, but if you do this in your own lifetime, well you get the boot, usually, or you end up like Jesus.

I am sure there is a correlation between being open-minded and taking responsibility for one's religious beliefs, rather than simply being orthodox and following the texts like they were timeless cultureless artifacts, that leads one to be generous with baked goods.

Perhaps it leads to other fine qualities as well.

 

[S.A.M.]

I am sure there is a correlation between being open-minded and taking responsibility for one's religious beliefs, rather than simply being orthodox and following the texts like they were timeless cultureless artifacts, that leads one to be generous with baked goods.

Perhaps it leads to other fine qualities as well.

Possbly, although I would suggest that making missionaries the goods to be distributed might not go off very well.

I recently saw a documentary of a religious ritual in which the dead are literally hung upside down and smoked and as their body fat melts, it is soaked up with leaves and distributed to those who wish to commune with the dead. The communers then take a leaf put it in their mouth and suck out the melted fat. Its a private sacred ceremony in which outsiders are not allowed to participate or even witness, although they were happy to recreate it with a pig for the purposes of the program.

I wondered if communion was based on some such practice. I did not pay attention to the program so I missed where the practice comes from, but it looked like some African or Polynesian tribe.

 

[Doreen]

Oh, you're quite right, one religious practice that offends 'Westerners' puts the whole concept of syncretism in question. Though of course it might be time for those tribe to do a little importation of new practices and be more syncretic themselves. Ah, everything is so two edged.

Anyway, as someone who works with nutrition you must know that the higher up the food chain you go, the more toxins - like dioxin for example - are collected in the fat. So eating humans, especially Western ones - or those from countries like Vietnam who have been the 'recipients' of Western Technology - increases ones chances of cancer.

 

[S.A.M.]

What have the Sauds done?

They destroyed all the old historical Muslim sites, ancient mausoleums and such because they considered them idolatorous. It was a "reform" movement initiated by Abdul Wahab [of Wahabbism fame]

Saudi religious authorities have overseen a decades-long demolition campaign that has cleared the way for developers to embark on a building spree of multi-storey hotels, restaurants, shopping centres and luxury apartment blocks on a scale unseen outside Dubai. The driving force behind this historical demolition is Wahhabism * the austere state faith that the House of Saud brought with it when Ibn Saud conquered the Arabian peninsula in the 1920s.

The Wahhabis live in fanatical fear that places of historical or religious interest could give rise to alternative forms of pilgrimage or worship. Their obsession with combating idolatry has seen them flatten all evidence of a past that does not agree with their interpretation of Islam.

Irfan Ahmed al-Alawi, the chairman of the Islamic Heritage Foundation, set up to help protect the holy sites, says the case of the grave of Amina bint Wahb, the mother of the Prophet, found in 1998, is typical of what has happened. "It was bulldozed in Abwa and gasoline was poured on it. Even though thousands of petitions throughout the Muslim world were sent, nothing could stop this action."

Today there are fewer than 20 structures remaining in Mecca that date back to the time of the Prophet 1,400 years ago. The litany of this lost history includes the house of Khadijah, the wife of the Prophet, demolished to make way for public lavatories; the house of Abu Bakr, the Prophet's companion, now the site of the local Hilton hotel; the house of Ali-Oraid, the grandson of the Prophet, and the Mosque of abu-Qubais, now the location of the King's palace in Mecca.

http://www.islamdaily.net/EN/Contents.aspx?AID=4299

I'm not much of a fan of sticks and stones over people, but even I cannot comprehend such destruction. Its one of the reasons why most Muslims have a very low opinion of the house of Saud. Even Gadhaffi who is a joke is more progressive:

Gaddafi: Allow Jews, Christians entry to Mecca

Libyan leader says Eid al-Adha holiday opportunity to bring three main monotheistic religions closer together

http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3346663,00.html

 

[Doreen]

I wonder if these tribes let outsiders eat the fat of those they cooked also. The class action suit may have to go up to World Trade Organizations or the UN.

 

[S.A.M.]

I wonder if these tribes let outsiders eat the fat of those they cooked also. The class action suit may have to go up to World Trade Organizations or the UN.

I don't think so. I only saw the tail end of the documentary, but I think the dead designate who gets to partake. Probably all the tribe members are not allowed to commune either since the premise is that one absorbs all the wisdom and knowledge and strengths of the dead

 

[pjdude1219]

I attended a Catholic mass once. Even though it was as part of my church youth group, we were not allowed to take Communion. We were not Christian enough for the Church, apparently.

are you a protestant or go to a protestant church? the catholic church tends to forbid protestants from taking the sacraments in a catholic church. My grand parents church(not sure about others) allows people of the orthadox faiths, the polish national catholic church, and two others to take the sacraments in it.

 

[Bells]

They destroyed all the old historical Muslim sites, ancient mausoleums and such because they considered them idolatorous. It was a "reform" movement initiated by Abdul Wahab [of Wahabbism fame]

:bugeye:

"Perhaps to them, they were just rock formations, value is subjective and dependent on awareness and education."

I'm not much of a fan of sticks and stones over people, but even I cannot comprehend such destruction. Its one of the reasons why most Muslims have a very low opinion of the house of Saud.

And yet you cannot understand why people had such a low opinion of the Taliban when they destroyed the statues?

Even Gadhaffi who is a joke is more progressive:

Gadhaffi is also one of the Muslim leaders who actually preserves the historical sites in his country.