"We are losing our individual relationships with God and becoming a communalist society and we are becoming subservient by doing so. We are too often looking at churches as the authority on our relationship with God and society and losing touch with our voice with God."

I don't quite understand why people have to see it as an either/or situation. A relationship with God can not exist in a vacuum. There is a social aspect to it, as Christ Himself instituted in the Last Supper. Eating the bread and the wine as a group binds them together as a community in Christ. It has a familial aspect which is important. Otherwise why would Jesus have done it?

Man is a social animal. He cannot live by himself or he will be storm tossed on the sea of nature. Didn't God say that it was not good for man to be alone? He created us to be social creatures, not lone wolves.

Frankly, the talk about having a "personal relationship" with God with absolutely no other moral authority smacks of rebellion. Charles Manson decided that he needed no one else to interpret the Book of Revelations, and he ended up ordering his followers to murder innocent people in order to incite the Apocalypse. As a matter of fact, it seems that most of the "lunatic fringe" in Christianity has emerged from Protestant sects nowadays: Jim Jones, David Berg, David Koresh, Jeffrey Lundgren, Marshall Applewhite, etc... Look them all up. Read their history. See a common thread?

Ironically, the Pope's Regensberg Address did not only indirectly criticize Islam for spreading conversion by the sword. The Pope also criticized those religions which refuse to combine REASON with their FAITH. God gave us reason to use and to determine right from wrong. Even the preChristian pagans managed to do that, like the Ancient Greeks, Confucians and the Romans. The rejection of reason combined with faith by the Evangelical Christians is partly responsible for the mockery they get from the press and from secularists. They do not persuade men of reason.

I was commenting on Atheling's remark that "the greatness of European culture and the rise of Western civilization stems from its Catholic Christian heritage". I was pointing out that other heritages were involved which contributed in spades to its "greatness". Not a particularly difficult or controversial line of argument, I would have thought.

As regards your comment about the Enlightenment, as it was largely a reaction to and against Catholicism it's hardly surprising it occurred in a "Christian civilisation"!

I really don't see how your remarks about moral-relativism have any relevance to the points I was making.

I'm not impressed with what I see in the Catholic church and/or many Protestant denominations. I think they are both missing the mark and both have "traditions" of man which are not based on God's word.

Atheling you asked:

"Pray tell, which of the two Christian churches does not abide by her teachings on faith and morals today?"

First, there is ONLY ONE Body of Christ. Only ONE Bride of Christ and ONLY one true Chruch of Christ (all being one and the same,) which the church based in Rome does not have a monopoly on.

Both "churches" have their issues with morality or immorality within or accomodation thereof, and both have issues with worshipping their traditions of "faith" (man's traditions) more than abiding by the Word of God. Some "traditions of faith" are not based on the solid foundation of God's Word, but man's faulty created traditions.

Atheling asked: "Which church changed her position on abortion, contraception, chastity, and homosexual chastity since her inception?

Abortion? Many protestants and many catholics believe abortion to be a sin, but for saving the life of the mother. Protestants don't have a "one voice" like Catholics can point to, i.e. the Pope, who is against abortion and I am grateful he is even if some "Catholic girls" along with "Protestant girls" are still getting abortions.

Contraception: Man's doctrine not God's. It is not a sin to strap on a condom to have sexual relations with one's wife or "withdraw" early.

Chasity & homosexuality? Both the majority of Protestants and Catholics advocate chasity and deem the PRACTICE of homosexuality to be sin. Although you can always find exceptions by some CLAIMING to be Christians, i.e. Protestants or Catholics, that fornication, homosexuality, or adultery are not sins. But I believe that those who do advocate that such is not sins, are speaking a lie and not following God's Word.

Which of these two has a crisis in dwindling membership? One could argue both either in congregants or leadership, but it appears "membership" into the Body of Christ is on the upsurge where persecution is the greatest like parts of China, the Sudan, and other parts of Africa.

Persecution is foreordained in the Word of God and it is only going to get worse, but how else is the dross to be removed from the precious metal, i.e. the Body of Christ, without the fire of persecution. When that occurs many Christians in the West and world will get refined and many alleged "Christians" will fall away.

Good post Bruno for the Pope or Protestant evangelists can sit in their comfy chairs at the Vatican or in the West from a pulpit, and make true statements which would get someone else in another part of the world killed or tortured. They have to be recognizant of that.

If they want to make such statements that inflame, albeit true, let them have the cohones to do so standing and surrounded by a crowd of Muslims. Much easier to make such bold declarations when it is not your butt on the fire and/or your head getting chopped off.

One can be BOLD from a distance, the true test is can one be so bold in the midst of the storm surrounded by one's enemys.

"about Luther....that he was key in smashing so much of the corruption that had infested the church in Rome - and obscured the message of Christ."

I love how people who know absolutely nothing about history make absurd claims and statements. Luther did not "smash" corruption in the Church. He left it and formed a Protestant sect. One, I might add, which has STRAYED from the "message of Christ" that you purport to be obscured by the Roman Catholic Church.

Pray tell, which of the two Christian churches does not abide by her teachings on faith and morals today? Which church changed her position on abortion, contraception, chastity, and homosexual chastity since her inception? Which of these two has a crisis in dwindling membership, many former members either becoming Evangelicals or "crossing the Tiber?" Give you a clue. It ain't the one who Luther "smashed."

The Church was reformed internally by the works of many who were clergy and laypeople, like Catherine of Siena, or Teresa of Avila, or Ignatius Loyola? (Yes! Many were women!) How many Lutheran women can cast a shadow like these two I mention?

"If the Pope thinks Islam is inherently violent (as I do) why doesn't he just come out and say it? Isn't the situation in Europe dire enough to speak plainly and without equivocation? With all his security, is it possible he too is afraid to 'insult' Islam with the truth? Doesn't he have a flock to protect from the circling wolves?"

Okay, not only ignorance in history but impolitic too. That flock the Pope must protect from the "circling wolves" is the reason why he has been circumspect in his approach. For just alluding to an obscure Medieval text, the Islamic world went ballistic, killing a nun, a priest, and many more Christians in the Middle East, Asia and Africa. And you want him to be more blunt?

The Curia has been plagued with clergy who are politicians and diplomats, not "shepherds", and the Pope is replacing them with more "pastoral" types. This has created disgruntlement and hostility towards him. Change takes time in the Church, a 2000 year old institution, who has weathered more and seen more than any other institution on this planet.

Sigh. I feel like I have to reinvent the wheel every time I respond to people who know nothing about the Church, its structure, its political climate, and its history.

You are writing specious rubbish Amsterdamsky.

Would you be good enough to quantify the people killed in the name of Jesus; not forgetting to indicate some accurate dates and most importantly, the places where (other than South America) your alleged genocides took place.

P.S. Islam is an offshoot of nothing except desert barbarity.

Buccaneer's points are well made.

I had hoped Pope Benedict would carry on how he began, but all this backtracking, apologetics, softly-softly, and historical re-writing is driving me to despair.

When was Christianity ever spread by the sword? Originally, it spread only via the teachings of the Apostles. Monastries were then founded. Saint Saba organized the monks of the Judean Desert in a monastery close to Bethlehem (483); this is considered the mother of all monasteries by the Eastern Orthodox churches. Ireland had its first monastery by the early 6th century. The first Viking raids in the British Isles took place in 793, when the great monastery at Lindisfarne (in the English north east) was sacked.

The Crusades were never about spreading Christianity; rather they were organized to reclaim free access for pilgrims to Chistianity's holy shrines in Jerusalem: blocked earlier by aggressive Muslim intransigence and arrogance.

The Spanish Conquistadors did indeed spread Christianity by the sword, but is Christianity to blame here, or have those events got something to do with Spain's earlier (and intimate) experience with Islam?

Europeans conquered parts Africa using guns, but Christianity was spread much later due only to the peaceful work of Missionaries; of which David Livingstone was one.

Why Christianity keeps being equated with the Cult of Islam beats me. Are even intelligent people going insane these days?

@Amsterdamsky

I appreciate your peaceful mind but try to
keep a foot on the carpet when equalling Islam's violence with Christian violence. Jesus never encouraged the use of violence. He explicitly discouraged it. The early Christians who were persecuted and killed by the thousands - without resistance - the Roman authorities are a telling example.

Mohammed, on the contrary explicitly encouraged violence. How else can you explain that he ordered all men of the Jewish tribe of the Quraish to be beheaded - and allowed his men to marry the remaining wifes and daughters right after ..
Jesus as well neither assaulted caravans, neither led armed raids into "infidel" countries, neither told his fellowmen to extract a jizah from the infidels, neither allowed them to take their wifes and daughters...

And when you are referring to the crusades - don't forget it's been the Muslims who directly provocated them by invading and conquering the holy land , at that time a province of the Christian Byzantine.