This is one of my religious Noms which have proven so popular in the past (the amount of posts I mean not the pro-religious sentiments). Will it be the last? Let’s hope so.
I’ve been reading about Juan Diego the Mexican peasant who had a vision of the Virgin. About the miraculous image that appeared on his cloak -‘Our Lady of Guadalupe’.
The miracle occurred in the C16 and was said to have helped convert the whole of South America. And I’m sure it did. One figure was that 10 million converted after the apparition. But there might be one other very good reason the natives took to the new religion. Their old religion. Which was basically based on human sacrifice to placate the gods. And we are talking hundreds of thousands sacrificed in their temples every year..
I was once in the British Museum looking at Aztec religious art. One word; DARK.
The film ‘The Mission’ is about this. Which can be summed by saying the Indians fiercely resisted the Spanish slave-traders, gold-speculators and the rest but embraced the religion of the missionaries that came with them enthusiastically. The Catholic missionaries literally brought light into darkness. Can we really compare the two?
I once heard someone say ”there is good and bad religion like there is good and bad science’ which I think is broadly true.
‘Cathargo est delenda’ cried Cato the Elder after every speech he gave in the Roman Senate. Carthage must be destroyed. Why? Well most historians say it was because it was becoming a powerful economic rival to Rome. But there was another reason; MOLOCH. The religion of Moloch. Once again human sacrifice demanded. This time infants. And it was deeply entrenched -so much so it would be like a family going to church now for a christening but instead of the priest pouring water on the baby’s head he would chop it off.
This was around 200 BC. Yes even the bloodthirsty pre-Christian Romans couldn’t stomach it. See the ‘gods’ of the Roman pantheon were homely and practical and….not like the Greek gods which had descended into sexual perversion. Pagan Rome was civilised. Their religion didn’t sacrifice children. Once again can we compare the two?
Frazer’s ‘The Golden Bough’ is very influential in the development of the subject of Comparative Religion. Basically his view was magic leads to religion which in turn is superseded by science. And he picked practices and rituals from all religions and said see they’re all the same. They come from the same inspiration, the same human impulse. Many examples. But religion is a universal human activity so there are bound to be similarities.
Something from Waugh- in his diaries he noted Aldous Huxley had said something like ‘the catholic mass is the same as a Hindu ritual or ceremony because they both use incense’. Waugh wrote after ‘only a very intelligent man could write something as stupd as that’. Hindus have many gods, Christianity is monotheistic. There is no comparison between the two.
I know you’ll all be happy with calling our Muslim neighbours ‘our brothers and sisters’. But it’s true, they are. I have difficulty with the Jews but I recognise Moses and Abraham as (in the words of the Mass) ‘our fathers in faith’. We are from the same Abrahamic seed. But having said that they are district religions. We might pray to the same God but we have totally different practices, theologies.
Cut to the chase-what I don’t like about Comparative Religion, what is behind it of course; ‘all religions are the same’, ‘there is no difference between them’, ‘it’s all bunkum so forget about it’.
I apologize in advance for yet another religious Nom. But there you are.
The study of Comparative Religion is less than useless.
Nominated by: Miles Plastic
