Thursday, June 10, 2010

Unitarian President Declared Catholic Church Amazing!

Ah the amazing power of a bibliosite.



This bibliosite is simply amazing for the fact that the President of the Unitarians, whose ranks are by now often filled with many ex-Catholics, is calling the Catholic Church amazing.

This brings to mind a new song by the award winning folk artist, Peter Mayer.  I love Pete's songs and so do my children.  Most days when they clean up the house in the evening, on goes a Peter Mayer cd.  However, Pete is a former Catholic worship leader who is now a Unitarian and he writes songs from time to time that musically are great, but lyrically are, well, Unitarian.  See the example below from his most recent album, Heaven Below:


All the World is One

You can say that you stand apart 
Put a fence around your yard 
You can build a tall rampart and guard it with a gun 
You can dig yourself a moat 
Burn the bridge and burn the boat 
It won't matter that much, you know 
Because all the world is one, all the world is one 

You can march in a big parade 
Every Independence Day 
You can raise up your own flag and sing your own anthem 
It will ring out in the air 
With all the other anthems there 
Till the winds of the earth declare 
All the world is one, all the world is one 

Go and ask the Buddha when he's sitting under the tree 
Go ask Walt Whitman when he's looking out at the sea 
Ask Alan Shepard when he's standing up on the moon 
Staring at that pearl of blue 

Ask an atom in the breath you take 
Ask the water by the river bank 
Ask a strand of DNA--it's written in your blood 
One life running in your veins 
One light from one big bang 
You can try and separate it 
But all the world is one, all the world is one 

Go and ask the Buddha when he's sitting under the tree 
Ask Annie Dillard when she's up on Tinker Creek 
Ask Alan Shepard when he's standing up on the moon 
Staring at that pearl of blue 

You can take an outbound train 
Try and make a get-a-way 
You can ride off like John Wayne into the setting sun 
But earthlings don't leave town 
They just go round and round 
Until they figure out 
All the world is one, all the world is one 
All the world is one


Pete writes about how all the world is one but I would offer a corrective to his take on the oneness of the world.  His Unitarian forefather was amazed at the oneness in the Catholic Church.  As much as Unitarians and others sing and preach about the oneness of the world, there is only one human institution that actually brings the world together into peaceful unity.  No other human institution comes close, not any nation state, not the UN, not the Olympics, not the IMF, nothing.  This is in no way saying these other institutions aren't beneficial, but they can't hold a candle to the Catholic Church when it comes to the power to actually unify people from every place on earth.

Even more thought provoking is that the most unified institution, the Catholic Church, teaches that the world is NOT one.  There is good and evil.  There is Jesus and the enemy.  Each person decides which side he will be on because all the world is NOT one.  The unity the human race longs for, isn't just there as Pete writes, it's found in Jesus and His Church.

Actually, the international unity and paradox of the Catholic Church is so amazing that one might be tempted to believe that it is the ONE Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church.

1 comment:

  1. Mrs Dalrene PompeusJune 15, 2010 at 3:30 AM

    This is brilliantly expressed. THANK YOU & GOD BLESS YOU. Mrs Dalrene Pompeus

    ReplyDelete