Dear fellow christian, judge not lest you be judged

As a fellow Christian I have found myself, on occasion, apologising to posters for the attitude shown to them by other "Christians" and the insults hurled at them in the name of God.One thing I find very sad is that, in pontificating about their fellow-posters' eternal damnation, they fail to remember one of the first things about Christianity i.e. God is Love. You should love your fellow man - it doesn't say "fellow Christian". Check out the thread "What God thinks of Fundementalists" (sic). That is one scary and shameful thread.As a Roman Catholic, I've been accused of being an atheist just because I am of the opinion that evolution happened, not by fellow Catholics, but by "Christian" posters on this board. I've also been rather insulted by certain comments directed at Roman Catholics by people who show a basic misunderstanding of Catholicism. For example, someone took issue with the practice of "idolatry" within the Catholic Church, accusing Catholics of worshipping The Blessed Virgin Mary (BVM) and elevating her to the same level as God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit and asserting that Catholics pray to the BVM. Actually, we don't!!! We never have! We ask her to pray for us, to intercede on our behalf with Her Son! We also acknowledge exactly what she agreed to do when she said "I am the handmaid of the Lord". She agreed to be a mother to a baby who would suffer an appalling death and she would have to accept this! It doesn't matter who the father was, when you're a mother, you're a mother regardless. I'm a mother. I couldn't agree to my son undergoing a death of that sort! Think about it. Her sacrifice was enormous. I'm not saying that elevates her to the same status as God, but I do think that it deserves a little recognition from Christians - after all, she gave up her son for them. Thanks would be nice!I've rambled a bit here, but I wanted to set the record straight about the BVM and also to agree with Mike that some of the behaviour seen from those who profess faith in Jesus Christ show a distinct lack of understanding of what Christianity is all about. Having said that, they will need to make their peace with God, not with me, not with my Church or any other Church. They will be on their own with God, no-one to plead their case and they can explain to God why their opinion supercedes his!

Mike, you've just written something that I've thought about for a while now. I'm wondering about describing myself as a Christian if I'm going to be lumped in with with the eternal damnation crowd. I'm not saying that it affects my faith, just how I would choose to define myself. Maybe a better description would be "A Follower of the Teachings of Christ" also known as AFOTTOC, doesn't exactly roll off the tongue in full and the acronym sounds like aflotoxin, but it says it all. Problem is that people can apply such a description to themselves without being in the least bit aware that what they actually preach go AGAINST the teachings of Christ.

Born2Preach, I think you just had a bad day. The reason I made no mention of Joseph was because I was specifically and exclusively talking about Mary. A point had been made about the way the Catholic Church holds Mary in reverence and I decided to mention why. To do that, I don't have to mention Joseph, since it was only Mary I was talking about. The whole point was about the BVM and the Catholic Church! The Church does have a St Joseph who is held in very high regard. The Church acknowledges Joseph and Mary, but a discussion of the role of Joseph as a stepfather doesn't cast much light on exactly how the Catholic Church sees the BVM.I'm not saying that Joseph is irrelevant, I was just talking about Mary. If we want to take this to extremes, I didn't mention Elizabeth, John The Baptist, Peter, Gabriel, James, John - you pick the Biblical names. That doesn't mean that I don't think they're important, it's just that they were irrelevant to the point I was making!! Yeah, I think that Joseph deserves more than a medal. I mean, how many guys do you know of who would say "OK, fair enough" if their girlfriend, whom they had NEVER slept with, came in one day and said "By the way I'm pregnant, but it's OK I haven't been unfaithful, the father is God"? Not only that, Joseph kept Jesus alive by legging it to Egypt after a nightmare. How this has anything to do with a rebuttal of the point that the Catholic Church practices idolatry with regard to Mary eludes me.