[Skybird]

Originally Posted by silentrunner

Where there is no self-denial, there is no virtue. St. Josemaria Escriva

Self-transcendence is something different than self-denial. setting up prohibitions for yourself and act as if your self is not there, only is theatre-playing, more or less enforced. You still fall victim to your ego - no on the hedonistic but on the asketic extreme of the scale. therefore asketic practice or self-denial hold not the smallest level of insight.

To become a soul of prayer one must deny himself the regular sinfull human activites.

And here comes the institution's dogma of sin again. Kill it.

Blindly believing is neither a virtue nor is it knowledge, but a sign for stupidity. Trust is the result of an empirical examination of experiences that cannot be replaced by simply believing somethign, anything, jut becasue somebody said soemthing or absues children to shove this crap into defenseless children's young minds.

And religious leaders should have nothing to look for in the White House. It even is against the spirit of the principles on which the US has been founded. and these were not about "free march for religion into office", but freedom from religion - and also letting everyone have his private religion inside his own house, if he wishes (that is what is called freedom of religion). Nowhere there is an excuse to say that the US have been founded on the principle of having to be in support of christian religion, or sects.Freedom of relgion does not mean the right of religion to impose itslf onto social life and stick it's nose into other people's business.

Keep politics and religion separate. Keep thy religion to thyself. give religion all the mockery that it fully deserves - before it gets us all killed: in the name of love, Allah and Jesus, of course.

http://www.youtube.com/profile_video...patcondell&p=r

Laughing is healthy, and gives wings to your mind! for the concerned, this:

http://www.odan.org/

The great tragedy is that most Opus Dei members do not realize that the ideals they aspire to do not correlate with their actual practices, which include a culture which demands aggressive recruiting, especially at the numerary level; the withholding of information from new recruits and new members; the imposition of intense coercion and guilt on those who wish to make free decisions; and blind obedience to superiors as the Founder of Opus Dei commands in Maxim 941, The Way: "Obedience, the sure way. Blind obedience to your superior, the way of sanctity. Obedience in your apostolate the only way, for in a work of God, the spirit must be to obey or to leave."

All this are symptoms of a typical psycho-sect. Others olwuld point out that Opus Dei is extreme hardcore fundamentalism. Needless to say what i think of fundamentalists, no matter what origin.


And now back to the topic: the upcoming presidential elections.