Chapter 1 - Intro to Phenomenology of World Religion

Chapter 1

Introduction to Phenomenology of World Religion ©

The modern world is the child of doubt and inquiry, as the ancient world was the child of fear and faith.
Clarence Darrow, 1929

Foreword: In studying the different religions as an historical investigator, one can find parallels and become entrapped in comparative theology. Historically, religion goes well into the time of prehistory – before any written account occurred.

Beatification of Pope Pius XII

In an Associated Press/Reuters report, the Vatican The Holy See] has been considering Beatification of Pope Pius XII, the preliminary procedure to canonization declaring sainthood to a person. He was the Pope during the time of the Holocaust period in Nazi Germany and there have been arguments over whether or not Pope Pius XII had turned his head during the persecution of Jews or whether he remained prudent in order to secretly save Jews through his diplomacy. According to an article at MSNBC: [See also

The Vatican newspaper L’Osservatore Romano dedicated an entire page to praising Pius, including an impassioned tribute from the Holy See’s secretary of state, Italian Cardinal Tarcisco Bertone.
“It was precisely by means of a prudent approach that Pius XII protected Jews and refugees,” Bertone wrote in an introduction to a book by a nun about the late pontiff.
Last month, Pope Benedict XVI made one of the strongest defenses yet of Pius, whose death 50 years ago is being marked at the Vatican. … Pius, as Italian prelate Eugenio Pacelli, had served as a Vatican diplomat in Germany and as the Vatican’s secretary of state before becoming pope in 1939, a few months before World War II erupted in Europe. The Vatican has started the process for Pius’ beatification, the last formal step before possible sainthood. Jews and others have accused Pius of not speaking out forcefully enough against the Holocaust. Bertone contended that research has shown that Pius “was neither silent nor anti-Semitic. He was prudent. If he had made a public intervention, he would have endangered the lives of thousands of Jews, who, upon his directive, were hidden, in 155 convents and monasteries in Rome alone …
Earlier this week, an Israeli rabbi [Rabbi Shear-Yashuv Cohen] who became the first Jew to address bishops’ gatherings at the Vatican pointedly omitted Pius when he spoke of the change in Catholic-Jewish relations from a “long, hard and painful history.”… The rabbi said some religious leaders “did not raise a voice in the effort or save our brethren, but chose to keep silent and help secretly.”

Turkish Theologians Begin Hadith Research Project

The Turkish Republic may be in for a Religious Reformation according to Daniel Pipes, Jerusalem Post, May 22^nd 2008 …

Accounts from Turkey suggest that the government is attempting a bold re-interpretation of Islam. Its unusually named ministry of religion, the "Presidency of Religious Affairs and the Religious Charitable Foundation," has undertaken a three-year "Hadith Project" systematically to review 162,000 hadith reports and winnow them down to some 10,000, with the goal of separating original Islam from the accretions of fourteen centuries. The hadith reports contain information about the sayings and actions of Muhammad, the prophet of Islam. They augment the Koran and have had a major role in shaping the Shari‘a (Islamic law), thereby deeply influencing Muslim life. Despite their importance, Muslim reformers have devoted little scrutiny to them, due to their vast size, unwieldy nature, and the challenge of discerning "sound" from "weak" hadiths.
One of the project's 85 theology professors, Ismail Hakki Unal of Ankara University, explains its goal: "The Koran is our basic guide. Anything that conflicts with that, we are trying to eliminate." The project website explained that its work is "an important step for carrying the universal message of the Prophet of Islam to the twenty-first century."

Investigating Scriptures and the Search for Lost Text of the Bible

In 2006 the novel The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown was produced on film  and because of the public interest in the fictional work based upon certain historical facts, as well as conjecture that has been argued by scholars for a long time, there was a great deal of controversy over the content. A well acted and directed film, it soon became the big discussion on the Internet and there are some websites that still exist today that concern the subject material in one form or another. This information being provided as background information.

After being released and previewed at the opening night of the Cannes Film Festival, May 17th, 2006, the film was criticized by the Roman Catholic Church and bishops urged Christians to boycott the film orchestrated by the Vatican curial department by Archbishop Angelo Amato. Some of the earliest showings had protesters outside the movie theaters and critical rhetoric was prolific. 

One More Time with Facts: The DaVinci Code is Fiction

Here I go again, but maybe a little more blunt and to the point?

The DaVinci Code novel is the popular talk of the town and because the gist of the story involves conspiracy, it is popular. That is what made Michael Moore’s “documentary” films so popular, not to mention that it satisfied Bush Haters in their lust for character assassination. Both of them are making money off of fiction. Don’t get me wrong, I am hopping mad at the Bush administration over several things, one of them his immigration policy that is coupled with the insane idea to create a North American federation that mirrors the European Union. What happened to the idea that the American system is not only unique, but is the best system (the way it was designed by the Founding Fathers) that has ever been drafted in human history? I am against certain Bush policies because of fact, not fiction or that I belong to the Bush Haters Club - the same applied for my views of the Clinton administration. But I digress …

DaVinci Code is a Novel

Dan Brown’s best-selling novel (key word here is novel) is quite the subject and the film based upon the book will be coming to a theater near you this summer.

Roman Catholic Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, Archbishop of Genoa, has called the novel and upcoming film “shameful and unfounded.” Cardinal Gaudencio Rosales, the Archbishop of Manila, stated that it was “blasphemous.” The Greek Orthodox Church says that “from a religious and historical point of view the film is wholly false.”

What are they talking about - The DaVinci Code, of course. It is a novel of fiction that is a murder mystery in which the Holy Grail is the gist of the story. Two people, Robert Langdon and Sophie Neveu are out to solve the mystery and learn that the Bible was not divinely inspired by god but rather politically inspired by Roman Emperor Constantine. They also learn that Jesus’ divinity was “a late-developed doctrine foisted on Christians by the Council of Nicaea.” Instead of being divine, Jesus was a human prophet who married Mary Magdalene and had children by her. The Holy Grail is actually Mary Magdalene’s ancestry (“blood line”).