Pope downplays interfaith dialogue (maybe)

“Batholics in Bohemia, or when your pastor enquires of you” is a Czeck cartoon which was inspired by Tony Cartledge’s May 20, 2005, blog “Baptists or Batholics?”

I am informed that the caption translates, “Did you vote for Christian democratic party, Civic democratic party or social democrats? According to the new SBC instruction no. 214/09 we cannot accept liberal voters.”

A few days after a Baptist minister called the Roman Catholic Church a cult comes word that the pope himself is sending mixed signals about the worth of interfaith dialogue.

Pope Benedict XVI wrote in a letter to an author that “an interreligious dialogue in the strict sense of the word is not possible” according to a report in the New York Times. In theological terms, the pope said, “a true dialogue is not possible without putting one’s faith in parentheses.”

The news comes after Jim Smyrl, the executive pastor of education at the First Baptist Church of Jacksonville, called the Catholic Church a “cult” in one of his church’s official blogs.

But it’s important to note that the pope also said “intercultural dialogue which deepens the cultural consequences of basic religious ideas” is important and called for confronting “in a public forum the cultural consequences of basic religious decisions.”

A Vatican spokesman seemed to walk back the pope’s comments even further, saying the comments were not meant to cast doubt on the Vatican’s many continuing interreligious dialogues.

Perhaps some good would result now if Jim Smyrl had an audience with the pope. He is, after all, a Batholic.

Fair Trade Christmas Olive Oil

Anne-Marie Berger of Living St. Louis examined Fair Trade and its increasing in popularity.

Fair trade is a means of providing adequate wages to the individuals that make many of the products that we all use everyday.

This video tells the story of Dr. Wilman Ortega, who is a third generation coffee farmer from Guatemala who founded Beans for Hope where a portion of coffee sales go to schools in his home country.

Coffee isn’t the only seasonal, fair-trade foodstuff.

Nor is refusal to countenance slavery inevitably a part of choosing fair-trade products over others.

Import Peace is non-profit organization that sells high-quality, fair-trade, USDA organic olive oil produced in Palestine.

It was founded by a group of 100 Presbyterians in response to the frustration, pain and poverty of the people of the Palestinian Occupied Territories during a 2006 trip with the Presbyterian Peacemaking Program.

Read the entire article