I don’t wish to get involved in the ongoing argument here but can someone clarify something for me?
The Church of the Nativity is important to Christians in the same way that Temple Mount is important to Jews or Mecca is important to Muslims, right?
Ok it may not be the actual spot where Jesus was born but it is the place that Christians have chosen to symbolise the place of Jesus’ birth. Same as Jews have chosen Temple Mount to represent the place where the third Temple should be - they don’t really know for sure that thats where it is, same as with the square in Mecca where Mohammed ascended into Heaven.
I mean, we don’t have GPS co-ordinates to exactly pinpoint any of these places. So isn’t the Church of the Nativity just as important to Christians as the other places are to Jews and Muslims?
In a word, no. The church of the Nativity is profoundly UNimportant to the christian faith.
a)Christianity doesn’t really go in for ‘holy places’ in the same way that Judaism and Islam (in their different fashions) do. There is no place that you are supposed to make pilgrimage to once in your life, and there is no place designated as ‘the place God told us to worship at’
b) Even if it did, the church of the Nativity wouldn’t cut it, because the really important event that needs to be commemorated is Jesus’s DEATH, not his birth.
I would be willing to bet that 9 out of 10 western christians didn’t even know there was such a place as the Church of the Nativity this time last month.
(PS on preview…- good apology-post Kirk. Short, succinct, and weasel-free…)
Perhaps your version of Christianity doesn’t “go in” for holy places, but the two oldest, and largest Christian faiths, Catholicism and Orthodoxy, most certainly do. The two ancient churches have many holy places and spaces. Not only those for the life of Christ, but the Vatican where Peter is buried, a Church in Rome over the burial place of Paul, and countless other shrines and bascilas built over or near the locations of the martyrdom, burial or apparitions of saints.
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Yes, Christmas is much less important thatn Easter, but it is still a very important part of the Christian faith. The Church of the Nativity is one of the two or three most holy sites in Christendom.
Well, I don’t want to sound like I think there are no sites in the world that are of any importance to any Christians, but I don’t think any of them approach the importance of Temple Mount to Jews or Mecca to Muslims.
Temple The one site in the world, as far as I recall, where Jews were authorised to offer sacrifices. The destruction of the Temple stopped the sacrificial system altogether - basically losing this one place changed the way the Jewish people worship for at least two thousand years, maybe forever. If the Church of the Nativity was reduced to a smoking cinder tomorrow (which I certainly hope doesn’t happen) many Christians would be sad, but the Christian religion would be unchanged.
Mecca This has doctrinal significance to Muslims. All muslims are supposed to try to make pilgrimage to Mecca once in their lifetimes. They even get a special title - Hajji - (sp??) after they’ve completed it. There is no such obligation to go anywhere on pilgrimage in the Christian religion, and if there was I suspect the object would be Jerusalem, not Bethlehem.
‘Profoundly unimportant’ may have been an overstatement, however. Can we agree on ‘nowhere near as important as the Jewish/Muslim comparisons given in the example’?
And I would seriously like to know how many Christians on this board (are we allowed to do polls in the pit?) knew about the Church of the Nativity before the recent events (to a greater level of knowledge than just “yeah, I expect there’s a church round there, don’t know what it’s called”). I know I didn’t.
By the way, what are your nominations for top two, if the C of N is at #3?
Actually, as a cradle catholic, (now lapsed) I also knew about the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem. Maybe it’s a catholic thing.
Maybe that’s why the Pope intervened recently rather than a more general “christian” intervention.
As regards the poll, I would have thought that St Peter’s in Rome would be No 1 (assuming it’s not the Church of the Nativity).
As regards pilgrimages, I would have to take issue with you. Devout catholics are always going on pilgrimages. They never stop. Whether it’s to Lourdes or Fatima or Medjugorje or Knock or Jerusalem or wherever. Pilgrimages are a constant feature of a (devout) catholic’s life.
I just hope Sharon realises what he’s doing when dealing with the Church of the Nativity. Catholics view it as one of their holiest sites. This is important because catholicism is the world’s biggest religion.
I take your point about how catholicism/christianity would continue unchanged even if the Church were to be completely destroyed.
But it wouldn’t endear Sharon (and, by extension, Israel) to the world’s largest religion and hence the world’s largest pressure group.
Shhh! It’s the pit! We’re not supposed to be nice to each other here! But maybe if we act all inconspicuous an’ stuff nobody will notice…
I assume that the C of N is owned by the Catholic church?? I can’t find a definitive answer to this in any of the news sources I’ve seen so far, but this would make sense.
I bet Orthodox christians have a different list
I have no idea what the Protestant equivalent (for whatever flavour of protestantism) would be - my guess would be the city of Jerusalem (inside the walls anyway) or just nothing at all.
Ok, well I guess you just fought some ignorance over here then
Is it catholic doctrine that the C of N is where Jesus actually, no argument, was born? Or just, ‘well, it was somewhere round here…’
