brighid

This is what Christians have to say about Wicca and again tie it to Satanism …

Wicca is actually polytheistic, its pantheon consisting of the Horned God which is viewed as the consort of the Goddess, and the Triple Goddess herself, whose aspects are the maiden, the mother, and the crone. The basic form of Wicca is the coven (or base community), which consists ideally of 13 people who meet regularly to practice their so-called craft. (This is the only factually true statement unblemished by bias in the whole friggin section) The number is significant; it is a mockery of the number 13 which composes Jesus and his 12 apostles. (horeshit!)
Covens cast spells which sometimes mock the Eucharist.(more horeshit) They often worship in the nude (some do, some don’t and especially NOT in winter! Brr). Modern witches practice "psychic healing," dance, chant, lay hands on one another and use storytelling in the coven to raise anger directed against the so-called patriarchy (i.e., the arch enemy, God the Father).HORSE SHIT!!! In some spells they attempt to inflict harm on others, although this is supposed to be done only on those who may have banned others first. In a "banishing spell" published in Canadian witch Robin Skeleton's publicly-funded The Practice of Witchcraft, the first words read as follows: "If this one has hurt this other one, let him be racked with the same pain."[14] HS!
Despite the commonly heard nonsense (so unbiased) that Wiccans are life-affirming, Skeleton presents in his book an even more appalling spell to "cause a natural miscarriage." This bit of malevolent free verse begins with the lines "Take back this gift. Let the womb release the human fish in its bubbled seas. Unclench the gut. Let the birth run out that none may be hurt in flesh or heart. . . etc."[15] The caster of the spell used to ask the "goddess" to kill an unborn child is told that it will be stronger magic if an egg is broken into a dish and then buried in the earth.
<a href="http://www.trincomm.org/research/retrieve.cfm?RecNum=611" target="_blank">http://www.trincomm.org/research/retrieve.cfm?RecNum=611</a>
All I can say is horse-shit –totally distorted, prejudicial horse shit. Christianity DOES not affirm the rights of others to express their religious or non-religious beliefs. The practice of other religions is tolerated by the majority of Christians because religion in protected in the US and then we also know the Christian Right works – need I say more. It is the abject silence of those supposed Christians who say this is not their way that is most disturbing. They allow their fellow Christian brethren to speak for them and in their silence they affirm the ascent. Silence is violence when your silence allows others to be oppressed.

Now there are some individual Christians who are different – but Christianity as an institution is not for the freedom of all, but the freedom of their own particular sect.

Brighid

Amos

The real definition of Catholics would never be comprehensible by even the most lofty New Yorker so there is no need to define it to believers. In fact the opposite is true in that Catholicism is a mystery religion that works best as a mystery of faith.

Lex Talionis

Quite. Of course, Wicca and most neo-pagan religions are not reveled religions, so it can be quite difficult to nail down the beliefs of any particular form of paganism. (Well, I've heard of a group in the US that bases its spiritual study on the Elder and Poetic Eddas and anticipates and offers survival courses for Ragnarok, but if they're even serious, they're in a great minority)

The irony of it, to me, is that belief in the ability of magic(k) to alter reality seems much stronger in conservative Christians than it does in pagans.

daemon

The Catholic Church explicitly denies the ability of the common man to decide upon theological matters, including what constitutes Catholicism, and has for a thousand years. The Catholic Church defines what Catholicism is on its own authority, and the top of the hierarchy controls the Church. According to them, you don't and shouldn't have the right to choose your own religious beliefs.