Saturday, October 02, 2010

Catholicity of Bill O'Reilly

I enjoyed watching the interview with Bill Mahner this week on the Bill O'Reilly. The ongoing political debate between the two is always informative and entertaining.

However, I found the 'religion' portion of the interview to be quite interesting. That part begins around the 14:00 minute mark of the video.

Mr Mahner, a self professed atheist and Mr. O'Reilly a self professed Catholic had a brief exchanged that left me a little frustrated and well embarrassed. Embarrassed because while Mr. O'Reilly is know for his political prowess his knowledge of his own faith is rather limited. To me that doesn't set well for such a high influentially person as he is and as he just emphasised in on his show with some resent public polls supporting this claim to being 'most' influential in a positive sense.In the political realm maybe, but certainly not expressing his religious knowledge.

Mr. Mahner point to Old Testament scripture from Exodus that claimed to justify killing those that didn't keep holy the sabbath day. Mr. O'Reially claimed that he (Catholic) doesn't pay too much attention to the Old Testament, but more on the New Testament. This is so baloney, Catholics take the WHOLE bible in it's entirety, not just the New Testament.

Mr. O'Reilly seemed rather confused on how to defend his faith. He couldn't or didn't know that Jesus didn't come to 'do away from the old' law but to 'fulfill it'. And those passages in the Old Testament have their place in the New Testament. Certainly the Deuteronomy law (second law) has come to pass with the birth of Jesus and his final act on the Cross. How many times in the New Testament did Jesus say "you have heard it said...but now I tell you" bringing the old law into a higher level. The act of Marriage comes to mind as he reminded the crowd that those ancestors had a hardness of heart that is no longer acceptable.

Also O'Reilly over simplifying of the Bible as all "Allegorical" is non-sense. Though some parts are allegorical, as a Catholic 'This is my Body... This is my Blood" is NOT!

Bill O'Reilly regularly defends the right to life which is highly commendable and regularly defends the Christian perspective. I only wish he would study and know his faith as much as it appears he does his political knowledge

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