@Valjean I have slightly reformatted your post in my reply for reasons of readability.
A Muslim who knows only Islam is not in sin on that account. Nor a Buddhist in a similar position. As to the salvation of those outside the visible Church, we commend that to God.
It is. There is nothing any creature can do that can in any way diminish God. But God as God is entitled to our reverence and worship as a matter of justice. Blasphemy is a sin against this reverence and since God is just he must hold injustice to account. In this case the injustice done is against the virtue of religion.I should think infinite dignity would be absolutely imperturbable.
- Is the injustice against God, or against some other entity?
- Who has been harmed? For that matter, is 'justice' consequential, or deontologic?
- What makes it society's business to extract retribution? You acknowledge that God cannot be harmed by our actions, so what harm is being vindicated?
- What is retribution supposed to accomplish?Piety owed to God? Who determined this? How does this piety benefit God? How is God hurt by its withdrawal?
- Do all who withhold piety from Allah deserve death -- Christians, Buddhists? Parsis? Animists? Atheists?
- It is against God, since blasphemy attacks the reverence due to God.
- Ultimately, the one harmed is the blasphemer himself. Mortal sin deprives us of sanctifying grace, without which we are ineligible for salvation.
- Under current circumstances I do not think the civil authority (in secular states) is in a position to punish blasphemy. At this point, the explicit re-recognition of God as lord over even secular states will not happen outside divine intervention.
- Retribution makes satisfaction for wrong done. It is the same principle by which Catholics commit to penance after absolution.
- My religion teaches that anyone who dies in mortal sin deserves eternity in Hell.
His sin against the virtue of religion. I meant conversion in the sense of growing closer to God, not necessarily converting to Catholicism. Although should the truth of Catholicism press upon a person's conscience that person should convert to Catholicism. One is obligated to accept the truth. But to the extent a person can accept the truth is in part a grace from God and in part a consequence of that person's circumstances.What has the blasphemer to repent for? Why should he convert? Don't the Muslims condemn conversion, inasmuch as it entails apostacy?
Isis and Thor are false deities of dead religions. I would not blaspheme Allah, since Allah as understood by Muslims is worshiped as the same God I as a Christian recognise. The error in Islam (from a Christian point of view) is not so much in what it affirms but in what it denies. Nonetheless, if I were to go to an Islamic state and badmouth Islam I would be committing a catastrophic imprudence at the very least.Should you, a Catholic, be killed for your impiety toward Isis, or Thor, or Allah?
As a Catholic, I recognise only one religion as being true. That is the religion taught by the Church founded by God incarnate. All other religions are mistaken. Being mistaken is not in itself a sin or heresy. The sin is in ignoring the truth once and if it has been made known to you.What makes blasphemy a sin? Is heterodoxy itself a sin? Is deviance from every religion's doctrine a sin? If so, what of contradictory doctrines? Eg: You say the Catholic god is real, a Buddhist says no god is real, the Navajo say the Diyin Diné are real. Which one sins? Aren't they all heretics in the eyes of the others? Can all of them be legitimately punished?
A Muslim who knows only Islam is not in sin on that account. Nor a Buddhist in a similar position. As to the salvation of those outside the visible Church, we commend that to God.
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