Sometimes, if you really want people to follow something, you should write it down. You can write down all of your beliefs, all of your laws, all of your rules, and all of your customs. If you do all those things people won't be able to say that you stand for something if, in fact, you don't. A disadvantage of this is that people will be able to say that you stand for things that, in fact, you do stand for. The Catholic Church's Catechism is a shining example of this. Often times you will hear Catholics who do not go to church say that you don't need to go to church to be a good catholic. It's true that the Catholics will always consider you a catholic, even if you don't attend mass, so that they can boast about it's number of adherents. If a catholic should come up to you and say that they are adhering Catholics who do not go to church, please refer them to the Vaticans's website (http://www.vatican.va/) and tell them to see Catechism 2180-2181 in Part(p) 3 Section(s) 2 Chapter(c) 1 Article(a) 3 which says that not attending Church is a grave sin and that Catechism 1857 in p3s1c1a8 states that this grave sin is a mortal sin. If a catholic should tell you that you can achieve salvation outside of the church show them to Catechism 845 in p1 s2 c3 a9 paragraph 3 which states quite the opposite.
Thank you Vatican for posting your Catechism and Canon Laws. It enable people like me to read basically the entirety of your beliefs, laws, rules, and so on. Interestingly, it's surprisingly difficult to find the document on the website, so here's a direct link for the interested http://www.vatican.va/archive/ENG0015/_INDEX.HTM - if you are searching for a specific part in the catechism, ask and I can refer you to the correct part, if it exists. There are some things that people attribute to the Catholics unjustly.
As well as documenting religious beliefs, writing can document culture. Codes of law, constitutions, instruction manuals, and other documents often describe many of the most important aspects of a culture. This is one reason why the destruction of documents is such a tragedy in many cases - even if a culture is destroyed, it can be recreated from its documentation, but that is gone then the culture also is all too often gone forever.
ReplyDeletePerhaps the best-known example of this is the Spanish destruction of a vast portion of the Aztec culture's written works. While, after much effort, archaeologists have discovered a few remaining documents, as well as stone carvings which record part of Aztec culture, there are still many aspects of the culture which remain unknown to modern researchers, and will probably always remain so.
In contrast, cultures which conquered other cultures but retained the conquered cultures' written documentation are often responsible for greatly improving modern society's knowledge of the past. Cultures are intertwined, so preserving the documents of one culture frequently affects later knowledge of others.
P.S. I also posted this on my blog if you'd rather read it there.