From the so-called American Catholic Church's Theology of Jesus as a Warm Fuzzie, to today's Jesus as a Home Boy, the Bishops of St. Cloud, Minnesota, Little Rock, Arkansas & El Paso, Texas still have trouble making the here and now connection between declining financial resources and the continued proliferation of religious apostasy in their bible study teaching materials.

Result?

Interesting!

Because while non-Catholic Christians are having a field day snapping up former Catholics to their own churches, many non-Catholics are converting to Catholicism, albeit not necessarily in these same dioceses.

Here are the latest examples of religious apostasy, a word which is more or less defined as the denial of religious belief, two books used in the here and now in the Dicoese of El Paso's Bible Studies program:

Pilch, John J. Cultural Tools for Interpreting the Good News. Collegeville, Minnesota: The Order of St. Benedict, Inc. 2002.

Nihil obstat : Robert C. Harren, Censor deputatus.
Imprimatur: John F. Kinney, Bishop of St. Cloud, Minnesota. April 8, 2002.

This book is warmly endorsed on the back cover by one David Valtierra, C.O. Scripture Institute at the Oratory, Rock Hill, S.C.

Pages 39-40.

"The baptism of Jesus precedes this encounter with the demon [as is recorded in Mark 1:24]. Jesus is moved to repentance by the preaching of John [the Baptist] and submits to his baptism. Perhaps his [Jesus Christ's] manual labor was less than perfect, perhaps he [Jesus Christ] cheated a customer, even if unintentionally. John was announcing forgiveness of sins using a word, forgiveness, which in peasant experience was always linked with forgiveness of debts. Even Jesus as an artisan could plausibly have needed forgiveness of debts. At the same time, John's baptism inserted the candidate into a transformed community which John announces." (39)

"No doubt he [Jesus Christ] also learned the basic skills of a Holy Man from John [the Baptist] an experienced, succesful, and to judge by the crowds he attracted, highly respected Holy Man.

"Once initiated, the holy Man becomes increasingly familiar with the adopting spirit and the spirit world. Because God and the spirit world are involved in this experience, anthropologists call it a religious trance. In the life of Jesus, these would include the testing (Mark 1:12-13); walking on the sea (Mark 6:45-52); the Transfiguration (Mark 9:2-8), For his followers, all experiences of the Risen Jesus are instances of religious trance."

Page 71, dealing with the Ressurection of Jesus Christ:

"The nature of this sighting of the risen Christ is an altered state of consciousness experience. Ninety percent of the people on the face of this planet have such experieces routinely, since all human beings experience a variety of states of consciousness throughout the day and even during sleep. Daydreaming, road hypnosis, reverie produced by music or art are but some of the twenty different states of consciousness of which human beings are capable, including normal, waking consciousness."