We have all heard that ISIS is an extremist group, and that may be true depending on what context the word extremist is taken. Islamic purist also fits the bill as an accurate description. So Connecting the Dots decided to see what that would look like if applied to a Christian based religion.
In some of our recent entries, we have concluded that ISIS is following the Quran and Sharia laws to the letter. There is no stepping off the path, and in fact it may be better described as stepping off the line as it is so strict. Everyone be they a cleric or just your average person who has a nine to five job must follow Islam to the letter. So just for contrast, we decided to swap Islam with Catholicism and see what that behavior would look like.
From the very start everyone would need to have the mannerism of being a priest. Daily prayers as well as following diet restrictions of no meat on certain days would be required. There also would be a requirement of going to church without excuse be it on sleep in late Sunday or not. For the most part that is not too hard, but that is just the start.
Some common sense things like birth control would need to be stopped. So if you end up with about 20+ more children than you wanted, it is seen as the will of God. Even a vasectomy or the equal female surgical procedure could not even be considered.
All decisions in your daily life must be guided by various passages in the Bible. With that you would be compelled to report sinners to the church. There would be no political correctness and you would need to get in the sinners face. Punishment for sins would be handed out by the church as there would be no form of government. The rule of the church would be absolute. There would be no trial by jury or anything else that would even remotely resemble a modern judicial system. Punishment would be entirely decided by the church. To be fair in comparison, some of those punishments would date back to the days of the birth of Islam being sometime between 500 AD and 600 AD.
For a quick note, much was the same as ISIS is doing today. Getting tossed to the lions and so on was one of the options. The lion was seen as the physical empowerment of the will of God. So if the lion killed you, it was the will of God, and it got past the do not Kill part of the 10 Commandments. This thinking was also seen in the days of the Salem Witch hunts where if a person survived or not was the will of God because a person was not wheedling a weapon. Water or fire was seen as the instrument of God as they were creations of God. Also much of the punishments were from the Old Testament and not the New Testament if an appropriate punishment could not be found in the New Testament.
So for the most part this is what it would be like. Now if you decide to call it Catholic extremism or simply being very devout is your choice as essentially both are an accurate description depending on the context of what is being said.
