Well the “spirit” of his post singled out the Catholic church for not being Christian.
This “stuff” is disturbing to you. Fine. Are you suggesting that other “Christian” churches do not have policies or directives that are disturbing to you?
If not, then the entire point of the OP seems rather moot.
great…and marching season just around the corner… 
**beagledave **
*Well the “spirit” of [lenin’s] post singled out the Catholic church for not being Christian.
[re; the link I posted]
This “stuff” is disturbing to you. Fine. Are you suggesting that other “Christian” churches do not have policies or directives that are disturbing to you?
If not, then the entire point of the OP seems rather moot." *
Excuse me, beagledave but that is utterly illogical. I have already made clear that I don’t hold the Catholic church to be uniquely guilty of hypocrisy.
To say that one particular hypocritical institution is not the only hypocritical institution is not, however, to moot discussion of that institution’s hypocrisy.
I find it rather odd, though not surprising, how irrational people become when religion is in question. If you were defending the Church policies cited in the article I would at least understand your position. But, as it stands, you seem to be defending the Church, not by defending its policies, but by accusing me of a particular prejudice against it which I have repeatedly disavowed.
Once again, for the record, the Catholic Church does not have a monopoly, as some have put it, on hypocrisy. For that matter, religious institutions do not have a monopoly on hypocrisy. Whatever lenin may have meant (and perhaps my reading of the OP isn’t the right one), I haven’t meant that, and I still don’t mean that, but I do stand behind my specific criticisms nevertheless.
Phew!
I’d like to jump into the discussion between Biggirl and Mambo, which isn’t related to the OP, but I find more interesting. 
Right off the bat, I have to say that I think Mambo is being a bit dogmatic in his views about the Coptic Church. For example, these comments
I have three comments on these points:
First, the earliest church had to be the church at Jerusalem. I don’t think it’s clear if any existing denomination can today claim to be the direct successor of that loose body - the Eastern Orthodox and the Oriental Orthodox may be the best candidates if you’re looking for a direct line of descent, so to speak, but Christ himself likened his work to the yeast in the dough, working gradually throughout - so in that sense, all churches claim descent from the original church, as I tried to indicate in my earlier posting in reply to Biggirl.
Second, at this remove in time, it’s a bit difficult to be so precise. There are a lot of traditions about where the apostles went and what churches they founded - some believable, others purely legend. S. Mark is traditionally associated with the early church in Alexandria, but he’s also traditionally associated with the early church in Venice and Rome. Those traditions date to an early age, and seem believable. But we can’t say that they are historical fact, in the same way as historical events that are better documented thorugh the ages.
Third, both SS. Peter and Paul are traditionally held to have travelled to Rome and evangelized there, and S. Peter is traditionally considered the first Bishop of Rome and hence the first Pope. I’m by no means well-versed in this area, but I would say that the traditions respecting Peter and Paul in Rome are at least as strongly based as the tradition of S. Mark in Alexandria.
I would also resepctfully disagree with Mambo’s statement, as being over-broad:
There’s no doubt that S. Athanasius attended the Nicence Council in 325, as secretary to Alexander, Bishop of Alexandria. (Athanasius became Bishop in 328) There’s also little doubt that Athanasius was a leader of the Nicenes in opposition to the Arians, and ultimately the Nicene party won at the Council of Constantinople in 381. However, from my limited understanding of the history, I don’t think that it is possible to attribute the Nicene Creed definitely to one person, such as S. Athanasius. It was the work of the Nicene and Constantinople Councils, not an individual, and was likely an attempt to summarise earlier creeds dating back to the early years of the Church, possibly in Jerusalem. (Mambo - are you sure you’re not thinking of the Athanasian Creed, traditionally ascribed to S. Athanasius?)
I also have some difficulty with Mambo’s argument that the Coptic Church has never changed its doctrine while the Roman Catholic church did, which is what he seems to be saying in these two passages:
The point of disagreement which led to the split between the Catholic and Eastern Othodox, on the one side, and the Oriental Orthodox, such as the Coptic Church, was a theological debate on the nature of Jesus Christ. The Oriental Orthodox took the view that Jesus was divine in nature, and divine alone (the Monophysite doctrine). The Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches took the view that Jesus was both divine and human (the Dyophysite doctrine). The two groups of churches split finally after the Definition of Chalcedon, which affirmed the Nicene Creed.
I’ve summaraised the theological issue to emphasise that I don’t think it’s correct to say that the Roman Catholic church changed its doctrine, while the Copts kept theirs intact; nor is it possible to say that this issue can be settled by simple reference to the Bible - if it could, there wouldn’t have been a debate. Rather, this was an issue that arose from theological speculations on the nature of Christ, and different churches chose to interpret it in different ways.
Next, with respect to dogma and theology of the different churches, Mambo said
and biggirl replied:
I would tend to agree with Biggirl here, provided we substitute “ascension” for “cruxifixion,” of course, since the Gospels state that Christ was present and teaching for forty days following Easter.
Different churches tend to emphasise different points in their interpretation of the Bible, and I would respectfully disagree with Mambo that the inerrency of the Coptic Church’s interpretation is self-evident from studying the Bible. For example, the doctrine of Purgatory is not accepted by Protestant churches.
However, I would also respectfully disagree with Biggirl’s further comment:
Some churches, and some members of some churches, do make such claims. But there are also churches which do not make such claims, and instead simply acknowledge the differences in approach and choose to respect those differences. It’s not the case that all churches believe that other churches are heretics and bound for hell. The basic point, as Mambo says, is the decision to follow Christ.
Northern Piper,
Thanks for your comments.
I did not mean to claim that the Alexandrian Church is the first Church to have been established. What I am saying is that it was founded by one of Christ’s disciples–a person who actually spoke to Jesus (most importantly between the ressurrection and the asscension when Jesus instructed the disciples on how to build the new church) and was later martyred for Him. The disciples are as close to Jesus as you can get. The Coptic Church is the oldest, uncorrupted church.
Many of the Churches corrupted the message (primarily due to the intertwining of government and church). Reperations, Papal infallability, The Virgin Mary being considered sinless and practically worshipped are just a few of the examples that the Catholic’s (and other churches) started asserting.
The Coptic Orthodox Church, however, did not introduce new doctrine and profess it to be from God. Of course there are sinners and fools in all churches, but the corruption of the Word of God did not occur in the Coptic Orthodox Church. Thus, the Coptic Church has been the same since St. Mark (I do not consider liturgies and hymns changes to the Church. Those are just the means to bring the message to a particular group of people)
Northern Piper, a couple of quick points: the Coptic Orthodox Church does not and did not profess the Monophysite Doctrine. It is the belief of the Church that Christ had BOTH a perfect divine nature and a perfect human nature united in one. The Copt’s were falsely accused. And as for all this talk about Jesus not explaining his message and everything after the Crucifixion being interpretation (as biggirl said), I argue that is not true. Between the resurrection and the ascension Christ taught his disciples. St. Mark was one of those disciples who was instructed by Christ on how to build the Church and in which way to build it. St. Mark also wrote the oldest of the Gospels. I think he could be trusted to know what Jesus said (and we have the Bible as our litmus test of truth) especially since he was later martyred for following Him.
The point of this is not to bring one church up or another church down. However, the Catholics have many teachings that go directly against the Bible. The Coptic Church does not, although individuals within the Church may not understand the message clearly. The Copts have considered it almost a duty not to change since they can serve as a beacon for other Christian churches.
The hope for all Christians should be to have one church, the Christian Church, that is based purely on Jesus’ Word, that will be able to adapt to the different needs of an eclectic group of people, and that works to bring all men closer to the Savior.
Please do the research on this and you will see that the Coptic Church has not changed since its founding and that this is backed up by unbiased historians.
Uh, Mandelstam?
I think I know the difference between Lenin and Stalin. As the Russians say, “Lenin has killed his millions and Stalin his tens of millions”.
Yeah, Stalin was worse than Lenin. But Lenin was the one who set up the totalitarian genocidal Soviet regime in the first place. This whole practice of rehabilitating Lenin by saying he wasn’t as bad as Stalin is pretty silly. Yes, I’d rather get bitten by a rattlesnake than a cobra. Doesn’t mean I’d want to get bitten by a rattlesnake.
Lemur, I’m delighted that you weren’t confusing Lenin with Stalin. That said, I don’t think that Lenin deserves to be remembered only for his share in the authoritarian regime that Soviet communism became, but also for what seems to me to have been his genuinely humane beginnings. A lot can be learned from Lenin’s example, and not just that revolutionaries often lapse into tyrannical practices.
I don’t know whether lenin (not Vladmir) was a troll looking for attention, or just someone with a naive and somewhat insensitive way of phrasing his/her thoughts. If the former, the name “lenin” may well have been chosen to elicit precisely the kind of “Oh and you think you know what it means to be a good human being and you call yourself Lenin” response that I was reacting to when I first made my very qualified remark. (And if you look at that remark you’ll notice that it was Marx’s philosophy that I was likening to Christian philosophy and not Lenin’s acts.) I dislike it these days when people act as though Marx’s huge contribution to philosophy were somehow invalidated by the collapse of Soviet-style communism. Anyone paying attention to what is going on in Russia today will know that–at present–there is at least as much to be learned in that country about the flaws of capitalist orthodoxies as there is about Lenin’s legacy. That was the spirit in which I responded: that and the fact that it seemed that people weren’t acknowledging that lenin, for all his/her ineptitude, had some points about the Catholic Church that warranted debate.
Unless one can demonstrate that an organization as a whole actively opposes (now, not in the past) it’s professed beliefs, one cannot claim an organization to be hypocritical.
See, hypocrisy is a human trait. It means to profess beliefs one does not possess.
Are there hypocritical people in the RCC? Of course. Is the RCC as a whole hypocritical? Show me some evidence.
“its,” dammit, not “it’s”
Sorry 'bout that.
The policies espoused by the Catholic hospitals are in line with the following:
Abortion is immoral.
Birth control and sterilization are immoral.
Physician-assisted suicide is immoral.
Discontinuing extraordinary means to keep someone allive is OK; discontinuing food and water may not be.
OK, so the Church is not being internally hypocritical, as these are clearly in line with Catholic guidelines. Your accusation of hypocrisy is that these guidelines go against the word of God, as preached by Jesus?
I don’t see how. Jesus spoke of loving God with all your heart, mind and soul, and your neighbor as yourself. He spoke of observing the Ten Commandments, one of which is against killing. He spoke of not worrying about things and trusting in God who takes care of the lilies in the field and the sparrows in the sky and will take excellent care of us. In other words, guidelines that choose life and don’t go against the natural way of things (fertility, the end of life) are in line with the word of God.
Where is the hypocrisy in these policies?
The problem in the Catholic Church is that they added to the Bible. Purgatory, for example, is not from the Bible and misleads people into believing that they have a second chance (according to the Bible) to turn to Christ. The belief in the infallibility of the Pope goes against the Biblical message that not one person is righteous. Same goes for the belief in the Virgin Mary being without sin.
“If anyone adds to these things, God will add to him the plagues that are written in this book; and if anyone takes away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God shall take away his part from the Book of Life, from the holy city, and from the things which are written in this book.” (Revelations 22:18,19)
Unfortunately the Catholic Church has added and taken away from what the Bible says.
**
I’m sure Tommndeb or somebody knows this better, but isn’t Purgatory supposed to be just for Christians? It’s where you go if you’re a Christian, but have done some bad stuff so you can be purified so you can go to heaven. I thought.
Captain Amazing,
Purgatory is not in the Bible. The Catholics made it up. I think at the same time they started reperations.
technically, purgatory is not a doctrine of faith, but a theological opinion. a widely held opinion, but still not a magesterial teaching.
jb
and mambo, you don’t happen to mean ‘indulgences’, do you? you’d have to fill me in on what reparations mean.
jb
Mambo - so you’re saying that in two thousand years, not a single improvement should be made in a religion? Faith isn’t allowed to evolve?
beagledave posted a link to this thread in the first reply to the OP. About halfway down the first page of it, tomndebb (among the best explicators of Catholocism and orthodox Christian belief you’ll encounter, so listen to him) explains that Catholics did not just “make up” purgatory. It is implied in a passage from II Maccabees, a deuterocanonical book rejected by Protestants partly because of that implication. It is therefore we Protestants who are guilty of changing the Bible to support an essentially made up theological point (i.e., there is no purgatory).
I thought my ears were burning (and thank you for the kind words).
FTR, while I do follow the RCC teachings on the canonicity of II Maccabees and the teachings regarding Purgatory, I recognize that there are strong arguments that can be made in opposition, as well. It is certainly not an open-and-shut case on either side.
A more complete (i.e., even more long-winded) treatment of sin, forgiveness, Purgatory, etc. (with a bit of Scripture) can be found on the What’s the Catholic Church’s position on this? thread at 08-01-2000 09:35 PM and at 08-02-2000 11:44 AM. (Near the bottom.)
The responsibility of the churches should be to bring the Christian message to their parishioners in a relevant way. So, hymns can change, liturgies can change (for language and for culture) but only to make the Christian message more understandable to the people. The core doctrine, which comes from the Bible, cannot be changed.
If it were “improved” as you say, then that leaves the door open for misguided individuals to change the core doctrine.
jb_farley, you are right. I feel like a fool for saying “reperations” in two different posts.