If you read the article, they are not exactly equal.
Break the rules, and you get kicked out of the club. My outrage meter isn’t registering anything. I say let the Catholics do what they want, as long as they’re not hurting anyone. If women want to be priests, there are plenty of religions that allow them to do that.
While the Church does consider both to be high offenses it does not put them into the same category. The article say that there will be separate categories for offenses against morals and offenses against sacraments. The abuse of children is the former and ordination of women is the latter.
To say that this means the Church considers both the be of equal gravity makes as much sense as saying the United States things murder and theft are equally bad. After all can be felonies. True, both may have different punishments, but I imagine that so would the offenses listed in the article.
While I’ll agree that it was a miss step to discuss both in the same news conference I do not think it is sufficient evidence to show that the Church thinks both are of equal gravity.
Does anyone have a transcript of the news conference? I can’t find one. We are relying on second hand reports here and one of them is an editorial. I think we need better grounds for a good discussion.
That’s the fault of those institution that allow themselves to be influenced by the Church. It’s a private club by any meaningful definition. Don’t like it, don’t join.
Perhaps you are correct about the situation hundreds of years ago. But not now.
The Church shows no signs of waning on this or birth control. People take birth control into their own hands and make decisions. The Church does not advertise the number of married priests either. The approved ones were previously married and now promise to be celibate. A whole other group are openly married and defy Rome.
I won’t live long enough for a change. When the ranks dwindle to nothing and the need arises, I bet there will be some epiphany of some kind. Some rock will speak or an alien will drop a message. Something will develop that rationalizes the needed change. It will be God’s will. By then all the women may be constructed like men anyway. I guess that’s another whole concept.
Well that’s your own highly personal opinion. Others would point to an institution that educates millions of children worldwide, helps feed and provide medical care for large numbers of poor brown people, runs significant portions of the healthcare system, has traditionally taken the lead in providing orphanages and hospice care, may well lower your property taxes by taking kids out of the public schools, and has preserved much of the cultural patrimony of Western civilization. Mismanagement, horrible mis-management, and in some non-zero number of cases, cynically covering up, problems caused by individual pervert priests, is a serious lapse. Not everyone would agree with you that it outweighs the rest and results in net “evil.”
I’m not sure of your source for this. The predominant group of married Catholic priests are (1) a somewhat large contingent of Eastern Rite priests whose usages have allowed marriage; and (2) a small grouping of priests who lateralled into the priesthood as it were by conversion from another religion in which they were permitted to be married ministers. No, they are not then required to give up sex.
Your reference to dwindling ranks and needed changes is kind of question begging. Membership in the Catholic church is increasing as opposed to otherwise (admittedly, increasing roughly in line with population) and while it might seem obvious in these parts that maintaining a celibacy/men only requirement would clearly be fatal to any religion, that is not yet borne out by facts on the ground.
So the KKK isn’t a morally repugnant club, because despite it being a racist organization, it is, in fact, a private club?
:rolleyes:
It being a private club has nothing to do with whether its beliefs are repugnant or not- only that it has the right to play by its own rules.
Wrong analogy. The OP brings up the requirements on being an officer (priest) within the private club (i.e., you must be male).
Now while it is probably true that it would be difficult or impossible for a black or Jew to be the grand klaxon or whatever in the KKK, it is not this condition on membership or leadership that most people would find to be the principal problem with the Klan as morally repugnant. It’s the substantive policies and presumptions that the Klan has about respective other races and religions.
So if the RCC only allowed men to advance to the highest leadership of the club, allowed people to join, not join, leave the club at will, and separately worked for and advocated genocide or the like, that would be the better analogy. Conversely, if the Klan de facto or by policy limited its membership to a subset of white male rednecks, such that no one else could be a Klan leader, but had a principal policy plank of I don’t know advancing flower arrangement or unifying the heavyweight boxing championship or something otherwise benign or neutral, I’d doubt anyone would be too upset about the Klan as evil.
Everyone has the right to their opinion of course. But the Catholic Church is far from the happy place you paint.
Off the top of my head, the evils they currently cause:
They are against birth control, leading to incalculable suffering.
They systematically enable and cover up priests raping children.
They lie about the effectiveness of condoms, particularly in Africa, leading to spread of disease.
They terrify unhappy people into staying in loveless marriages, for fear of being cast into hell.
They frighten children into sobbing guilt about something as banal as masturbation.
They will gladly council a woman to kill herself in childbirth, when a legal alternative is available.
They actively fight the right of non-Catholic gays to marry.
I’m not saying that they do no good, I’m saying that the good they do is secondary to spreading their influence. The Catholic Church, in my opinion, just isn’t morally good.
I should mention, I’d trade the Evangelical-Loons we have in America for an equal number of additional Catholics any day.
IOW, that quite belatedly they’d be moving in the direction of harmonizing the organizational rules on clerical/sacramental misbehavior with the general society’s rules on criminal misbehavior.
ALSO, as the article cited mentions, this is NOT something that is new, it’s an announcement of an adjustment to something that has been in place for a decade anyway.
(Bolding mine)
It does rankle, doesn’t it – not only that in order to take sex abuse cases more seriously, it was felt necessary to incorporate it a new category within the larger class of “grave clerical offenses” (because, obviously, mere guilt of heinous human-law crimes is insufficent to impeach your priestly status…sure…), but also that the announcement was logrolled together with provisons such as the one about ordination of women, that are obviously meant to please the doctrinal hardliners. Makes it look like a crisis=opportunity mentality, where in exchange for a strengthening of the rules about sex abuse, that the hardliners would view as the Church backing down before The World, those same hardliners get to announce a strengthening of other conservative sacramental doctrines (because, of course, the problems with the Church all come from too much modernism and liberalism…sure…). In any case, it’s left to the APPLICATION of the new rules to show how seriously in effect the institution takes them.
Your “currently” is the first highly-suspect part. Certainly in America and Western Europe the behavior of Catholics is trending toward or at that of non-Catholics on issues such as contraception or divorce. Or can you show me statistics supportive of the idea that meaningful numbers of Catholics are “terrified” into staying in marriages when they don’t want to? By the way, I’m going to need a cite for your suggestion that divorce is grounds for damnation. The main policy of the Church as I understand it is that they deny that you have the ability to dissolve most marriages.
Also, take a poll of Catholic acquaintances and find out how many have ever experienced “sobbing guilt” over masturbation. No, really.
Of course, you cannot know and it seems very implausible that any strawman Catholic authority would be “glad” to counsel a woman to “kill herself” in childbirth (hmm, a vanishgliny rare scenario statistically, makes you wonder how significant it is).
The “right” of gays to marry is a modish idea that existed nowhere until about five minutes ago. They’re hardly alone in voicing their belief that it didn’t need to be invented.
And the abuse and coverups are not some ongoing (remember, current) official or de facto policy.
In short, the best examples you come up with are either not very current at all, or are drawn from some movie or James Joyce version of life in 1920s Ireland or the like.
In other words, just like the Catholic church. Women can’t be priests because the CC is an organization that holds women in contempt, that looks at women as inferior beings and always has. It has always been the enemy of womankind, it has always treated them terribly. Just like the Klan and blacks. The Church is simply fonder of “we’re hurting you for your own good” rhetoric these days.
The Catholic Church is not “just a private club”. Most religions that have been around for long enough can NOT be meaningfully compared to “private clubs”, except by context-deaf imbeciles. Now I may be fortunate enough to live and have grown up in one of the countries (the UK) in which the citizens are most free to brush off religion’s malign influence, but I am capable of recognising my good fortune in that respect. One day, if our species gets its act together, the CC, and Islam, and Hinduism and Scientology and the whole sorry lot of them, will indeed be seen as no more than ‘private clubs’. But that day has not yet come.
I decided to ignore Bricker a while ago when he demonstrated he’d sold his reason and conscience to the cause of Catholic apologetics. So I’m not sure if perhaps you made some announcement to the SDMB a short while ago that you would parody him at length in some sort of performance art. If so, consider me comprehensively whooshed. If not, consider this: yes, anyone can leave. Many will be lucky enough to suffer no negative consequences to their psyches or social or familial relationships.
Many will not.
Very much like (once upon a time) the idea that women should be allowed to vote, or that there are no innate inferiorities of black people that make it natural for them to be slaves.
:rolleyes:
The Catholic Church’s position of gay marriage goes somewhat beyond the opinion that ‘the right didn’t need to be invented’. You know this perfectly well, of course, but you prefer to obfuscate, for whatever irrational motive.
They may or may not be ongoing. Let’s (unwisely) give them the benefit of the doubt (are you familiar with the psychology of abusive relationships?). Then even if it’s not ‘the coverups’ that are ongoing, it’s the coverups of the coverups, as evidenced by all the cretinous protests of persecution that we have seen recently from the highest levels. The priests are the new ‘jews in the holocaust’, the Belgian police raids being ‘surprising and deplorable’… that kind of thing.
Well, I suppose the news is a couple of months old. Fucking hell, you might even think that supports your point. :smack:
It’s a private club. There is no country in the world where you are required to be a member of the Church. Except in those countries that ban the religion, anyone can join or quit. You get kicked out if you break the rules. But it’s much less restrictive than many private clubs where you have to pay to be a member.
So what? The current trend in America and Western Europe is against racism. Does that mean the KKK isn’t a racist org? The shift in 1st world democracies is in-spite of the workings of the Church.
I know two personally. But again, it doesn’t matter the number, because they are trying to achieve that goal. That they are succeeding less, is the one great sign that eventually Humanity will eventually throw of the stupidity of religion someday in the far future.
And if you get married again, you’re committing adultery. I believe the party line is, “We hope that you disgusting sinners will get into heaven, but we can’t promise anything.”
From: Here
By acting in this way, the Church professes her own fidelity to Christ and to His truth. At the same time she shows motherly concern for these children of hers, especially those who, through no fault of their own, have been abandoned by their legitimate partner.
With firm confidence she believes that those who have rejected the Lord’s command and are still living in this state will be able to obtain from God the grace of conversion and salvation, provided that they have persevered in prayer, penance and charity.
That’s the absolute purpose of the policy against masturbation. It doesn’t matter if no one is taken in by it (which is absurd, because for a fact I was afraid I was going to hell for beating the weasel), what matters is that these asshats are trying to make kids feel like sinning garbage.
Don’t keep up on current events, huh? Also, it doesn’t matter if it happens once, the policy is evil. The men who write them are evil and the men and women who carry it out are evil.
They aren’t disallowing Catholic homosexuals to marry. They are telling other people, of other and no faith that their opinions get primacy. That’s evil.
I’ll believe it when we get some future numbers. Face it, the pope is more hurt by the PR damage than the thought of some altar-boy’s nuts having been in the mouth that kisses his ring.
In short, you have a wonderful fantasy world. I would like to travel there and have an orange-pop while we watch a Baseball game. Gee-whiz!
Nancarrow, this is insulting to John Mace and to Bricker. Please back off and make your point without digs at other posters.
But surely there’s some difference between a private club - in which, generally, membership of is a matter of personal interest - and a religious organisation, in which generally membership is a matter of personal belief?
Quitting a club requires denial of something you’re interested in in some way, which may well be a hardship but does at least only have the lack of that interest being met to dissuade you. Quitting the Church puts your soul at risk; really, all countries in the world are places where you are required to be a member of the Church. It’s a requirement forced by your own belief, rather than an outside body, but that’s no less a restriction.
False, we’re against artifical birth control. I’ll be needing a cite for the suffering part.
No more than any other organisation at worst.
Wrong, condoms have not been effective aginst AIDS in Africa.
Wrong.
Wrong.
They will gladly council restrain when an action, desirable as it may be, may cause he death of another person.
Finally something right. However, all oganisation have he right to aspire that laws are the way they want.
To the OP: No, we’ll never see ordained women.
I think you just answered your own question. Condoms would be more effective in preventing AIDS in Africa if not for Catholic propaganda against their use and effectiveness.
If you’re going to claim that any other organisation has expended the organisation’s resources to repeatedly move child abusers to greener pastures when they get caught, I’ll be needing a cite.
Yes, they have that legal right. That does not prevent their desired laws from being morally abhorrent.