The only birth control that works is artificial birth control, so you’re wrong there. Being pregnant and not being able to terminate will inevitably lead to suffering. Try hard, I trust that you will eventually come up with a scenario.
You are mis-informed. There isn’t a willful attempt to move around and hide the information about pedophiles in any other industry I’m aware of. And seriously, fuck the pope for being a part of it.
Condoms work. Explain in detail how African Aids has super powers.
Read my quotes above to find out why you’re no correct. Or you could write in detail why I’m wrong.
There is no person involved in the vast majority of cases. But even if you are silly enough to believe in a soul, killing the mother to save no one is evil.
They don’t have a right to make others live by them. And in any case, they’re still evil. You can see it, you just don’t want to. Sorry your church’s administration is a bunch of assholes.
Catholics in general are probably as good as the population. Catholic administrators have worked together to produce an evil organization. If they aren’t evil, they’re incompetent.
That’s a difference, I suppose, but you’re still free to quit the Church whenever you choose. No one forces you to believe. No one forces you to profess faith, as was done in the past.
Only if you believe. You’re free not to believe.
I assume there is a typo in there somewhere.
If it’s your own belief, what’s the problem? No one forces you to believe.
Not really. It is, among other things, a sovereign nation. It has diplomatic ties with almost every nation on earth. The Vatican is considered a non-member state by the UN, according to Wiki.
That’s all very well, but the pedophiiac priests are guilty of serious secular crimes and the bishops and hither church authorities are guilty of covering up a crime (accessory after the fact, if not more serious offenses) and the church is asking the secular authorities to butt out. Until they start coming clean and reporting the guilty priests to secular authorities they deserve all the negative publicity they gather.
If they want to continue their patriarchical ways, that is their business, but if they equate it with serious crimes, they are opening themselves to well-deserved ridicule…
Let me expand on this a bit. The church has always said that only “natural methods” of population control are acceptable. I am unaware if they ever expanded on what that meant, but I imagine that if asked they would reply, “celibacy” and perhaps Vatican roulette. But when I hear those words I can only picture disease and death. And indeed the Vatican (and, to be sure, the Evangelicals) have influenced the US to ban any aid to programs that provide condoms in Africa and elsewhere. I would not (quite) go so far as to say that this is the Vatican’s official population control policy, but it fits. Regardless, the church’s attitude to condoms has to be counted as one of the greatest abettors of the spreads of HIV in the world today. Isn’t that sufficient to call them an evil organization?
I don’t know your particular beliefs, or lack of them. But if we are free not to believe, then I challenge you to alter them. Make yourself believe the opposite of what you normally believe; if you’re religious, make yourself an atheist or adherent of another religion. If you’re an atheist, make yourself believe.
You can’t choose to believe or not. It’s not within our power to select. You are, generally, free from outside influence as to that. But not from inside influence.
Well, that’s true of everything. If I join a bridge club, it’s because I like playing bridge. No one can force me to like it, and if I do like it, I can’t convince myself to not like it. You may grow to like it or dislike it over time, but again, that’s like everything.
And we see people switching religions, giving up religion, or taking up religion all the time.
As I already pointed out, they do categorize them differently. How serious the acts are depends on what you believe. And you may not be a believer, but if you are a believer, violating the sacraments is a damn serious crime. You are judging their belief system from outside that belief system.
That’s true. But if you’re ejected from a bridge club, you lose the ability to play bridge with them. If you’re ejected from the Church, you run the risk of losing your soul. One strikes me as rather different than the other.
True. There’s all those “What made you change your religion?” threads that pop up around here every now and again, and so far as I remember there hasn’t been anyone who’s said “Oh, I just changed my mind”. It’s the result of experience, not active choice.
The church is not a club. They educate and train kids from babyhood into believing. Calling them club trivializes the church and its power both over people and governments across the world. It is more like a cult. It implies if you don’t like it you can just walk away. Very few can. They are raised with it ingrained into their lives and just walking away is not possible for many without deep and difficult psychological trauma. It is not like dropping a country club membership because they ban blacks or women.
Well, no one actually gets ejected from the Church. You get ex-communicated, which means you can’t take communion. We should keep that straight. And if you want to take communion again, you confess and change your ways. If you don’t want to change your ways, then you’ve chosen to reject the beliefs of the Church. It’s not like they just randomly excommunicate people.
In many ways, it’s much more open than a private club would be.
Now that the thread title reflects the true nature of the OP (let’s bash the RCC), and now that there is a thread dedicated to discussing whether or not the RCC is a club, I’m going to take my argument over there. You guys can continue your bashing of the RCC here.
Revenant Threshold: BTW, I was raised Catholic, indoctrinated in Catholic schools, and quite easily became a non-believer as a teenager. It wasn’t difficult in the least. Most Americans seem to have no trouble being “cafeteria Catholics”, and not letting the belief system interfere with their life in any significant way.
For example, when I was kid, the large Catholic family was a cliche. Now it’s an endangered species.
Or does the opposite. The church has covered up pedophile priests for generations. They have paid billions to the people the church representatives harmed. It is not trivial . It has greatly harmed the church. So putting women being ordained in the same article makes it a very great sin indeed. It elevates its importance.
This was a particularly gutless move by anonymous mods. Do they plan on making a habit of changing titles to reflect their own personal biases? If they thought the thread deserved to be moved to the pit, they should have done that, not graffitied the title.
I’d start a little ATMB thread on this, but I just don’t care enough to do so.
I think you’ve got it wrong. It’s not a matter of not wanting to change your ways, it’s a matter of not changing your ways. You can not want to change your ways, yet do so, due to the risk of excommunication. I think that’s the problem; for someone of faith, it’s really quite a strong sword over their heads.
I think ejection is a fine term. I don’t mean by it a literal enforcement of bouncers removing you from Church property. I mean the removal of that person (well, the message of removal) from the “communion” of the Church. It’s an indication of seperation.
Probably depends on the club. But I would say that even if you really like to play pool, or whatever, religious faith is generally rather more of an important subject.
I don’t disagree. But “becoming a non-believer” is not the same as choosing to become a non-believer. As I said, it’s a matter of experience, not choice. I have no trouble at all believing that, as a result of life experiences, or outside events, a person might find themselves changing their minds. I have a great deal of trouble with equating changing religious belief to a simple choice.
But not as a result of active choice.
As just a general question, i’m unsure, but does your point about Catholic bashing being in the same post as your response to me mean you’re accusing me of it? I didn’t think it was, but I thought i’d check.
But that’s the whole point of what it means to practice this religion. You get tempted all the time to disobey the rules and you choose not to give in. You could steal, but you choose not to. You could cheat on your wife, but you choose not to. You could get an abortion, but you choose not to.
Not a big deal, but I think it’s inaccurate. You’re not barred from attending Church services. You’re not shunned, and you’re easily able to rejoin if you repent.
No, I didn’t mean that you were bashing the RCC. I made that post, and then realized I hadn’t answered your earlier question.
