Um… “excommunication” is canon law.
Don’t forget my approval of Idi Amin’s regime, shown so clearly when I said he wasn’t a cannibal.
Funny, not a word on “fighting ignorance” when you were directly asked whether you thought priests who molested children ought to be excommunicated.
Not a word on “fighting ignorance” when you were challenged on whether children had free will to attend Catholic services.
Not a word on “fighting ignorance” when it came to repeated coverups of molesting priests, and the question of whether that fell under canon law.
Not a word on “fighting ignorance” when it comes to the simple question of whether, since canon law is written by the same persons which it rules over, and the Catholic church essentially sits in judgment of itself, the whole edifice of canon law might be considered suspect.
But, please, go on “fighting ignorance” against terminological inexactitudes. It’s so useful for derailing discussion about such minor matters like thousands of children being raped by priests.
Although I agree that canon law is relevant in the case of the excommunicated nun, I should note that canon law is (in this case) really, really fucking stupid.
Why not?
Don’t get me wrong- normally I loathe the “Won’t someone think of the children!!!” argument. However, it’s eminently appropriate in this situation. Children were the victims, and **Bricker **is a member of the Catholic church. Presumably, his children (if he has any) are occasionally in the care of Church officials.
Would you feel better if I changed it to “What if it had happened to you?”
I wasn’t aware that you were voluntarily a member (and supporter) of Idi Amin’s regime. You know, like you currently are of the Catholic church.
Presumably you tithe, or donate money to the church. By doing so, you’re materially helping to cover up child molestation.
You probably missed this -
Regards,
Shodan
Hilarious:
What do you do, read the first six or seven words of posts and then stop?
Nope, not a word:
Not one:
Well, there, you got me.
Of course, as I read the thread, I don’t really see where that point was raised. Did I miss it?
That’s not true.
Is it your contention that the Church is NOW, today, trying to cover up current acts of child molestation?
I don’t agree. The Church has in place now, today, policies that I believe are appropriate for dealing with the issue. So how is what I’m doing today “helping to cover up child molestation?”
Yes, you did, very early on and repeatedly. That’s a consequence of the Ignore feature - you can look even more foolish than you already do.
But you can try to answer the question anyway: Why should anybody give any respect to this “canon law” shit you’re defending so passionately, far more passionately than you’re defending any of its victims, I might add?
How do you feel about a cop automatically being placed on desk duty or administrative leave after a shooting, even in a case where his shooting saved a busload of special-needs kids from certain death at the hands of a knife-wielding murderer?
The last New Republic had a very good discussion of this, http://www.tnr.com/article/forgive-not written by a person who has studied the church for some time.
I’m afraid you need to be a subscriber to read the entire thing. The author does a good job tracing the history of the church and how it got to be the way it is today.
It ends with a reference to Matthew 25:40
"And the King will answer them, ‘Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me.’ " and concludes that the priests and church are raping Jesus.
Was he on duty? Then I oppose. How is this relevant? A potential rogue law enforcement officer arguably presents a threat to public safety.
I fail to see what great harm might occur if a nun fails to follow an arbitrary rule that she must immediately be excommunicated. After all, your omniscient God already knows if what she did was kosher, yes?
Bricker,
You’re not stupid. I think I’m fairly safe in making that general statement. But I think that you’re trolling in this thread. I think you purposely post things a specific way that you KNOW will infuriate people and make them assume you believe one thing on an issue when it’s clear you don’t. You’re just doing it to rile people up.
The OP was pretty much about two things.
- The ongoing, systematic, widespread abuse of children all across the world as a result of pedophile priests and an organization that continues to protect them rather than excommunicate them
- A comparison of that scenario against a nun who saved a life and then became excommunicated.
Your response:
Again. You’re not stupid. You know this post said nothing and you were just itching for the followup. You’re like the guy who goes
“sigh.”
“Sigh.”
“SIIIIIGHH.”
“Man, I’ve had a rough day.”
And we roll our eyes and finally go “What? What is it? What was your day like?”
“Oh well if you really want to know…”
Also, you knew that while this post would say nothing, that people would assume it to say so much more (everything from canon law addressing why pedophelia is ok to, I don’t know, that you supported pedophelia yourself) until you could jump right in with your laser scalpel and extract that one nugget you wished to argue against all else.
So what happened when people finally took the bait as you knew they would? You explained how canon law creates an automatic excommunication for the nun and not that the hierarchy excommunicated her.
And I’ll have to admit that this is something I didn’t know. I’m really not up on Catholic doctrine. You’ve fought my ignorance and genuinely pointed out a factual inaccuracy in the OP. Kudos to you.
But if I need a textbook example of not seeing the forest for the trees, I’m going to look back to your first post in this thread. Remember the two main points in this thread? Yeah, your argument addresses neither of them. You knew that your point addressed neither of them.
You’re like the Republican version of Aaron Sorkin in your argumental style. I don’t know quite how to explain it, but if you’ve ever seen how arguments and dialoges play out over the course of an episode of the West Wing, Studio 60, etc, you’d understand what I mean.
You’re being willfully obtuse in this thread, gleefully arguing against a point that doesn’t address any substantive argument made, and hiding behind the shield of “fighting ignorance.”
Hey, Bricker?
You win. Put this one on your scoreboard too, you big ol’ hunk of Socratic brilliance, you.
Now goodbye.
Yep, and the un-organized as well.
Fine, fine – you oppose. But I assume you wouldn’t argue that application of such a law is evil, or idiotic. After all, it’s clear that the law is intended to apply to a wide variety of situations, and rather than try to write in “…except in cases where it’s ultra-obvious that the cop was in the right…” and then be faced with arguing about just how ultra- we need to be, they impose a blanket requirement for review. You would perhaps do it differently, but can you really say it’s insane to do it that way?
Yes, but like so many laws, it’s written to apply to the vast majority of situations. What great harm is it for a nun to receive the sacrament of penance? What great harm is the imposition of an automatic penalty until she receives that sacrament?
What does excommunication mean in this case? That the Sister can’t teach or go about her usual nunlike duties until she explains herself to her confessor? If she dies before she has a chance to explain herself, will she go to Hell, even though God knows this particular abortion was justified?
Right. Because we, as Westerners, are SO incredibly unfamiliar with the Christian faith, that we need Bricker, the eternal apologist, to explain things to us.
:rolleyes:
What part of “it ain’t a fucking* law*, it’s just some organization’s policy” don’t you get? :rolleyes:
IIRC, the official Church position is that two wrongs don’t make a right. You cannot murder one person to save the life of another–and they consider the termination of any pregnancy, even a single-celled zygote, to be murder. So, in the same way that if we are stranded on a liferaft in the middle of the ocean, I may not kill you and eat you in order to give myself more time to get to land, a woman may not abort a fetus that will kill her as it develops.
Note: This is not reasoning I agree with. I’m just explaining how it works.
Cite? It’s my understanding that abortion is never acceptable unless it’s the indirect result of another procedure. So, just an abortion is always wrong, regardless of whether or not the pregnancy would have killed the mother. However, in the case of an ectopic pregnancy, you may remove the fallopian tube, even if that has the result of killing the fetus, because the removal of the tube was the intent of the procedure, not the termination of the pregnancy.
Side note: This appears to be the same kind of logic that says it’s okay to pull out before you ejaculate but not to just wear a condom.
The pedo priests needed something to do with their hands while they were being trucked around from parish to parish.
Again, I ask for a cite. That is directly contradictory to every understanding I have of the Sacrament of Reconciliation. You may not be given absolution unless you genuinely repent of your sin. Saying you did it, you’re not sorry you did it, and you’d do it again would absolutely be grounds for a priest to refuse to absolve you.
AFAIK, you’re wrong. There are *no *circumstances where an abortion qua an abortion is allowable under Church law.