FT, i’ve got a couple of questions about your earlier cite of 1 Corinthians 7. The most glaringly obvious point in reading it seems to me to be that Paul thinks that marriage itself isn’t a good thing, but rather a necessary evil to combat or deal with immorality. Am I interpreting his words correctly?
My second is that apparently the married couple should not “deprive” each other by mutual consent; this seems to suggest to me that deprivation based on a *single *partner’s wish is inadequate; where is my mistake in interpretation here?
He already provided a cite. More than one, actually.
Jesus’s “own words,” from Luke 16: “Anyone who divorces his wife and marries another woman commits adultery.”
This is not ambiguous, and it’s not out of context. Those are Jesus’s words. The fact that you, or Friar Ted, or some random preacher on the internet can write several hundred words of gibberish, and at the end of the essay conclude that Jesus meant the exact opposite of what he said, does not change the fact that those are Jesus’s own words, and apparently, since he said the words, and the holy spirit directed Luke in writing those words, God thought those words were sufficient to get his point across. The fact that God did not feel the need to add the several hundred words of your internet preacher to the bible to explain how he meant the exact opposite of what he said speaks, IMHO, volumes.
I know it seems crazy, but it is logically consistent. One component of confession is that the person making the confession has to be resolved that they will not commit the sin again (of course, this doesn’t mean that they won’t, regardless of what sin it is, but the intention has to be there). A person who has remarried has made a statement, in effect, that they intend to continue the sin of adultery. Of course, if you don’t believe that that’s what you are doing, then it makes perfect sense to leave the Church, as many people do.
Sarahfeena, I always appreciate the kindness of your responses to me. They calm me down when I get worked up in these religion threads.
I find that what you say is only “logically consistent” within a pre-defined set of logical rules that are totally illogical, if that makes any sense whatsoever. In other words, the church has its own logic. I find that logic at times to be completely backwards, incomprehensible, and often repugnant. However, you are correct that, within the confines of “church logic,” this situation is consistent. However, any logical system which punishes someone who is harming nobody much more harshly than someone who commits the most destructive and reprehensible violence upon the weakest, most innocent members of society is strange, to say the least.
Of course, when viewed in the light of recent events, perhaps the church not wanting harsh punishment for child molesters is logical after all.
Well, essentially, they see it as treating all sins the same…anyone can be forgiven for anything, as long as they are truly sorry, intend to not commit the same sin again, and show the proper repentance. I’m not sure what’s incomprehensible or illogical about that, to be honest with you.
Speaking of consistency, I don’t think the Church treated that problem all that differently from how it’s often been treated…in the past, people have often found these situations shameful for all parties, and have swept them under the rug. It’s wrong, and we should all be glad that we are in a more enlightened age.
It’s illogical because all sins aren’t the same. My friend got divorced to get away from a violent alcoholic. Apparently that’s a sin. Then she got married again, because she wanted to be happy. That’s a sin too. Any system which places these “sins,” that hurt nobody and serve only to improve the lives of everyone involved, on the same level as molesting a child, is illogical.
True, but don’t you think it’s fair to expect just a little bit better behavior from the church?
I think we just have different perspectives. The way a Catholic (even a bad Catholic like I am) sees confession is focused on the forgiveness aspect, not the punishment aspect. We are always taught that it doesn’t matter how bad we are, no matter what we do, we can always come back to God and be forgiven. That is how sins are all the same…that there’s nothing so bad that can’t be forgiven, not that the sins are all equally bad.
I don’t know your friend, so I won’t comment directly on her situation, but I will say this about the Church…it’s not nearly as monolithic in its treatment of people as it seems from the outside. The priest who married me & my husband, although pretty traditional in his own beliefs (they aren’t all), used to counsel divorced & remarried couples. I knew another priest who did the same for gays, and both of these priests welcomed these people (who were supposedly outside the Church) into their parishes and into the sacraments. The Church teaches that our own conscience should be our guide above all else, and a good priest will help lead people to peace with themselves and with God.
Sure, maybe, except that the Church is made up of people who are just as fallible as anyone else, you know? If they were moving the priests around and covering it up out of maliciousness, then I would say, yes, we should expect better behavior from them. But if they were doing it out of misunderstanding of the nature of child molesters or trying to avoid embarrassment, not just on their parts but on the parts of the children & families, then I would say that I wouldn’t really expect any different from them than from public schools, scout troops, other clergy, and other organizations that had the same misunderstandings & intentions.
So if my friend gets divorced again, will she regain all of the privileges she lost? What if she remarries her first husband, how about then?
OK, fine, but remind me again why, if this is the case, I’m supposed to listen to these people and follow their advice about morality? The church has to at least appear to occupy some sort of moral high ground in order to speak with any kind of authority about morality, don’t you think? If what you say is true, and they are just as screwed up as me, why should I listen to them when they tell me how I should live? You want to have your cake and eat it too. You want the church to be able to speak with moral authority, but you don’t think they should have to actually do anything to earn that right. I disagree.
And this distinction about them moving priests around to avoid embarrassment rather than maliciousness is really, really lame. Even if it wasn’t malicious, it was reckless and negligent and they should have known better.
She could, but to my mind, it doesn’t matter. It really makes no difference what the “Church” says. What the important thing is is that your friend’s conscience is clear, and that she has come to that clear conscience through honest reflection & prayer. There are many fine members of the clergy who can help her with that (and maybe they have, I don’t know). I don’t know of any “privleges” that the Church has taken away from her. She has not been excommunicated. Technically, she is not supposed to receive sacraments, but believe me, if she did, she wouldn’t be the only remarried person in church that day doing so.
What we are talking about here are complicated social mores. As I said, it wasn’t just the Church that covered this stuff up in those days…everyone did. You may think it’s lame, and maybe it is, but in large part, the reason was to protect the children, so that they wouldn’t be gossiped about. It might not make sense in our culture today, but the way child abuse was treated was very, very different prior to, say, the 1980s. Children were much less likely to be believed. They didn’t understand the damage it caused, and they thought it would minimize the damage not to talk about it at all. They didn’t understand the psychology of the abuser. There is absolutely no reason to expect the Church to understand any of this any better than the psychologists of the day, and there’s no reason to expect them to behave any differently than any other organization would have. There’s no reason to believe that they should have known better…why would they?
“Don’t have sex with children” is not a complicated social more.
If everyone jumped off a cliff, would the church jump off one too? (Sorry, couldn’t resist.)
This is ridiculous. They wanted to protect children. so they shipped them to a place where they would come into contact with more children? Even if, and it’s a huge if, I agree with you that they covered up the abuse with the completely unselfish and proper motive to protect the child, there are plenty of places they could have sent those priests where they would not have any contact with kids. They could have fired them outright. But they didn’t do that.
You are focusing on one tiny little part of the scandal, the cover-up. While you make an interesting case in that area, nothing you say gives anybody an excuse for molesting the kids in the first place, or putting more kids in danger.
Well, of course not. I think everyone knew it was something that shouldn’t have happened. My point is only that the Church didn’t treat it any differently, or act differently in the aftermath of it, than was generally the case.
In that case they should stop pretending they know better than the rest of us.
:rolleyes: Sacrificing children in order to avoid embarrassment is an evil thing to do. It’s no better than I’d expect out of such an evil organization though.
As for other organizations - the vast majority of the time, they can’t wait to come down like a hammer on a molestor. One reason the Catholic Church has acquired such notoriety on the subject because so very few groups would DO what they did.
I checked out the site, and the stuff about living off the life force of other humans, (no need to actually drink any blood!) and other neo-Vampire cult ramblings might not be relevant to this discussion, you are correct.
It may be true now that other organizations are doing so, but it wasn’t true in the 50s, 60s and 70s. And for that matter, now the Church is doing it, too. We’ve all become a tad more enlightened about these things, thankfully.
First, a minor point: These still are not the “Jesus’s own words” that were supposedly cited earlier. This is a relatively minor point, I’ll admit. I mention this because the supposedly exact words given earlier were quite a bit more emphatic, and we should set the record straight regarding what the Scriptures specifically record.
Moreover, I already showed that elsewhere, Jesus allowed for exceptions in cases where someone has been the victim of adultery, as well as where one attempts reconciliation with someone who is unwilling to reconcile. In other words, there are clear exceptions to the rule. This is akin to saying “It’s wrong to kill” (a general statement) while simultaneously allowing for exceptions that are described elsewhere.
The Church didn’t become more "enlightened; it’s dirty laundry got dragged out in the open, where there were too many non-Catholics who didn’t care enough about the Church’s image to sacrifice children to it. Last I heard, your Pope still claimed it was the fault of America and it’s alleged liberalism, not his Church. And the Church still has a habit of covering for it’s priests at the expense of others; like covering up the rapes of nuns by priests ( in countries that still have young nuns ), and pressuring them into abortions. And then there’s all the financial shenanigans they tried to cover up. It’s attitude towards the victims of molestation is SOP for it, not the aberration you want to pretend.
(Sorry, couldn’t resist.)