Could you please show me wheree I said “bipoloar”? Because I never use that word. Or is this part of your free, long-distance,over-the-internet psychiatric assessment of me?
First, I will apologize to Tom because I was wrong about one fact. Our initial discussion was whether the RCC teaches that masturbation is a mortal sin, not whether they teach that homosexuality is a sin.
It was this that led to what I consider his patronizing comment that it is a shame I was not taught better.
The most basic problem between Tom and I, though, and what makes me feel he is a liberal RCC apologist is that for Tomndeb, what is “THE TRUTH” about RCC doctrine is a document of some sort that he can find to show that the RCC is “really” like this or that. For him, it is the document that proves what the RCC really is.
For me and millions of other recovering Catholics, actions speak louder than words. What I was taught and what I was preached over and over again by officials of the Church surely must have some valid claim to also be “really” what the Church teaches, one would think, at least to some extent.
Father Hailey, preaching our high school closed retreat, told us how he had been called to a scene of two young people killed in a car accident at the very moment they were having sex in the back of the car. He told us with tears in his eyes of his horror in realizing that these two young people, killed in the instant they were performing a mortal sin, were now indisputably in Hell and that there was nothing he could do for them with all his priestly powers to administer the sacraments.
Am I to believe that none of this in any way represents church teaching? When I and a couple of hundred other high school students were taught this? Why did they have this man full of erroneous doctrines preaching to us?.
So what do Tom’s “official” documents about the “real” RCC teachings prove? Once again, does on-the-ground reality have no meaning in front of good intentions on paper?
I could find documents in whch the former apartheid government of South Africa denies that it is in any way racist. But ask the victim of aparheid.
How about this quote: “The German people are not a warlike nation. It is a soldierly one, which means it does not want a war, but does not fear it. It loves peace but also loves its honor and freedom.”
Or, “I did not want war in 1939.”
Both of those are by Adolph Hitler. There is another quote that I have seen on the internet but which I cannot find in which Hitler says he is not a racist (or not racially prejudiced), and even goes on to praise other races like that Chinese and Japanese with civilizations older than those of Europe.
You could find enless quotes by Inquisitors saying they never hated any of the heretics they dealt with, an actually loved and cared about them.
My guess is that Tomndeb wants to believe that the liberal good-intentions statements of doctine are what he defines as “real”.
And, you on the other hand, define as “real” what has anecdotally happened to you. 
Of course, to get to that position, you have to change and twist my actual statements.
At no time have I ever claimed that anyone’s experience of the RCC was false. At no time have I claimed that they were not taught what they say they were taught. I have even explicitly noted that many Catholics have believed various ideas and taught them as Catholics. (Look up my various commentaries on Limbo, worshipping saints, Jansenism, and a few other odd “Catholic” phenomena.)
The only single thing I have done (and will continue to do) is that when a poster claims THIS is RCC doctrine and it is not doctrine I will note that difference.
It appears to be your own personal problem upon hearing that different Catholics passed along bad information that has you upset. It is a really huge and really old organization. At different times, we can find different theologians taking diametrically opposed views on some topics and sometimes the “losing” theologians’ views make it into schoolbooks or catechisms for various reasons. There is no question that a lot of people inside have picked up and passed along errors. If you post that one bad act at the end of a blameless life will get you eternal damnation was the information you were taught, I will never contradict that you were taught that. However, in the interest of the Straight Dope®, if you post that one bad act at the end of a blameless life will get you eternal damnation is church doctrine, I will point out that you are repeating an error. I think it is relevant to point out the distinction between errors that have crept in to various classrooms and the actual teachings of the church. If you believe that passing on bad inforamtion is acceptable, just because you happened to never hear the facts, then I think you are on the wrong message board.
My guess is what **tomndebb **believes will ever be a mystery to you, as he makes it a point to leave his beliefs to himself. We know he is a Catholic. That’s about it. He does attempt to correct errors of fact concerning Catholicism; he does so with other topics as well. How well his efforts succeed is left up to the reader, but your attempts to quantify and qualify what he holds in his heart are doomed to failure.
So by analogy: If a white kid raised in South Africa in the 1950s and 1960s said that Apartheid was a form of institutionalized racism based on a belief in white superiority, and were to say to you that this belief was clearly impressed upon him by his teachers and parents and their behaviour; and if I find an official document by the former South African Government that clearly denies that Apartheid is based on racism but rather on a desire to have all races develop in their own way and for their own benefit (which is pretty much what the SA government used to say), then the document would be the correct definition of the South African Government’s doctrine of apatheid. And the kid who plainly saw a racist system based on white supremacy would be “badly taught”?
Give me a break! :rolleyes:
I’d rather give you a clue or a course in logic, but I would not want your head to explode.
In your odd South African example, I am fairly sure that we could dig up a substantial amount of evidence (in the form of internal memoes, memoirs of private conversations, public speches, and other information), that outlined the underlying reasons behind apartheid that contradicted the official explanation. However, your strange analogy fails on the rather clear point that you are incorrectly comparing the motive of the Afrikaans to the published beliefs of the RCC. If you could show, for example, that the RCC had a “real” reason to encourage people to “worship” saints that contradicted the distinctions made between worship and veneration, and that all the discussions of vneration were merely some sort of camouflage for the “real” beliefs, you might have a point, but your analogy is little more than a comparison of apples and square building blocks. Or, to take the incident that ignited your fuming, if the church had a motive for telling people that they would go to hell by committing a single bad act at the end of a good life when the church “really” knew that that was not the case, you might have a point. On the other hand, if different people in the church simply came to different conclusions and the overall teaching of the church got obscured, by the different interpretations of beliefs, then your analogy is wholly irrelevant since, unlike the South African government, the church is not trying to hide any nasty motives under a good presentation.
I think your desperation to paint me as evil is pretty silly looking.
Actually what happened to him is real. The official stance of the church is not real. Not when you go into the parish. Simply saying your church stands for one thing and allowing the buggering of children for centuries i. Does anyone pretend the church didn’t know. I am sorry you guys can’t see it. That is the church.
Thank you, Larry.
I sometimes get the impression that Im not Tomndebs favourite poster,although I know how absurd that must sound
and I think we are a trifle at variance in our opinion bases Tom being a wet woolly,pinko liberal and me always being right whatever the subject.
But in all honesty I have always found him scruprously fair and polite and he has my total respect even though he s always wrong.(Actually gave him a boost on a sister M/B. dont let it go to your head Tom)
Setting aside that there is no god and that religious belief is a manisfstation of the way some people’s brains work, I have to say that if there were saints, tomndebb might just be one due to his patience.
Valteron, it’s April now, so as implied in your OP, please go away.
I’m jumping in late but this debate seems to be revolving around a silly semantics game, which is what Valteron appears to be trying to say. Namely, he makes several points and references anecdotes, and teachings which no doubt more (previous/current) Catholics than himself have, and tomndebb goes out of his way to nitpick the fact that he used the word doctrine.
It seems fairly trivial to an outsider to resolve this…
Valteron needs to stop using the word doctrine, because it does indeed have a specific, documented meaning to the RCC, the doctrine is indeed recorded, and almost certainly says what Tom says it does
Tom needs to agree that the conditions on the ground, and indeed, the general condition, may be that doctrine is often ignored, poorly understood or misunderstood, and possibly not well known, and thus the points Valteron are making, while semantically incorrectly using the word doctrine, are valid arguments against the RCC that need better responses than what he calls Tom’s “apologism” that stems from only recognizing the doctrine of the RCC, not the actual acts.
FWIW anyways, just my take on the whole thing.
Some of us think you might look nice in evil. Why not give it a try sometime?
::wanders off whistling ‘Georgie girl’::
No. Go back and read the exchange I posted on the first page of this thread. Valteron made a claim that the RCC “says” a particular thing. I posted that his information was incorrect, (although I did not doubt he had been taught that). He responded by going off on several different tangents, making claims about what I had said that I had not said, accusing me of “defending” the RCC when that had been no part of my actual post, and then dragging in a bunch of personal issues of his own that I did not even comment upon.
He wants to pretend that I am “defending” the RCC simply because it satisfies his own need to condemn it. Larry gonzomax Finkelstein has joined in with his own need to demonize the RCC and use that to cast aspersions on anyone who will not actively join him in his condemnation.
They each have my “permission” (that they certainly do not need) to offer whatever criticism they would enjoy hurling. My only request, (in the spirit of the Straight Dope®) is that they have some clue regarding the topic they are addressing. (Based on their respective posts on other topics in other threads, I have no fear that that will often occur, of course.)
In the current brouhaha, Valteron did not even have to respond to my initial post, in that I was happy to simply post the crrection without making an issue of it and without attaching any blame to him for the error. If he cannot get his facts straight and wishes to Pit me for providing the facts, I am content to let him display his issues for others to comment upon.
Well – I was brought up Methodist, in a neighborhood that was about 50:50 Catholic/Protestant. The Catholic kids repeated to us what they were told by the Sisters, who apparently got their information from Fr. LaBrosse, the pastor. And that was that all us Protestants were going to Hell.
Tom’s been scrupulous to show that that is not and never was Catholic doctrine – and that what individual Catholics say is often in error by the official teachings of the church.
Besides, Godwin’s Law shows that Tom automatically wins this, even if he had not already been far ahead on points.
Nitpick: Afrikaans is a language, and insofar as I know nothing but. Afrikanders are the Dutch- and Huguenot-descended people who spoke it, and were the leading but not the only proponents of Apartheid.
Again what is significant,how the church is in practice or some ivory tower that pretends it is something else. It is what it is. It is not what spokesman say it is. There is much the church should answer for like paying a billion is law suits. Why did it go to court. It could have said thats not our policy listen to the pope. Cant talk to the archbishop he was involved.
alright, I can see that. I’ll expand my criticism to include to Valteron to not put up straw men, and expand that to say “not to imply that those are the officially sanctioned beliefs of the RCC in any way”.
was my point , pretty much, and pointing to that in response to a post like his could be construed as “A defense”. dragging personal issues in to it, etc. was pretty out of line to be sure.
Other than that, having skimmed through the thread and some links, Valteron’s general behavior seems to be cause for a :rolleyes:
So if I and hundreds of other kids heard a particular thing from every priest and nun that taught us for two decades, (including a priest, trained in an RCC seminary, consecrated in Holy Orders by a bishop, and specially appointed to preach a closed retreat to a couple of hundred high school students) I still cannot validly say that the RCC Church “says” that. The only thing they one can validly maintain that the RCC Church “says” is what Tom dredges up from documents at his disposal.
All 32+ of them?
Damned Papist conspiracy!