It's time to liquidate the Catholic Church

Great Debates
1

Sometimes a business is flush with cash and other assets, but it’s business plan has become outmoded, or it doesn’t have one at all.

Management, if it were responsible, would pay a liquidating dividend to the shareholders and be done with it. Human nature being what it is, however, this rarely happens. Wishing to keep it’s well-paying and prestigious jobs, management fights tooth and claw against any liquidation or takeover attempt.

And so it is with the Catholic Church. I was raised Catholic but now consider myself a pantheist. At any rate, just the other day priest in my Indiana home town parish admitted to committing sexual abuse against a minor in the late 60s. He’s now “outa there.”

I had thought that the Church was core-rotten, but this hit home. The abuse had always been “elsewhere.” Now I suspect it’s everywhere.

The Church is pretty much dead in Europe, and it’s a zombie in the US, with no new priests and a de facto schism with Rome. A huge percentage of American priests are homosexuals, which would be OK did the Church itself approve of homosexuality.

Liquidate. Liquidate! Sell off the churches and the Vatican art colllection. Then let viable religions accept the flock, and let’s move on.

Your opinions, please!

2

Two wrong “it’s” in a row.:smack: Why can’t we edit our posts?!

3

You mistakenly seem to think “The Church” equals the current hierarchy and infrastructure. That’s not what Catholics teach. The real body of the Church cannot be liquidated; it is eternal and transcends evil men who abuse their positions (not to trivialize that evil). But I suspect that’s no longer an issue for you.

And, speaking as another “former Catholic,” let me assure you we’d be glad to have you back as part of a body that defies vulgar business conepts like “liquidation.” No rush. We’ll wait. :wink:

4

So are you suggesting to get rid of the organized aspects of Catholicism (The Vatican, the orders, the strict hierarchy) or the whole religion?

If its the former then that would’nt solve the too-friendly-priest problem since the priests would still be around and still capable of molesting.

If its the latter then why stop there? Why not get rid of other religions like Islam, it’s been in some negative news recently too. Or all of them, I’m sure that would really make the whole world a better place.

5

Tell that to all the young male seminarians I know, most of whom LOVE John Paul II and his teachings.

6

Wouldn’t say the catholic church’s dead the in US, I’ve seen quite a number of catholics around.

7

Ah ha, ** Aeschines**, you advance a cogitative decision to liquidate the teetering Catholic Church and then you skip prissively out of the room to let the tremendous religious void left by your ungodly liquidation be filled by, as you say, “viable religions.”

This is not the way that things are done. The Church is in a state of transition, religion is in a state of transition, and all of humankind is undergoing the most vicissitudinous social and cultural transformation since we learned how to stand up straight and throw a rock.

No.

Decisions as momentous as yours cannot be left to wiles of individual thinkers or to social engineers. Decisions such as what you propose can’t even be left to “decisions”. Only the collective unspoken processes of all involved cultures can properly address the dismantlement of the Catholic Church’s antiquated infra-structure, and bring about a mundane transfiguration that is suitable to meet the spiritual needs of the people in the new world just ahead.

Think about it this way…

The Catholic Church is a gigantic monstrous ten-story, rusting , out-dated Combine made from ancient iron eighteen centuries past.
Then suddenly, with the tremendous impetus of ancient time and rigid tradition, the Church rose up and groaned and creaked its way into the 21st century, protesting greatly, but unstoppable , with a million creaking gears grinding , a hundred thousand clanking pistons pumping , and ten thousand sputtering, protesting, engines; tired old engines, governed ever-so-loosely by ever-so-reluctantly slow-turning flywheels, while a bank of new fashioned vacuum tubes provided the Great Combine a direction.

Maybeso, but if you take a man’s mule because farming by mule is out of style and old fashioned, you should at least bother to tell the man how it is that he is to farm. :slight_smile:

8

The last time I recall a country liquidating the assets of the Roman Catholic Church, it ended with a bloody revolution, and in the end, the Church still remained the same, only under the radar. That country? France, in the 1700’s.

9

Yes! Forget about how strong the RCC is in South America, and forget about how quickly it’s growing in places like China and Africa! At this brief moment in time it seems to be failing in places that I care about, so we’ll just have to chuck the whole thing! :rolleyes:

10

hmmmm. So, since it is already dying (according to the OP), we should launch a specific plan to kill it, ignoring the frequently noted point that the best way to engender support for a belief system is to persecute it.

It seems that Aeschines is really looking for ways to bolster the church and increase the membershup. HEY! Aeschines, for which diocese are you the evangelization director?

11

There aren’t very many business’ in the U.S. that have so many repeat customers around 50 times a year. Hmm…that seems to be working for them.

I don’t know. I mostly just go to be closer to G-d and give them money. I don’t want their jobs. I don’t want to take over, too much work. I don’t want anything back.

Cite! And not just sporadic abuse, but wide-spread. Take the total number of offending priests and compare to the total number of preists and give us a % of “bad” priests.

Cite! statistics for homosexual priests. I missed that number. Explain the relevance of your statement. I have never attended mass without the church managing to find a priest.

My church seems very viable. Consider all of the religions together and do an analysis of who contributes the most time and money to the poor.

My opinion is you got tired of trying to bate and insult the skeptics and you’re hoping religion will be more entertaining. To make the assertions that you did, you need profit and loss statements, proof of all of your other claims and a reason why you think this is necessary, would be nice. Didn’t you learn that GD requires cites and valid information if you wish to make claims. Catholics are skeptics too. :rolleyes:

12

Up until around the beginning of the eighteenth century, the word ‘tolerance,’ in the French, had a meaning that implied a lax, even heretical complacency towards evil. Tolerance meant peaceful coexistence with witches and heathens and heretics and democrats and the like, and was a bad thing. As more and more people were revealed to be witches, heathens, heretics, and democrats over the next hundred years or so, the meaning somehow was reversed: strict adherence to virtue became known as intolerance, and tolerance came to mean the blind acceptance of whatever strange-assed thing anybody felt like doing at the time.

Aside from the bastardization of a perfectly good word, which might bother my soul on a lexicological level, it seems to me that I can’t be opposed to that. Let’s face it – virtually everyone already knows what is right, and they know that what is right is whatever they, personally, say is right. The days of central, guiding moral codes is long gone, replaced handily by the codification of petty griefs and popular opinions we call the legal system. Now that the Catholic Church has been revealed to be an imperfect institution populated by imperfect humans, it makes abundant sense for the perfect to rise up and dismantle that institution.

I guess my only questions would be – just who is going to do this liquidating, by what method, and to whom would the proceeds be distributed? I mean, we must certainly see to it that only the oppressed, wronged, harmed, and thus perfect, benefit. Any participation by or benefit to any person or institution that is itself imperfect would be sort of cynical, and would smack of persecution for political ends, wouldn’t it? Then we would need to liquidate any and all institutions, organizations, religions, and/or governments containing some members who have themselves committed crimes, and that could get pretty messy. Especially for Congress.

Religious freedom can get a bit annoying even for the persecutors who would grant it to themselves but not to others, as the French again found out in the late 1600’s. Even though the Edict of Nantes was the law, the Protestants still came under legal maneuvers bordering on religious persecution because of that odd chicanery known as the ‘letter of the law,’ which always reduces the intent of any regulation to just about zero. So this liquidation edict had better be written in airtight form, lest it accidentally forbid the witches, heathens, heretics, democrats, and other tolerant people from practicing their own forms of worship just because a few of their members might do even odder things than are currently sanctioned by those who decide what is right and what is wrong this month.

Some accomodation should also be made to replace the worldwide charities of the Church that is proposed for liquidation, since, despite having a few high profile nut-jobs in the ranks, they manage to do more genuine good (with purely voluntary contributions and not a single conscript) in any given day than the U.S. government does in any five year abstract of altruistic humanitarianism. I propose that the liquidators be appointed to personally replace that work, since they could hardly argue that huge amounts of good work should go undone simply to satisfy some lust for revenge or some weird logic that one bad apple spoils the barrel, and they could certainly not argue that taking tax money at gunpoint and threat of imprisonment in order to do such work is a better system.

So, hey, I agree – liquidate away.

Gairloch
Can’t remember the classical Latin word for rebirth.

13

Strato:

And, speaking as another “former Catholic,” let me assure you we’d be glad to have you back as part of a body that defies vulgar business conepts like “liquidation.” No rush. We’ll wait.

If you’re former, and I’m former, there’s no common body to rejoin. Wipe and flush, I say.

Golds:

So are you suggesting to get rid of the organized aspects of Catholicism (The Vatican, the orders, the strict hierarchy) or the whole religion?

The whole muthafucka.

If its the former then that would’nt solve the too-friendly-priest problem since the priests would still be around and still capable of molesting.

After the liquidation, they would have to sell themselves to other churches/religions on their own merits. Time to polish the CV, I say.

If its the latter then why stop there? Why not get rid of other religions like Islam, it’s been in some negative news recently too. Or all of them, I’m sure that would really make the whole world a better place.

The more helpful and more nicer religions may continue to exist. The others will be loo-flushed.

Res:

Tell that to all the young male seminarians I know, most of whom LOVE John Paul II and his teachings.

Is there or is there NOT a priest shortage in the Catholic Church today?

Milum:

Ah ha, Aeschines, you advance a cogitative decision to liquidate the teetering Catholic Church and then you skip prissively out of the room to let the tremendous religious void left by your ungodly liquidation be filled by, as you say, "viable religions."

I’m here and in play, baby. Who says the Rosary anymore anyway?

This is not the way that things are done.

Then shit’s gotta change.

The Church is in a state of transition, religion is in a state of transition, and all of humankind is undergoing the most vicissitudinous social and cultural transformation since we learned how to stand up straight and throw a rock.

Transition? Yeah, it’s called “death,” the biggest transition of all. The religions, not the species.

Decisions as momentous as yours cannot be left to wiles of individual thinkers or to social engineers.

If it’s “yours,” then it’s “mine.” Liquidate, I say.

Decisions such as what you propose can’t even be left to “decisions”. Only the collective unspoken processes of all involved cultures can properly address the dismantlement of the Catholic Church’s antiquated infra-structure, and bring about a mundane transfiguration that is suitable to meet the spiritual needs of the people in the new world just ahead.

Um, yeah. Maybe.

The Catholic Church is… a bank of new fashioned vacuum tubes provid[ing] the Great Combine a [fresh] direction.

Wheat or sorghum? Avocadoes from Mejico.

Xay:

The last time I recall a country liquidating the assets of the Roman Catholic Church, it ended with a bloody revolution, and in the end, the Church still remained the same, only under the radar. That country? France, in the 1700’s.

Revolution first, blood later, I say.

Gnat:

Yes! Forget about how strong the RCC is in South America, and forget about how quickly it’s growing in places like China and Africa! At this brief moment in time it seems to be failing in places that I care about, so we’ll just have to chuck the whole thing!

Let’s nip the perv process in the bud in those places right now. Priests may be willing to trade sexuality for food in those places right now, but later on they’ll be up to their old trix.

Tom:

hmmmm. So, since it is already dying (according to the OP), we should launch a specific plan to kill it, ignoring the frequently noted point that the best way to engender support for a belief system is to persecute it.

Liquidate, not persecute. THX–1138 is allowed to pray to Ohm in the chapel, not before the image that is being relayed by video.

Gairloch:

I guess my only questions would be – just who is going to do this liquidating, by what method, and to whom would the proceeds be distributed?

The proceeds go to the shareholders. In this case, everyone who has ever been wronged by the Catholic Church: abuse victims, people scared witless because they used contraception and thought they were gonna go to hell for it, etc. The liquidation will be effected by TPTB.

14

A distinction without a difference.

15

I thought my status would be quite clear in context, but let me clarify. I am a “former-former-Catholic”–i.e., one who had left the Church a long time again and returned to it, now for many years. My point is that you shouldn’t be so sure of your current convictions regarding the Church.

I can also see from your continued participation that you have no real interest in meaningful discussion and would prefer to show how coolly you can dismiss others’ beliefs. I’m sure you get a nice little tingle every time you see a response to your nonsense. There’s a name for this type of posting, and your last post summarizes it quite nicely. See ya.

16

Strago:

I thought my status would be quite clear in context, but let me clarify. I am a “former-former-Catholic”–i.e., one who had left the Church a long time again and returned to it, now for many years. My point is that you shouldn’t be so sure of your current convictions regarding the Church.

Why? It’s a rotten corpse of an institution. And why the hell did you come back, anyway?

I can also see from your continued participation that you have no real interest in meaningful discussion and would prefer to show how coolly you can dismiss others’ beliefs.

Catholicism is bullshit; I’m saying it straight up with no chaser. I’m sorry if that gets your panties in a wad.

I’m sure you get a nice little tingle every time you see a response to your nonsense. There’s a name for this type of posting, and your last post summarizes it quite nicely. See ya.

My gawd, what’s with this place. Skeptics on the one had, fundamentalists on the other. Truly the wackiest board I ever been to. And poor me, persecutred right in the middle. Weep!

17

The Catholic Churches in my area are doing fine and last time I checked, France and Italy were predominately Catholic.

I don’t understand the point of your post.

18

So do you want to liquidate it because of the scandals, or because you don’t believe in Catholicism anymore? IMHO, neither reason is a good one.

19

As the only people who can really call for a liquidation are the stockholders, and as Aeschines appears to have sold his own stock, and as none of the current stockholders seem to want to liquidate, there doesn’t seem to be an issue here. Were I to walk into a shareholders’ meeting of General Motors and called for its liquidation I’d be laughed out of the room, but I couldn’t get in in the first place because I own no GM stock.

20

Who gets the funds for this liquidation?

Abuse victims will get there share from civil court cases.

If it is people who are “wronged” by the church then how can you tell who these people are.

Will parishioners get a $50 check in the mail?

Aeschines you are the one attacking an entire religion.