krypt0nian
Banned
Not persecuting people for a start?
Actually I don't believe the catholic church has any idea of a greater good, so it's perfect that you would ask.
-
Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.
Vatican to American Nuns: Not Bigoted Enough
- Thread starter Devolution
- Start date
- Status
Not persecuting people for a start?
Actually I don't believe the catholic church has any idea of a greater good, so it's perfect that you would ask.
~Devil Trigger~
In favor of setting Muslim women on fire
Pollux
Member
And please elaborate on how the Church is persecuting people...
No one said it can't change. There's no reason to change it as a result of whiners outside the church though & nuns agreed to the belief system.
If they don't like it, they should leave and picket the Vatican.
By the horrible action of not advocating things that they are against.
If they were anything less than cruel barbarians, they would be paying for condoms, abortions, and hire an atheist pope...
krypt0nian
Banned
Hahahahahaha. Head in the sand.
Pollux
Member
Out of curiosity, do you think polygamy should be legal?
krypt0nian
Banned
You should have said beastiality too for the trifecta.
But kudos for finding the persecution post! You're not blind as I suspected.
Pollux
Member
You didn't answer the question.
krypt0nian
Banned
Changes nothing. As long as consenting adults agree, I see no issue as it's not my place to judge.
The fact you brought it up at all is quite telling.
Pollux
Member
Not really. I've never been one to say that the state should ban gay marriage, I've just said that a Church shouldn't be forced to change their beliefs. No matter how many people disagree with them if those beliefs aren't hurting anybody. I'm perfectly fine with laws legalizing gay marriage, I don't recall I ever said that I wasn't.
The reason I asked about polygamy is because if you're for one type of relationship but not the other then it just wouldn't make sense.
Why not?
Why, for example, was the catholic church so fucking ok with slavery for so long.
Did that mean that God was ok with slavery too, or does that mean that the church was full of shit.
The Anti-Monitor
Banned
It boggles my mind they can seriously believe this kind of stuff is a good PR move.
krypt0nian
Banned
Well deserved.
They be hatin' on the gays.
Devolution
Member
Bigoted is as bigoted does.
bonesmccoy
Banned
Remember that the Church puts Tradition on the same level as Scripture. Tis why so little in terms of dogma has changed over 2,000 years. Tis also why it doesn't attempt to reinvent itself with the gusts of wind in each generation.
Catholicism doesn't work with 'liberal' and 'conservative' things, but with what's in harmony with the Faith and what isn't. Put another way, it thinks in terms of orthodoxy and heterodoxy; things that align with the faith are kept and things that don't are not. To reply to your comment, no pope can change this, for if he attempted to, he would have basically declared latae sententiae excommunication upon himself. An anti-pope, if you will, would exist whose statements and promulgations would be invalid.
Funny you say that. The beef with this particular leadership group - which I remind you, was created by and is only answerable to (local bishops be damned!) the Vatican - refused to support the Church's teaching on the male-only priesthood way back in 1977. Being loud about abortion is important, but it serve as a kind of white-wash for Catholics (see Mark Shea's numerous blogs about Catholics getting tricked into Republicanism through anti-abortion rhetoric).
krypt0nian
Banned
That's the church motto at this point. That evil pope has it tattooed on his ass.
Pollux
Member
Joking?
Just because someone doesn't agree with your sense of morality doesn't make them a bigot.
The bar for evil these days must be pretty damn low if you think Benedict is evil.
Devolution
Member
There's a difference between live and let live and making sure people are feeling persecuted and without rights.
krypt0nian
Banned
Why the fuck would I be joking?
When my sense of morality says that it's wrong to try to create an environment that alienates and marginalizes gay people and especially gay youth and to bully and isolate them from support, and someone else opposes that, I think it makes them a bigot.
bonesmccoy
Banned
No, not really. They're arguing that homosexual sex is a bad thing, not that people with homosexual attractions are. Rephrasing: The Church doesn't argue that people who have sex outside of a monogamous marriage are bad, but that the sex outside of the monogamous marriage is bad.
If there are any intellectually serious Gaffers who're legitimately interested in discussing this stuff in real detail, why not go review Eve Tushnet's blog, and ask her how she juggles being a lesbian and a faithful Catholic? She's a Yale grad, I think, so you won't get reflexive recitations of the Catechism.
lol
anyways this is meaningless, we all know once same-sex marriage is legalized after a few years the church will come crawling back otherwise they will seem more hateful and archaic than they already are.
krypt0nian
Banned
But it's tradition. You know except for the evil priests that the vatican covers for while they abuse kids.
Wow, except that they cannot get married, so there is no way to be a good catholic. Is it difficult to see the problem here?
"We don't hate you. We just make it impossible to live your life."
Pollux
Member
If people are feeling persecuted it's not the fault of the Church since that's not the intention. Their intention is to fight against sin.
No clue, but I don't think people or organizations should be the subject of hatred and ridicule just for a different value system. Feel free to disagree with the Church's stance on anything, that's fine, but do it with an argument other than "the pope is evil and they're all a bunch of bigots". Not only does it lower the level of discourse but it makes it nearly impossible to have a rational discussion.
How does the Church "bully and isolate" gay youth?
krypt0nian
Banned
But I and many others find them to be bigots. You don't agree? That's fine.
I feel you choose to bury your head in the sand and pretend nothing is wrong. Especially with all of the questions that anyone with any knowledge would already know the answers to.
Just like racists, the catholic church should be despised for their horrendous views.
I feel you choose to bury your head in the sand and pretend nothing is wrong. Especially with all of the questions that anyone with any knowledge would already know the answers to.
Just like racists, the catholic church should be despised for their horrendous views.
Oh so people are allowed to be gay as long as they repress themselves and never have gay sex.
That doesn't sound evil at all, noooo sir.
Not really interested in the mental gymnastics needed to be a lesbian catholic.
Intention means shit if the result is that gay people are discriminated against.
The way to hell is paved with good intentions.
And christians.
bonesmccoy
Banned
This is actually a good point. Society - far beyond those filthy Papists - marginalized, ignored and put down homosexual people in the past. Does it follow then - almost axiomatically - that anyone or any group opposed to things like gay marriage and gay adoption be 'bigoted'? Keep in mind that the Church has been remarkably consistent with respect to marriage and sexual ethics: No-fault divorce, casual usage of birth control and the baby-as-consumer-product are things it has been arguing against for over 40 years. It's not as if they cooked up the opposition to SSM just to fuck around with the gays and lesbians - it's part of a much larger position on sex and marriage.
krypt0nian
Banned
Society and the church supported slavery as well. Didn't make it ok then either.
Their bigotry is super old at this point. Got it. They have been bigoted by centuries.
Doesn't make it any less bigoted.
They still need to be called on their bullshit.
krypt0nian
Banned
As long as you're consistent, it's ok.
bonesmccoy
Banned
It's no different than the Church telling 99% of divorcees are in the wrong for re-marrying without an annulment. Or that 2 baptized Catholics shouldn't be knocking boots prior or marriage. Et cetera.
Try it out. The worst that can happen is that you would gain deep insight into what's normative for Catholics. Which I think would be a helpful thing for the future arguments you'll have on the intertron and in real life. Of course, if your chief interest is belittling people you disagree with, I can understand why you'd recuse yourself from the invitation.
Bigotry, bigoted, bigoted, bullshit. This is lazy stuff, ElFly. If the righteousness of your condemnations is so implicit, why is moving beyond a superficial level of discourse so difficult?
Sorry, I know the text above will sound disrespectful. But has to be there. That said, I'm genuinely interested in fleshing out your ideas here; if you want, I'm more than happy to continue talking via private message.
Pollux
Member
Just because that a group of people/an organization have a different value system than yours, that does not in any way make them bigoted. The Church is not preaching hatred and violence against homosexuals, or preaching that they are subhuman or anything like that. Stop pretending that they are.
Ok so according to the catholics heterosexual people are allowed to have sex, but gay people don't have that right.
Gay people cannot marry the person they love according to catholics either.
That is subhuman treatment. "Regular" humans can marry the person they love. That's hate.
The fact that their value system is complete bullshit means they are bigoted.
You never answered my comment about slavery either, because you know that the church was 100% in the wrong there and that they are 100% in the wrong now.
Was raised catholic. Live in a country predominantly catholic.
They are fuil of shit.
Being a Catholic has always been easy if you're willing to be celibate.
"An intrinsic moral evil."
They are preaching that homosexuality is an intrinsic moral evil. Homosexuality is an intrinsic part of my identity. How should I take that?
http://www.truthwinsout.org/blog/2012/04/23928/
Do you think that wasn't a bullying and isolating experience for gay youth? I don't know how you can sit there knowing how the Catholic Church thinks about homosexuality and ask me how that attitude doesn't bully and isolate gay children. My parents were Catholic; I didn't feel comfortable coming out until I was 20 because I didn't trust them because I knew what Catholic teachings were. I spent my teenage years in the closet, and it was an isolating experience.
Devolution
Member
Are some Catholics in here going to keep projecting the idea that you cannot exorcise the bigotry from the religion?
Pollux
Member
Considering that slavery was never an unchangeable subject within the Church and had been hotly debated since the Church was formed...I don't see how the Church changing its position on slavery (not an unchangeable doctrine within the Church) is in anyway relevant to whether or not they change their position on any topic that is an unchangeable issue (whether that issue is the role of the Eucharist in Mass or abortion, or anything else that hasn't changed in over 2,000 years).
How bout that OP? Anyone wanna argue why abortion should be a fundamental right and why the Church is evil for opposing that one?
Pollux
Member
The first three-quarters of the presentation were really good, said Bliss. They talked about what is marriage and how marriage helps us as a society. Then it started going downhill when they started talking about single parents and adopted kids. They didnt directly say it, but they implied that kids who are adopted or live with single parents are less than kids with two parents of the opposite sex. They implied that a normal family is the best family.
When they finally got to gay marriage, [students] were really upset, said Bliss. You could look around the room and feel the anger. My friend who is a lesbian started crying, and people were crying in the bathroom.
When they finally got to gay marriage, [students] were really upset, said Bliss. You could look around the room and feel the anger. My friend who is a lesbian started crying, and people were crying in the bathroom.
They're stance on adoption is not the position of the Church and they were wrong to say that and to imply that families with adopted children are not normal families. Analysis of Canon Law on the subject
Devolution
Member
What dictates what is changeable?
... And what about the intrinsic evil part or the part about gay marriage?
I like this argument.
Just because there was dissent in the church whether slavery was ok or not (something that should be REALLY FUCKING OBVIOUS to anyone that claims that his leader is infallible on moral matters, and make no mistake, popes officially endorsed slavery through official proclamations) it means that the church gets free from guilt from endorsing slavery for centuries.
That's cool, millions of slaves from centuries ago. The church wasn't 100% sure if it was ok to ruin your lives so the church wasn't at fault.
And please, the church has dissent about gay marriage now. Bishops have speaked in favor of gay rights. The thing is that the current pope is a bigot that thinks not all people have the right to marry the person they love, but someday, a more progressive pope will be elected and he will accept gay marriage.
Probably 100 years after the world does and the church is again seen late to the party.
Fair.
The moral code of the church ranges from silly to plain old evil in several ways.
Relevant to the current thread:
*There's no good reason to discriminate against women in the clergy. Tradition is being used to push simple misoginy and puts women in a traditional subservient role to men.
*The homosexual issue has been discussed for long, but if you don't see this as bigoted, well, there's no point in going on.
Irrelevant to the current thread:
*The church's views on contraception are simply put, evil. I am not talking about abortion here, but plain old condoms. This has put tons of christians in considerable risk. That teaching has cost people's lives.
Abstinence only does not work. The church intransigence on this is unacceptable.
*Pedophilia. Ok not gonna extend a lot on this but the church has actively protected pedophiles. Evil behavior.
*This shows how the church has such perverted doctrines that think it is ok to kidnap children.
My hate is well deserved.
The church hides tons of misogynists, homophobics, bigots, pedophiles AND kidnappers.
It's indefensible.
By defending the church you are supporting satan.
Joel Was Right
Member
To argue that the Church must "change" is intellectually dishonest, or at best ignorant. Despite the characterisation, dogma isn't dictated by a group of conservative priests in an office at Vatican City - it is to be found written in a scripture older than any present civilisation and believed to be divinely inspired by its worshippers. It's not theologically possible to censor or re-write doctrine without scriptural evidence much less base it on the ethics of a [secular] society inherently at odds with the text.
A couple of years ago I saw an interview with Phil Donahue, a Catholic. He said that falling church attendances particularly amongst the young was an indicator of the fading relevance of faith in modern society and argued that the Christian stance on topics like abortion or gay rights were the predominant causes for this. To change this tide, he added, the Catholic Church must reverse its stance on these or lose more mindshare as well as worshippers. It's ironic that he's more concerned with bad PR than his own scripture. If tags of bigotry are bad PR then what do you call that of the first Christians in Rome and Judea experienced? There's a prophesy in Islam that the Abrahamic faiths began as something alien and will one day again be something alien. If anything is to change realistically then it will be the amount of people who adhere to these beliefs
A couple of years ago I saw an interview with Phil Donahue, a Catholic. He said that falling church attendances particularly amongst the young was an indicator of the fading relevance of faith in modern society and argued that the Christian stance on topics like abortion or gay rights were the predominant causes for this. To change this tide, he added, the Catholic Church must reverse its stance on these or lose more mindshare as well as worshippers. It's ironic that he's more concerned with bad PR than his own scripture. If tags of bigotry are bad PR then what do you call that of the first Christians in Rome and Judea experienced? There's a prophesy in Islam that the Abrahamic faiths began as something alien and will one day again be something alien. If anything is to change realistically then it will be the amount of people who adhere to these beliefs
Devolution
Member
If all Catholicism is, is some hateful dogma, then what you're really arguing is that it should be stamped out entirely since apparently it cannot thrive without hateful regressive shit?
Pollux
Member
Explains the idea better than I can
Links in that post can explain in great detail the Church's position on female ordination, abortion/contraception, and homosexual relationship & marriage
Judging men by the standard of today is a very unfair thing to do. The Pope and the Magisterium are only infallible on matters of faith and morals under special circumstances. Not everything the Pope says or teaches is infallible.
And yes, I know about the Papal Encyclicals in defense of slavery. They are not infallible. Binding? Yes. But only at the time they were written during the circumstances in which they were written. The Popes that wrote the Encyclicals on slavery were wrong. They succumbed to the pressure of foreign governments. The Pope is just a man. The Church's defense of the African slave trade was wrong. The Church's defense of slavery for the first 1000 years or so before the African slave trade is wrong to us today.
This explains it:
In ancient times, slavery was seen as justly arising from one of three circumstances: (1) capture in war, (2) punishment for crime, and (3) obligation for debt. Enslavement for debt would be the least reconcilable to Catholic doctrine, although the Church had to deal with it as an historical reality in Roman law, reacting prudentially in order to mitigate the evil without creating greater ones. Regarding prisoners of war, however, more deserves to be said. Biblical slavery could be seen as a reform, a lesser evil made necessary by the inability of societies to hold war prisoners in idleness due to scarcity of resources. Release of prisoners was extremely impractical when wars lasted many generations, as did Israel's wars with her hostile neighbors, the Greek struggles with the Persian Empire, or the Punic Wars between Rome and Carthage. Humane slavery (always a Catholic requirement) was a superior option to the suicidal release of prisoners of war, the economic impossibility of simply imprisoning war captives, or the terribly inhumane alternative of executing captured enemies.
It is important to note that the Catholic Church in past centuries did not intend to endorse authoritatively any specific instances of slavery, but only the principle that slavery could be justified as the lesser of evils in certain circumstances. The situation surrounding ancient warfare illustrates one particular application of this principle. The same notion of the "lesser evil" was also applied to the question of the status of the children of slave mothers. As Noonan observes, "St. Antoninus of Florence followed St. Thomas in acquiescing in the civil law permitting slave status to follow birth to a slave woman,"20 but in noting that the eminent Jesuit moralist Cardinal Juan De Lugo "found slavery 'beyond the intention of nature,' but 'introduced to prevent greater evils,'"21 Noonan does not see the clear extension of that principle to the conveyance of the mother's status to the children.
One can easily see that if the Church had attempted to bestow freedom upon the children of slaves, owners might well have denied the right of slaves to marry, with all the attendant evils that would involve, and owners might not have properly cared for the offspring of slaves . . . offspring over whom they would have enjoyed no property right.
Thus, we can see the complicated case for accepting slavery as a social condition arising from prolonged periods of warfare. John Locke's justification of slavery in his late 17th-Century work, Two Treatises on Civil Government, contains the same rationale as has been given here. 22 It will be recalled, of course, that much of modern slavery did not so originate, since innocent and non-belligerent persons were set upon (usually in Africa) and impressed into slavery without moral justification and in the most inhumane of conditions.
Finally, classical morality accepted the legitimacy of slavery for crime. This form of slavery, it would seem, can be easily justified, and under a different name, this penal slavery is still the practice of most nations. It is not accidental that in the aftermath of the American Civil War, the framers of the Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution wrote into that amendment an exception to the prohibition on involuntary servitude. The text of the 13th Amendment states, "Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist . . . ." Prisoners may be compelled to work, their liberties are often seriously curtailed, and although the vast majority remains in this condition for only a limited period of time, "life without parole" is an increasingly used option, as are finite sentences of such duration as to ensure that they constitute de jure life imprisonment.
The change of the Church's attitude toward slavery reflects the changed circumstances of the world more than it reflects any revolution in moral theology. Wars tend to be of shorter duration in the modern world (though often of far greater severity); nations often possess surpluses out of which they can feed and care for prisoners of war who are held as prisoners rather than as slaves as would have been the case in previous times, and most importantly, perhaps, civil authorities are willing, in general, not only to abolish slavery, but to extirpate those greater evils the avoidance of which made slavery's existence permissible. In this new environment, the Church may put greater emphasis on its statements that "slavery is evil" . . . but it had never judged otherwise. The Church had done no more than proclaim that in other sets of social and historical circumstances, slavery represented the lesser of evils.
It is important to note that the Catholic Church in past centuries did not intend to endorse authoritatively any specific instances of slavery, but only the principle that slavery could be justified as the lesser of evils in certain circumstances. The situation surrounding ancient warfare illustrates one particular application of this principle. The same notion of the "lesser evil" was also applied to the question of the status of the children of slave mothers. As Noonan observes, "St. Antoninus of Florence followed St. Thomas in acquiescing in the civil law permitting slave status to follow birth to a slave woman,"20 but in noting that the eminent Jesuit moralist Cardinal Juan De Lugo "found slavery 'beyond the intention of nature,' but 'introduced to prevent greater evils,'"21 Noonan does not see the clear extension of that principle to the conveyance of the mother's status to the children.
One can easily see that if the Church had attempted to bestow freedom upon the children of slaves, owners might well have denied the right of slaves to marry, with all the attendant evils that would involve, and owners might not have properly cared for the offspring of slaves . . . offspring over whom they would have enjoyed no property right.
Thus, we can see the complicated case for accepting slavery as a social condition arising from prolonged periods of warfare. John Locke's justification of slavery in his late 17th-Century work, Two Treatises on Civil Government, contains the same rationale as has been given here. 22 It will be recalled, of course, that much of modern slavery did not so originate, since innocent and non-belligerent persons were set upon (usually in Africa) and impressed into slavery without moral justification and in the most inhumane of conditions.
Finally, classical morality accepted the legitimacy of slavery for crime. This form of slavery, it would seem, can be easily justified, and under a different name, this penal slavery is still the practice of most nations. It is not accidental that in the aftermath of the American Civil War, the framers of the Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution wrote into that amendment an exception to the prohibition on involuntary servitude. The text of the 13th Amendment states, "Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist . . . ." Prisoners may be compelled to work, their liberties are often seriously curtailed, and although the vast majority remains in this condition for only a limited period of time, "life without parole" is an increasingly used option, as are finite sentences of such duration as to ensure that they constitute de jure life imprisonment.
The change of the Church's attitude toward slavery reflects the changed circumstances of the world more than it reflects any revolution in moral theology. Wars tend to be of shorter duration in the modern world (though often of far greater severity); nations often possess surpluses out of which they can feed and care for prisoners of war who are held as prisoners rather than as slaves as would have been the case in previous times, and most importantly, perhaps, civil authorities are willing, in general, not only to abolish slavery, but to extirpate those greater evils the avoidance of which made slavery's existence permissible. In this new environment, the Church may put greater emphasis on its statements that "slavery is evil" . . . but it had never judged otherwise. The Church had done no more than proclaim that in other sets of social and historical circumstances, slavery represented the lesser of evils.
Anyway, to get back to the point of the OP, the Church is not evil or bigoted for telling the group of nuns that they need to conform to doctrine. As I've said before, if the nuns or any priests don't feel as if they can support the Church because of a these issues mentioned in the OP article, then they can become Episcopalians where all those things are allowed.
Pollux
Member
Yea. That is absolutely right. The entire belief structure of the Catholic Church is pure and absolute evil. Every single belief. Everything that the Church ever had any part in has no place in modern society and should be abolished...am I understanding you correctly?
- Status
Similar threads
- Locked