BS: Catholic come all-ye

Subject: RE: BS: Catholic come all-ye
From: Greg F.
Date: 16 Apr 10 - 05:38 PM

Sorry- let me re-state: Jimmy, you're at it again - facts not in evidence

Subject: RE: BS: Catholic come all-ye
From: Peace
Date: 16 Apr 10 - 06:58 PM

Mithra was ahead until Constantine was converted and decreed that Jesus was his choice.`
`
Constantine didn`t become a Christian until he was on his death bed. Coins of that time show the Sun god AND the Cross. That boy covered both bases. FYI.

Subject: RE: BS: Catholic come all-ye
From: Bill D
Date: 16 Apr 10 - 07:35 PM

"Scholars debate whether Constantine adopted his mother St. Helena's Christianity in his youth, or whether he adopted it gradually over the course of his life.[197] Constantine would retain the title of pontifex maximus until his death, a title emperors bore as heads of the pagan priesthood, as would his Christian successors on to Gratian (r. 375–83). According to Christian writers, Constantine was over 40 when he finally declared himself a Christian, writing to Christians to make clear that he believed he owed his successes to the protection of the Christian High God alone."

Subject: RE: BS: Catholic come all-ye
From: Joe Offer
Date: 16 Apr 10 - 08:43 PM

I think Benedict/Ratzinger is an interesting phenomenon. He is a true intellectual. He may not agree with you, but he's open to discussion. I do not think he sees himself as infallible - but when he was John Paul II's Rottweiler, he seemed to consider John Paul II to be infallible. He tried to get John Paul's refusal to ordain women to be an infallible statement, but he missed one crucial element of infallibility. There was no universal acceptance of the refusal to ordain women, so the claim to infallibility of this statement lacks credibility.

A pope can't just use authority to declare a statement infallible - the statement has to be credible, and universally accepted. To a great extent, the Vatican seems to have backed off its attempt to define JPII's statement as infallible, but ordination of women is NOT a subject Benedict is willing to discuss.

-Joe-

Subject: RE: BS: Catholic come all-ye
From: mousethief
Date: 17 Apr 10 - 01:24 AM

The Pope's infallibility wasn't universally accepted in 1871. That's why we have Old Catholics.

Subject: RE: BS: Catholic come all-ye
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 17 Apr 10 - 04:22 AM

"Sorry- let me re-state: Jimmy, you're at it again - facts not in evidence"
The longer this goes on, the more transparently stupid your arguments become.
The Catholic Church are the leaders in the field of child abuse because they are the only runners in this particularly sordid race - there are no other contenders for the title. If there were I have little doubt that you and your fellow-apologists would be jumping up and down and pointing them out; as it is, your silence says it all.
Name one organisation that has harboured paedophiles who have systematically abused children for decades, probably generations, have ignored the abuses until they have got out of hand, then have created an escape rout to allow abusers not only to evade justice, but to continue their abuses elsewhere, defying national law in order to do so. Name one organisation which has been part of the defiling of children in this way and is powerful enough to have broken national law in this way. JUST ONE ORGANISATION THAT COMES ANYWHERE NEAR THIS and you might have a case - otherwise case proven beyond any reasonable doubt - any unbiased jury would convict and throw the key away!
Joe:
"He may not agree with you, but he's open to discussion."   
I suspect that this may be due entirely to the changing fortunes of the church rather than to the character of the Pope. If any good has come out of this whole affair, it is the fact that it is making the church answerable for its behaviour, albeit gradually and extremely reluctantly.
Certainly within my lifetime, if Catholics were to question the word of the Pope, the bishops, or even their p.p., they would be looking up for the lightning bolt. Now we have prosecutions and imprisonment of abusive clergymen, resignations of bishops, the demand for more, and even demands that H.H. should answer the charges against him (even the suggestion that he will be the first pope to be forced to resign) - the times they are a'changin' indeed! I never thought I'd live to see it.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: BS: Catholic come all-ye
From: Greg F.
Date: 17 Apr 10 - 09:34 AM

One word, Jimmy: Bullshit.

Subject: RE: BS: Catholic come all-ye
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 17 Apr 10 - 11:20 AM

"One word, Jimmy: Bullshit. "
Two words - prove it.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: BS: Catholic come all-ye
From: John P
Date: 17 Apr 10 - 11:45 AM

Greg, what are you talking about? It is well and widely documented that high church officials facilitated the rape of children. Many, many instances of priests being moved to other parishes where the parents of small children didn't know they were getting a pedophile foisted off on them. And all to avoid embarrassing the church. Yuck! The police are just a phone call away. Why hasn't it been church policy that law-breakers in the ranks are turned over to the law immediately?

Some of these priests have been brought to justice, but not many, and almost none of the bishops and cardinals who colluded with them.

I'd like to know why all affected governments haven't raided the church offices and hired a small army of lawyers to go through all the records.

I'd like to know why there is even mention of allowing the church to investigate and police itself. If the church were going to do an investigation, it should have been published -- with every detail -- a couple of years ago. Where is it?

I'd like to know why the church is attacking journalists who, in the absence of any credible official action, are trying to ferret out the truth for themselves. Why isn't the church working with those journalists to make the truth universally known so everyone can figure out how to deal with the mess?

Subject: RE: BS: Catholic come all-ye
From: Bonzo3legs
Date: 17 Apr 10 - 11:48 AM

You should watch the excellent Song for a Raggy Boy, which shows bigoted raving catholics at their worst.

Subject: RE: BS: Catholic come all-ye
From: michaelr
Date: 17 Apr 10 - 01:27 PM

Bill Maher says the Catholic Church should be prosecuted under the RICO act.

Subject: RE: BS: Catholic come all-ye
From: Joe Offer
Date: 17 Apr 10 - 09:15 PM

Jim Carroll says: Name one organisation that has harboured paedophiles who have systematically abused children for decades, probably generations

The Boy Scouts of America

It took time and some attempted coverups, but the Boy Scouts generally cleaned up their act by about 1990. Of course, they have never been the target of prejudice that the Catholic Church has been.

Jim, it's a very difficult and bewildering problem. There's no question that the Catholic Church screwed up this thing, and screwed it up badly. But much of it was unintentional and misguided. The American Catholics threw a lot of money at the problem in the 1970s by building centers that were expected to treat and cure the problem of child molestation - but they didn't work.

I still don't believe we have a workable solution to the problem, but at least the Catholic Church is trying.

-Joe-

Subject: RE: BS: Catholic come all-ye
From: Bonnie Shaljean
Date: 18 Apr 10 - 03:25 AM

> There's no question that the Catholic Church screwed up this thing, and screwed it up badly. But much of it was unintentional and misguided.

Unintentional?? HOW can sexual abuse and cover-ups be unintentional?

Subject: RE: BS: Catholic come all-ye
From: Bonnie Shaljean
Date: 18 Apr 10 - 03:29 AM

OR "misguided"? That word implies an innocence-of-motive aspect that I don't believe for one minute.

Subject: RE: BS: Catholic come all-ye
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 18 Apr 10 - 04:35 AM

Joe
Are you saying, as an organisation, the Boy Scouts of America allowed paedophiles to operate in their ranks until their behaviour got so out of hand that something had to be done and they were moved on to other Scout troups in order that they escape justice, allowing them to continue with their paediphelic practices? Was none of this reported to the law, and were the victims and their families bullied into vows of silence? Did this behaviour include the whole organisation, from the Chief Scout to the individual scoutmaster?
This is what happened in the organisation of the church, and that is what makes the stance they took so unacceptable.
Apologists have tried to pass this off as a handful of 'bad apples' - it wasn't; it was an in-built culture of abuse and acceptance of abuse, excused and fostered by the church, which almost certainly lasted for generations and spread throughout the church.
Until people realise this, the victims will never have closure and the church will have committed 'the perfect crime'.
Throwing money at the problem went on here too - sort of, but it wasn't an attempt to stop the abuses happening, rather, it was part of the cover-up. Some - very few, were placed in therapy in order to give the impression that something was being done. One of the worst abusers here (over a hundred victims), despite the advice of his therapist that he was an uncurable paedaphile, was put back in office, where he continued to abuse, was finally moved to a post abroad and was discovered to have made his home overlooking a childrens' playground.   
Is this the type of money-throwing that the church indulged in, in the US?
It really isn't a difficult problem - the church should be separated from childrens' education and welfare, they should have no more say in temporal affairs than we ordinary citizens have, and their role be restricted to the spiritual ministering, and only then at the full consent of the individuals who wish it.
They must be become a spiritual organisation and nothing else.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: BS: Catholic come all-ye
From: An Buachaill Caol Dubh
Date: 18 Apr 10 - 11:43 AM

Another relic of the Roman Empire crumbles. Another triumph of literacy, the printing-press and public opinion.
Perhaps these should both be rhetorical questions?

Subject: RE: BS: Catholic come all-ye
From: mousethief
Date: 18 Apr 10 - 02:08 PM

A goodly chunk of public opinion in this country thinks Obama was born in Kenya and his Hawaiian birth certificate is a clear forgery, in spite of there being absolutely not a shred of a ghost of a scrap of evidence to support this assertion. I wouldn't be so proud of public opinion.

Subject: RE: BS: Catholic come all-ye
From: An Buachaill Caol Dubh
Date: 18 Apr 10 - 02:50 PM

True for you. That's part of why I wondered (visibly, at least) whether I should frame the statements as questions. Need "public opinion", however, imply the opinion(s) of a majority in a given population, as distinct from an appreciable number? Then there's the issue of access to the modern-day media.

Subject: RE: BS: Catholic come all-ye
From: An Buachaill Caol Dubh
Date: 18 Apr 10 - 02:53 PM

By the way, I didn't mean to imply that "a goodly chunk" means a majority! Just an appreciable number, I suppose.

Subject: RE: BS: Catholic come all-ye
From: mousethief
Date: 18 Apr 10 - 03:38 PM

Actually, leaving aside the accuracy of your second statement/question, I'm not sure anything has crumbled just yet.

Subject: RE: BS: Catholic come all-ye
From: An Buachaill Caol Dubh
Date: 18 Apr 10 - 04:17 PM

Well, it's coming apart at the edges; in the process of crumbling. Apparently in Ireland, when some Pastoral Letter was read from the altar recently, many among the congregations left.

Subject: RE: BS: Catholic come all-ye
From: Amos
Date: 18 Apr 10 - 09:33 PM

"In my travels around the world, I encounter two Catholic Churches. One is the rigid all-male Vatican hierarchy that seems out of touch when it bans condoms even among married couples where one partner is H.I.V.-positive. To me at least, this church - obsessed with dogma and rules and distracted from social justice - is a modern echo of the Pharisees whom Jesus criticized.

Yet there's another Catholic Church as well, one I admire intensely. This is the grass-roots Catholic Church that does far more good in the world than it ever gets credit for. This is the church that supports extraordinary aid organizations like Catholic Relief Services and Caritas, saving lives every day, and that operates superb schools that provide needy children an escalator out of poverty.

This is the church of the nuns and priests in Congo, toiling in obscurity to feed and educate children. This is the church of the Brazilian priest fighting AIDS who told me that if he were pope, he would build a condom factory in the Vatican to save lives.

This is the church of the Maryknoll Sisters in Central America and the Cabrini Sisters in Africa. There's a stereotype of nuns as stodgy Victorian traditionalists. I learned otherwise while hanging on for my life in a passenger seat as an American nun with a lead foot drove her jeep over ruts and through a creek in Swaziland to visit AIDS orphans. After a number of encounters like that, I've come to believe that the very coolest people in the world today may be nuns.

So when you read about the scandals, remember that the Vatican is not the same as the Catholic Church. Ordinary lepers, prostitutes and slum-dwellers may never see a cardinal, but they daily encounter a truly noble Catholic Church in the form of priests, nuns and lay workers toiling to make a difference.

It's high time for the Vatican to take inspiration from that sublime - even divine - side of the Catholic Church, from those church workers whose magnificence lies not in their vestments, but in their selflessness. They're enough to make the Virgin Mary smile."

Nicholas Kristof of the New York Times

Subject: RE: BS: Catholic come all-ye
From: GUEST,mg
Date: 19 Apr 10 - 12:59 PM

If you can stand more, read up on Marciel and his bribery, corruption, protection by Pope John Paul II, who should no longer be considered for sainthood.

Then try to get a take on Cardinal Sardono? Sadono? Something like that. He has made some of the more interesting statements and he keeps appearing in this drama. mg

Subject: RE: BS: Catholic come all-ye
From: GUEST,mg
Date: 19 Apr 10 - 02:55 PM

Another problem curtesy of Andrew Sullivan (and yes I read him but he also reads me because I write to him). A subordinate was pressured to cover for Ratzinger regarding a meeting he chaired where a priest was reassigned and went on to abuse.

I will say this in front of God and everyone. I think that the pope is either incompetent mentally or he is basically lying to us. Or figuring he does not have to actually say the truth as long as he does not speak words of lies. Either way he needs to go. Now.

There is so much filth associated with this Marciel case..bribery of church officials, at least it looks that way. Lots and lots of money exchanging hands. A pope who turned the other way..John Paul II. This is not the case of a lonely, tortured priest in a run-down orphanage. I am sympathetic to those poor souls, although I would do all I could to keep them away from children, including jail of course. This is a scam artist of the highest degree. A human worm. No, I should not insult worms. A subhuman inferior to a worm. mg