The Catholic Church appears not to have noticed the significance of two recent developments. Women have been accepted not only as readers, but also as ministers of the Eucharist. They are thus involved in the biblical word and in the distribution of the sacraments, two main components of worship. The general acceptance of girls as altar servers also shows that feminine persons can no longer be excluded as ritually impure.
Perhaps someone with the necessary access will whisper in the ear of the Pope, during his coming visit, that the roles of women in the church need careful re-examination. While fewer women may now have vocations to join religious orders, a growing number are called to serve as priests.
In this year of Newman’s canonisation, is it too much to hope that church discipline will grow and develop just as much as doctrine?
Lord Hylton,
I have read biographies (not book length if there are such) and am still not clear. Is Your Lordship a Catholic of the English Tradition whose bishops are in full communion with Rome (as to your personal life) or an Anglo-Catholic in the Anglican Communion who clearly are part of the other side of the schism regardless of what their and your ideals may be? I hope Your Lordship can answer this or acknowledge the correct answer provided by a commenter — it matters.
In terms of the Roman Catholic church the forbidding of girl altar servers is too much. In addition for all of the lack of interest and support from the women’s ordination groups there ought to be scholarly work and agitation to regularize this cae so when minor orders of acloytes and lector are restored women wre included. The women’s ordination group also have no intereset in creating non bishop Abbess-Cardinals which is clearly a matter of discipline and scholarship, they show no interest in creating somewhat restricted distaff deaconesses which have also existed and some of whom could be deaconess cardinals as well as there have been deaconess cardinals. This is not the Anglican Church and far less is it the Protestant Church of What Feels Good Lately. The truth is that we do not have a controversy over Women’s priestly ordination yet. We have cry-baby, vandalizing would-be liberal Protestants and those influenced by them. We have tradtionalists who know this is no way to make change. We also have those who honestly oppose the idea. Finally we have real misogynists. Should there ever be a controversy worthy of the name then influential people supporting women’s priestly ordination might flock to the banner. However, when people bring a tennis racket to a cricket match few can be expected to cheer.
Both the internal and external contexts of this Religion topic (and of most other topics, scenarios, discussions, agumentations, and ‘rantings’, such as appear on the Lords of the Blog) come marching on stage without recognition of hidden or not-at-all-clear impingeing Issues within or around it.
————————-
Religions surely should be centrally committed to helping each human-being and individual-human-development institution to nurture and healthily-develop the seven innate ‘sacramental’ energy-centres and energies, ‘implanted by God’ pre-birth in each human-being ?
That these self-same centres and energies have recently been given names and functional-descriptions that further clarify them, by Human Development disciplines including psycho-somatic and somato-psychic psychology and psychiatry, is a fact and factor that should surely have been fully appreciated and publicly discussed by Believers, Agnostics and Atheists alike ?
Please look through
“Lifestreams” by David Boadella, and through
“Anatomy of the Spirit” by Caroline Myss.
————
Please also look for the content about “self-control” ( as being more cost-effective and life-supportive than the old but now increasingly obsolescent “Reinforcement Theory”) in “Perceptual Control Theory” by WT Powers (and the ‘school’ he serves in).
—————
Otherwise, hidden fallacious internal and external components of issues and arguments, including of ability to nurture the human spirit, mind and body, will continue marching on and holding centre-stage and, after huge expenditures of our time, money, and human-effort have failed to remove falsehoods, go marching off-stage to again dwell hidden, like explosive-mines beneath the good-soil’s surface, all over the ‘human’ world.
==============
(JSDM1000W08Sep10)
The status of women in church needs to be seriously looked upon. No need for sexism in today’s church. There is nothing wrong with women being called to spread the word by God
Sooner or later, it will happen, as religions always evolve to better ingratiate themselves into the societies they live in.
What I am looking forward to when it does happen is the inevitable hasty rewriting by the Catholics that show that it’s not a change of mind at all and that they’ve never said women can’t be priests, that this is all just a continuation of the same doctrines that have been around since Peter. That kind of thing is always good for a giggle.
“shows that feminine persons can no longer be excluded as ritually impure.” I wonder what they think.
“While fewer women may now have vocations to join religious orders, a growing number are called to serve as priests.”
It surely takes a very different kind of woman to be a nun than a priest,although there was one very ‘noble’ nun who used to serve time in W.Abbey on a regular basis some years ago. That is the CofE though.
Pity about the lessened interest in monastic orders; there are plenty of Nunnish/Monkish people about, but no ‘career’ path for them to take.
MY Lord Hylton, I’m afraid on this matter I must disagree that a Growing number of women are called to be Priests. For one thing, a female would be a Priestess; Priest is not Unisex as a term.
That said, If I told you I was making a movie about Jesus, and was casting Actors, would you think I was being Sexist if I only considered Male Actors for the role of Jesus? I doubt it. But that is what you think of the Priesthood, which is infinitely more important.
You may argue that this is different, for Jesus is a man and a male Actor would be needed to show this, while the Priesthood is a leadership position in the Church, but the point is, the Priesthood isn’t merely about Leadership at all.
Its also rather impossible to ordain women in Catholicism. The role of the Priest is not simply to “do a job”, but to be a Sacramental representation of Jesus. When we say the Priest represents Jesus, we do not mean that he represents him as a Lawyer represents a client, but rather that he makes Jesus present to the congregation, and while dispensing the Sacraments.
The Priest acts Ex Personal Christi, or in the Person of Christ, while performing his Sacramental Role, so that the Lord himself is the ultimate administrator of the Sacrament.
Jesus was a man. This cannot be changed.
Likewise, the Priest acts as he is married to the Church, the Bride of Christ, in that regard. Women obviously won’t work in this role, for they cannot be Husbands can they? The relationship would be that of two women, not a man and a woman.
A Woman can never be a Husband. Neither can she be a Father. Nor can she be a son. She will thus not be able to serve as a Priest whose role is to be precisely those things.
The Priesthood is also a reflection of the Divine Order, with the Priest reflecting the Divine Fatherhood of God, thus his title of Father, and the Divine Sonship. Both are male Roles.
The Priest reflects the attributes of God in the person of Jesus, and thereby makes Jesus present in our day for our peoples.
Can a woman? Not really.
The Priesthood is for men alone for a specific reason, and this reason cannot be changed in favour of modern attempts at Equality, for the Churches teachings are not about the worlds notions of Equality at all. Its about the Submission to the Will of God. The Church is not a Democracy, and the Priesthood is not and never has been mere leadership. It is central to the Priesthood to be Male, so saying that this can change only shows a lack of understanding of the nature of the Priesthood, or an attempt to alter its actual purpose.
Some today may call this sexist, but its not. it’s the Sacramental nature of the Priesthood that demands it be reserved for men alone.
Incidentally, women can’t be called by God to violate Gods will, or to do the impossible, so I’m afraid that those who think a Growing number of women are called by God into the Priesthood are simply mistaken.
“a growing number are called to serve as priests”
Is this truly an area in which the Church can ‘develop’ or change? One expects a Church to be ever faithful to her roots and mission, whilst adapting her expression of that to time and circumstance.
I ask that pointedly because this issue has been examined as recently as 1994, but then John Paul II declared “the Church has no authority whatsoever to confer priestly ordination on women”. Notice he is not talking about desire, or opinion, but an objective inability to do something. In ontological terms, it is like trying to engineer a male womb.
I would also note that canonically women are not permitted to be instituted Lectors; and, that the so-called ‘ministers of the Eucharist’ are extraordinary ministers of Holy Communion, that is to say not the usual ones (the Priest or Deacon).
I would have thought that the essential Task of religion is to nurture, educate, defend, and set a practical-living example to the God-given innate seven sacramental-energy-centres of the human-being, as they unfold from birth to about age 21 years:
1. Baptismal
2. Confirmational
3. Holy Communion
4. Relationship (Marriage; Bonding)
5. Confessional
6. Ordinational
7. Unctional.
From the above vocation and mission tasks, to ‘God-parent’ both the child and the adult, as Children of God, three prerequiaite and ongoingly-adaptable skills and willingnesses are clearly essential, be that in the role of father, mother, elder sibling, uncle, aunt, reader, teacher, mentor, priest, cardinal or archbishop; and they are
1. To be fully conversant with and able to teach the enablements (‘life-skills’)inherent in each of the successive seven sacramental-energies
2. To be a living-example of a ‘seven-sacramental life-style’ during the 75% lifestyle-timeframe
3. To be a trained-priest in the 25% workplace-timeframe duties of the Vocation & Mission (such as formally administering each of the sacraments, truthfully presenting the tenets of the religion, and constructvely participating in the hierarchical activities of the religion).
Surely such a job (and career) qualification could to be met equally by a man, a woman or a eunoch; but clearly not in a priest role any younger than say 25years of age (to give time for service-to-life-experience to be internalised after completing the natural development span of the seven innate sacramental-energies and centres by age 21).
That competence and teaching abilities are necessary in a religious leader, very specially including Reasoning and Critical- Thinking abilities, should be mandatorily clear, also.
============
(JSDM2319M06Sep10)
JSDM, in Catholic Theological teachings the Sacrament of Ordination goes much beyond the Priesthood as a Job. It is a Sacrament, that literally changes the Soul of those its applied to. It is a Holy Trust that literally, literally must be done in order to preserve the Nature of the Other Sacraments. As such, anything that would be seen as possibly, even Remotely changing the Formula, hat could even in Theory risk the loss of Apostolic Succession, is avoided most stridently.
The Priesthood is also about the Priest acting In Persona Christi.
This means that, literally, the Priest, when administering the Sacraments, becomes Jesus, who works through the person of the Priest to administer the Sacrament. He is not Represented like a Lawyer represents a Client, but is literally “Made present” by the act of Sacramental Authority, brought literally to the Mass by the Priest, is embodied by the Priest, and is infused in the Sacraments themselves, especially the Eucharist and Baptism. It is this infusion that makes them Effective.
The Priesthood is not just a Career, and is not just teaching or giving out Communion or visiting the sick, it is literally bringing Jesus personally into the company of the Mass, and as such allowing him to offer these things to his People.
This is why women cannot be Ordained into the Priesthood, because a woman can’t be Jesus. Jesus was a man. This is one of his Attributes, and doesn’t change. While any sort of man may be Ordained, it still must be a Man, someone who embodies that aspect and all others of the Human Jesus. No Human can be Divine, like Jesus, but they can be Men and thus share in his Nature and essence in that regard. But a woman Can’t. In much the same way that an Actor playing Jesus must be a man to truly capture his essence and spirit on Stage, so must a Priest be a Man in order to Capture his Essence and Spirit and make it present to the Congregation he is Administering.
To Ordain a Woman is thus to undermine that essence and destroy the Representative nature of the Priesthood. It would destroy the capacity of the Priesthood to function in this regard.
Even if there was some doubt in this regard, to Ordain a woman at least risks the loss of Apostolic Succession, which must never, ever be risked.
If there is even the slightest possibility that this is invalid and nonexistant then every Eucharist she consecrates would have to be Reconsecrated Provisionally by a man just in case.
But there is no doubt as the Church has Issues its teaching on this long ago, and unlike what McDuff says, the Church never really changes its Theology. Disciplines yes, but not the Actual Theology.
To change this would be to Change how the Priesthood itself is seen, to Change how the Priesthood itself exists. It would cease to be about embodying Jesus, and become a Career, about Teaching. While Teaching is a part of the Sacramental office, it is not the Sacramental offices only Role, and as such, because of this, you cannot change it.
The Priesthood is not about simply doing a Job. it’s not about simply handing out Sacraments and Preaching Sermons and going to bedsides. Its about so much more than that, its about Jesus being made present, though imperfectly, in the Priest.
So, no, it can’t be Changed. Not without scrapping the idea behind the Priesthood outright in favour of what the Anglican Church now has.
Zarove’s reply avoids the key-point that ‘ordination’, and each of the other six sacraments, is an internal sacrament of direct-link between God and the individual human-being, divinely-independent of priesthoods and churches.
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Zarove uses unsubstantiable Dogma, and fails to show valid arumentation and strong critical reasoning.
———
No priest. nor Pope, has the power nor the great-skill (as a personal or institutional ability) to turn him(her)self into the creative God, or even a ‘co-creative’vicar-of-God, namely for the Purpose of transubsantiating God (or any part of God or of The Trinity or of the ‘co-creative-god’ namely the officiating priest) into ‘mere’ bread and alcoholic-wine however nice they may taste and however biologically-nutritious and free from ‘germs’ they may be.
——–
Zarove’s ‘school’ of belief and of attempted-argumentation, which I am unable to identify as yet, appears to be neither appreciating nor answering highly disciplined formal and moral reasoning contributed by both heralded and unheralded others:
Robert Graves, Bertrand Russell, Prof Joad, Prof Dawkins, Prof Hawking, Caroline Myss and David Boadella. and the Australian Roman Catholic archbishop who seriously taught that (“) Jesus came to Earth to help us become more Human”.
((( According to Zarove, Roman Catholic priests seek to escape that teaching by themselves becoming transient Christs-incarnate, taught by High Religious Leaders as an essential part of the dogmatic-fantasy behind other esoteric-dreams unwittingly posing as theo-logic-al Dogma Overall))) ?
—————
If you accept the three basic principles of clear thinking, discussion, and reasoning:
1. Clarity
2. Charity
3. Self-correction
then in the name of the Charity principle alone I believe you would do well to make serious reading of:
“Lifestreams” by David Boadella;
“Anatomy of the Spirit” by Caroline Myss; and
“A Rulebook for Arguments” by Anthony Weston;
Adult to adult, then we might better shape up as fellow win-win-win participants, able and willing to both appreciate and use clear-argumentation & critical-reasoning as well as substantiable dogma, and in that ability to better help each other to achieve a collective Clarity, Charity and Self-correction competence and confidence.
I say these things in the an attempt to honour leadership by others, such as Girle, Halpin, Miller & Williams who in introducing the Clarity, Charity and Self-correction argumentation-principles say
“If debates are approached in accordance with the principle of charity, and not in a highly competitive way, then people don’t lose out, only falsehood is defeated – that’s the aim anyway”.
So come on, help us out with believable and practically-achievable thinking where we go wrong.
—————–
(JSDM2222T07Sep)
” I was being Sexist if I only considered Male Actors for the role of Jesus?”
What? Like the male “Swan Lake”, a new Biblical film with Jesus as a female?
Title of Film “The woman Jesus of Nazareth?”
Certainly not Jesus of Montreal!
The most amusing thing in the world is watching believers battle over esoteric points of dogma. It’s like seeing people have an argument about whether unicorns are pink or blue.
Personally I wonder what on earth women would want to promote an institution as biased against them as the Catholic Church, but then that’s because I’m constitutionally irreverent. It takes all sorts and if people want to do silly and self-harming things, well, who am I to stop them? No worse for them than doing drugs, really.
It’s not like you couldn’t find examples of a feminine God in the scriptures if you weren’t so wedded to the idea of the inherent superiority of the masculine gender anyway. It’s not as if the Catholic Church could never change if it wanted to. And it will, eventually, change. Causing some splits, no doubt, just like Vatican II did. And the world will keep spinning on its axis, blissfully unaware of the silly things that primates do.
The world-history I read when young told us that long before any Male God or god dominated, there prevailed a Mother God(dess), later but still long before the Male God, to be named ‘Artemis’ ?
———————
(Incidentally, about ‘Mother-Earth’ and ‘Gaia’, at least Plato, Aristotle, Jean Fernel (1497-1558)and Sir Charles Sherrington (in his “Man on his Nature” 1940) had preceded Prof James Lovelock’s ‘Earth-Goddess Gaia theory’; and evidently so had ‘Holy Writ’ some-time between Plato and Fernel i.e. between the anno-domini Founding of the Christian Church and 1558.
——–
We still need ro remember how Science not so many hundreds of years ago for a long time held that reproduction was a matter of ‘spontaneous generation’ i.e. that living-creatures were (‘miraculously’) formed directly out od inorganic matter i.e. without the need for an interstertiary copulation, egg, sperm, zygote … .
In some senses, Religion depends upon a prior-advance in knowledge or hypothisation by Science, as it were upon whose ‘heavenly-coat-tails’ religious theo-logic and dogma then seeks to ‘fly’ and, witness The Vicar of Bray’s words “The illustrious House of Hanover, and Protestant succession, To these I lustily will swear, Whilst they can keep possession;
For in my Faith, and Loyalty,
I never once will faulter,
But George by lawful king shall be,
Except the Times should alter.”
=======================
(JSDM1457Th09Sep10)
“And this be Law I shall maintain, Until my dying day, sir;
That whatsoever “King” may reign, Still I’ll be the vicar-of-Bray. sir.
JSDM, What I presented was the Catholic Churches own Theology regarding the Priesthood. Saying I sail to use Strong Argumentation and Critical Thinking is off base, and out of Character for you as you have always been much more respectful.
The problem with Ordaining women as a discussion is that those who are for it often view those against it as retrograde thinkers who simply resist change and who are dogmatic but not Logical. it’s the same problem as when Atheists debate Religious people, as if the Religious person is irrational and the Atheist has a Monopoly on Reason. ( And I’ve said before that Atheists are themselves religious, a fact I’m usually seen as insane for. But I repeat it anyway as its True.)
Using names like Bertrand Russell and Stephen Hawking also seems out of place. To my knowledge Dr. Hawking has never spoken of the Catholic Priesthood, for example, and I’m not sure what he would believe in regard to it. I’m pretty sure that you aren’t either. At any rate Hawking is not a Moralist, he is a Cosmologist, and all of his expertise is in the Realm of Theoretical Physics, which is also why he doesn’t have a Nobel Prise. (It is only awarded to those who have proven something with testable experiments, not those whose Mathematics is eloquent but whose conclusions are unproven, and improvable.) This doesn’t make Hawking useless, but it means he’s useless sin this discussion, much like I am useless in discussing sport hunting as I know nothing about the topic and haven’t said anything in its regard.
Bertrand Russell did say a lot but I don’t think we should bend over backwards to listen to an Anti-Christian Atheist when it domes to what the Catholic Church should do. Russell’s Logic and Moral teachings wee further not very good to begin with. As I’ve said before, if you read his own Biography you know he mistreated and emotionally abused his own Children, was married four times, often took as lovers other men’s wives, and frequently caused friendships to end by betraying the trust of the Friend. He did this not in spite of his deep moral thinking, but because he lived by his Moral code.
Even excepting that, Russell was not a Catholic, nor did he show any willingness to explore Catholicism on its own terms.
Richard Dawkins won’t even bother to open up a Theology book much less examine why people believe what they believe in, and instead claims people hold to belief in God as a delusion. Most of his views are just repetition of older Atheistic works like Russell, and his books are somewhat Jarring to read to an educated mind because he frequently uses poor Logic to show why God most likely doesn’t exist.. ( I’m still bemused over his “Ultimate stinkiness” line…did he not try to understand Anslam on purpose?) His moral values are just copied out of Secular Humanism and Bertrand Russell, and his own life follows a similar course as Russell.
Again, why should a man whose only dedicated to pushing the Religion of Secular Humanism, whilst insisting he has no religion, and who has shown no willingness to look at what people believe on its own terms but rather insists we all conform our beliefs and practices to what he personally believes in be seen as a viable source of information for this topic? Dawkins would have us give up the Catholic Church totally, or barring that change all of its teachings regarding the Existence of God, as well as the Priesthood.
While not trying to go overlong I skipped the other names, but you see my point by now I hope.
You have to first understand the Catholic Priesthood from a Catholic Theological perspective before you can make comments regarding if it can be changed, much less should it be changed. To understand it purely as teaching and administering the sacraments and as merely a Job, or as reflective of life development, is to ignore the principles on which the Priesthood is understood within Catholicism. The Priesthood isn’t just a job. It isn’t just a career. The Priesthood is a Sacramental office specifically designed to make Jesus Christ present to the Mass, and allow administration of the Sacraments to the people to be performed by Jesus himself through the medium of the Priest.
That isn’t something I’m making up, its what the Catholic Church has taught for the last 2000 years, and the Church itself has no Authority to change this, as its part of the Deposit of Faith, not a Discipline.
Below is a Link to what I mean.
http://www.catholiceducation.org/articles/apologetics/ap0001.html
Another link may help.
http://www.dummies.com/how-to/content/looking-at-the-priesthood-as-nowomans-land.html
I was tempted to post the actual Vatican document, but this is somewhat easier to understand, and I realise not all people are as in depth with their study of Theology and Religion as I am.
I am not saying that as an insult, but the Vatican’s own documents tend to be very dense, and intimidating to those not use to such work.
But the point is, the Catholic Church has no Authority to Ordain women, who are not proper matter for Ordination. Just as Water is needful for Baptism, and Wine and Bread for Communion, so a man is needful for Ordination. One cannot have Baptism without Water, Water is a Key element of the Rite. One cannot substitute Apple Cider for Wine, it must be Wine. It is an integral part f Communion. Rice Wafers are often asked to be sued in Communion, but the Church says it must be Bread. This is a Key element of the Communion Wafer, the Host before consecration. At the same time, he Ordained must be a Man. It isn’t that the Church reuses to Ordain women, its that Women cannot be Ordained, any more than Rice can be consecrated, or Apple Juice can be Consecrated.
A woman is incapable of being Ordained, even if you prefer the Rote on her. He will thus be unable to consecrate the Elements of Bread and Wine to Tran substantially change them into the Body Blood Soul and Divinity of Christ Jesus. She will be unable to perform a Sacramental marriage. She will be Unable to perform Confirmations.
Baptisms she will be able to perform, but only because literally all Catholics can Baptise. It is the one Rite any Catholic may perform.
A Woman will not be able to hold the Person of Christ and reflect it. Jesus was a man, and this is an integral part of who and what he was, and it is thus needful for a Man to be placed in this position.
Also one has to wonder how far the Feminism would take us? The Episcopal Church of Scotland made the News last night, because the Women “Priests” (why do we not call them priestesses?) have went form saying they should be let into Clerical Roles just as men, to wanting the Language of worship changed because hey don’t want to refer to God as a man. All of this is because hey want to Change the way we see God to suit themselves. At this. point they no longer seek God and his will, but instead their own hearts and heir own Will.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1309451/God-longer-male-says-Scottish-Episcopal-church.html?ITO=1490
All of this simply confirms the Scripture. People will often stop seeking God and seek after their own Hearts, and instead of seeking Sound Doctrine seek only their own desires.
I break with convention and use the Douay-Rheims rather than the KJV I am accustomed to using, out of respect for our Catholic membership.
2 Timothy 4
[1] I charge thee, before God and Jesus Christ, who shall judge the living and the dead, by his coming, and his kingdom:
[2] Preach the word: be instant in season, out of season: reprove, entreat, rebuke in all patience and doctrine.
[3] For there shall be a time, when they will not endure sound doctrine; but, according to their own desires, they will heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears:
[4] And will indeed turn away their hearing from the truth, but will be turned unto fables.
[5] But be thou vigilant, labour in all things, do the work of an evangelist, fulfill thy ministry. Be sober.
Now to this end, I ask you to reconsider the implications of what you ask. It is not Sexism that drives the Priesthood to be exclusively male, and its not just a Job in which the Priest gives our Sacraments and preaches, it’s a Sacramental Role reflective of the Person of Christ Jesus, which to change is to destroy.
Being male is a Constitutive element of the Priesthood, not as Discipline, and cannot be Changed.
I still find clearer, quicker, and much more reasonable guidance to my mind, in such matters as we have here in the Lords of the Blog or Elsewhere, from the works I have already quoted, but notably and currently from the little desk-side “A Rulebook for Arguments” 4th edition, by Anthony Weston, than I do from Religious Dogma or Comentary.
‘Contextuality’ is a real live Stumbling-Block; beware not only the contextualities within an argument* but those externally relevant to it.
If you look via Google for “strain at a gnat but swallow a camel” (Matthew23:24)(a physiological and mind-functional mistake that I believe we each want to avoid in our thinking and communication) you’ll find Barnes’s Notes anachronisticly attributing modern new-knowledge in Biology to ancient times up to and including Jesus’s life (see Spontaneous Generation which had not yet woken up to the fact of generative-succession egg > grub > chrysalis > imago:
so when the Bible says ‘gnat’ it would not be in the sense of ‘maggot’ but in the sense of the adult-imago insect, flying with mosquito-like wings, that we still see and know today.
==============
Once again, I can not lower the Standard I try to follow any less than the three accepted principles of clear thinking, discussion and reasoning I now appear to have to continually quote:
1. Clarity.
2. Charity.
3. Self-correction.
=======================
On that simple and quickly-comprehensible basis, my previous submissions shall continue to stand:
thus possibly like Zarove who has a position (or two) from which he will not ‘budge’, I too will not ‘budge’ from that latter.
Perhaps we are each something like the ‘Vicar of Bray’
“…To these I lustily will swear
Until the Times to alter”.
=================
* ‘argument’ in the real-life sense of ‘constructive-reasoning’, of valid-reasoning, of strong-reasoning, and of cogent moral-reasoning.
======================
🙂
(JSDM1555Th09Sep10)
“Being male is a Constitutive element of the Priesthood, not as Discipline, and cannot be Changed” (Zarove sez).
Women therefore qualify, having certain ‘male’ parts including a masculine-gender spirit whereas the Man whilst having certain ‘female’ parts has only a feminine-soul (authorities: History of Humankind; CG Jung; and Others).
Zaove’s “…’Constitutive element’…’the Priesthood’…’as Discipline’…’cannot be Changed'” each need exhaustive clarification and definition (please).
Any-one game ?
===============
(JSDM2053Th09Sep10)
LH: It not so much a whine but the wine or more specifically sacramental wine that is important. Surely only the pure of heart and body should serve the Eucharist.
What has always perplexed me is the nature of sacramental wine itself. I fear priests are using any old red plonk to do the job and the congregation is non the wiser for it. Surely this should be free from any adulteration, excise duty or sales tax. And what of the water that dilutes the wine, is common or garden Aqua-Fawcett being used?
What good are these high-minded considerations of purity when the symbolic body and blood of Christ are often in the hands of Philistines? Faith is truly blind!
Ref: EWTN: Why Water with Wine?
http://www.ewtn.com/library/liturgy/zlitur39.htm
Senex,
You do realize your nome de plume means “old man” and not cynic in Latin?
It is common to make fun of ritual today whether Introductions at Lords, the Mass, horn-blowing llamas or the second line at the funerals of Creoles of colour in Louisiana one find many nearby making fun. It has always been done but less than in recent centuries. Cricketeers could pitch to the stands, voters could stuff ballots into ordinary postal boxes on slips they write themselves, Lord Hylton could take to calling himself Generalissimo Russleson and hold councils in a local hotel. The primary thing wrong with each of these plans is ritual improriety but the fact is the results would be poor. Some rituals have a mianly interior purpose like rock music, impressionist paintings and ballet. However, your incapacity to enjoy or appreciate any given one of these things does not prove it to be less valuable. Making fun of the forms you do not understand mainly makes you look silly in my honest opinion.
We pray to mother merry for our well being but another side we made restrictions for female from many ritual ritually works. This is really unfair.
I empathize because I have had many posts on LOTB that were badly garbled. But honestly I think your post bears slim resemblance to anything in your mind as you typed this. I probably would disagree but seriously this is not very legible.
Yes, the Microsoft MCSE Training Courses’ comment is ‘muddled’, but might be meaning to say
(“) We pray to Mother Mary on one side for our wellbeing, but on the other side we have excluded females from many vital rituals, which is really unfair (“). ?
———-
(JSDM0957F10Sep)
Indeed!
Truly.
It is, frankly, hilarious that the spammer got through because everyone else is so blitheringly incoherent on this matter. It’s like the Turing test taken in reverse.
JSDM, you may not like Religious Dogma but we’re discussing Religious Dogma. it is Dogma by definition that the Church operates on.
And unlike the negative connotations that word conjures in our mind today because of how it is frequently used to denote authoritarian control in a dictatorial manner, or absolute teaching that is simply there to control, the word “Dogma” simply means an absolute teaching, that is not to be Challenged as it forms the core of the principle involved.
In the Catholic Church, Dogma plays a central role because its basically the already defined tenets of the Faith.
If you prefer your sources to Dogma that’s fine, but you can’t honestly expect to discuss the Catholic Faith without discussing Dogma, and placing it as superior to all other considerations.
Somehow I feel wonderfully positivised by your quite clear Reply, Zarove.
I would leave it at that too, were it not for a slight doubt in my mind over meanings or senses, and contexts: e.g. your closing paragraph says “but you can’t honestly expect to discuss the Catholic Faith without discussing Dogma (i.e. Catholic religious Dogma, which is ‘not to be Challenged’)and placing it as superior to all other considerations.”
University-entrance taskings clearly distinguish “Discuss” from “Analyse”, “Compare and Contrast”, “Explain”, “Evaluate”, “Argue” and “Debate”.
“Discussion” has to be academically disinterested: it may not include “placing Catholic Religious Dogma as superior to all other considerations”.
Any other participant see such task-distinctions to be necessary ?
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2145F10Sep10.
Frank: When I said “Faith is truly blind” your on-guard response is commendable but it does the Roman Catholic faith no favours. The reason why the church has suffered greatly is because no one has been prepared to question what was going on and denial was everywhere.
The faithful go to communion as children and see it with wonder and question everything but because they are children such questions are not taken seriously. As adults’ communion has taken place so often that the inner child never again questions the ritual.
When did you last ask your priest where his sacramental wine came from because the church is very prescriptive about its make up? As somebody receiving the sacrament it is taken on faith that the priest is doing his job properly and the instruments of ritual are as they should be.
In India the parish can claim back any duty and sales tax on sacramental wine and this is how it should be everywhere. Conceivably the Romans could have taxed the wine drunk at the last supper but its highly unlikely that it was subject of an excise tax.
For the church, being able to reproduce the actual character of the wine drunk at the last supper is important but not to those that receive the sacrament at communion.
There is no reason why any Christian church that enacts Holy Communion should not have a central buying facility and a bonded warehouse where sacramental wine can be distributed to a parish free of tax.
You might be at one with a spiritual church but you are blind to the practicalities of the same church delivering its faith to the world at large.
Senex,
The debate as to taxing wine is entirely respectable. The tone of the idea that small details in a ritual cannot matter was objectionable to me. I would expect that most poeitions taken on taxing wine would be driven by reasons other than ritual and will not opine on the specifics.
As to reasons ” reason why the church has suffered greatly is because no one has been prepared to question what was going on and denial was everywhere” == I think the level of things in Ireland may be unique in part because the not so dillo pecadillos of the very House hosting us created a bunker mentality in the Church which could not be healthy and could not be avoided either.
In other societies my statistics show that pedophilia among priests is in line with or below that of other groups that have confidential access to the young. The CHurch is being punished for being able to maintain an institution and balance a budget which other groups cannot do and therefore having something to take in a lawsuit. Denial is indeed everywhere in scouting, secular schools and elswehere and the protection racket is huge. I have always favored severe penalties for real pedophile priests according to what I view as correct principles and long before it was a worldwide topic of discussion. I am also willing to see a sgnificant number of married diocesan priests but married pedophiles abound. I also believe that while it may be technically hypocritical the fact that a substantial percentage of Catholic priest and monks are homosexuals is not really denied in most communities and seems like areal good thing to me. Unlike Hitler I would not like to kill my homsexual cousins and unlike the brain dead modern polities I do not see same sex couples as capable of contracting marriage. Heterosexual pedophilia of course is more common but less by proportion to the two populations. Frankly, I draw some real distinctions between a youth worker who has two indiscretions with seventeen year olds in forty years of working with adolescents and a serial rapist manipulator of seven year olds. This sense of compromise does not mean a separate standard of law. The policy as it really exists outside the papers regarding homosexual clergy has existed across many different legal regimes and is one of the better options ever created in history. Although I am hoping the tooth fairy will one day make us all free of all desires and except lifelong monogamy with our loving supermodel of the opposite sex it has not happened yet.
Most teachers and social workers can do almost anything they want to do to the most vulnerable youth and that is almost impossible to change. In fact where it is really kept in check it is often by the personal scary qualities of colleagues and peers in those groups who let it be knwon that consequences may not involve public inquiries but some not so regular recourse. The break down of such organs in parts of my church is evident but not unique. Please don’t quote me laws and policies to refute this impunity because enforcement with skilled adults and very vulnerable children is an entirely unique case compared to any other part of policing. The closest thing is prison policy about which scarcely an honest page reaches a government in a hundred years.
“In other societies my statistics show that pedophilia among priests is in line with or below that of other groups that have confidential access to the young. The CHurch is being punished for being able to maintain an institution and balance a budget which other groups cannot do and therefore having something to take in a lawsuit”
To be fair, the Church also claims to be an institution with a direct line to the source of all morality, and entrusts its officers with a number of duties which it claims have a direct impact on the souls of the people who subscribe to its services.
It might be the case that the Church is no worse at kiddy fiddling than the rest of society. But, really, when you think about it, shouldn’t it be? And if it’s not, what’s this direct line to God for? If the Church can’t tell that the person they’ve given the capacity to hear a sinner’s confession is an actual rapist, doesn’t that throw the whole purpose of and justification for this particular institution into question?
Mc Duff,
I am not sure you could accept this. However, I think our difference in this case is not mostly about religion and irreligion or conservative and liberal. Before you vow that this cannot possibly be true allow me to elaborate. I am more pessimistic than you are. You are more pessimistic than many but I more than you. I support this parliament that is not my own for its efforts but if they knew the secret grade I give them in the inner sanctum of my mind then they might feel justly offended and so it is with most things. Perhaps you are all as son a son should be, all as a citizen (of Australia perhaps?) that one should be, all the lover any woman ever had a right to expect when she was with you — perhaps…
My experience is that people and institutions fall short of their purpose more often than not….
That’s my experience too. And when dealing with human beings it’s absolutely understandable, expected, and not even really than much grounds for condemnation.
But, as I said, if the Catholic Church is no better than other institutions that don’t have God whispering in their ear, what is He telling them? What, frankly, is the point of Him? And, further, what is the point of them?
Frank: You give your thoughts on what is a continuing headline scandal for the RC Church but I didn’t really want to drag this up. What was uppermost in my mind was the prejudice generally shown to women both inside and outside of the church especially if they are divorced and want to remarry again within the Church. There are other issues of insensitivity too towards women that are hidden away and ignored.
I return to my sacramental whine. In Singapore Halal foodstuffs are big business. Before the product can obtain a genuine Halal seal the inspectorate has to be convinced that it was prepared and packaged only by Muslims.
Does the same principle apply to sacramental wine? Were only Christians involved in the manufacture and packaging of what passes as sacramental wine; did Philistines tread the grapes with their bare feet? If the Churches executive regards women as impure or inappropriate then so is sacramental wine on this basis.
What is forgotten all too often is the role that women have played in promoting Christianity down the centuries. In a cruel merciless world dominated by violent men Christianity offered women equality, respect, kindness and love and they took to it in their droves and so did their children – along for the ride were their inconsiderate men, it eventually softened them too.
Women have abandoned the Church partly because they have changed the nature of the world we live in and no longer need the Churches love and protection. It now comes packaged with everyday life. If the Church is to see a revival women must come back to the Church and see some sort of equality. Being an accepted part of the ritual would be a first step.
Senex,
You make many assertions and I cannot respond to such a large number. In my really vast travels, studies and network of friends around the world I would say that women are not the group definable as having not abandoned the RCC or the community of Christian Churches. In fact a complicating wrinkle is that women already outnumber and out-presence men in much of the church by a large factor. Nonethless I accept the Christian feminism that is part of our heritage an have no desire to see it eroded.
Hmmm, no comments from women. OMG!! Look what I just did!!!
Lady Tizzy,
That is an excellent point…
Should be and are are two different thinks McDuff. The Church is still operated by people, and expectugn superhuman behaviour is simply not Valid. Nor is it a Valid argukents against the Church when its Pritss succumb to sin, for the teachings must be weighed, not the actions of individuals.
Zarove
Given all the church claims for itself, I think expecting a *little* bit of superhuman behaviour and conduct isn’t actually unreasonable.
Or are we to believe that a lifetime of submission to Christ should actually have no discernible effect on the character of a minister? And if so, for heaven’s sake, why bother at all?
If you genuinely can’t get better results than the other lot, what use are you?
MC Duff,
Let us be honest, whether he reads this varefully or not Lord Hylton and I can be seen to be engaged in a real quarrle of thought. I would not impugn his House or house with physical cowardice but even if we could meet at approved ground and shoot each other it would not resolve all the issues involved. With you the honor would be harder to find but words merely extend violence, wouldn’t you say?
The Catholic Church involves these social workers in the project of preserving vast museums of art, educating hundreds of thousands of people in higher education and millions in secondary and primary studies, it marks and graces countless agricultural and social calendars with signs of grace and festivals that make life humane, it joins many classes and languages in all sorts of humane dialog. The fact that it cannot measure up to the entirely artificial, disconnected and delusional pretense at logic and ethics proposed by you cannot be held much against it. Whether your persona here is real of not, it is that of a thorough-going pirate in the philosophical spere. Your whole approach to the human condition is specious. The difference between one who throws rocks through a stained glass window and one who makes or commissions such a window is too great a distinction to reduce to mere position papers.
This is not really so ad hominem as one might acccuse me of. I would imagine many in the House of Lords (for example) if they knew me could marshall just as much animus as you abound in here. However, there might be more than merely animus in most cases.
Mcduff, given that you’re fed a steady diet of Atheist Propaganda, your argument is sure to make sense to you. But for those of us who have taken the time to read what the Catholic Church actually teaches, it doesn’t.
The Church teaches that we as individuals must submit to Christ and that this will make us more morally perfect, it doesn’t guarantee that we actually will. There are plenty of Catholics who do not fully submit to Christ, and plenty who don’t at all submit to Christ. The Priesthood is not immune from this as the Priests are still in the end Human.
Just because someone is in the clergy doesn’t mean he always obeys, and trying to link his bad behaviour to the Churches Teachings as if they are the cause is not really valid.
I’m not saying the teaching is the cause. Well, maybe the celibacy thing. The Church is, in my view, quite hopelessly muddled about anything to do with sex.
I am merely pointing out that I would expect the teaching to produce fewer child rapists than it, apparently, does. As I’ve said above, this is not, to my mind, the most arduous moral hurdle to place in any institution’s path.
Also, Zarove, what is always curious about God in these constructions is just how passive He is. One can submit to him and be made a better person, but can always fall away. There’s not a lot going on there that couldn’t be readily substituted for any other vague and dream-like deity. Or, indeed, for a general sense of right and wrong.
Non-Catholics create great artworks and educate people too, Mr Summers.
I am not sure what makes my standards so artificial and disconnected. I am merely making the suggestion that if an institution claims that its officers are agents of the living God, from an outsider’s point of view it seems not unreasonable that, at a minimum, those officers should not be actively engaged in the raping of children. Since they are, it strikes me as casting at least the shadow of doubt onto the claims of the institution as a whole.
It’s not exactly a claim staggering in its scope and ambition, that one. Many people who aren’t Catholic priests go their whole lives without raping children.
I have known a good number of Buddhist, Jewish, Pagan and Hindu artists of varied media and few of them if any produced works primarily inspired by not being Catholic. There are cars driving fast on a race track who may beat each other or not and there are those who drive in from the parking lot and wreck several such cars and the two are not the same. Arguably the House of Lords is among the most anti-Roman Catholic institutions on Earth — all in all. I would say, yes it too has lots of quite good art. You asked what results there were that differed from sinners not inspired by Christ. There are two comparisons, one with other sources of inspiration and one with yourself and others who might be described kindly as the black death of the social soul.
Frank Wynerth Summers III: ‘Arguably the House of Lords is among the most anti-Roman Catholic institutions on Earth’. And the basis for this assertion is? I suspect the leading Roman Catholic members of the House may disagree with you.
Lord Norton,
The word “arguably” especially set off by a comma at the start of a sentence had meaning for me. In our dialect this indicates that an argument can be made for such a position and not that I am making it. However, were I to make it for clarity it might not be what I generally believe. So they might not be disagreeing with me. The Noble Lords who are Roman Catholic are certainly entitled make arguments in the opposite vein. However, I think a coutnryside of ruined and confiscated abbeys, the Irish troubles, the circumstances of the Acadian deportation, the special place of the War with Spain in your political culture and the general impression the realm made upon me as a lad make it a lovely and appealing argument to me — perhaps I shall make it one day. I have not yet. Your Lordship may rest assured that I would not have said or written this unadvisedly — I would imagine that literacy among Peers of your realm is quite high. However many may choose to read my remarks…
Are you aware that it is the year 2010?
(Psst) ‘the House of Lords has to be “arguably…”anti-roman-catholic”…” defacto because it has to pray to a Protestant God… ‘ (Psst ends).
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(JM195_sn12sep)
And all this because I suggested that I’d expect priests to not rape children, too! One would have thought I’d p***ed on your doorstep or something, the way you’re carrying on.
“few of them if any produced works primarily inspired by not being Catholic. ”
Who on Earth claimed or would claim otherwise? Are you making things up or losing the capacity to frame coherent sentences?
As far as “black death on the social soul” goes, I’ll take that as a compliment from an authoritarian huffandpuff like yourself. If you genuinely feel that I’m some kind of threat to your conception of society I must be doing something right.
McDuff,
One day you really should take up reading the words you read — we have to invent a new word to make the right distinction here. My response is to your pretense that inspiration was not vital to Catholic art and that the existence of nonCatholic art had some relevance to refuting the positive value of Catholic art was made clearly as this concise format allows. Of course one might argue that secular humanist, Protestant, and Moslem culture always have a limited amount of the rejection of Catholicism in them. However, the degree varies greatly. I am a Christian and in a real sense that means saying I am part of a tradition “that left Orthodox Judaism” yet in my life and the work of many artists I know, as we perceive ourselves, our hearkening to Hebrew and Jewish sources is mostly positive. Even some Lutherans have such feelings about the RCC.
Your other nonpoint is also incoherent. You do not challenge my conception of society. Your point of view, when it is promoted and lived by, and as it runs as unchallenged as it does in some limited circles challenges society itself. It is an active disease which impedes healthy cultures from maintaining and transmitting themselves. Now, I do think and some point I will have to discontinue this thread. However, I would be pleased if we could continue this under somewhat distinct circumstances.
My point was, in totality, and as follows:
“non-Catholics create artwork and educate people too.”
The idea that other religions have a “rejection of Catholicism” in them, aside from Protestantism, is pretty narcissistic.
But then narcissism is running through the thread here. Yeah you rape kids, just like everyone else does. And you make art and music, just like everyone else. And you give money to the poor, just like everyone else.
At what point do the rest of us look at you and go “hey, there are those fruits that make the Catholic Church so unlike other groups of religiously-minded folks?” Because it looks as if you’re just like all the rest of them.
Do you get that, from an external point of view, the fact that the population of “Catholics” is no worse than the general population isn’t something that’s proves you’re not just being a really old religion, just like the rest of the really old religions that also aren’t true?
McDuff,
Allowing for the fact that there may be a disconnect between the person living out there and the persona writing here I can assure you that I am much more aware of external points of view than you are ever likely to be, my network of friends and associates is among the most varied in the world. One who does not understand religious language, technique or epistemology and is really a vandal is simply not qualified to judge if it is true. I admit that I have a good number of friends in the Chinese Communist Party and almost all of them have taken some kind of Atheist Pledge which some kind of interpret away in ways not incompatible with their own Taoist, Confucian or Buddhist beliefs. Also like other political atheists powers their own record for hugely out of control violence and homicide is very sad and bad. But they are like religions in that they see the balances between plurality and unity, struggle and peace, community and individuation. Like religions they seek a path of wisdom and have an air of calm respect in many of their leaders that is similarto religious poise often seen. Many of my other friends will not appreciate so blanket a statement, but I have a real respect for the Chinese Communist Party. It is a particular weakness of my background that I do concern myself with you as a person — you are profoundly disordered. You are a drunken vandal in most of your approach and a danger to all around you…
Well I guess that may be true. But at least I’m not a prideful person who “goes into great detail about what he has seen, and his unspiritual mind puffs him up with idle notions.”
As someone else once said:
“Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs.”
Let’s just say that boastful Christians don’t get the greatest amount of respect from me. Whited sepulchres and all that.
McDuff,
Good on ya mate! Whether you quoted the scripture yourself or just had an ally spoon feed you I am still impressed. You are not qualified to lecture me about Christianity but I applaud the effort. The “seeing” Saint Paul referred to is mystical he talked about his ordinary travels all the time. Pride is not to be understood by those not trying at all and I do not mind telling you that I wish I was ten times prouder than I am, justice drives me to it. Pride goes before destruction but the destruction can be two sided. Secondly, as to a whited sepulchre Jesus’s image is very clear to those who can read. I have never pretended to you to be what your acid trip version of a Christian is. You want Christians who are perfect targets for your bile and vitriol and I would much rather make you my target. Let me add that while I do not claim to be kind or gentle or nice I sometimes am. I suspect you are sometimes sane. But yes there are dead men’s bones in me — in a well marked spot that says “dead men’s bones” metaphoricaly. But good on quoting Scripture you may attain to Lucifer’s moral stature yet. I think he is a much more morally respectabe figure than you have shown yourself to be so far. However, let us assume for a moment that their is a literal Last Judgement I believe your testimony against me will get a fair hearing. I believe in divine justice although I am not sure of how it all works out. I think I will leave that to God.
JSDM, I’ve hear for years now some of the more radical Christian groups, regrettably those who now have media exposure and influence, say that Muslims do not worship the same God as Christians and Jews, but it was always understood by all, except there most extreme, that Catholics and Protestants worship the same God.
Martin Luther, John Calvin, and Ultrich Zwingli never suggested otherwise.
I doubt you’d find many, if nay at all, within any Church who thinks the Catholic God differs from the Protestant God. Theological understanding may differ on some points, but its all the same God, and thanks to the Elizabethan Compromise, The Church of England lead Prayers in Parliament are safely about Ritual understanding, which is the same, and not over points such as the Effectiveness of Communion, or he Role of the Saints. The Prayers in the Lords are Suitable to Catholics, and I daresay are often suitable to non-Christians.
Maybe all of this, and every side, ‘owes’ much to the times and church-heads of Descartes’s day.
Descartes’s formal-argumentation resulted in the simple compound statement “I think therefore I am”; which both he as a straight-thinker slghtly ‘ahead’ of his time, and the Church minds of the day as needing to increase their ‘flock’, were able to cooperatively-apply to persuade masses of the People that God is good and exists, and ‘so do we all’ (rather than “I exist therefore so does God”).
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JSDM1403T14Sep10.
McDuff, the idea that there is an abundance of Child Rapists in the Catholic Church is an old bit of Propaganda itself. While we hear far more of Paedophile Priest and the Paedophile Priest has become a Stereotype of the Catholic Priesthood, its still a Minority of Priest who are Predatory toward Children.
In fact, less than 2% of all Clergy have any connection at all to this, worldwide. Generally the Priesthood is less likely to be the Home pf a Paedophile than a Schoolteacher.
As to both Gods passivity, and the Teachings of the Catholic Church on Sex, perhaps you should read more than just Atheist Drek. Like another rposter a whole back, I doubt you’ve bothered to actually study what the Catholic Church actually teaches about Sex, and instead get all your information on the subject from Sources hostile to it. God is also not very Passive when you look at the Ramifications, which Ironically Atheist also use as why God is cruel and shouldn’t be worshipped, which in turn is odd as hey focus on how rotten God is even though they insist he doesn’t exist.
Who said anything about abundant? Aside from the Belgians?
I just pointed out that I wouldn’t expect to find *any*.
And my point about passivity was just a followup to the point you made justifying the presence of child rapists in the church. Not based on “Atheist propaganda”. Based on what you said. Because the description of God you gave is one of immense passivity, with little to no agency that I can see over the actions of the people he supposedly rules.
I mean I am just throwing this out there, but I rather suspect that if I were an omniscient God, I might consider slipping a list of priests in seminary who were also *going to rape kids* to, say, the pope or their teacher or something. I mean this is not fiddling with free will any more than the plagues of Egypt or the firebombing of Sodom. And it strikes me as *really* passive that even something like that didn’t happen. That God was totally cool with saying “yup I know this guy taking all the tests to represent me is actually going to completely abuse that responsibility and rape some children, but I figure that’s OK actually, there’s no need to use any of this omnipotence on something like that.”
I mean, this is the same geezer who sent a bear out on an assassination trip because some kids made fun of a bald dude. He is obviously OK with a little bit of involvement, according to his newsletter. What I am kind of not seeing is how come He had no involvement in this, when it seems like the kind of thing you would think was a pretty big deal.
McDuff,
I am aware that it is 2010.
JSDM,
See my comments on post Catholic culture in my recent response to MC Duff.
Anybody Else Reading,
Yes, this thread really is this long. We all sort of realize this. Does it excuse us?
McDuff, the idea that there is an abundance of Child Rapists in the Catholic Church is an old bit of Propaganda itself.
==============
Really? The main crime was covering up the abuse and allowing the abusers to go to another parish and carry on.
What about the covering up of a priest involved in terrorism? Even the UK government got in on the act there and protected the evil priest.
Zarove: In Christianity each faith serves the same God because each of these faiths accepts the ascension of Christ. However, the concept of God is notable in scripture by never having had any corporeal form. Apart from Judaism it has always been the emissary that lived the lives of ordinary earth bound men. Judaism in this respect yearns for an earth bound saviour to come along, something that gave Christ as a ‘Rabbi’ some problems when he was alive.
In Christianity both God and Christ are interchangeable or are generally synonymous. In Islam, Mohammed (pbuh) is firmly earthbound having never ascended in the manner that Christ did so he is not deified. It’s also notable that both and Christ and Mohammed (pbuh) never actually wrote anything down that we know of. Mohammed (pbuh) is acknowledged as having been illiterate.
On this basis both faiths are the contrivance of men based upon witness testimony and built up to supply a catholic infrastructure suited to the promotion of the individual faith. Both faiths have roots in Gnosticism however the departure from earlier Gnostic faiths was that esoteric knowledge was not required to practice the faith.
Islam now, does have problems that were removed in Christianity by translations of the bible from the dead language of Latin into the native language of the believer; the scripture of Islam remains written in a dead Arabic language and its followers learn by rote how to pronounce the language and intonate it in the manner of the oral histories of illiterate people and without taking contemporary literal meaning from it.
Islam now, in one respect, has similarities with the Gnosticism that Islam successfully displaced when Mohammed (pbuh) was alive in that it relies heavily on esoteric knowledge and interpretation of scripture by clerics. Its clerics cannot be women and women cannot lead prayer.
As for Frank, no matter how off beam he may sound or whatever pangs of conscience he may experience in his blogging a quick trip to confession will annul all of his sins just as those that have internally trespassed against the RC Church and caused it it so much pain.
The real controversy is that Christ does not appear in scripture until his early thirties so did he travel to India and acquire the philosophy of Buddhism? Did he have knowledge of Greek and Dodgy Knees of Sinope sometimes a Cynic? Whatever the faith, there really should be no gender barriers to practising it or to its priesthood and there should be no return to the exclusivity of pre Christian Gnosticism.
Senex,
A few point of scripture so we can really get as out of hand as is possible. Maybe cancel the LOTB with this thread.
Please understand all of the following in the hermeneutical context of canonical New Testament texts in relatively uncontroverted exegesis and plainly stated there are no cites because I am going from memory and have no Bible around.
1. We know Jesus could read because one of the core passages is when he announces his mission while acting as lector in his home synagogue.
2.A less core passage and a floater but one I believe is as ancient and true is that he wrote on the ground with the woman caught in adultery.
3. There is very strong circumstantial evidence in the canonical texts that he read in Davidic Hebrew, preached in Aramaic and could get along in Latin and Greek.
4. Few moderns take the flight into Egypt seriously but I do as well as the visit of the Magi. Most Jews in Egypt lived in Alexandria where all the greatest of Greek paganism could be found studied audibly on the Library steps and where one of the greatest study centers of Theravaida Buddhism and some Mahayana dissenters was established. He was most often addressed as “Son of David” by strangers which means Prince of the Old Line in context. He probably lived in Bethlehem almost or just over a year before being visited by the mages who found him by crossreferencing genealogies of royal lines for the astrological omen of a renewed dynasty. Then he went into Egypt as a child four or five years was enough to make a mark. It is hard to describe here, but the evidence is that his family were culturally open and he was a genius. He probably absorbed greek paganism and Buddhism along with other learned Jews there. His mother was of a priestly family and when he came back to Israel his cousin at first became an Essene. These two elite groups had a nucleus of very committed Jews who sought to learn from the best of Paganism and Buddhism in a free statist jewish way. While he sent his apostles to Greece and India after his death there is no evidence he needed to or really could spare the time to go to these places. At most he may have met such people at rendevous points in Alexandria and Ceasaria Philipi. I am aware of contrary traditions among authentic Hindus and Greek pagans but I think they and not the gospels are slightly garbled here.
5. Christology is very rich and complex and not so easily summarized well but you are right that it does not mostly divide between Protestants and Catholics.
Mcduff, I’d reply to you more but, your claims are still Atheist Drek. I mean, you say that I justify the presence of Paedophile Priests when I dint, and you mention God sending bears to kill Children for making fun of a bald man, which didn’t actually happen in the Scriptures. And yes I am aware of 2 Kings chapter 2, but the Atheist complaint that those were Children who did nothing but make fun of Elisha for being Bald is simply a reliance on the KJV, which while I think is the best Translation available is not without error. These weren’t Children, but Young Men. The Image of 9-12 year olds being Mauled by Bears ( And none were actually said to have died, nor even all injured) may make God seem Malevolent, but what about grown men? And was it really just that they made fun of a Bald Guy? The Cultural Context was that they were threatening him. “Go up, thou Bald Head” was basically a taunt, and a mob can be a pretty ugly and Violent thing.
I don’t expect an ignorant and deliberately hateful Atheist like you, who pretends to be more rational than “Religious people” and feels he has the right to mock others base don this perceived mental superiority to bother to actually check facts to see if your arguments are correct though. So long as it attacks Christianity and the Bible and God, your OK with it.
Still, your “Facts” are in error, and your arguments are just rooted in uneducated mockery, which I’ve had quiet enough of. Please read something other than Atheistic Propaganda.
Sorry. You said it was unjustified of me to not expect there to be Priests who were also child rapists. To err is human and all that. Now, to me, that seems like you were justifying their existence, on account of to err is human, but hey. Regardless. I wouldn’t expect them, on account of The Divine having a hand.
Also you entirely missed the point on the bear. The issue was not with the precise reasons for the bear attack. It was to point out that, in actual fact, God was an intervening God. I’m sure a mob is an ugly thing. You know what else is ugly? The rape of children. God didn’t even have to send a bear. All he would have had to send is a memo.
Seems kinda weird that he didn’t.
Sennex, you need to read a bit of History I’m afraid.
Forts off, you claim Christianity and Islam somehow grew out of Gnostism. That’s simply daft, as Gnostism was a merger of Christian and Pagan thinking. Christianity is not the Product of Gnostism, it’s the Mother of Gnostism. Gnostism was a Christian Heresy.
There was no Pre-Christian Gnostism, as Gnostism required Christianity to get started. Christianity got stared off of First Century Judaism, likely from a branch like the Eassenes.
I realise that people have odd ideas about how Christianity came about but, this is just not going to fly with me here. Positing Gnostism as older than Christianity, and Christianity as emerging form it, is not really any better than those who claim Christianity came out of Pagan Mystery Religions, with it sonly advantage being that Gnostism actually existed in the Ancient World unlike the cult of the Dying and Rising Saviour.
Islam also did not get stared off Gnostism. Islam was begin as an offshoot of the Aryan Heresy which was common in Arabia. Arians did not believe Jesus was God, though they dd accept him as somehow Divine. Arians claimed he was the First being Created by God and the most powerful, but was still a created being. Islam modified this further claiming he was specially created by God, being Born of a Virgin, but was still a mortal man, no different form others. Islam teaches Jesus was a Prophet, and not Divine.
As to the Bible and its Languages, Bible Translations are typically not out of Latin, but Greek and Hebrew. While some Bible Translations were made of the Vulgate, notably Wycliffe’s and the Douay-Rheims, mist Bibles have been Translated from the Greek and Hebrew texts. Martin Luther’s Bibel was out of the Masoratic Hebrew and the Textus Recipitus Greek, for instance, and in English Tyndale’s New Testament was also Textus Recipitus Greek, and the portions of his Old Testament Masoratic. Coverdale finished off and revised Tyndale’s work, but he used the German Bibel of Luther. The other Bibles that followed, such as the Geneva Bible, were all Translated form the same sources, Masoratic Hebrew and Textus Recipitus Greek, as produced by Erasmus and later revised. The Venerable Authorised (King James) Version was itself produced from these base texts.
I know of no Modern Bible that was taken from Latin either.
In regards to women parching you still haven’t bothered to look at why they aren’t allowed, other than to mention bad History. Disallowing women is somehow going back to Pre-Christian Gnostism which Christianity supposedly emerged as a reaction to. Except the Gnostics didn’t come before Christianity and certainly didn’t regard gender as that important given that their belief was that matter, all matter, as evil, and our bodies were just Prisons our souls were trapped in by the Evil Demiurge, that we had to find release form by Gnosis, or Knowledge of how illusory our world is.
The Priesthood is not for women for the reasons I sated above. It reflects Jesus Christ personally, he is represented in the form of the Priest. The Priests act In Persona Christi.
To let women be Priests is to destroy the Priesthood. They cant be ordained, as they are not proper matter for Ordination so in the end you have invalid Sacraments, according to Catholic Theology.
Could someone try to address that? Could we set aside the view of the Priesthood as just a job of officiating a Relgious Rites and look at what Catholicism teaches that it is?
Maybe I’m not qualified to out-Catholic you, Frank, but you’ll out-Protestant me when you unicycle up mount everest without oxygen. Chum.
As to what I want Christians to be, you are sadly clueless, like most bitter and prideful people, who desire to be hated as devils rather than pitied as the ineffectual blowhards you really are.
I don’t want Christians to be anything, but I do have a preference for particular kinds over others, for the Fred Clarkes and Philip Yancys over the Billy Grahams and Archbishop Nicolses. Also for my dear Zimbabwean friend and business associate, who is twice the Catholic you’ll ever be, disagrees with me about damn near everything, and would crush you like an ant, yet for whom I have the utmost respect. That’s a thing called generosity of spirit, and that’s what I respect most in people, not just Christians. Puffed up vipers intent on gustily labouring their points with self-aggrandising, otiose vocabulary are definitely not the kind of thing I, in general, put on my christmas wish list.
Also the thing is, since you’re not the king of Christianity, you don’t really get to decide what other Christians are like. And so I’m free to hang about and converse with the kind of Christians I approve of and to mock you wholeheartedly for your frankly comical self-importance.
I mean, look at you, floundering around on an internet message board trying to pour scorn and vitriol and paint as some kind of anti-morality devil a perfectly unassuming atheist with a copy of Chesterton’s ‘Orthodoxy’ which he keeps so he can lend it to Christians who might be struggling, since it helped him in the years before he left the faith. A window-smasher? Me? Your vanity, sir, extends to the opprobrium you heap onto your enemies to make it seem as if you’re fighting some kind of good fight. But I am not the inflated cartoon villain you wish me to be. I’m just some guy on the internet who doesn’t think theology is anywhere near as sophisticated as it thinks it is. That’s precisely all I am. And I’m laughing at you because in your efforts to be important you’ve picked me out as a grand villain.
You can tell a man’s importance by their enemies. Look around you, Frank. See anyone else in the cohort of my enemies worthy of your immense stature? Just you then? Lonely over there?
My own tendencies were pretty Ecclesiastical anyway. Vanity, vanity, all is vanity. It strikes me as the very height of irony that there exists someone like you who appears to take that passage as aspirational.
McDuff,
I suggest we stop because we have gone as far as we can go without being physically present to eachother by proxy or directly. This is just a fight not a discussion now.
That is my real name and so I also do not hide my location. I suppose if you are saying I have a death wish there may be some truth to it. Although they are beautiful places with fine people Mindanao, Colombia, Tijuana and many inner cities are not the place to go because one wants to be very safe. It does not mean I won’t get squeamish when it happens but I have looked death in the face many times.
You are right in that I am not directly responsible for the management of Christianity. I am writing in my own name as a layman. I would rather defend the church in other ways than doctrinal dispute. We have saying which may not carry across boundaries but if you want a list of my potential or real enemies it is a long and distinguished list. You do not intimidate me. A man may die of a virus but I would still rather be the losing artist than the winning virus.
Am I suggesting you have a death wish? No. I’m suggesting you’re vain. It’s really that simple, Frank. An overwrought drama queen with more self regard than a hundred mirror-coated fashion designers.
I think it is, frankly, hilarious that there seems to be nothing I can say to which you will not respond: “aha, McDuff, but here is where you are wrong because I *am* in fact the intelligent and important man that I repeatedly claim to be!” Were you also captain of the debate team and winner of the Neatest Underpants prize in prep school?
McDuff,
The meaning of vanity in that passage in Ecclesiastes is more or less “That which comes to nothing” and smacks dtrongly of the suicidal and self cestructive. More recent concepts of vanity such as hanging on to youthful beauty just remind us of that interpretation.
Actually, McDuff I would rather be having a pleasant correspondence with someone else about the visit of His Holiness Benedict XVI to the Unbited Kingdom. I do appreciate your interest in the underwear of young lads though — I see how that would matter to a guy like you…
You crack me up. A witter about how Ecclesiastes isn’t a book warning about the folly of regarding one’s achievements on earth as anything other than dust and ashes (the NIV uses “meaningless”, and your vanity would be no less apparent if you’d taken that as your set text for life either) followed by, and I absolutely had to read this three times because it is simply hilarious, a jibe about me being some kind of gay pedophile.
In *this* thread.
You made a “yes well you like little boys so neener” crack in THIS thread!
You, sir, are legendary, but alas, not for any of the reasons you think.
McDuff,
I said this was a fight not a discussion. How do go straignt to gay pedophile? Could I not have meant that since you are so busy attacking others you probabaly forgot to wear underwear as a lad and so envy those whose trousers were cleaner? I do think I will concern myself about your assessment of me, my God and my church sometime but this is not the time. This electronic conversation is more like setting the Guiness Book world record for who can read poetry to to a dung beetle the longest in its natural habitat. Odd, useles but somehow enough to make one continue.
That *really* is scraping the barrel now, Frank. “OMG U HAS DIRTY BUM!” I mean, seriously, it’s alarming how seriously you take yourself when there’s nothing to take seriously about you.
McDuff,
I appreciatively acknowledge your awaiting the end of the State Visit. I also note some nearly rational discourse in some of your comments — however I did indeed attribute the bottom of the barrel to you as I could think of no better place to attribute it. It really is a means of despising one’s least favorite people less any time I hear from you.
I do appreciate the love you’re showing for me, as scripturally instructed, Frank. We know people by their fruits, after all, and your branches are laden with grace, humility and charity, available freely even to people for whom you have enmity such as myself. I commend your faithfulness to the spirit of Christ.
McDuff,
It is not easy to find the words to describe the exact enormity of the value of your good opinion to me. Certinly by the standards of probability used in a Douglas Adams novel there is a chance I will retain you as my spiritual director. The beauty of your language and the sweetness of your spirit must be what leads me to believe that you need to coddled and encouraged in your path.
McDuff’s “generosity of spirit” seems to be akin to, as it were ‘overlapping with’ the second principle of good commnication and honest argumentation namely “Charity”.
(“Charity” specificly in matters of argumentation means (“)having fairly and dispassionately comprehended your opponent’s case, and given credit to those parts that are fallacy-free and either completely Valid (Deductively) or strongly cogent(Inductively); as well as having rejected any falseboods”.
‘Fair-mindedness’ might equally well serve ?
Nevertheless, FWSIII and others who may have ears-to-hear, it remains poignantly relevant that:
“Fair words butter no parsnips”.
1025W22Sep
JSDM.
It would emerge in carefull analysis that McDuff’s tone and use of the most relevant sources — in this case Sacred Scripture or (being here the same) the Bible in communication with Zarove and with me, at first, actually improved long in to this absurdly iredeemable thread of discussion. In my discussion with McDuff I pointed out that his persona and his person might be distinct and it is evident that this persona is at least more interested in scripture than the persona that began. Howver, given the nasty and iresponsible and cowardly and lazy way he began (not much offset) then in matters of faith the correct aphorism to apply was “Do not cast your pearls before swine, for they will simply trample them underfoot” as Jesus said. Certainly this correspondence with McDuff has been very demeaning and he is practiced in the craft of demeaning those with something at stake. Like Satan who disguises himself like the angel of light according to the Apostle. Christian love does not involve coddling the devil he is committed to becoming or the evil he seeks to do on the spiritual plane. Love does not involve arguing with a man who follows no honorable path in argument. He needs a thrashing but since thrashings are hard to administer in our age I can insult him online forever or untill stopped but further conversation in this thread is far worse than counterproductive.
Well, I am devilishly handsome, it’s true, but I don’t think I’m quite up to the true standard of Satanic Majesty yet. Thank you for the compliment, though, Frank.
Incidentally, saying “I do not agree with his argument therefore I want to hit him” marks you out as the lowest form of boor, and it is precisely because of such oafish behaviour that we have conspired, as a society, to constrain violent and authoritarian nutcases like you from acting on your delusional apish instincts. Most people think that some self-important religious man being unable to take out his frustration on those who do not agree with his argument to be a positive development in society, but I’m pleased that you have at least admitted that you are in the vanishing and increasingly unfashionable group that still pine for the golden age when your privilege was unfettered by such concerns as basic human decency.
You really are a textbook case, Frank. When you finally bluster yourself into the grave, I might take steps to have you stuffed and mounted for display in a museum.
McDuff,
You keep trying to protect yourself in the veil of religion. I relate in a relaxed and freindly way to people of many religious stances including (a bit less relaxed perhaps) those that are seriously and personally hostile to me and my faith.
The faith has no direct bearing on this it is merely the instance in which you behave from a dufferent basis of ideas and points of view. You deserve to be thrashed because no society can be humane which allows so comfortable, cowardly and complacent and person as yourself to be for a thrashing so long and so clearly and refuse to give it to them without becoming less than a civilization. Carl H. has said many horrible things abour Christianity and the church but doesn’t demand a flogging. By the way, I am of course referring to doing the job directly and very possibly you may have the physical advantage. You truly are insane and it is the requisite therapy.
And that is why we changed the law of the land to have people such as you locked up, Frank. You’re a danger to yourself and those who come into contact with you. But, honestly, probably more to yourself.
Have a drink and try to forget about it. The world has moved on, and soon you will be dead, and no less influential for the change. Best to live out your twilight years at least drunk and impotent rather than raging on this blog about how you’re going to thrash someone you’ve never met like some outrageously tweeded Victorian gentleman. It was comical in the 19th century and in the 21st it’s really just pitiful.
We 21st century types – moderns, as you call us – don’t do things that way any more. If you were to try and enact your foolish vengeance upon me over ideology, I would not lower myself to a rousing bout of fisticuffs for my honour. I would have you *arrested*. Please try not to take it personally.
Zarove: Well, I looked up Gnosticism in Wiki and it says it “refers to diverse, syncretistic religious movements in antiquity consisting of various belief systems”. Then I looked up Syncretistic and Wiki says this “is the attempt to reconcile disparate or contrary beliefs, often while melding practices of various schools of thought.” Gnosticism is therefore not confined to Christianity but to many other faiths.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syncretism
The RC faith is technically a syncretistic melding of Pagan and Christian belief. These original faiths enjoyed literacy that was relevant to their time and location. The problem arose when they expanded beyond their location and the language became foreign to the new faithful and in time became a dead language because language is a dynamic living thing that changes with contemporary society.
All of this matter not to the ordinary individual practising their faith. Its earthly value is to be found in the community, sense of belonging, kindness and love that it promotes and encourages. It also puts a moral straight jacket on you. Perhaps this is really why congregations have fallen?
McDuff if you believe the sun will rise next Sunday then you are capable of blind faith. Its only a short step to adopting a faith even the lack of a faith is a faith in itself.
Frank, you make out Christ to be quite the intellectual for a humble carpenter. Not a bad thing I suppose as Christian churches could do with a few more joiners.
I don’t believe the sun will rise tomorrow. Based on an analysis of past events I believe it to be extremely probable that the earth will continue on its current orbital path with its current rotational velocity, barring significant events which will alter that, until such point as the orbit degrades. This has the natural result of producing the effect we perceive as “sunrise”, which, following the physics, will continue to be an effect we can perceive until such time as the rotational velocity of the Earth is altered.
The certainty with which I can express my conclusions is robust enough that people can and do use it to plan out their lives. It’s also somewhat biologically ingrained – all biological creatures on the planet have evolved with the appx-24hr diurnal cycle and the seasonal shifts caused by the tilt of the axis of rotation. We are genetically adapted to operate in a world where the concepts of “day” and “night” and “winter” and “summer” exist. These facts as well as many others contribute to a historical body of evidence that suggests the “sun has risen” approximately 1.57*10^12 times in the last 4.3Bn years without deviation from the same cycle by any more than a few milliseconds every rotation, without exception. The continuation of this pattern is a safe bet.
But all that is just evidence supporting a robust hypothesis. It doesn’t amount to belief. The chances of something happening that would prevent the sun rising over the UK on schedule are remote, but they aren’t entirely out of the question. That’s why I go out to check on it whenever I can. It’s always good to keep gathering evidence.
Of course there’s also the fact that worrying about such things is sort of pointless. If the Earth did stop rotating suddenly, the deceleration will tear the oceans, atmosphere and everything in them into a giant maelstrom and also incidentally kill 100% of everything larger than a bacteria and probably most of those. Further, since such an event would have to have a cause, it’s worth pointing out that anything strong enough to counter the Earth’s rotational energy would probably result in a release of kinetic energy strong enough to liquefy the crust. Saying “the sun will rise tomorrow” is pretty much functionally saying “the Earth will remain capable of supporting life for the foreseeable future”. And if such a thing categorically turned out to not be true at some point, what would I do about it except boil away like the rest of the soupy organic matter that makes the thin green film of life on the surface?
I don’t believe that the sun will rise in the morning. I just expect it to.
Senex,
Jesus was indeed born to a family who offered the gift fit for the poor when he was circumcised, he did indeed say that he often had no place to lay his head. When he announced his mission in Nazareth his critics there did respond “is this not the carpenter’s son”. I do not dispute these points. While both his parents were part of what Northwestern Celts and Teutons (our hosts here) would call a royal clan only his mother’s side had the close Priestly service. There was a Herodian King of the Jews and of several other peoples with a fabulous palace who did not like Davidic families. His earthly father’s title of Prince as we would term it today was little of a financial asset and much of a liability. If one goes by the whole book he fed thousands of people more than once. This was not called a miracle but a “sign and wonder” it was a sign that revealed his full operation and made people wonder. It was a sign because in those instances (there may have been dozens of other where this was not the case) he asked for food to be brought up and people were so hungry they did not have enough to share to hide the fact that he was adding a huge amount of food to the mix. We are led to believe this was somehow life threatening to him but he insited on feeding them. Notice that they were carefull to collect all the scraps. Jesus lived life very much on the edge and his family did practice trades, but unlike German Kultur Hebrew mores saw a value in even the greatest minds learning to be artisans as well. Remeber the well educated Saint Paul was a tent maker too. The gospel image is of a man very much at home with poor and rich, armed and timid, educated and those innocently simple and ignorant.
Mcduff, this is the internet. The only thing we can do is be verbose.
That said, aren’t your own comments not but Vitriol?
You really don’t put a lot of thought into your own posts, which by and large are just cheap insults.
I mean, look at the Interventionist God point. The way you talk you’d think the Bible depicts God intervening in everything, in contrast to our real worked in which he doesn’t. You do realise I hope that the Biblical texts show God intervening on rare occasions, and not constantly. Oh but why bother? You want to pretend this is a point. I should forget the fact that when God contacted Gideon it had been 200 years since his last direct involvement with anyone, or how God really wasn’t all that directly involved in the reign of King David.
God seldom intervenes, and when he does its usually via a medium of some sort. God sent Gideon to battle, for example, he didn’t go personally himself. Even the example of the Bears is proof that Gods choice of methods usually is indirect involvement. A Secular account of the event seeking to claim naturalism could be that the Bears were just in the area, were attracted by the notice, felt threatened, and attacked on their own. Its not like there as a glowing presence of God there for all to see, all anyone noticed was that Bears came out of the woods and mauled a few people.
The vast majority of Gods actions in the Bible are described this way. David’s sin with Bathsheba was pointed out by Nathan, and David lost his Child because of it, but God didn’t send an Angel with a flaming sword to kill the Baby. David then had perpetual family troubles, all because of his Sin. However, David never faced Divine Retribution in the form of God personally coming down and intervening in an overt way. That didn’t happen.
Esther is seen as guided by God too, and acted as his means to saving the Jewish People. But she didn’t work any miracles, much less did God personally arrive to ensure their survival.
I could go on and list others but won’t. The Truth is, Gods intervention in the Bible is seldom direct. Sure, he intervened direct in the life of Abraham and we see Sodom and Ghamorrah destroyed, and its true that he directly intervenes with Moses, in the form of a Burning Bush, and later the Miracles of Egypt, and guiding his People in the Desert. Yes, he intervenes directly with shadrach, Meshak, and Abednigo, and with Daniel, in the Book of Daniel, but, those events are separated by centuries. He only works two or three miracles for Gideon, hen lets Gideon fight his own battle. Most of the time the events are only known to be God guiding them because the text says so, but the events shown are far from Miraculous.
The idea that God is intervention list in the Bible and yet seems not to intervene today is simply a false claim, one of the many conceits of a Militant Atheist like you who thinks it a wonderful piece of evidence that shows how illogical it is to believe the Bible, that you can use as a weapon for your own hatred. But really the Bible reads as the same sort of thing that happens today happened then, with few overt miracles and even fewer personal appearances from God Almighty. The argument of there being such a sharp contrast is invalid.
In today’s world God exposed the Guilty, and they now have to live in shame and ridicule, and have tarnished the very Church they served. how is that different form the Intervention God did in the Bible? Other than in how we describe it, there is none.
No, I would think the Bible depicts God intervening in some things.
Let us look at the circumstances here. Failure to intervene has resulted in thousands of raped children and a crippling blow to the reputation of the Church. “Intervention” could have been nothing more than a couple of dozen well-placed dreams. Simples.
I mean, think about it, kid. Your argument is basically “God doesn’t really do that kind of thing.” But there’s no hard and fast rule about it. He does, on occasion, burn a city to the ground, or slaughter the firstborn son of every family in a nation. And there’s all the little times he’ll intervene. I mean, let’s face it, you can tell me I’m a listening to atheist propaganda by saying God is interventionist, but eighty-thousand Catholics show up at Lourdes every year (for example) because they believe He is. There’s some big disconnect between what you’re saying and the lived beliefs of millions of Catholics, I’d say, which might go some way towards explaining how these revelations “shook the faith” of half the Catholics that have been asked. Because it’s not some sneaky-ass twisting of the notions underpinning the faith; it’s a genuine question that the faithful as well as the unbelievers have and it deserves consideration. It is a conundrum that many have struggled with but none have answered to the satisfaction of all.
I mean, what we are asking here is fairly simple. Why restore the icon of Guadaloupe but not protect a child from rape by ensuring that her rapist did not become a priest? This isn’t something you need exposure to Atheist propaganda to ask, I think you’ll find. It’s a question that falls out of the positioning of God in the lives of the faithful. The fact is that it takes no effort to wonder why that is. The effort is accepting the official Catholic explanation for it. Not because it’s necessarily right or wrong in the theology, but because it’s a tough sell, especially in the emotional cases like this.
Set the scene. It’s the throne and two people are standing before Jesus. He gets done telling Frank that he is a loud gong and crashing cymbal, that all his earthly works are for nothing, that every time he failed to show love for the least of God’s creation it was as if he had done it to Jesus himself, and then tells him to depart because he never knew him. So far so anticipated. But the next person to arrive stops Christ midway.
“Where were you? I was raped. I was raped by a man who claimed to be working for you. He told me that telling people was a sin. He tortured me for your sake. Where were you?”
“Well, I don’t really intervene very often, and there are reasons…”
“Am I not a good enough reason?”
“If you look behind you, you’ll see that at times of trouble and strife there’s only one set of footprints on the beach…”
“Don’t give me that. I was raped and you were silent. It shook my faith in the Church – your Church. It ended up driving me away from it. I got over it with the help of my family, but the Church placed all the emphasis during the ‘counseling’ sessions on staying quiet, not on the hurt. You weren’t there for any of that. I don’t care where else you were or weren’t. Whatever you did for the least of these, you didn’t do it for me.”
It’s not a theological argument where I want to stack up every time God has intervened vs. every time He hasn’t to try to find a pattern. I want to point out that the absence of God in particular situations, more than others, throws emotional shrapnel into the souls of those trying to come to terms with the character of God. The question “why not here?” is not some fancy trickery that is designed to trip up Catholics. It’s a genuine question that, particularly in the case of the victims themselves, comes from a place of emotional need, in response to a serious hurt. I personally love the quiet tragedy of Shusako Endo’s novel Silence, but even his acceptance of the situation does not answer the nagging question. The apologetics and writings of great teachers may convince some, other writings others, but the reason one has to write them in the first place is because people genuinely wish to understand the answer to these questions
But in the end you cannot dismiss people’s concerns about this as being somehow indoctrinated into us by atheist teachers. People do not default to Catholic at birth only to be tempted out by Bertrand Russell and Richard Dawkins. If you think asking questions is atheist propaganda, that’s a pretty low kind of Catholicism.
What profiteth a God to work in mysterious ways if he loses a rape victim to a predatory priest? In the end all you *can* say is that you don’t know, but you have faith in the idea that there is some kind of long game being played. That all this, even the nights spent weeping, are just through a glass darkly.
Do you really think that people who find these explanations unsatisfying are suffering from atheist-induced biases?
Mcduff, I was asked to shorten this, so I will be brief.
You are, again, completely misrepresenting what I’ve said because you refuse to look at anything with any sort of Nuance. I did not say God never intervenes, I said that his intervention is seldom overt. Even in the example you promoted, with the bears, his intervention was not overt. He sent Bears in. He did not go personally.
That said, Jesus once remarked on the Story of Elijah about the emotional ultimatum you issued. Once upon a time Elijah was hungry and found a Widow and her son. He asked for food, but she told him she had only enough for two more cakes, and she and her son would eat them, then die. He told her to make here cakes, and she wouldn’t. She did, and found that she still had flour. Amazingly, the flour and oil lasted till the famine ended. But, Jesus noted centuries later that there were other Widows and Orphans. Elijah’s visit spared one Widow, not thousands, and surly the Famine had affected several others.
Just because some are helped in an unusual way doesn’t mean the Majority are, and again, what we see in our lives today is exactly the same as we see in thee Bible. Your claims that the Bible shows an Interventionist God and I’m wrong are thus not only misunderstanding what I’ve actually said but still show the sort of blind ignorance I’ve come to expect form the devout Anti-Theist. Even your Icon claim proves my point,. You ask why he’d restore an Icon but not save some girl from rape. This is odd as most of the rapes are boys not girls but who cares about facts with Political correctness. That said, does God restore all Icons globally? Or just specific ones in Guadalupe? If its just specific ones in Guadalupe, then you have no case, your saying the same thing I did. And what if God did save her, that Hypothetical future Rape Victim but not others? God guides her away form the Molesting Priest and prevents him from Terrorising little Jane, that wouldn’t mean he’d stop every instance before it occurred.
The pattern we see in the Bible is that he helps a few people on a limited basis and even those he helps in an indirect way the vast majority of the time. So why should I see the lived expi4rnces we see today as vastly different form what’s expected given what the Bible says? Only if I bought into the Atheistic Drivel which claims to be thought rooted in reason but is really just unthinking hatred masquerading as rationalism.
But do try to be more intelligent in future posts.
Have you ever read any Endo?
“unthinking hatred”. You really are just *paranoid*, aren’t you?
And, sadly, too bitter for empathy.
I ask again.
“Do you really think that people who find these explanations unsatisfying are suffering from atheist-induced biases?”
Or do you think that they’re suffering emotional hurt and finding the “God also lets other people suffer” answer to be slim comfort?
And is the best you can do in that situation to offer your disdain for their unwarranted attack on the authority of the Church?
By the way, I’ve been asked to submit shorter posts, or a series of shorter posts, so no more “Stream of consciousness” cracks from you lad. Its bad enough you have to assume the worst form those who disagree without such disparagement.
Mcduff, I’m not bitter. Thats projection.
And, again, your shifting the goal post as origionally your question was why God did not intervene as he did i the Bible. Why can’t an Atheist like you just admit your argument was wrong? Why the need to ask about peoples emotional states when you initially asked about God not intervening like he did in the Bible? Your earlier argument was clearly about the existence of God, and now you wan to change that.
Incidentally are you a Moderator? You seem to answer my posts before they appear publically.
And McDuff, I’d answer your question if it were Honest, but its not. Your initial comment said God intervened int he past but not now, yet Gods intervention in the past was exactly like it is today. Now your just changing the goal posts, and using emotional claims to do it. This was not your original point and I find it rather offputting that you’d pretend it was the whole time.
If you have to salvage an argument by saying it was really some other argument, then you have basically admitted that this is nothing but an attempt to attack a position not to find any rational basis for a claim or Truth of anything. I have no regard for that sort of approach, and won’t be drawn into a never-ending argument in which you leap to the next point as if it was the original one, no doubt calling me too dull witted to catch on each time. Its juts pointless and reveals further the bankruptcy of your own thinking.
Because that was never the full crux of my argument. The initial question was “why is God so passive?”
I’m talking about theology as the key to understanding a lived faith, Zarove. The emotional reaction is the most important one. If you don’t understand that and you think that it’s shifting the goalposts to talk about people’s need to understand.
You claim that the Bible shows God intervening only in limited and exceptional cases and claim this shows a non-interventionist God. But it doesn’t. You’re the one talking about signs and wonders. I said He need only have sent a memo. He need only have kept His house in order. When the priests at the seminaries asked for wisdom, as they are told to do by James, He would have granted it. That’s “intervention”. It doesn’t require fire and brimstone.
The intervention required is so simple for God: keep those who He knows will rape children, on account of omniscience, out of positions of authority in His Church. Nothing is required there except wisdom and guidance and discernment among the existing priesthood.
Instead: nothing.
And the emotional core of that problem is not solved nor helped, is in fact exacerbated, by crassly pointing out “God rarely shows up”. We can *see* He rarely shows up, Zarove. That much is clear. What we want to know is why He so rarely shows up, and why His priorities when He does seem so far away from the words He said while He was down by the Jordan: “suffer the little Children to come unto me, and forbid them not, for of such is the Kingdom of God.”
As I said, if you think this is a theological trap laid by a sneaky atheist to trip you up, that’s what we call a failure of understanding. The scriptural query is the backup to a deeper spiritual query, not the other way round.
Further I don’t expect you to answer, so don’t feel pressured. Better men than you have wrestled with this question and come up short. It simply remains startling to me, though, that you continually interpret these questions as “atheist attacks” and propaganda, as if there were only two religions and people would default to Catholicism without the whispering of atheist devils in their ear, or something.
Theology is only worth something if it answers questions people actually have.
Solid writing, McDuff;
but it leaves me unclear as to the ‘balance’ therein between Clarity, Charity, Self-Correction on one hand, and fallaciousness on the other (including ad hominem ‘praise’ as well as ad hominem ‘attack’).
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JSDM1015W22Sep.
Mcduff, you’ve just proven you haven’t the slightest idea what I have said. So Ill bullet point it.
It really is simple.
1: I did not claim God is noninterventionalist. You put those words in my mouth. But I never said he never or only seldom intervened.
2: I did say Gods intervention was seldom overt. This is not the same as saying he is non-interventionist. Even your example of the She-Bears mauling the “Children” is a Prime example of how God typically operates. God did not directly intervene he sent bears.
3: Claiming emotional reaction is central actually contradicts the Scriptures which tells us not to rely on emotion and passion but on Reason. No our Emotional responses are not Central to this.
4: God did intervene or else bigoted Atheists like you would not have occasion to mock and degrade the Catholic Church, and by extension Christianity as a whole. The Priest Abuse Scandal was exposed after all, and this was how God typically intervenes in Scripture.
Not by showing up personally, but by exposure via natural means.
5: You assume the Priest actually did Pray for Wisdom which again brings us back to the presumption that everyone who went to Seminary not only sincerely believed in what they were doing but never allowed nay other passion or interest to enter their thought process or to block them from seeking Gods will. But the Priests are Human, and naturally will not perfectly follow God, not always seek his Guidance, and not always do what he has taught hem to do.
6: Also, your still looking at this life form a Human perspective whilst discussing God who obviously doesn’t.
If God is concerned with our Souls rather than our bodies, and if he see’s this life as simply a testing ground or school of sorts, which exists specifically to offer us challenges, then why would God prevent tragedy in this life which doesn’t in the end harm our True Selves, our Souls, but does act to facilitate our ability to face Challenges and to thus grow as people. This life was given to us so that our Souls may be perfected by learning the lessons of Love, forgiveness, Trust, obedience, and Duty, and we were specifically designed to have weaknesses and limitations, and placed in a world that would provide us tragedy and triumph, so that we could expunge those things and learn to overcome any problems we have within us by living in a world that provides an external reflection of an internal conflict.
If God intervened to stop all the wrongs in the world, then we’d never be able to overcome them ourselves and thus not grow, which would defeat the entire purpose of our existence in this world.
And I still don’t think your intention is Honest.
1/2. So God is an interventionist God but via indirect means. OK. So, would, say, a dream or vision qualify as indirect enough? I would say such things are not only scriptually precedented but also much less direct than mauling someone with bears, which I still hold to be a fairly direct way of dealing with a problem.
3. Emotional response is the reason we need the apologetics and the reason we wrestle with the problem of evil. Emotions are the central defining characteristic of the human condition. Catholicism isn’t the only philosophy to emphasise reason, and it’s not bad advice to not be enslaved to emotion, but by a similar token it is an impoverished spirit indeed which believes it can argue their existence away. People feel and hurt and are wounded in their spirits, and these need care just as much as any physical hurt.
4. See, from the external point of view, it appears that “God” didn’t do anything, that the abuse scandal was broken by the victims and other human witnesses coming forward. Appreciating, of course, that one can claim that is God’s will being manifested in human actors, and that I have no real answer against an evidence-free assertion like that, I don’t think it really answers the question why He used His almighty power at the point *after* all those rapes had taken place.
5. I would certainly bloody well hope *someone* in the leadership of the Catholic Church was praying for wisdom! If not you might as well shut up shop right now! I don’t know whether the individuals who later went on to rape were praying for such things, but surely someone in the hierarchy above them was? Surely one of their teachers was? Surely *someone* must have been in a position to listen to God say “I do not want this man to be a priest”?
6. Of course I look at it from a human perspective. It’s the only perspective I have. And I have to say, I struggle immensely to see the justification of anyone saying “I let you be raped when you were seven because it would help your soul grow.” As a post-hoc justification for the problem of evil I see it as having meaning, but it also, to me, indicts God most strongly as a character of callous unconcern with the hurts His creation, by design, is capable of enduring. There is a gradient between swaddling someone in cotton wool and discarding them, as every parent knows, and “not preventing systemic rape and abuse that you knew about” is somewhere rather beyond what most people would consider good parenting from fallible humans. I’m merely suggesting that I hold God up to an at least as good as humans standard when it comes to concern and compassion. As you say, I’m a biased, hate-filled atheist, and yet I would not let a child get raped if I had it in my capacity to prevent. God, who is love and compassion personified, did, many times. One has to take a particularly long view of suffering in order to make that work out, and I’m not sure such a view is especially valid to the general condition of being a human.
And we are, after all, humans. Even the victims.
Bravo, Zarove;
Your ‘bullets’ come more at spiriual-fire than as hot-lead.
Thank you; thank you.
Such writing should be given immediate ‘sanctuary’, by all sides.
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JSDM1009W22Sep.
Mcduff, you are proving my point about Atheists. The claim that is routinely made by them, and you specifically, is that an Atheist is driven by Logic and Reason, and only believes what evidence shows them. But, in my experience this has not been the case. The truth is, most Atheists I’ve had the displeasure of having this sort of discussion with start with the conclusion they want to reach already in mind, and then wrap everything else around that Conclusion to make certain the argument leads to the predetermined end they have set. They then declare that theirs was created by objective examination of the evidence, and will say that those who believe in God, or more commonly, “Are Religious”, simply do not use Logic and Reason and will not look at the evidence in an objective manner and this is why they do not arrive at the same conclusions as the Atheists. it’s a horribly dishonest sort of Argument, as it demands we define what is and is not Rational to be whatever the Atheists conclusions happen to be, and to exclude everything else as “Faith”, the new bully word.
The above is no exception. You hate Religion, and you hate the idea of God. You as an Atheist will insist you aren’t Religious, and that belief in God is absurd, there is no evidence, and all the evidence leads away form God. You don’t assert this because you have calmly looked at the evidence and arrived at his conclusion, you concluded this already, and now are simply presenting an argument for Atheism based solely upon your need to verify a conclusion you have already decided is True.
Of course nothing I’ve said makes any sense, because you don’t want it to make sense, you want the obvious conclusion that believe in God is inconsistent and irrational to make sense instead. Therefore you won’t even for the moment consider anything I’ve said, and will instead dismiss it as an excuse. You even declare that Apologetics exists only for the emotional need of people, as if, again, Religion is about emotion and Atheism , which is the opposite of Religion, is about Reason. Its all just mental Slight of Hand though.
You want to take something horrible, like the Rape of a Child, and create n aversion to believe in God, base don sheer shock Value.
We are expected to be so appalled that we question the existence of God because we would want God not to exist if he allows this sort of thing. We don’t try to look at it from Gods perspective, only our own, and lash out in an emotional state against God, and the very belief in God, as if somehow bad things happening proves God can’t possibly exist.
But it doesn’t, and as I’ve said, God allows these things to let us learn from these sorts of evils that befalls us. This is not a Post Hoc explanation, it is base don the understanding of what life is. But, you need to call it Post Hoc so it sounds like the “Religious person” is just Rationalising and your using cold reason. But your not, your using sheer passion, sheer emotion.
Worse, you claim my explanation will be of no comfort to the based, well, I’m not even talking to an abuse Victim, I’m talking to an overwrought Atheist who just wants to shoot his proverbial mouth off. Really this becomes tiresome as you will never accept anything I say as even the slightest bit plausible as it’s the “Religious “ argument and you have to shut that down in the name of Reason and Logic, just like any Atheist that one encounters. Your even willing to use Double Standards. Somehow Sending Bears to maul some young men is Direct Intervention, God overly showed up, yet God doing something similar, such as creations a Controversy within the Catholic Church , isn’t the same. The only difference is you need this to look like God did nothing.
There is literally nothing I can say that would really end your course of attack because it’s not rooted in getting real answers. Your line of questioning has nothing to do with making something more comfortable for abuse victims. Your just exploiting this scandal to further attack belif in God, so no matter what I say, you will persist in this sort of question and dismiss everything I say as a result.
This is all about you trying to attack other peoples beliefs, and using a Tragedy to do it. Its sick, and I am tired of it.
I mean, your claim now that you should hole someone in the Catholic Church prays for Wisdom assumes I said no one does, even though this wasn’t what I said. I said not everyone does, nor any given person all the time. They are Human, Fallible, and limited. Even those who Pray for Wisdom may not Pray for Wisdom on all occasions, and not all will Pray for Wisdom at all. But this isn’t saying no one ever Prays for Wisdom, it’s not an all or nothing sort of thing. it’s not either they all Pray for Wisdom on all maters or none f them do, and that sort of Cut and Dry black or white rendering of the matter is a gross distortion of what I’d said, but then so is the assumption that I said God is noninterventionalist because to you God either Intervenes or he does not. You seem utterly incapable of Nuance.
So its very clear that, despite the claim of being somehow Mentally superior you really aren’t Capable of deep thinking, and your not interested in the Truth, only in Furthering your own Ideas. While I don’t think all Atheists are necessarily Hostile or hateful or arrogant, and I certainly accept that several people who believe in God can be equally as incapable of sincere argument, and don’t mean this as an indictment over simple Atheism, I do find the sort of Atheism you represent to be something that can’t be debated against because it refuses to allow any other option. Of course the real problem is arrogance and Pride, not Atheism, but Arrogancy and Pride are still what I’m dealing with here, and not really Atheism.
I have provided you your answer, and you simply do not want to accept it, so will find an excuse not to.
There really is something to be said for your immense powers of projection, if nothing else, Zarove. I wonder if at any point you’ve had an argument without assuming bad faith on the part of the person you’re having an argument with?
The fact is that you’re claiming things about my character that you not only don’t know, but could not know without some kind of soul periscope capable of peering into the hearts of men. I’m not an abuse victim, you say. HOW DO YOU KNOW? You don’t know the first thing about me yet you have spent pages and pages expounding on the details of my character, most of which would be laughable to even casual acquaintances. Although I shan’t go through and tell you which ones, because you don’t care, as far as you’re concerned character trumps argument. I’m just some atheist which is like a religion (again, a touch of the hobby horse, perchance?) and I am therefore sneaking in like, as Frank said, the Devil, trying to trip you up.
Perhaps if you spent less time guessing at the worst motives of people in your paranoid way, you might be a little less intolerable. As it is, well, I’m more or less done giving you the rope to hang yourself. For someone so dedicated to the concept of reason, you plainly haven’t much in the way of an argument hidden behind your personal animosity towards people who don’t agree with you. Love, peace, understanding, charity… ah, the good old fruits of the spirit wither on the vine unpicked.
Lord Hylton please:
We need an Argumentation and Two-way communication Referee in this Blog.
Since this has to be yourself, but you are de facto by your initial Posting possibly already ‘compromised’ as being one of the ‘contesting’ participants, we have a sort of double-challenge.
‘Ideally’ a disinterested retired professor of Logic, Moral-Reasoning, and Governance-Meeting Facilitation would be a welcome co-moderator up there amongst the Peers of the Blog.
Someone to as it were call “Stop !” then tell the participants “whilst it is good to have a conclusion in mind when formulating an argument, it is mandatory to construct true premisses such that the Argument is made either Deductively Valid (all premisses being True for all cases therefore the ensuing conclusion must thereby be true) or Inductively Strong (all premisses being true for some cases therefore the ensuing conclusion is True for Some but not necessarily All cases).
Handy, and sufficiently detailed, quick reference guide: “A Rulebook for Arguments” 4th edition by Anthony Weston.
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Lord Norton, in some such difficult ‘in-house’ impasses, also applies the Army’s practical commonsense “No names, no pack-drill” tenet.
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Here goes with JSDM as a voluntary-temporary-acting-unpaid ‘referee’:
(“)In communication and especially in two-way communication you need to be Clear; but when it comes to Argumentation you need to be Clear, Charitable, and Self-Corrective. (“)
Two sourcebooks:
“Inductive and Practical Reasoning” by Girle, Halpin, Miller & Williams (1978 and still a reliably standard reference & know-how work);
“Every-One Can Win” by Cornelius and Faire (the ‘Fighting Fair’ shortlist of Rules of enablement and ‘Fouls’ to be avoided).—————–
In a similar spirit to the Marquess of Queens bury’s rules in a friendly-sparring ‘ring’ the ‘referee’ could now say someghing like “box on”, meaning “being square with each other, now carry on arguing or discussing”.
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JSDM1437Th23Sep10.
Given that we have now reached 100 comments, perhaps I should step in and do the “that’s enough comments, ed.” end line.
Perhaps I may (vainly but kindly) recommend against using other threads for continuing the same argument! I’m sure there are other issues that will engage your attention….