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The real cause of the Great Depression
by slimboyfat 18 Replies latest watchtower child-abuse
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Leolaia
Rutherford was the Alex Jones of his day.
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donny
The pope must have been extremely busy trying to assign the jobs to the good Cathlolics. Did all Catholics get the jobs or only ones with no venial sins?
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slimboyfat
Witnesses are always saying they have never been racist, but didn't anti-Catholicism in early twentieth century America have a strong element of racism to it?
As America continued to allow Protestant northern Europeans in but limited the intake of Catholic southern Europeans.
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DaCheech
maybe rush limbaugh should join their writing staff
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daniel-p
Limbaugh said it was a Time-Warp Obama.
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Fatfreek
Before Jw's I was Catholic, brought up in a predominantly Catholic city of New Bedford, Massachusetts.
It wasn't many years after my JW baptism in 1956 that the RC church did a reversal of the no-meat-eating policy with regard to Friday. Oh, did we make hay on that one whenever we had a chance at the doors of Catholics.
"Today it's okay to eat meat on Friday's but last week it wasn't?"
"What happens to those already in Purgatory for eating meat?"
"Can't the church make up its mind when they teach something?"
"The Friday meat-eating prohibition is an excellent example of your church's contradictions. A complete reversal of doctrine. A doctrinal flip-flop."
And we unmercifully never let up. Never once did I hear the JW alibi, New Light from a Catholic householder. Little did we know about our own contradictions which would make that single flip-flop look like a tinker-toy. Take the example of the resurrection (or not) of the ancient Sodomites. That teaching alone has been at the mercy of 6 different positions -- yes, no, yes, no, yes, no. All of these positions are verifiable from their own publications. Then, there's the 3 different positions on the Superior Authorities, the identity of the Alpha and the Omega -- 4 positions, the 3 different positions on organ transplants, the 10 different teaching positions of the 1,260 prophetic days, and lest we forget -- the "this generation" teaching and its 6 different positions over the years.
Len
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Leolaia
Witnesses are always saying they have never been racist, but didn't anti-Catholicism in early twentieth century America have a strong element of racism to it?
Of course. Catholics were predominantly ethnic Irish and Italian, non-WASP ethnic groups of more recent immigration status, and lower on the social totem pole in many respects. There is a kind of xenophobia in anti-Catholic conspiracy theories which Rutherford's particular one feeds into, the idea that the Vatican is polluting the democracy of our founding fathers with Catholic organizations and institutions that represent some sort of invasion of America.
It should also be mentioned that Clayton Woodworth, writing in Golden Age, accepted praise from the Ku Klux Klan for Rutherford's anti-Catholicism and printed their words without qualification (10/11/1933, p. 4). This shows quite clearly that Rutherford's ideology was not existing in isolation but was socially situated with respect to other (more racial) discourses about Catholics of the time.
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BurnTheShips
Of course. Catholics were predominantly ethnic Irish and Italian, non-WASP ethnic groups of more recent immigration status, and lower on the social totem pole in many respects. There is a kind of xenophobia in anti-Catholic conspiracy theories which Rutherford's particular one feeds into, the idea that the Vatican is polluting the democracy of our founding fathers with Catholic organizations and institutions that represent some sort of invasion of America.
Throw into the mix a long prior history in Anglo Protestant culture going back to the wars of the Reformation. In most wars, participants have to find a way to demonize the enemy, to make him truly evil. This happens to help you fight better and be able to defend your reasons for fighting, psychologically speaking. Some of these old tropes, however, have adhered surprisingly well.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_legend
BTS