I Believe Catholicism And Its Trappings Are Silly, Strange & Weird!!! (page 8)

Jeffro

For me what is irrational is looking at the Universe and don’t believe there is a Creator. But I don’t insult people that believe there isn’t any.

Actually, you kind of just did.

Jeffro

The Church can not be compared to the WT, sorry.

He didn't. But that's not to say that valid comparisons cannot be made. Both rely on belief in irrational stories with no evidence.

Official celibacy imposed on RC priests began centuries after the first century. I first learned about the history of the celibacy of priests when I heard Father George Darling give a sermon that explained how it was introduced into the church. That was at St. Pius Catholic Church in Grandville, Michigan. The history is easily researched and is well known in the modern church. It was introduced because of the land the churches occupied and inheritance rights. And it was much later than the 1st century.

The Orthodox Church is one church. There are Bishops in Russia, Greece and other countries. The bishop of Rome broke from the Orthodox Church when he decided he should have greater power. It's a myth that the Eastern Church broke away from Rome. Rome was only part of the greater Orthodox church. Rome had a bishop like Greece had a bishop.

In today's RC churches the masses are done in the local languages. That doesn't mean that some masses won't have latin, but go into any normal Sunday mass and you will find it is spoken in the local language. You can even find masses in latin in Anglican churches, but it isn't the norm, it's special.

You're right about Vatican Council II and the dates. I typed in 68 because of a discussion I had with an Anglican priest who left the RC church over the council, which led to discussions happening in 1968 that were the final straw. This final straw had to do with women in the church and birth control.

There is a lot that I do not agree with going on in the RC. Celibacy of priests, not ordaining women, the ban on birth control are three of the biggest problems I see, as well as bad decisions concerning child molestation in the church.

botchtowersociety

RESPECTFULLY FHN, THERE ARE A FEW THINGS ON THIS THREAD YOU ARENT 100% ON.

dgp

Diest:

Africa would have more condoms if it werent for the church....

Truth be told, only very few Catholics give up contraception because the church says so. The fact that the number of children per family has been going steadily down, for many years, is proof of that.

My grand-aunt had six children, all in their fifties and sixties now, because she couldn't use contraception. The reason was never the church, but the fact that she had some very bad reactions to contraceptives. And of course my grand-uncle wouldn't use a condom, but - believe me - the church never had anything to do with that.

The Catholic church is responsible for many ills, but people not using contraception is not one of them. Sometimes it's comfortable to blame someone else and use that to give it a shroud of respectability.

Where I live, in years past some men didn't want their women to use contraception because they were afraid the wives would cheat on them and they would never find out. The idea was, "if she cheats on me, she will get pregnant and I will know". So not using contraceptives was seen as some kind of protection against cheating. People also said that they would have "as many children as the Lord sends", but the Lord had nothing to do with that.

If you have lived in a religion that has such tight control over its faithful it is easy to think that the Catholic Church can also control people. The truth is that, at least nowadays, it can't.

dgp

Someone - I forget who - said that the Catholic church was active in liberating people, for example in El Salvador. This person specifically mentioned the Jesuits, some of whom where horribly killed there.

That the Jesuits were "freeing" anyone is open to debate. I attended a college that was at least nominally Catholic and belongs to the Jesuits. There, we had to take a mandatory subject, called "Theological Reflection about Reality". One of the priests made us watch a specific movie, "The Mission", as an example of the good role that the Jesuits could play in liberating the opressed.

Somebody here may have watched that movie. It's about how the Portuguese and the Spanish destroyed the "reductions" the Jesuits had built in Paraguay. The Jesuits had created communities of Indians who would all live communally and worked together. During the daytime, the men would go to work the fields following a "saint" in a procession, and singing. They would return in the afternoon in the same fashion. The women stayed in the reduction doing other chores. In this way, the Jesuits were able to accumulate wealth, and that was what attracted the greed of the Portuguese and the Spanish. And the movie ends with some brave Jesuits, one of them being Robert de Niro, dying while they fight for the Indians.

Actually, the reductions were places where the Indians were never allowed to choose what they wanted. They were kept as perpetual children, and the church, of course, was entitled to lead them. The fact that a Jesuit in the 20th century would fail to notice that is in itself depressing, and it was one of the first reasons I had to walk slowly away from the Catholic Church. One has to wonder whether the Jesuits didn't achieve their ideal when they created the "reductions".

It is said that the Jesuits created ETA, the terrorist Basque organization. I know for a fact that they were involved in many a revolt in Latin America. Some of them died, like the ones in El Salvador, but others didn't. They just encouraged the young to fight.

I wonder to what extent a Liberation Theologian like the priest who made us watch that movie could be trusted to be promoting anybody's liberation. I believe they had a very particular definition of freedom.

dgp

The Mission

FlyingHighNow

The Catholic church is responsible for many ills, but people not using contraception is not one of them.

Andy's RC mother had her tubes tied after baby 3. Baby 3 grew up to be a staunch supporter of the RC policy on birth control. We wonder how that will change if she ends up pregnant with a 3rd child. She sat in my living room kind of upset over the RC secular employees getting coverage for birth control. She told us that people shouldn't be sexually active unless they are married and then they need to use the RC "family planning method."

Here in the USA, some modern Catholic women are staunchly against using birth control pills, diaphragms, IUDs, etc.

apostatethunder

Dgp, you are right, and that just proves the point, you can be part of the Church and still be your own person, with your own opinions.

The WT is totalitarian, you need to conform, or else.

They support two completely different ways of seeing the world. I prefer the one where I can exercise my right to disagree safely.

minimus

Jeffro, thank you for your defense.

Catholics have done nothing to me...lol.

I just think The Church is odd. I don't feel that way toward all religions because some do not promote mysticism and eerieness.

I Believe Catholicism And Its Trappings Are Silly, Strange & Weird!!!

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