The Synod of Catholic Falsification

[metis]

It was Christianity that elevated the slave in the first place with its notions of intrinsic human dignity. It's true that Christianity in itself does not say much about slavery as an institution. But it was Christianity which laid the moral framework by which one could coherently oppose slavery. As bad as the slave trades may have been it wasn't the Islamic or pagan worlds which ended it.

The Church very much allowed for slavery up through most of the 1800's.

 

[Left Coast]

It was Christianity that elevated the slave in the first place with its notions of intrinsic human dignity. It's true that Christianity in itself does not say much about slavery as an institution.

The Bible says lots about slavery as an institution. It commands it, in fact. What was true yesterday remains true today, right?

But it was Christianity which laid the moral framework by which one could coherently oppose slavery.

Bull****.

As bad as the slave trades may have been it wasn't the Islamic or pagan worlds which ended it.

That's true. It was the modern secular world that ended it, because they rejected Catholicism's theocratic fundamentalism. The precise cultural movement you're criticizing.

I think you misunderstand me. I'm not interested in delusional projects which seek to undo modernity and return us to a romanticized vision of the High Middle Ages. I'm not advocating for sodomy laws to be put back on the books as I don't think it's the civil authority's job to get people into Heaven. What happens in your own bedroom is your own business.

But if Christianity is actually true then the sexual faculty exists not for our physical gratification but for the good of spouses and the procreation of children. Concupiscence is a fact of life for just about everyone. All of us suffer from disordered passions. That's why we're called to take up the Cross because this life is primarily a battle against our sinful dispositions. Virtue is hard and vice is easy.

Again - the desire to love and be loved is not sinful by any coherent moral standard. The excuse that "virtue is hard" in order to perpetuate irrational discrimination against people like me does not hold water. Despite the idea that "we all have disordered passions," your religion only demands celibacy of some. You know this.

Western culture, due to its de facto atheism,

Secularism. They're different things.

has lost the sight of the eternal good. Few actually believe anything awaits them after death (how shocked they'll be when they pass though the veil) so of course they've given themselves over to the easy path of vice. Virtue is pointless if the temporal is all there is.

I disagree. To be honest, I see the carrot and stick morality you're advocating as a less developed one. If you only do good to avoid hell and get heaven - are you really virtuous? To be truly virtuous, it seems to me, would mean to love virtue for its own sake, regardless of what happens when we die. And we need no God to figure out what's virtuous anyway:

The Euthyphro Dilemma and Appeals to God as Source of Morality

But I am convinced that the denial of the eternal; the practical atheism that has dominated western culture for a long time now, is a lie. That's why the sexual revolution and its increasingly absurd claims will only perpetuate misery even for the people it is intended to most help. Because the temporal will never make anyone happy in the long run. The human soul was made for God and not for the fleeting pleasures of this world.

The evidence does not support your view. It is the repression created by your religion's homophobia that has caused so much suffering for so many of us. We keep trying to tell you, but you do not listen. It's a shame.

 

[metis]

It was the beliefs and teachings of the Society of Friends ["Quakers"] in the UK and here in the States that largely led to the elimination of slavery.

 

[pearl]

The Catholic faith either teaches perennial truth or it doesn't. I don't want a "progressive dialectic" where truth conveniently aligns with whatever the fashionable opinion happens to be at any given time. If truth is whatever liberal culture says it is then I don't need the Catholic Church. I don't need religion at all.

I think you are terribly unfamiliar with Vatican II. It did not change one iota of dogma, it was a pastoral Council.
"The substance of the ancient doctrine of the Deposit of Faith is one thing, and the way in which it is presented is another. And it is the latter that must be taken into great consideration, with patience if necessary, everything being measured in the forms and proportions of a magisterium which is predominantly pastoral in character." John XXIII

 

[Estro Felino]

I think you are terribly unfamiliar with Vatican II. It did not change one iota of dogma, it was a pastoral Council.
"The substance of the ancient doctrine of the Deposit of Faith is one thing, and the way in which it is presented is another. And it is the latter that must be taken into great consideration, with patience if necessary, everything being measured in the forms and proportions of a magisterium which is predominantly pastoral in character." John XXIII

I think that Catholics have the right to know is such "magisterium" comes from a Masonic pastor.

 

[Father Heathen]

I think that Catholics have the right to know is such "magisterium" come from a Masonic pastor.

So these are the guys who are today taking over the Vatican, and then tomorrow the world?

 

[Estro Felino]

So these are the guys who are today taking over the Vatican, and then tomorrow the world?

When the Pope says : there are zero Freemasons in the Vatican, I will be reassured. Not before.
But he will never do it, because he can't lie.

 

[Father Heathen]

When the Pope says : there are zero Freemasons in the Vatican, I will be reassured. Not before.
But he will never do it, because he can't lie.

Freemasons aren't allowed to join the Catholic Church, and why would they even want to?

 

[Estro Felino]

Freemasons aren't allowed to join the Catholic Church, and why would they even want to?

We are speaking of the Vatican. The one with Pope Borgia. Have they ever respected their own rules? No.

 

[Father Heathen]

We are speaking of the Vatican. The one with Pope Borgia. Have they ever respected their own rules? No.

You didn't answer my question. Why would freemasons be wasting their time doing whatever it is you think they're doing?

 

[Estro Felino]

You didn't answer my question. Why would freemasons be wasting their time doing whatever it is you think they're doing?

To begin with, I am speaking of an European context. You are surely speaking of an American one.
I know the European context and Freemasonry has done anything to be viewed with suspicion.

 

[Father Heathen]

To begin with, I am speaking of an European context. You are surely speaking of an American one.
I know the European context and Freemasonry has done anything to be viewed with suspicion.

And still no real answer. What are their missions and motives?

 

[Estro Felino]

And still no real answer. What are their missions and motives?

The more Freemasons barricade themselves in their elitist and secretive circles, the more people will elect rightist-populist leaders who condemn their redundant secrecy.

 

[Father Heathen]

The more Freemasons barricade themselves in their elitist and secretive circles, the more people will elect rightist-populist leaders who condemn their redundant secrecy.

Still doesn't answer my question. What do you believe the freemasons' motives and missions are, how much power and influence do you believe they have, and what evidence so you have for any of this?

I suspect they're just being used by addled fools as a convenient bogeyman like Jews and the nonexistent Illuminati tend to be. Nothing more than kooky spooky conspiracy theory nonsense.

 

[blü 2]

If the Catholic Church is what it claims to be then nothing will change because the truth of Catholicism is predicated on the fact that settled teaching (in this case natural law sexual ethics and holy orders being open to men alone) cannot change.

Of course it can change. The Christian God began as one of many tribal gods (and not the first) in the Canaanite pantheon, and [he] had a consort Asherah.

Only after the Babylonian captivity does [he] become the only god. Then in the first century [he] becomes the Christian god who, unlike the Jewish god, abandons the covenant of circumcision. Then in the fourth century [he] becomes a Trinity, and in the process Jesus, who has repeatedly denied he's God, and the Ghost, who was the ruach, the breath of God, but not an entity distinct from God, becomes God too.

Then the Christian god took on a variety of national forms, Eastern and Western and Coptic and I dare say more.

Then the Western Christian God became the god of protestants and the god of Catholics.

And now there are thousands of versions of [him] and [he] doesn't appear to be in the slightest concerned about it, since [he] just goes on looking on and doing and saying nothing.

Correct me if I got any of that wrong. When I say 'wrong' I mean historically wrong, of course, not dogmatically wrong,

 

[Glaurung]

As you say it is not the same as infallibility, being a more general statement about the essentials of the faith. But it is curious that it states the church can never become corrupt in faith and morals, when it is agreed on all sides that, at times during the mediaeval period, it quite clearly became highly corrupt, in morals at least.

I interpret that as not a denial of any potential for moral corruption within the hierarchy but that the teaching of the Church itself is protected from moral error.

But if we leave that last contentious sentence aside, what it describes is the essential character of the church, not every detail of its teaching. As I and others have pointed out, details of the teaching most certainly have changed over the centuries. There is no reason to think this is incompatible with maintaining the essential character of the church.

My contention is that the Church's teaching on sexual ethics do indeed touch upon what is essential. The faith is not credible if it does a 180 on its millennia old teaching on sexual morality. If the Church embraces the teaching of the world I will consider the Church has having defected. I will be done with the sophistries of Catholic apologists and their increasingly desperate distinctions. For goodness' sake. Pope Francis could publicly deny the existence of God and they would argue that denying the existence of God isn't heresy if by "God" the we mean X.... instead of Y....

There are a great many areas of sin besides "sexual".

That's true, but irrelevant.

The Church itself never claimed to be infallible in all of that which is taught as basically that would make the Church "God". And as I posted last, there's been change jjst recently. Also, a change in the Catechism a few years ago now states that capital punishment is now unethical under the Gospel as all countries have jails & prisons available as an alternative.

The Church does in fact claim to be indefectible in its moral teaching.

If the Catholic Church has been wrong in its teaching regarding sexual ethics. If God does not actually care about how we use our bodies, then it's hard to see how a religion which has been so incorrect about such an essential issue could possibly be guided by God.

More replies coming up later...

 

[metis]

The Church does in fact claim to be indefectible in its moral teaching.

Only on the basics, but even with that being said the Church gives us the right of "personal discernment" per the Catechism.

If the Catholic Church has been wrong in its teaching regarding sexual ethics. If God does not actually care about how we use our bodies, then it's hard to see how a religion which has been so incorrect about such an essential issue could possibly be guided by God.

You've taken it to a polar opposite position that I do not go by.

 

[pearl]

I think these might be what Musing Bassist is referring to, the upcoming synod's, maybe especially the German Synod.


The role of women in the church and the possibility of expanding women’s ministries “is the most urgent question and the one that separates us most” from the Curia officials, Bishop Bätzing told reporters.
Concerns about Germany’s support for changing church teaching on homosexuality and women dominate Vatican meetings | America Magazine

 

[metis]

I think these might be what Musing Bassist is referring to, the upcoming synod's, maybe especially the German Synod.


The role of women in the church and the possibility of expanding women’s ministries “is the most urgent question and the one that separates us most” from the Curia officials, Bishop Bätzing told reporters.
Concerns about Germany’s support for changing church teaching on homosexuality and women dominate Vatican meetings | America Magazine

Thanks for the above and the link, especially since my subscription to America ran out.

I think this issue can put Pope Francis in a bind as he's very open to scientific research such we've seen with that of climate change.

 

[pearl]

I think this issue can put Pope Francis in a bind as he's very open to scientific research such we've seen with that of climate change.

And also open to larger roles for women.