The Song Fight Bulletin Board

jack shite wrote:all you people that voted senile old prick better look both ways before crossing the street.

Is that a threat?

/voted 'senile old p'

j$ wrote:Some of those countries which you refer to are the same ones where they say 'I can't use a condom despite the AIDS epidemic because the Pope tells me it is a sin' ... one european telling 'places that aren't Europe' how to think is as bad as another ....

amen.

I don't think you can blame the pope for the established precepts of his wacky religion.

Did I just say that?
Really, though, that's a fault of the Church. I don't see why it makes its figurehead an evil person. I'm not all weepy over this, but I don't have any particular angst to vent on his corpse.

abecedarian wrote: If a person can so easily dismiss the entire life of a man who has accomplished as much as he has, then how easy will it be for others to call me worse when I'm dead?

You've got it backwards, I think, actually--the less you've done, the more you're liked when you're gone. There's some natural law to be found here, I'm sure--the ones who hated you always speak louder than the ones who were fond of you, so the more you've done, no matter what it was, the more hate and hate-flavored indifference you get to collect on the death bed. Am I right or what?

No, probably not. But you can't expect a politically active religious leader to get all smiles and kittens when he croaks. It just never happens. In fact, you can probably replace "religious leader" with "individual".

sparks wrote:I don't think you can blame the pope for the established precepts of his wacky religion.

Sparks, you can't blame him for establishing the precepts. However, you can hold him accountable for upholding them.

I've got nothing against Catholics. I've known some good ones. My problem is with the religion's power. It's religious power if you will. I view Catholosism ON THAT PARTICULAR LEVEL a political influence. I don't believe one religion should have that much 'say' or political influence. One might argue that our president does much the same thing and a lot of folk argue against the American christian values and it's world domineering agenda. To me it's very much the same thing. Maybe even worse.

The pope perpetuates religious dominance in the world. This includes it's flaws such as condemnation of condems, lack of WE'RE SORRY's for christian persecution, and the handlings of priest relocations for alleged misconduct. These things may not be his fault directly but he is the shoulder that these things befall.

Nobody is required to think that this man is great if he continues to ignore these problems in light of greenlighting and condeming things from the Vatican for world approval.

/rant

Post Script: Again, nothing against Catholics. Keep believing. God is a good thing and we're all brothers in the bigger picture.

Post Post Script: If I remember correctly...I think the Vatican did release a statement two years ago on the Catholic crusade on protestants. It admitted vague regrets of it's past mistakes. It has not officially come right out and said to Christians "my bad for all that mess back then".

Hoblit wrote:

sparks wrote:I don't think you can blame the pope for the established precepts of his wacky religion.

Sparks, you can't blame him for establishing the precepts. However, you can hold him accountable for upholding them.

What would you have done differently if you had been Pope?

I agree, Hoblit, you -can- blame him for being Catholic, and for upholding the principles he believes in. That dirty bastard!

Really, no one is forcing anyone to be Catholic. I wouldn't even recommend it. There is the matter of the spread of HIV, and other morally questionable concepts, but there is a foundation in the Church that contraception is immoral. It's established. It's a nasty rule, but it's there, and it's his job to live and to instruct others according to those principles.

sparks wrote: It's a nasty rule, but it's there, and it's his job to live and to instruct others according to those principles.

No, he is infallible, so his job is tell other people how they should be living their lives. Or go to Hell if they don't.

Also, it makes sod all difference where the next Pope comes from. The Vatican is in Rome, and always will be.

Also - don't change a system, just becuase it's always be done that way? Hmmm, fuzzy logic ...

No, no-one is forcing you to be catholic (anymore than someone born into a strictly protestant background is likely to grow up imbued with the lessons of the Protestant belief system), but the effects of the edicts of the Catholic Church are felt by non-catholics every day, and therefore it becomes an issue that should involve everybody.

j$

http://us.news2.yimg.com/us.yimg.com/p/ ... nyp201.jpg

Speaking with a man whose bullet almost killed him.

And?

j$ wrote:No, he is infallible, so his job is tell other people how they should be living their lives.

Actually no. The doctrine of papal infallibility states that the pope is infallible on theological matters, not moral ones. It was introduced as a last ditch attempt to quieten a rash of theological disputes.

So, if the new pope declares that the trinity has always had four members, then he is right, even though previous popes were right in saying it has always had three. Yesterday there had always been three, today there have always been four.

But, if he declares that abortion is forbidden, or that rain falls upwards on thursdays, he is officially fallible.

Don't agree to play Monopoly with me and then complain that I'm not giving you credit for a triple word score. We're not playing Scrabble, we're playing Monopoly. If you want a religion that changes it's rules and does things that benefit people on earth and whatever else, find one. If none exists to your liking, start one. But crap, he's the Pope. He's not going to change the game he's playing just because other people want to play a different one.

j$ wrote:And?

I think it represents an act of supreme forgiveness and compassion.

When you post a series of pictures with the Pope talking with the x million Catholic AIDS victims, I will agree with you.

Until then, I would compare to it to a picture of Reagan talking to Hinckley ...

Kapitano, religious infallibility becomes a moral issue when the edicts which claim to be religious in root effect a crisis which has nothing to do with religion.

j$

15-16 puzzle wrote:If you want a religion that changes it's rules and does things that benefit people on earth and whatever else, find one.

[nit]
Er...that describes every religion that has ever existed. The question of course is which people are benefited by the changes.
[/nit]

J$ wrote:Kapitano, religious infallibility becomes a moral issue when the edicts which claim to be religious in root effect a crisis which has nothing to do with religion.

Obviously we're all aware of that. Theological wranglings are generally about underlying moral issues anyway. I was just saying that the pope is in strict terms only held to be infallible on cosmogenic matters. The trouble is though, this blurs into the grey area of biblical interpretation.

It's largely academic anyway. But you and I are both ex-academics .

15-16 puzzle wrote: But crap, he's the Pope. He's not going to change the game he's playing just because other people want to play a different one.

"I come to make everything new" - Jesus.

Or slightly less glibly, that's a particularly moribund intrepretation - do I mean moribund? Practical might be a better word. The edicts to which I am referring (specifically condom-related ones) are obviously a modern, human interpretation of guidelines written down at a point when society was utterly different from now. Why can't a fully realised belief system evolve to incorporate changes in society? It should do, as a compassionate God's representatives on Earth rather than the hotline to Heaven it is often taken to be ...

Why can't people just not have Catholicism be a part of their lives?

15-16 puzzle wrote:Why can't people just not have Catholicism be a part of their lives?

Because thinking about stuff is hard work?

Lots of people do, I guess, the semantic difference I am arguing (not veyr successfully by the looks of it) is that Catholicism is a seperate entity from the Catholic Church, and that I personally feel that some people would have a healthier relationship with their God if they were more honest about recognising that the Catholic Church is simply an organisation that on more than one occasion recently has failed in its moral duty to its human members. Certainly it is no worse or better other a hundred other organised religious bodies, but it is the Pope that's just died ...

j$

j$ wrote:When you post a series of pictures with the Pope talking with the x million Catholic AIDS victims, I will agree with you.

j$

actually, all it took was hugging one small boy on a visit to san francisco and the pope did more to present the seriousness and compassion towards AIDS than anyone did or ever has done since. he brought awareness of AIDS on a global scale.

it's really shameful the way some of you disrespect a great man.

jack shite wrote:it's really shameful the way some of you disrespect a great man.

Woah! We're gonna have to agree to disagree on that statement, Jack, on more than one level, but I don't want / never meant to upset anyone by offering an opinion differing from the one the media has chosen to present us with.

Out of respect for you, and other people, Catholic or otherwisem who might have taken personal offence at what I've been saying, that was not my intention, and I apologise. I'll say no more on the matter. I was pretty much done anyway, I guess ...

PS I didn't vote either way, for the record ...

j$ wrote:Lots of people do, I guess, the semantic difference I am arguing (not veyr successfully by the looks of it) is that Catholicism is a seperate entity from the Catholic Church, and that I personally feel that some people would have a healthier relationship with their God if they were more honest about recognising that the Catholic Church is simply an organisation that on more than one occasion recently has failed in its moral duty to its human members. Certainly it is no worse or better other a hundred other organised religious

Yes, the distinction is quite clear. The problem as I see it is that it's impossible to have a relationship with god.

First off, how can anyone possibly relate to something they can't define? As we've been discussing in another thread, whatever god is, it's alien. Not just strange and foreign, but completely beyond anything we have a frame of reference for conceptualising.

Second, the great theologin Karl Barthes argued that god has the power to make us understand him for what he is - he can squeeze understanding of his infinitude into our tiny minds. How? Well, he's god and he can do anything.

Even if we accept this, how is it possible to have a relationship with something like that? Except of course the relationship between benevalent master and protected slave. Where the slave asks for favours, expecting not to recive them, and the master occasionally for inexplicable reasons grants the request, leaving the slave in abject gratitude.

Third, even if we bypass this problem by saying 'god isn't like that, he loves us', there can still be no relationship, because there can be no sharing, companionship, nothing we might call friendship.

You might confide in him, though he already knows whatever you tell him, but does he confide in you? Is there an exchange of opinions? No, there is his opinion which is truth, and yours which is error. You can't reciprocate his kindness, or do anything to be worthy of his inexplicable love of you.

The point of all this? That we know what a church is - a political institution of humans much like ourselves. It can be understood, petitioned, influenced. It has moods, crises and tantrums. It can even seem like a friend.

It isn't possible to make friends with a god. The church is human enough (because it's made up of humans) that a relationship (albeit a very unequal one) is - kind of - possible.