Posted on 04/01/2007 12:47:35 PM PDT by siunevada
Look at Haiti and its predominant Voodoo cult for an answer.
Um ... canon law is not civil law. Are you expecting the Church to make a coup d'etat and run the government?
It educated them in what was important in an English dominated society where being French was looked down upon and speaking and writing it discouraged - the faith. You do recall that English speaking elites completely dominated Quebec until a few decades ago, don't you?
And the literacy of England and New England did very little for their eternal souls. Most of these people had lost their Christian faith by the 1850's. Wonderful, they could read and write - so the first thing they did with such skills was to take up Unitarianism, Evolutionism, and Universalism.
Amen...."social gospel" instead of getting their souls to HEAVEN is the reason....plus they aren't exactly civilized and haven't got a judicial system based on "SO HELP ME GOD".
Ah yes, and the World Health Organization has the perfect solution - abortion! That would bring the murder rate down to a percentage more in line with the "enlightened" nations. (as long as you don't include the murdered infants)
Is the writer, John Allen that little guy in the dark rimmed glasses?
A rather unprofessional post.
Really. This is a forum for anyone to discuss common interests. It is not an academic enterprise to flash credentials. It is very unseemly.
Oh, I thought it was just a bunch of scolds looking for someone to jump on.
No, but the priests do not teach on this subject and too often, view private property as not-quite Christian. FWIW in many countries such as Guatemala the Catholic Church does greatly influence who is elected.
Most Catholics (and Protestants, but since this is about Catholicism...) are culturally Catholic. They have no real commitment to the church or even to Christianity. They are Catholic because their parents and grandparents were Catholic.
You posted a statement which seemed to support the simplistic and ridiculous theory that "that Glory of Rome and Western Civilization was dragged down into the Dark Ages by the degenerate Catholics."
I challenged it. Perhaps not in the best way, I admit. Your friend then defended you, even though he seems to agree with me in principle. Odd. But okay. It's a free country.
History may be variously intepreted to "prove" various conflicting theories. Historians who possess doctorates may totally disagree with one another in their various interpretations.
History is not a hard science. Holding a doctorate in history does not automatically make one infallible in interpreting it. If it did, there would not be so much disagreement among those who hold doctorates in history.
You must have a chip on your shoulder. All you want to do is bicker and fight. Consequently, I don't think you have contributed anything but animosity.
Apparently, you have read history, but it is not uncommon for a history buff to know a lot of facts but be unable to handle something like my questioning the premise of the article. You took that personally.
Of course, degrees and credentials never make someone right on their own. That doesn't make them meaningless. The idea that flashing credentials is unprofessional is just populism. Usually, public display of credentials is required by law and people who practice without licenses are jailed as quacks.
This is all just a spat about who is out of his league. That only interests imposters and doesn't interest people who earned their expertise, at all.
My dear, I have no interest in a fight. I actually wrote that in my last post, but somehow the last paragraph was not included in the post.
If you subscribe to what is in Wood's book, we are in agreement. Why continue this?
I wrote "seemed to be" not "was". I am very sorry if I did not make myself more clear. I posted earlier that it all appears to be a misunderstanding, and thought this statement with "seemed" would be understood in that light, that I considered it a simple misunderstanding.
Except for blacks, of course. You are aware that it was against the law to preach to blacks or teach them to read in several British-dominated Southern states, aren't you? One state even had the death penalty for anybody who taught the slaves to read, although I don't think they ever enforced it. The British feared that if they permitted the baptism or religious instruction of slaves, or permitted them to marry, they would have to treat them like human beings and grant them rights. Hence they took great pains to prevent their instruction.
The people who came here from England came from a literate culture and they never tried to spread it, except for one brief moment in New England when several scholars worked on translating some parts of Scripture into an Indian language. But they abandoned that attempt fairly early on.
By contrast, the people the Spanish instructed were not literate and didn't even speak a European language. In fact, the Spanish created picture books, based on what symbols they could determine from fragmentary scraps of documents and sculpted designs on walls, to instruct the indigenous people in the Faith. Furthermore, even the soldiers who came to the New World were expected to know their basic catechism and were sometimes assigned to teach catechism classes to the Indians.
bump for later
why does no one ask why protestantism hasn't had a more positive effect.
abortion, secularism, all manner of sin promoted by 'clergy' in the name of God.
I can understand why the priests interviewed in the article wouldn’t come up with an answer such as you gave. You said that Vatican II, with its emphasis on the collective rather than on the individual response of faith, is at fault. I agree.
On October 4, 1965 during the Fourth Session of the Second Vatican Council, Pope Paul VI flew to the US to address the United Nations General Assembly saying, “We bring to this Organization the suffrage of our recent predecessors, that of the entire Catholic episcopate and our own, convinced as we are that this Organization represents the obligatory path of modern civilization and world peace.”
Obligatory path?
Wow. No wonder when he thinks about his apostolate, a Honduran priest is going to wonder about the gang problem and corrupt government officials more than hearing everybody’s confession at least once a year.
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