Posted on 11/08/2009 1:25:05 PM PST by Cardhu
A BBC Debate
Motion: That the Catholic Church is a force for good in the world.
.................Before.........After...........Change
For...............678............268............-410
Against.......1102...........1876...........+774
Undecided....346..............34
A good debate and the numbers reflected a true evaluation of that debate.
Yikes!!! Hitchens cleaned the FOR side’s clock.
I wonder how the same people would vote if a certain ‘religion of peace’ were substituted.
When are they debating the same question on Islam?
It was a debating blow out but Catholic side did very well with the hand they were dealt.
I am sure it would be even worse with Islam.
Just curious what case the pro-Catholic side made. For me it would be No Catholic Church = No Western Civilization.
You wrote:
“When are they debating the same question on Islam?”
(snicker)
Hitchens also hates Islam but he would end up headless long before he got the chance to criticize it.
From an article:
As might be expected, Hitchens bombarded the audience with facts, but they were better organised than might be expected by anyone who read the ramshackle God is not Great. He castigated the Catholic church's history of violence, it's collusion with fascism, its cover-ups of child abuse and its attitude to homosexuality and AIDS. The latter point was reinforced by Stephen Fry - arguably the strongest speaker and definitely the most passionate - who implored the Catholic church to change its attitude to condom use.
The condom use thing could be a problem. The fact is, a lot of people are going to have sex outside of the defined parameters, condoms or no. That's just reality. And AIDS is a huge problem, especially in Africa.
The church may have colluded with fascism and covered up some child abuse scandals, but I have to view those things as an exception to the general ethos.
Part of his strength as a speaker was that unlike Hitchens he did not appear hostile to Christianity. His objection to Catholicism was that it bore no resemblance to Christianity or to Jesus's teachings.
That could be said, and is being said, about most of our churches.
Fascinating
ping
and its attitude to homosexuality and AIDS. The latter point was reinforced by Stephen Fry - arguably the strongest speaker and definitely the most passionate - who implored the Catholic church to change its attitude to condom use.
Yes, that bad old Catholic church, telling people that it's wrong to scr*w around, even if you use a rubber.
I mean, after all, where is that in the Bible?
Oh, wait ... hmm ...
Gamecock, if you are a Christian, these people aren't your pals. They'd hate you, too, if you were big enough to be on their radar.
"History of violence"? "Collusion with fascism"?
All of that pales against the 100 million victims of atheistic socialism in the 20th Century alone.
Catholics are bad people because people are bad, and they have been ever since that little episode in the garden. But where sin abounds, may grace abound all the more.
A lot of what Hitchens says about the Roman Catholic church is correct, i.e. its deep ties to fascism; its pederast priest sex scandals; its liberation theory social policies; the inherent tyranny in its top-down hierarchy, etc.
A debate like this seems to be set up as Christian vs. Atheist. And it's not. It's Roman Catholic against atheist. And the RCC is not equipped to debate atheism because it is synergistic and acknowledges many paths to God.
This debate between Greg Bahnsen (Christian) and Gordon Stein (atheist) is a much stronger, more successful trouncing of the atheist's nihilistic world view.
Hmmm...Ever hear of Felix Dzerzhinsky? He was a Polish Roman Catholic under Lenin who became founder and head of the Russian Cheka (Russian secret police), forerunner of the Russian NKVD and Soviet KGB, and a model for Hitler's SS.
Under him 20 million Orthodox were murdered.
Who has always loathed the Orthodox and benefited by their demise? Rome.
Hardly, Religions held back the march of civilisation until the Enlightment.
Religion flourished in the Dark Ages and was responsible for retarding the spread of knowledge.
Enlightenment
Actually, to speak of a Western European "dark ages" is to indulge in Renaissance-era propaganda.
Also, your historical causality is askew.
What was responsible for retarding the spread of knowledge at that time were things like the collapse of the Roman Empire in the west (and the resulting economic and political chaos); the invasions of various barbarian peoples followed by attacks by the "Big 3": the Hungarians, the Vikings, and the Muslims; and the continual hammering of Western european population centers by various plagues, pathogens, and endemic malaria.
Kinda hard to find the leisure time to develop science and literature when you're fighting for your life on the field of adversity.
Who has always loathed the Orthodox and benefited by their demise? Rome.
During the anti-Christian Terror in the Soviet Union, it was Bolsheviks like Lenin and Stalin who were calling the shots. Memory tells me that neither man had a RC background (in fact, both were baptized Orthodox at an early age).
There's been no love lost between the Church of Rome and the Eastern Orthodox for over a thousand years -- although the history is a bit more complex than that -- but to insinuate that Roman Catholicism was behind the Bolsheviks' murder of millions of Eastern Orthodox is both absurd and obscene.
I’m not Catholic, but this isn’t even close.
Over the centuries no institution on earth has done more good for more people than the Catholic Church.
Not even close.
Seriously, some of these posts demonstrate the utter and ludicrous illiteracy of the writers.
Here some serious reading for the uninitiated
Yeah, he was a "Polish Roman Catholic" like I'm a potted fern.
He was an atheistic communist. Know what happened to the Ukrainian Catholic Church under the rule of "Roman Catholics" like Dzerzhinsky?
They were wiped out. Then, in the areas of Ukraine that were under Polish control between the wars but came into Soviet control after WW2? Wiped out there, too.
Google "Ukrainian martyrs" if you don't believe me.
Dzerzhinsky was as Catholic as Heinrich Himmler was Jewish.
Exactly. You can't separate the civilization from the church, though the culture would like to. Secularists want the comfort of the church's symbolic presence without its moral obligations.
For example: It's not an accident that the culture's favorite phenomenon of the last decade, the decidedly non-Christian Harry Potter series, takes place in what is basically a beautiful, enormous Gothic cathedral, and its magicians pronounce spells in Latin.
We were "debating atheism," and winning, a thousand years before Calvin was born.
Correct. Stalin actually studied for the Georgian Orthodox priesthood as a young man. (He was expelled from seminary eventually.)
If Wikipedia's chronology is to be believed, he became a Bolshie in 1917. Bolsheviks WERE atheists by self-definition, no ifs, ands or butts.
Also, he joined a Marxist party (the Social Democratic Party of Lithuania) in 1895, when he was 18. So there apparently wasn't a sudden conversion to atheism in 1917, either.
Hey, Dr. E., you ought to look up to him. He abandoned the darkness and tyranny of Rome, after all!
As long as he was not black, any member of the Communist Party would be welcomed by the OPC. The Orthodox Presbyterian Church is as white as it gets; no blacks need enter the grounds, except if they are serving lunch or cutting the grass.
Good to see you taking Hitchens’ side in an argument. Sure you want to rethink that?
Dr. E.
Whatever respect may have existed for you has evaporated. You definitely sound like a certain individual whose tracts are banned here on Freepers. Nevermind that your last post is almost verbatim from one of his.
Don’t let facts get in the way of their virulent Anti-Catholicism.
That is an outstanding point. Because of the monasteries and the universities, we have Western Civilization.
When the Christian debates an atheist they prove as much as humanly possible from Scripture and the world around them that God exists and is sovereign over His creation.
When a Roman Catholic debates anyone, his only defense of the faith and true reality is "that's what the papacy teaches and that's good enough for me.
What an interesting analogy. Himmler was born and raised a Roman Catholic, too.
When he was a young man, Felix Dzerzhinsky was apparently a RC; how can he have been "one of mine" since I am not of the Church of Rome?
Later in his life, Felix Dzerzhinsky fell in with atheists and became an atheist. How can he have been "one of mine," since I am not an atheist?
Dzerzhinsky did what Lenin and Stalin and his own black, Communist heart told him to do. To try to pin his actions on the Church of Rome bespeaks only a certain fearlessness in the face of the Ninth Commandment.
As for his actions having "benefitted Rome," I must admit puzzlement over how you could think his murders benefitted anyone at all.
Who knew, and who cares? National Socialism was not a RC political movement.
You're forgetting that both Martin Luther and John Calvin were born and raised Roman Catholics.
People can have a change of heart. Sometimes, as with Calvin and Luther, it's for the better. Sometimes, as in the case of monsters like Himmler, it's for the much, much, worse.
He is clearly one of yours, an enemy of the Church.
Which statement only proves that you've never actually listened to any of them.
You pay attention to Catholics only insofar as you can use what you hear to score points.
And was just as apostate as Dzerzhinsky. Himmler was a neo-pagan and quite open and aggressive about it, as any cursory examination of the evidence proves. Dzerzhinsky was an atheistic communist.
Like you, Himmler and Dzerzhinsky hated the Catholic Church with a vengeance.
By the way, how does imprisoning and killing Catholic priests and faithful benefit Rome?
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