Posted on 10/27/2009 6:46:41 PM PDT by GodGunsGuts
In America we are a century and a half away from the "Know-Nothing Party", a secret political society that fulminated against the Catholic Church and Irish immigrants. (Asked about its composition, members would say, "I know nothing;" hence, the moniker.) Formed in public as The American Party, the party's hateful, nativist politics took a long time to expunge from our shores. But we now have an Englishman, Richard Dawkins--one of society's "Brites" according to his fellow-Darwinist, Daniel Dennett--in a screed against the Catholic Church that proclaims the same frothing bigotry exemplified by the Know-Nothings. This and Dawkins' various other attacks should remind us that the hoary religious hatreds of old (including those of the angry atheist) were a European legacy. Catholics and other Christians need to realize that Dawkins and Company aim to revive them.
Rome is possibly "the greatest force for evil in the world," Dawkins announces, "a disgusting institution" that is "dragging its flowing skirts in the dirt and touting for business like a common pimp." That kind of language is like a blast of stale air from the 1850s.
You cannot expect his fellow Darwinists to repudiate Dawkins for the simple reason that a number (e.g., P.Z. Myers) share his prejudices and his paranoia. Darwinism never was mainly about science; it is about metaphysics. It is a worldview that has no space for the sacred, no regard for the exceptionality of human life. Darwinists, who operate few if any hospitals or homeless shelters, cannot recognize the humanity of those who do.
Dawkins is not an oddity. He is the world's leading Darwinian spokesman. He is hailed at universities, museums and foundations. Publications like The Washington Post and The New York Times--that simply will not run an article by scientists presenting the evidence against Darwinism--can't showcase him enough.
Other than such Know Nothings, what other modern bigots are regarded as so fashionable?
>>and meet in person at such liberal venues like the Rally for America....know me. <<
Oh, oh okay. Sure they do. LOLOLOL!!!!!!
I would like to point out that I didn't call you a liberal. I don't have any notion of your politics and there are plenty of anti-Catholics who aren't liberal.
However the suggestion or invitation suggest to me that attempts at reasonable discussion are not likely to be fruitful.
I think you really don't know what you are talking about, when it comes to the Pope. Such opinions are rarely voiced without research. Have you looked into what led to the Pope's expressing this view?
Wow....because people use condoms, society gains a possible dysfunction making people die earlier? REALLY?
Wow.... because people research and look into questions that others have not even thought to ask their conjectures and conclusions should be subjected to ridicule without examination? REALLY?
Come back when you've looked into this a little. Ignorance and thoughtlessness hiding behind a hedge of abusiveness holds no interest for me.
Can you remember that after the Pope made the comment you quote, which was meant with blind screaming hatred from so many, there was some other evidence brought forward from a secular source which supported his assertion that handing out condoms exacerbated the problem.
In general, the problem with many "public" and "population" oriented people who have cast off the shackles of out-moded, traditional morality for the clarity of a utilitarianism which has never been seen on the face of the earth, seems to be that they are just so darn certain that their positions are right that they don't look into them.
I first encountered this remarkable uninquisitive arrogance in a discussion with someone who has spent her life in public health, mostly related to Africa. She thought that if one favored a constructionist approach to the Constitution that meant that one supported slavery!
And I'm intrigued that the idea that people will not be chaste is presented as an undebatable common notion, while the idea that they will use condoms and have sex responsibly if only ... if only ... well, we're not sure if only what but we just KNOW they will and we're so certain that we get to say horrible things about people who don't share our religious belief in the power of the condom.
I say religious because I am thinking that while it is entirely plausible that WHERE condoms are used there is a reduced rate of pregnancy or transfer of STD per act of intercourse, there still seems to be a problem getting them to be used.
And, then. of course, there's that unlamented public health official, the lovely and gracious Dr. Jocelyn Elders who, upon learning that the condoms the government was distributing were defective thought that condom use was so important that it trumped the matter of whether the condoms actually WORKED.
But WE are the ones forcing our values on others, while we may never know how many people got STDs or just knocked up because of Dr. Elders's belief in the magical goodness of the condom.
What's being compared here is, on our side, millennia of teaching about chastity, and, on theirs, the insistence that some state of affairs which has never actually existed in history would be good. While failures in chastity have been undeniable forever, and are therefore "prrof" that we should stop advocating chastity, the decades of failure to persuade the unchaste to practice safe sex are only proof that we should try harder to get people to do so. The Church's failures are her fault and the fault of her teaching. The Public Health failure is, is ... um, well, whatever it is it's not their fault.
From Miles Jesu:
A recent example of attempted limitations of freedom in the name of freedom occurred this past April, when the House of Representatives of Belgium ordered the Ambassador of Belgium to the Holy See to deliver an official condemnation of the Pope’s remarks on the use of condoms to prevent AIDS in Africa.ANDThe Holy See responded by saying it “deplores the fact that a Parliamentary Assembly should have thought it appropriate to criticize the Holy Father on the basis of an isolated extract from an interview, separated from its context, and used by some groups with a clear intent to intimidate, as if to dissuade the Pope from expressing himself on certain themes of obvious moral relevance and from teaching the Church’s doctrine.”
Dr. Edward Green, a Senior Harvard Researcher for AIDS Prevention, told Catholic News Agency that science is finding that the media is actually on the wrong side of the issue. In fact, Green said that not only do condoms not work, but that they may be “exacerbating the problem” in Africa.
From What Does The Prayer Really Say?
Senior Harvard Research Scientist for AIDS Prevention, Dr. Edward Green, who is the author of five books, including “Rethinking AIDS Prevention: Learning from Successes in Developing Countries” discussed his support for Pope Benedict XVI’s comments with CNA.So who's making stuff up as he goes along?According to Dr. Green, science is finding that the media is actually on the wrong side of the issue. In fact, Green says that not only do condoms not work, but that they may be “exacerbating the problem” in Africa.
“Theoretically, condoms ought to work,” he explained to CNA, “and theoretically, some condom use ought to be better than no condom use, but that’s theoretically.”
Condom proponents often cite the lack of condom education as the main culprit for higher AIDS rates in Africa but Green disagrees.
After spending 25 years promoting condoms for family planning purposes in Africa, he insists that he’s quite familiar with condom promotion. Yet, he claims that “anyone who worked in family planning knew that if you needed to prevent a pregnancy, say the woman will die, you don’t recommend a condom.”
Green recalls that when the AIDS epidemic hit Africa, the “Industry” began using AIDS as a “dual purpose” marketing strategy to get more funding for condom distribution. This, he claims, effectively took “something that was a 2nd or 3rd grade device for avoiding unwanted pregnancies” and turned it into the “best weapon we [had] against AIDS.”
The accepted wisdom in the scientific community, explained Green, is that condoms lower the HIV infection rate, but after numerous studies, researchers have found the opposite to be true. “We just cannot find an association between more condom use and lower HIV reduction rates” in Africa.
Dr. Green found that part of the elusive reason is a phenomenon known as risk compensation or behavioral disinhibition.
[this is actually a pretty interesting article.]
Many Self-described scientists not only lack a basic understanding of morality, so that they cannot, for example, plausibly differentiate between an ethic of indifference and an ethic of virtue, but they also lack the kind of breadth of vision without which one cannot see that what one thinks is a cosmopolitan and comprehensive point of view is really pretty parochial, even clique-ish.
The famous line attributed to Pauline Kael after the 1927 election applies. She supposedly said of Nixon's win, "I just don't understand it. Everyone I know voted for McGovern." And yet New Yorkers consider themselves uniquely broad in their views and knowledge.
Here, the Pope articulates a view which a public health professional has not heard and so he simply MUST be making it up. There couldn't possibly be any research behind the Pope's statement or supporting his point of view, because, the illusion is, if there were, the public health profession would know about it already. And, after all, the Pope is just a funny man in a white dress who studies things nobody but a few (okay, a billion) cultists care about.
Spot on!
Anyone who says that anti-Chtholic bias is not thriving in America, both within the leftist-athiest communities and among the so-called “saved” is either ignorant or lying.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-religion/2374083/posts
“I find it odd.”
You’re certainly not alone.
I don’t think FR liberals understand two things that they seem to regularly overlook...(you know that stick out a little more than the thousands upon thousands of things self-absorbed liberals wantonly misunderstand. :) )
1. that their positions are in fact liberal.
2. that they therefore stick out like sore thumbs and get called out for being the liberals they are.
I expect no less from the MSM. They hate God and anything to do with it and will, of course, castigate religion any chance they get. The more light a denomination shines on their immoral behavior, the more they'll hate it.
However, I don't see anything in that link that implicates the *saved* (meaning non-Catholics, Protestants in particular, I presume).
I don't see the kind of anti-Catholic bias among any of the Protestants I know, I haven't seen it in decades. Not to say that it didn't used to exist, but it did go both ways, knowing it from being raised a Catholic.
I still stand my my statement.
I don’t......
And yet another evo lie posted about creationists.
That is why I qualified the word saved with the quotation marks. As a Catholic participant of many religious discussions on FR I am appalled by the level of anti-Catholic sentiment and vitriol that spews forth under the anonymity of internet postings by people claiming to be saved because they, and only those identical to them in thought and affiliation, have broken the secret code to the Word of God and found the keys to the Kingdom of Heaven. It makes one really question what lies beneath the veneer civility when encountering non-Catholics face-to-face.
This is the most over blown charge that gets made. Everytime there is a heated discussion the "anti-catholic" charge comes flying out. If there is such a hatred for RC's how did so many become Supreme Court Justices. How did the Speaker of the House get that position? How did Biden become Vice President. Disagreement on theology does not mean someone hates you.
I'm a Born Again Christian. I see slurs thrown at my faith all the time, but I don't drop the "bigot" bomb at the drop of a hat.
Do discussions get heated? Sure. Do things get thrown around that shouldn't? Sure. Are all sides guilty? Sure. Does that mean everybody hates everybody? NO!
I agree, this has been my experience with my Roman Catholic friends.
I see measurable rejection of Catholic doctrine, particularly the ‘priesthood’ and the Mariolatry, but it amounts to mostly a feeling that that doctrine is harming the Catholics themselves. There is no hatred of Catholics as persons that I can see.
FWIW, you might not get so upset by this if you saw what comes from the other side. Think about how charged the terms protestant, heretic, separated brethren, and co-redeemer just to name a few are to Christians. A case for anti-Evangelical sentiment could be made very easily.
BTW, you might not be aware, but the reformers did not call themselves protestants. They thought the term derogatory. They called themselves Evangelicals.
Actually I think there is PLENTY of bigotry about BACs, and almost as much misinformation as there is about us feelthy papists.
I think Pelousy got her position becuase she exemplifies what it is to be a CINO. I think the Supremes got that way because hand-in-hand with the accusations that we are superstitious, slack-jawed idolaters there goes the notion that we are fiendishly well-edumicated especially as regards the kind of reasoning that makes one a lawyer -- AND that, with notable exceptions and with diversity of viewpoints notwithstanding, the Supremes still approximate a meritocracy.
I haven't seen it in my everyday life either. I've seen the discussions here get pretty hot, but in the end these are just words.
>>I don’t see the kind of anti-Catholic bias among any of the Protestants I know, I haven’t seen it in decades. Not to say that it didn’t used to exist, but it did go both ways, knowing it from being raised a Catholic.<<
Honestly, neither did I until I came here. Maybe it’s the anonymity of the internet. I married a non-Catholic, half my blood family is non-Catholic. I don’t think that “Anti-Catholic” is the norm among Christians and in fact proved it with two threads a while ago asking if Catholics thought Non-Catholics were Christian and if non-Catholics thought that Catholics were Christians.
It was an overwhelming YES on both sides. Some people were even offended that I asked. That is until the Anti-Catholics showed up. And yes, we had one Catholic who tried to say no, but he was quickly shot down.
There is a difference between discussing differences with tact and as FReeper Sandyeggo put it “Slash and Burn Evangelization”. Most people can have differences and still show Christian love.
We have a bigger fight than each other! I’m just trying to get my kids to adulthood with their freedoms intact!
>>co-redeemer just to name a few are to Christians. <<
That’s not fair.
Co-redemdrix is upheld by a fringe group. I’ve posted over and over again the quote from B16 stating that this idea is against Scripture.
It’s like the Catholics being offended by the ideas and actions of Fred Phelps and blaming it on all non-Catholic Christans, coming up with obscure quote and dismissing all proof that it’s not mainstream. It’s twisting facts.
I apologize. I did not know that the term Protestant was offensive. But I do have to ask, which part of “separated brethren” is offensive. The separated or the brethren?
But is the "bigot" bomb thrown around by BACs all the time?
I think Pelousy got her position becuase she exemplifies what it is to be a CINO.
Every church has it's tares. One of the things I go on about is the need for church discipline with issues like abortion. Not just your church, but mine as well. If we really want it ended we need to tell the supporters of this atrocity they aren't welcome till they repent.
fiendishly well-edumicated especially as regards the kind of reasoning that makes one a lawyer
I'm not sure I would want to be known for that. ;0
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.