Free Republic

Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights fights this kind of stuff every day

Actually, I joined them, as a direct result of my experiences here.

My first encounter with this hatefulness was at work. I had saved the job of an Evangelical colleague by completing a project for him he was having trouble with. He rewarded my by loaning me a copy of Woodward's Babylon Mystery Religion. I read it, and thought that no one but a few cranks could possibly swallow such tripe. Little did I know.

Interestingly, Woodward renounced his book a few years ago, and no longer publishes it. He even did an article in This Rock, essentially apologizing for it. Naturally, this development has received far less publicity than the original book, which I understand some group of bigots is keeping in print.

petronski still reads these threads but he's not coming back because of the nosedive FR is taking.

What a pity. He's a fine man, and I'm sorry to lose his insights.

Many of my friends have left as well, for similar reasons.

I've been here since shortly after the March for Justice, so I understand how this place, when it's at it's best, can bring people together. But in your case, it's especially memorable!

either kiss a little butt to keep your membership

Thank you for your kind words.

I have no intention of kissing anyone's butt for any reason whatsoever. The situation is intoleratable, and it must change. It's not negotiable.

my job is to keep the peace

No justice, no peace.

If others are content to abide by rules of moderation which are inequitable and irrational and inconsistent, they are free to do so. I am not.

I do not pick sides.

When your moderation is inequitable, as you admit it is, in effect you do.

I will not consent to being anyone's whipping boy. I will not tolerate bullying, bashing, or bigotry. If it is wrong to direct it against Jews, it is equally wrong to direct it against Catholics. The fact remains that the people who insist upon stirring up trouble are almost exclusively Calvinists, and their targets are almost exclusively Catholics. It's not right, and any decent human being should be able to understand why.

Once again, "ignorance" is not pejorative. "Instruction of the ignorant" is, in fact one of the corporal works of mercy. There is no culpability in being uniformed or misinformed, and that is all that "ignorance" means. It becomes "willful ignorance", however, when it persists in spite of repeated corrections. There comes a point when a persistent false statement becomes a culpable lie. One who lies is, objectively a liar. I will continue to use both "ignorant" and "liar" when they describe objective situations.

When your moderation begins to make sense, I will begin to pay attention to it. Until then, I intend to ignore it, and I hope others will do so as well.

One way or another, this crap is going to stop, at least for me. This can happen in one of three ways:

1. You step down and allow someone who understands the standards of equitable and rational behavior to take over in your stead, or

2. You revamp the standards of moderation along the lines I have spelled out above, or

3. You permanently ban my account.

Which you choose is a matter of indifference to me, but the latter is the path of least resistance.

I am not simply "having a bad day". I am thoroughly fed up, and I will not drop the matter until Catholics come in for equal and rational treatment here, free of bullying, bashing, and bigotry. I am not asking you to resolve the religious issues. I am asking for fair and civil treatment, and I will not accept anything less.

there will be consequences.

I have spoken to you respectfully, calmly citing objective facts, and principles of logic and philosophy. Instead of addressing the points I have raised, your response to my last post was to log me out. Not what I would call a mature, reasoned action.

The standards of moderation which you have established are, objectively, inequitable and irrational. Apparently, you consider that my appeal for civility and a renunciation of bigotry is too much to ask. That speaks volumes, and it is not necessary for me to enumerate further exactly what it speaks.

I simply will not acquiesce to such eccentricities; no one in their right mind would. If you will not reconsider your approach to moderation, and it appears you won't, I would invite you to delete my account forthwith. What others choose to do is, of course, entirely their own affair.

It is disingenuous to complain that your confession is being maligned when you are NOT using the caucus designation to protect the thread from challenges!

No, it is disingenuous to establish standards of moderation which are inherently inequitable, and irrational. I've explained why they are inequitable: Jews come in for special protection, but Catholics are to be subjected to special opprobrium. I shouldn't have to explain why that is unjust to any person of good will. I'm sorry that we don't seem to have suffered enough throughout history to suit you, but I refuse to accept a standard which does not grant me or my co-religionists the same degree of human dignity which is due to everyone. To suggest otherwise is bigotry, pure and simple. But bigotry against Catholics is tolerated here as it would not be tolerated against any other group. See, for example, Philip Jenkins' The New Anti-Catholicism: The Last Acceptable Prejudice. For the record, Jenkins is an Episcopalian.

The poster of an article is quite literally "asking for it" when he omits the caucus label.

Rubbish. No one ever "asks for it", but we Catholics seem to get it anyway. The standard of common civility always applies. Those who do not wish to abide by it make take their food fight to the Smoky Backroom, if it still exists. It will certainly contribute nothing to a civilized discussion.

... labeling another Freeper ignorant ...

I've explained to you that "ignorant" simply means "uninformed" or "misinformed". It is a statement of objective fact, not a personal slur. I will ask you once again to stop calling people out for this.

... but do not make it personal.

But as a matter of logic, these things are personal. To claim otherwise to abandon rationality.

You can repeat this nonsense as often as you like, but repetition will not make it any less nonsensical. I simply don't know how to explain it more clearly than I already have. But it is a principle of Thomistic philosophy that an unjust law is no law at all, and it is legitimate to ignore it. Indeed, under certain conditions, there is a moral obligation to disobey it. Unless and until you are willing to establish standards of moderation that are rational and equitable, you should expect to continue to receive complaints on these matters.

I'm sorry to put things this bluntly, but we Catholics have had a target painted on our backs for many years here, and it is profoundly tiresome to be constantly put on the defensive. I can't imagine why JimRob is willing to have FR be a haven for anti-Catholic bigotry, but that is what it has been for quite some time. Nor do I see how allowing it to become this serves the stated purposes of FR as a whole.

Once again, no member of this forum should be the subject of bigotry; and every member of this forum is entitled to civility. Anything less, and the whole religion forum is an exercise in futilty.

I've also been here quite a while, although I seldom post anymore precisely because of the incessant anti-Catholic (by which adjective I mean bigotry, rather than intellectual disagreement) attacks we have to endure at FR.

Since this thread has already been hijacked, as happens so often, and is now way off-topic, I hope you won't be offended by my taking the opportunity to address a few of the points you have raised, and how they relate to the moderation of the religion forum.

First of all, I think we should drop the polite fiction that everyone comes in for an equal share of heat. It simply isn't so. Catholics are the most frequently targeted group, and the most frequent targeters are Calvinists. You will rarely find a thread started by a Catholic raking Protestants of any denomination over the coals for various difficulties arising from their beliefs or practices. But there are many which go in the opposite direction. The purpose of these threads is not clarification, but irritation, and it is quite tiresome to address the same issues over and over again. We have, time and again, clarified these issues by stating, with referenced sources, what the Catholic Church actually teaches, only to find the same poster repeating the same false statements within hours. That's not how people who are interested in an intellectual discussion behave; it is, however, the behavior of a bigot. Such behavior would not be tolerated here if it were directed at Jews, and I have seen the management jump in, in the past, when it was directed at Mormons, but it does always seem to be open season on Catholics here. Why the double standard?

With regard to the exercise of charity, I've seen it stated that Catholics are as guilty as the Calvinists of not living up to Christian standards. This is not so. We endure insult, ridicule, and incivility on a continual basis, but they are returned in kind only when one of us has been goaded beyond human endurance. We are far from perfect, but we are a good deal better in this regard, as a simple count of posts will show.

Now, to a few specific points:

"You are showing your ignorance." is making it personal. Don't do it.

Actually, it's a statement of objective fact. "Ignorance", in this context, simply means, "lack of knowledge", and there's no particular shame in that. Since no one knows everything, everyone is ignorant of something. It is also the most charitable interpretation of why the poster in question is speaking a falsehood. One prefers to believe that it's due to a lack of knowledge rather than attribute the falsehood to malice or deliberate mendacity. After several such corrections, though, it becomes clear that something less innocent than ignorance is operative.

Your attempt to distinguish between the general and the personal is logically flawed. A statement made about a group of people is a statement made about every individual in that group. In logic, this is the inference rule known as "instantiation". For example, if someone says, as we so often see here, "The Catholic Church teaches idolatry," the unavoidable implication is that I am an idolator. For if the Catholic Church teaches idolatry, and I am a faithful Catholic, i.e., one who believes what the Church teaches, I must therefore be an idolator. The personal nature of these kinds of statements is unavoidable, so the distinction you are trying to make doesn't exist.

Not only are these things inherently personal, they are personal in the most intimate way. For people who take their religious beliefs seriously, who organize their whole lives around the principles of their faith, there is nothing that can wound more deeply than false accusations and evil imputations directed at these beliefs.

Religious matters can be discussed dispassionately, and with intellectual honesty. And because religious principles form the basis of objective morality, which should be the basis for law, which is created by legislatures and is therefore a matter of politics, relgion is an appropriate topic for discussion at FR. But only if one treads lightly. It can be productive if the discussion is grounded in respect for one's opponent, civility in tone, and arises from a genuine desire for understanding.

But so often here, that is far from the case. More often than not, these "debates" are nothing more than an opportunity to exchange polemical barbs, or present historical events in a distortionate manner to one's advantage. In short, it's little more than negative propagandizing, and it reflects very poorly on those who engage in it. Such propaganda has lead to real injustices directed toward Catholics not only in Western Europe, but in the United States. The publication of the book Rebecca Reed, though less well-known than Maria Monk, lead directly to the burning of the Ursaline convent on Bunker Hill near Boston, for example. And I know of no other religious group, Jews included, which has had a whole political party, the Know-Nothing Party, which was loosely associated with the Republicans, formally organized against it.

So the issue, as I see it, is not one of "making things personal", but of bigotry. Bigotry toward Jews is not permitted here, because the management does not want such garbage on his website. I heartily agree. But, in fairness, that principle should be applied to all members of FR. None of us should have to endure bigotry in order to participate in this forum, Catholics included.

These people are seriously confused. Where to even begin ... ?

It's not surprising to find VOTF associated with this nonsense. They were never about the welfare of the victims, and always about remaking the Church according to their own preferences. But, really, you have to be pretty far "out there" to be disciplined by the Diocese of Rochester (NY). It's probably the most "liberal" (by which I mean "least orthodox") diocese in the country.

Meaning no disrespect to faithful Anglicans, one can find all these practices, attitudes, etc., there. Why not just go there?

[I]t's our business to hope that, in spite of everything, he died in a spirit of final repentance.

Thank you so much for saying that!

Catholic politicians who advocate positions contrary to both the teachings of Jesus Christ and to the Natural Law are a public embarrassment, and a scandal to the faithful. Fr. Drinan was especially so by virtue of his ordination to the ministerial priesthood. How he managed to reconcile the principles he was required to uphold, and to teach as a priest, with his voting record is a mystery known to him and God alone. As I understand it, the Vatican several times forbade him to hold public office (eventually publishing a document forbidding such direct political activity by all priests), but he simply ingored the directives.

Nevertheless, too many of us, in our desire for justice, forget that Christian charity is the highest of the theological virtues, and our first duty toward everyone. To wish someone in hell is far worse than to wish him dead, for the former is eternal death. Even saying "good riddance" goes too far, since we must hope that his life was not cut short before his repentance. (That is the principle reason for opposing capital punishment.)

I can only speak for myself, of course, but if God does not temper His justice with mercy I my case, hell would be my fate as well. But somehow I don't think I'm alone in that particular boat, in which case a certain humility is in order.

I hope and pray that this man rests in peace, through God's abundant mercy.

On an objective basis, it seems clear that mercy is what it will take.

Thank you, Dr., we Catholics are quite aware of the sin of idolatry, which is why we take such offense when Protestants constantly accuse us of it on the thinnes of pretexts. We've addressed this accusation time and again on this forum over the course of many years, and I'm not going to waste my time engaging in yet another pissing contest. You might look up in the Catechism what the Catholic Church actually teachs in this regard. Perhaps if you look it up yourself, you will retain it longer.

If you're trying to suggest by this post that we Catholics consider Mary a goddess, I would also suggest that you look up what the Church teaches on the doctrine of the Holy Trinity. Here's a hint: Mary's not in it. And I hope I do not have to point out the obvious absurdity that if she were, we would logically have to refer to the Godhead as the "holy quartet" or something of that nature.

In my experience, Protestants are not interested in what the Church actually teaches, but in their own favorite polemical distortions thereof. That is an intellectual swindle which should be beneath the dignity of anyone who calls himself Christian.

I would remind you that the Psalmist says of idols:

They have eyes, but they cannot see.
They have ears, but they cannot hear...
Their makers shall come to be like them,
And so shall all who trust in them.

Beware that you do not make an idol of your prejudice, and bow down and worship that. The result is blindness and deafness to the Truth, and therefore to Jesus himself.

... much of the rejection of Mary is in fact rejection of her because she is a woman.

Actually, I think there is something more fundamental at the heart of these attacks on Mariology. Both Luther and Calvin rejected the notion of free will, and it is impossible to fully appreciate the role of Mary in salvation history without understanding that her fiat was freely given, in contradistinction to Eve's free acquiescence to sin. Mary is, in essence, a living refutation of one of the key ideas of the Reformation, so her role must needs be diminished by Protestants.

There are a number of other theological and practical difficulties which derive from the rejection of free will, but this thread is not the place to go into them.

The intellectual dishonesty necessary to sustain the present "argument" has been amply demonstrated above, though of course that fact will never be acknowledged. In the many years I have seen this sort of thing go on at FR, I can't recall a single time when the most obvious distortions were ever admitted to be vacuous. After such a long history of this behavior, I can no longer sustain the charitable assumption that we are dealing with people of good will.

Of course, this would be a blatant violation of internal law, as well as the First Amendment. The Catholic League has provided some interesting additional information:

JUDGE OKAYS SUIT AGAINST VATICAN

Catholic League president Bill Donohue commented today about a judge who allowed a lawsuit against the Vatican to move forward:

“The same judge, John G. Heyburn II, who ruled on October 7, 2005 that the Holy See is a foreign state that enjoys certain immunities now says that the same lawsuit can go forward. That’s because a few technicalities that stopped him from initially dismissing the suit altogether are no longer relevant. There’s an odor to this and it stinks.

“The lawyer, William McMurry, won a $25.7 million settlement with the Archdiocese of Louisville in 2003 and managed to cream $10.3 million off the top for himself and his legal team. What motivated him to continue his pursuit was the revelation in 2003 that a 1962 Vatican document, leaked to the press, allegedly shows how the Vatican planned to cover up cases of sexual abuse. But the document, as we’ve pointed out many times before, not only does not implicate the Vatican—it proves how serious it took cases of alleged abuse. For example, it prescribed penalties for any priest who ‘whether by words or signs or nods of the head’ might convey a sexual advance in the confessional. (My italics.) It also prescribed penalties for the penitent if he or she didn’t report such conduct. In other words, the 1962 document is a model of excellence.

“Besides, accusing the Vatican is bogus. ‘I have reviewed thousands of pages of documents surrendered by the Archdiocese of Boston,’ said victims’ attorney Roderick MacLeish Jr., ‘but haven’t seen a scintilla of evidence showing the Vatican knew what was going on.’ None of this matters to McMurry, whose anger at the Vatican involves his once being denied entrance to St. Peter’s Basilica because he was wearing shorts.

“McMurry’s clients are Michael Turner, James H. O’Bryan and Donald E. Poppe. Turner alleges that over three decades ago he was molested by a priest; last year he said he ‘thought’ the local bishop was following Vatican orders dealing with his case. O’Bryan says a priest touched him through his pants pocket in 1928, and Poppe’s alleged molester died in 1983. This is what we’ve come to—a free-for-all against the Catholic Church.”

What we have here on this thread is an assortment of Catholics and Calvinists ... being suddenly "shocked and appalled" that their own glass houses might look like an inviting target.

It is hard for those who have never known persecution,
And who have never known a Christian,
To believe these tales of Christian persecution.
It is hard for those who live near a Bank
To doubt the security of their money.
It is hard for those who live near a Police Station
To believe in the triumph of violence.
Do you think that the Faith has conquered the World
And that lions no longer need keepers?
Do you need to be told that whatever has been, can still be?
Do you need to be told that even such modest attainments
As you can boast in the way of polite society
Will hardly survive the Faith to which they owe their significance?

-T.S. Eliot, Choruses from "The Rock" VI

So here's a test: if one wouldn't subject Jews to this kind of treatment - and it goes without saying that one wouldn't - why should it be acceptable to subject Christians to it?

The practice of venerating the saints and their relics is indeed apolostic, and it is attested by Scripture.

I think St. Jerome expressed it best when, writing in the fourth century, he said:

We do not worship, we do not adore, for fear that we should bow down to the creature rather than to the creator, but we venerate the relics of the martyrs in order the better to adore him whose martyrs they are.

Of course, Jerome is best known for translating the Scriptures from the ancient languages into Latin, the most widely-spoken language in West at the time, so that more people could have access to them. A mere twelve centuries before the KJV ...

Benedictus Deus in angelis suis et in sanctis suis.

"Blessed be God in His angels and in His saints." Amen.

It's a pity that Protestants deny the doctrine of the Communion of Saints, one of the elements of the Apostles' Creed, and the underlying theological dispute made manifest here. When all the theorizing is said and done, I'll be glad to have the prayers of this great cloud of witnesses presented to the Father on my behalf at the hour of my death, than to be without them.

The reason we're seeing this resistance to the discovery of Paul's tomb is because the very fact that his tomb is still extant verifies that the cult of the martyrs (veneration of relics) dates from the apostolic age.

Yes.

I haven't read the whole thread, because it has, quite predictably for FR, become yet another Catholic bash, a venerable tradition here. So it's possible someone may have already mentioned this, in which case I apologize for the inadvertent repetition. But the efficacy of Pauline relics in particular is attested to by Scripture, which buttresses your position that their use dates to apostolic times. Viz., Acts 19:11-12:

And God wrought by the hand of Paul more than common miracles. So that even there were brought from his body to the sick, handkerchiefs and aprons, and the diseases departed from them, and the wicked spirits went out of them.

the "handkerchiefs and aprons" being, of course, relics of St. Paul.

Oh, and I don't mind "Holidays" so much, it's when they drop the 's' and make it just 'holiday', which invariably means Christmas, that I get real perturbed.

Actually, even in this, the joke is on the secularists. "Holiday" is a Middle English variant of the Old English haligdaeg, meaning, of course, "holy day". And holy days are those originally designed by the Catholic Church (in the West, and the Holy Orthodox in the East) for the remembrance of important events in the life of Christ. In particular, "Christmas" means, literally, the Mass of Christ.

Christianity is the bedrock of our culture, no matter how much the psuedo-intellectuals try to obscure that fact.

For those who may not know, Commonweal is a leftist psuedo-Catholic journal, and dissident articles such as this one are typical of its content.

There's a lot of rubbish to address in this post, but I'll confine myself to this one point:

Why is it morally permissible to avoid pregnancy by using NFP, but “disordered” and an “intrinsic evil” to act on the same intention using a different contraceptive method? When the bishops can explain that, perhaps Catholics will resume listening to what they have to say about marital love.

"The bishops" don't have to explain this, because the Supreme Pontiff, who is the bishop of bishops, already has. Pope Paul VI, writing in Humanae Vitae put it this way:

Recourse to Infertile Periods

16. Now as We noted earlier (no. 3), some people today raise the objection against this particular doctrine of the Church concerning the moral laws governing marriage, that human intelligence has both the right and responsibility to control those forces of irrational nature which come within its ambit and to direct them toward ends beneficial to man. Others ask on the same point whether it is not reasonable in so many cases to use artificial birth control if by so doing the harmony and peace of a family are better served and more suitable conditions are provided for the education of children already born. To this question We must give a clear reply. The Church is the first to praise and commend the application of human intelligence to an activity in which a rational creature such as man is so closely associated with his Creator. But she affirms that this must be done within the limits of the order of reality established by God.

If therefore there are well-grounded reasons for spacing births, arising from the physical or psychological condition of husband or wife, or from external circumstances, the Church teaches that married people may then take advantage of the natural cycles immanent in the reproductive system and engage in marital intercourse only during those times that are infertile, thus controlling birth in a way which does not in the least offend the moral principles which We have just explained. (20)

Neither the Church nor her doctrine is inconsistent when she considers it lawful for married people to take advantage of the infertile period but condemns as always unlawful the use of means which directly prevent conception, even when the reasons given for the later practice may appear to be upright and serious. In reality, these two cases are completely different. In the former the married couple rightly use a faculty provided them by nature. In the latter they obstruct the natural development of the generative process. It cannot be denied that in each case the married couple, for acceptable reasons, are both perfectly clear in their intention to avoid children and wish to make sure that none will result. But it is equally true that it is exclusively in the former case that husband and wife are ready to abstain from intercourse during the fertile period as often as for reasonable motives the birth of another child is not desirable. And when the infertile period recurs, they use their married intimacy to express their mutual love and safeguard their fidelity toward one another. In doing this they certainly give proof of a true and authentic love.

The Catholic position with regard to artificial contraception is a matter of simple logic, and depends upon only two premises: 1) God exists; and 2) He is the Author of Life. Human beings do not create life (i.e., it is a misnomer to say that we "make babies"), we merely procreate. We use our free will to decide when to engage in the marital act, but God decides if that act is to result in the conception of a new life or not.

Artificial contraception therefore potentially thwarts God's will to bring a new life into existence, and it should be obvious that it is therefore sinful. In Natural Family Planning, the couple exercises its free will not to engage in intercourse at certain times, so there is no potential for thwarting God's will.

Calvinists, since they reject free will altogether, will no doubt have difficulty with this analysis.

How many of us Roman Catholics find ourselves in Churches with Risen Christ images in the Sanctuary, replacing the Crucifix?

While I've never actually been in such a Catholic church, I've seen the pictures.

There's a simple reason why the Risen Christ image makes no sense: it's redundant. The Risen Christ Himself is Present in the Tabernacle. The Crucifix provides us with a focus for meditation upon His Sacrifice for the remission of our own, personal, sins.

Had the sisters not lost their faith en masse and become of the world, their numbers wouldn't have dwindled.

Quite so! Others have alluded to Carl Rogers, so I thought it would be instructive to cite E. Michael Jones' analysis: Carl Rogers and the IHM Nuns: Sensitivity Training, Psychological Warfare and the "Catholic Problem". It's a long read, and only part I is available online, but quite instructive.

With regard to the retirement situation, I can't speak to the national state of affairs, but, at least in my diocese, there is an annual special collection to help replenish the funds. My parish is reputed to be quite generous in our donations.

Despite all the shortcomings, these women served us when we needed them, and we do not shirk our responsibility to care for them, now that they need us.

I seem to have messed up the PDF link my previous post, so here it is again.