(shiver)

1. “having it articulated so clearly is a gift because it prevents us from rationalizing our way into complicity with evil”

I know these things are a matter of perspective, and to some degree it’s an aesthetic choice, but I think this is a horrifying way to look at the world. If God told you to jump over a cliff, would you jump over a cliff? What about the lies the Church has told - that condoms ‘spread AIDS’, for example.

Now, I know these things are a negotiation, but did you really need to convert to Catholicism to be told that the truth is usually better than lies? Was there really no framework you had that allowed you to go about your life?

2. I’m an atheist. If you are right, your God, the God you worship, will send me to an eternity of torture. I also try to live a good life, a humble life, a thoughtful, truthful life. If you end up in Heaven, enjoy it, look at God. Think about the countless people almost exactly the same as you, your friends and relatives, that your new master is torturing. If the thought fills you with joy, as the apostolic tradition demands - it says that the idea that others suffer sweetens your own joy - then I will gladly suffer. Because an eternity of living with sadists, constantly praising Daddy Rumsfeld for setting up Space Guantanamo ... that ain’t Heaven.

3. I have role models, too.

4. It sounds like you’ve swapped one set of self-justifications with another, slightly more self-critical one.

5. If you really couldn’t forgive people before you became a Catholic, then perhaps it’s best you converted. I forgive you.

Terrific article!  Well said!  I converted thirty years ago and my life would be very different had I not become a Catholic.  I left that life behind and would never go back.  I am blessed to have a good husband and children.  The graces I receive every day have sustained me through tough times and I know that I can face what’s ahead in life because of the armor of faith.

As an atheist myself, I have to shake my head at some of these points. Let’s go over them…

1. This is one I have the biggest problem with. Ok, so you have certainty as to what is good and what isn’t. To this I say “so what?” Certainty about what is good is what drives suicide bombers to blow themselves and those they perceive to be the enemies of Allah - if they weren’t certain it was good and right, they wouldn’t sacrifice their lives for it.

Uncertainty is a good thing in regards to morals. It makes you consider the consequences of your actions. It makes you consider why something is considered good or bad.

On the matter of rationalizing, you’ll do that to a certain extent whether you’re certain or not if you’re lazy. Whether you’re certain or not, lazy thinking is bad for morality. That was your real problem from the sounds of it.

2. Well, you pretty much already have stated the standard - fearing punishment doesn’t make you a better person.

As to us “choosing hell”, sorry, but no, that doesn’t work. And no, it’s not an eternal naughty corner - it’s an eternal torture chamber that your deity supposedly created. He made it, and he made the rules to determine who goes there. He could just as easily send nobody to eternal torment, being omnipotent. He’s the one doing the choosing.

3. Ok. You have role models. I have role models too. But none of them said anything like this as far as I can tell:

“The Jews are the most worthless of all men. They are lecherous, greedy, rapacious. They are perfidious murderers of Christ. They worship the Devil. Their religion is a sickness. The Jews are the odious assassins of Christ and for killing God there is no expiation possible, no indulgence or pardon. Christians may never cease vengeance, and the Jew must live in servitude forever. God always hated the Jews. It is essential that all Christians hate them.” - Saint Ambrose

Or this…

“What is the difference whether it is in a wife or a mother, it is still Eve the temptress that we must beware of in any woman…...I fail to see what use woman can be to man, if one excludes the function of bearing children.” - Saint Augustine of Hippo

These are not people I see fit to be role models.

4. I doubt your current description of your old self actually matches what you used to think of yourself. Seems to me you rather have a new image of your old self.

5. I don’t really have anything to say to this. There’s still no convincing evidence for God, so arguing on this point probably wouldn’t get me anywhere. I do think you’re probably being overly hard on your old self, but that’s to be expected considering Christianity teaches we’re all wicked and wretched and need God.

If you’re actually happier I’m glad for you, but none of these reasons would be good enough to convince any thinking atheist to change.

This is a well said article.  Thank you for it.  I am a cradle Catholic so it is good to be reminded by converts how wonderful our Catholic Faith really it.

To Jemima, God does NOT send people to hell—they send themselves.  While we are here in this life, He is a God of Mercy; in the next, we will meet the God of Justice.  We cannot know the Mind of God except what He has revealed to us through His Son and the prophets, so we cannot judge who will or won’t go to hell.  That is up to them (and God.) 

Also, while we will know those in heaven who make it, we will not know those who don’t, so your point about us knowing that you are “gladly suffering in Hell, is moot.

Would you rather have a morality that has been reasoned, and well thought out, or would you rather have one that has been dictated to you based on what a benevolent dictator in the sky supposedly wants?

Beautiful. I’ve always wondered why secular humanists wouldn’t embrace the same logic you’ve given. Forget all of that “stifling” religion business: if your goal is solely to become the best person you can be, I think even that desire would draw you to the Church.

By almost any criteria, if you made a list of the “best” people from the last two thousand years, the huge majority would be saints—and therefore Catholic.

RE: Atheists’ version of hell’s torture:

A year ago a group of us planned an outing to the mountains and advertised it in our church bulletin as “a hike up a mountain, with mass and bring food to share afterward.” One woman joined us who, for whatever reason, didn’t realize that it was a) a hike up a mountain, b) a mass (ie - don’t eat before) and c) a meal of random picnic food after.

While driving to the mountain she complained about missing dinner, the whole way up the mountain she complained about the hike, the entire time she was up there she complained about the lack of dinner food and the general evil of the evening. The rest of us were having a wonderful time, which only seemed to make her unhappiness worse. Despite our best efforts to cheer her up, she remained determined to be upset. She finally ended up heading back to the cars early, walking back alone into the woods.

This has since then been a sort of analogy in my mind of Heaven and Hell. God didn’t “make” hell, anymore than we “made” this girl miserable. He made Heaven and we are given the choice to participate in the party. If we reject that and insist that it isn’t the beautiful event that it is, we will be tortured by the Joy of others. In His Mercy, God allows us to “get as far away” as possible into the outer darkness; however, there is NO JOY outside of that party, only torment.

Brandon, the desire to be the best human I can be drove me in the exact opposite direction of the church

RE: Morality dictated by sky fairy:

Would you rather have a law of gravity that has be well-reasoned and thought out, or one that has been dictated to you by some fuzzy white-haired superbrain?

Oh wait…

If you would take the time to read through the numerous documents of the church on morality you would find well-reasoned and thought out arguments. Catholicism can’t be said it encourages people not to think…sit down with any theologian and that will be blown out of the water.

So Christina, you have hypothesized that moral laws are set in stone, and given to us by a deity.  What evidence can you provide to support this claim?

I have sat with theologians, and I’m blown away by there inability to work with reality.

“By almost any criteria, if you made a list of the “best” people from the last two thousand years, the huge majority would be saints—and therefore Catholic.”

I’m sorry ... before I reply to that, and I mean this: are you being serious?

I like some of the saints. St Brigid of Kildare, for example, was refreshingly pro choice - she was venerated for performing a miraculous abortion according to Cogitosus.

Atheists,

You seem to have a problem with Jennifer’s reasons for her moral framework. But from an atheistic perspective, what reason can you give for a moral framework at all? The fundamental principle of morality is self-sacrifice, or altruism (otherwise known as the virtue of Charity). How does this play into an atheistic way of thinking, where good is ultimately subjective?

I ask because if you follow strict rationality, without a transcendent and objective definition of what is Good, the logical basis for morality is is outcomes, or ultimate benefit to me. This leads logically to selfishness, a la Ayn Rand.

In other words, you can try to be a good, self-sacrificing person as an atheist. It just isn’t consistent in a world where Good doesn’t really and truly exist—where Goodness is subjective like all meaning. If Goodness is not a thing (or a person, and Christians believe), but simply an outcome or what brings the greatest benefit to me, then selfishness just makes sense. But as the life of Ayn Rand demonstrates, such rational selfishness inevitably to misery and intense unhappiness—what you might even call Hell.

“Also, while we will know those in heaven who make it, we will not know those who don’t, so your point about us knowing that you are “gladly suffering in Hell, is moot.”

I know that Catholic doctrine is currently that God will wipe your memories of your friends and loved ones who don’t make the cut (and that somehow this isn’t God lying to you). Doesn’t matter. You believe *now* that some of us are hellbound, and that your God sanctions that. You act *now* knowing that, even if you will be oblivious to it, billions of ordinary people, including friends and family, will be downstairs being tortured while you are upstairs.

There are two levels here - given that there’s no proof, that it’s essentially down to personal taste whether you find that desirable, why would you *want* to believe such a horrible thing? Secondly, if it is true, there is just no wriggle room - in human terms, the only terms we have, anyone who would allow that would be the greatest monster in history.

Fear of Hell is fear of a monster God, not of the fiery place he’ll send you. If God exists, and he sends people to hell, fear would be an appropriate response. But it negates all Jennifer’s other points about role models and truth.

Thank you for this article.  I am currently going through RCIA and agree on many of your points.  I see some of my old self in some of the individuals posting an opposing view so I certainly understand their concerns.

However, I truly have seen the Holy Spirit in my life and and grateful for it.  I am a better person for becoming Catholic.

Non-Believers have a lot more faith than we do.

Oh, Jemima - I love how you picked what you like from us because it fits your agenda, such as the story of St. Brigid and the ‘abortion’, but then dismiss everything else as unbelievable.  To take the few lines written about the woman and St. Brigid and call it an abortion or attempt to equate it to what occurs today is fallacious.

1.  In regards to the objections to point 1, we should note that our atheist friends are putting up a strawman argument to a teaching that Catholics don’t believe it.  That would be the “Divine Command” theory that states that God arbitrarily decides what is right and wrong so that such is only intelligible to God and mere man is incapable of rationalizing and must instead merely trust that God is right in these regards.  This is not a Catholic teaching, although many Christian and even Catholics believe it is so.  Our faith teaches that God is Reason - the first lines of the Gospel of John state this implicitly.  God is Logos - the Greek word we often translate as “Word” is also the root word for “logic”.  God is actually Reason, so He is reasonable, even if at times that reason exceeds our finite ability to reason.  God by His nature is good, that’s why what He wills is good and it is a logical progression that we can indeed understand.  That’s why the Church almost always approaches her moral teachings in two ways - from revelation which can only be known by knowing God, but also by natural law, which can be grasped entirely by our own reason.
2.  This is another strawman argument being presented to us by our atheist brothers and sisters, despite the fact that Jennifer clearly explains actual Church teaching in her article.  Hell was created because there must be an alternative to Heaven by our gift of free will.  Heaven is eternal union in the presence of God.  But if that’s not what we choose to pursue, there must be an alternative, and the only alternative to being in the presence of God is to not be in the presence of God.  We were made by our very nature to long for fulfillment of who and what we are - we wouldn’t pursue things if that wasn’t so.  Christians say that that purpose of our lives is to be with God.  If that is so, then what will ultimately fulfill us is to be with God.  Anything less would be frustration of our nature and thus unfulfilling and ultimately frustrating.  If Heaven is eternal fulfillment, then Hell is eternal frustration.  And anyone who has not met ultimate fulfillment yet (which is all of us) knows what a gnawing hunger that lack is.  That’s why Hell can be likened to fiery flames - eternal discontent is the ultimate torture, but its something we choose for ourselves, by rejecting that which our nature calls us to pursue.
Catholic doctrine is NOT that we will forget those we knew here on earth who have chosen to turn their backs on God.  Rather, we will somehow be able to accept that that was their choice.  We honor free will.  Anything less would mean we were unable to truly love, because love must be a free choice.  Compulsion destroys love, and freely given love is truly freeing. 
3.  The saints were human like we are.  Very few of us are blessed to have role models that are utterly perfect in every aspect of our lives and made no mistakes, ill remarks, or missteps so that we can admire everything about them.  What we have as Christians though are people who, though human and fallible and prone to mistakes like ourselves, were able to rise up and do incredible things that we often only wish we had the strength to do.  I look to Joan of Arc, for instance, as my model in how to be bold and countercultural, despite the opposition around me.
4. What’s wrong with having a more critical vision of our old selves? Isn’t that usually a good thing, and a sign that we are perhaps progressing onto something better, if we can look back at our past lives and say “Wow, I’m glad I’m not doing that anymore, and I hope to be somewhere even better 5 years from now?”
5.  Authentic Christianity does not teach that we are all wicked and depraved - Catholicism rejects the idea of total depravity. It does teach that we are fallen and in need of salvation, but that idea is hopeful rather than condemning.  Grace lifts us up to what we should have been, it provides us stairs to reach for the stars.  Grace allowed Mother Teresa to minister to the dying that others ignored, allowed Maximillian Kolbe to offer his life in exchange for that of a father, allowed Gianna Molla to choose her daughter’s life over her own.  Grace allowed Christians to go to their deaths in the Roman games singing songs of joy and sustained Francis in his pursuit of poverty for God’s sake.  If you can do good things on earth without grace (which you can), imagine the heights you can reach with grace!

Concise and calm, truth-based and beautiful.  As a convert from loosey-goosey Protestantism, I can relate.  And judging by the comments so far, which are either supportive or either ad hominem, straw man, or based on factual error, I’d say your piece will be understood by many.

Hey, did you notice? The same no-nothing crabapples come here time after time. They skim Jennifer’s articles to get a vague feel for the main point, and then they begin a juvenile combox campaign of “Let’s Poke Fun Of People Who Aren’t Like Us.” They NEVER respond to good counter arguments made (and there are many). They ONLY address one or two shallow, misinformed conclusions they arrived at well before they came here, apparently after a life spent rigorously studying comic books and Dan Brown novels, and the rest of what they have to say is just bluster and childish nicknames for a god they despise.
There has GOT to be some rancid corner of the World Wide Web where you people will feel more comfortable, some site where other atheists like you hang out and talk this way to each other. This place just isn’t for you—this is a place where demonstrably kind, respectful people discuss their relationship to a Creator, the existence for which was demonstrated by non-Christian pagan Greek philosophers a long frickin’ time ago, e.g.: since no actual thing in the universe possesses full existence in itself then there must be an Ultimate Cause from which all things get existence, a Cause which possesses existence in full. The very fact that you won’t concede even that makes me want to be a Christian.

Great Article!  I don’t understand why Atheist’s try to be good and moral or to prove that God does not exist.  If you come from dirt, turn in to dirt and that’s that, then why even try to do good??? There’s no real reason to distinquish right from wrong if you’re just gonna dissapear anyway.  Then they will claim that God does not exist based on science, but you can’t measure God with a ruler or a microscope(At least the last time I checked). If you’re an atheist, I would like you to prove that God does not exist.

Hang tough Jennifer!  Your words are God-given and will be used by the Holy Spirit!  Blessings on you!

Responding to Marie:

“I don’t understand why Atheist’s try to be good and moral or to prove that God does not exist.  If you come from dirt, turn in to dirt and that’s that, then why even try to do good??? There’s no real reason to distinquish right from wrong if you’re just gonna dissapear anyway.”

1. If we exist temporarily then that doesn’t make our time here worthless - it makes it infinitely more valuable. We don’t believe we’re going to have eternity to do the things we want to do. We only have now.
2. Human beings for the most part care about eachother - this is built into us as a species and has nothing to do with religious beliefs. If we care about eachother, then we’re going to care about our actions in regards to how they affect others.
3. Even if we didn’t care about eachother, logically speaking the majority of us are better off by behaving nicely to eachother. By agreeing not to murder, steal, rape, etc. and agreeing to punish those that do we decrease the chances that anyone else will do that to us.

“Then they will claim that God does not exist based on science, but you can’t measure God with a ruler or a microscope(At least the last time I checked). If you’re an atheist, I would like you to prove that God does not exist.”

You seem to have a misunderstanding - all atheism is is the lack of belief in gods. We don’t find it probable, but most of us still accept that it might be possible. We don’t have a belief because of what you said - nobody has managed to provide any measurement for it. There’s no evidence. We disbelieve for the same reasons both we and you don’t believe in leprechauns, unicorns, fairies, or any of the other gods you don’t believe in. We aren’t the ones making the positive claim - you are the ones asserting that God exists, so you are the ones that need to provide evidence for that claim.

A fine article on goodness. And Pam’s writing above explains free will in #2 as well as any. But our brothers & sisters above that have difficulty with the concept of a God are missing the sense of the supernatural. But there is no wall between us, and if anything they have a better shot at heaven than we, because much more is expected of us.

John D. said, regarding the existence of God “...There’s no evidence.” You say atheists “are not making a positive claim,” implying that you are thus free from any burden of proof. Well, you have come to a certain conclusion. You thus should be expected to be able to defend that conclusion, just as you expect theists to defend theirs. You have come to a conclusion that there is no evidence for the existence of God. You say the evidence for the existence of God is equal to that of unicorns. Prove it.

Also, please tell me how you came to a conclusion of what “behaving nicely” means. Why is murder, stealing, etc., not nice? Elementary questions, I know.

1.  If you think that we have an eternity to do what we wan’t as Christians, you are mistunderstanding our understanding of heaven and eternity.  We live our lives on earth uprightly with respect for God, hoping that after death we may live stand in awe of God’s glory.  We don’t expect Heaven to be a place where we can fulfill all of our selfish desires.  If your wrong about God’s existence and the only reason for life is a chance for us to choose God, then you’re view on life which is, fulfilling all our own desires, renders your life useless because you failed to recognize the true meaning of life.  We have morals, we don’t do certain things because we’re not animals.  Animals do whatever they feel like, whenever they feel like doing it, without concern of whether or not they are hurting another of their kind.  A mother cat will smother her kitten if she thinks he will not be to bring benefit.  But us humans will spend all the money in the world to save one child with mental retardation.  Why is it, we humans, have instintive morals above those of creatures?  This is one of many proofs of God’s existence.

2.  In your response to #2.  Why is it that humans have this desire to care for each other and animals do not?

3.  Question about #3.  You asserted that murder, rape etc. are wrong.  How can you prove that this is wrong?  This is a rule that you have imposed on human behavior.  How do we know that murder, rape and etc. are indeed wrong? 

So you are basically saying there is no univeral truth or morals. however, rape, murder etc. are universally wrong and should be punished.  Why is it obvious to us human beings that these things are universally wrong???

Another response to John:
You put:
3. Even if we didn’t care about eachother, logically speaking the majority of us are better off by behaving nicely to eachother. By agreeing not to murder, steal, rape, etc. and agreeing to punish those that do we decrease the chances that anyone else will do that to us.

On what basis are we getting along with each other than by following universal behavior that is not to be contradicted.  And you say that if somebody were to contradict these universal behaviors we should punish them for the good of our society.  So basically you are saying the same thing that Christians do.  You just don’t understand where these universal truths come from neither do you realize that there are other universal truths other than the one’s you listed.

I came back home to the Catholic Church when I realized that I love better when I am obedient to the Church’s teachings than I ever did when I was following my own path. I am quicker to forgive, slower to anger, more grateful for the smallest things done to me by others, more aware of the needs of others, more attentive to those who are suffering, and am more patient with those who are not at the same place on their journey in life than I am. The closer we come to God, the more loving we become because God is Love. Every teaching of the Church, every sacrament and sacramental, and every Tradition is all designed to help us to grow in our ability to love and to accept love from others.

Atheists would make us believe that the church tells lies and hates Jews while atheists are eternal source of unselfish love. How about all the killings done by atheists from the time of French revolution, Nazi area, communist USSR to modern day China?

Responding to John D:
Atheists may hope for a world based on being nice to one another means that God does not need to exist, but there are many things the Bible stops people doing e.g. incest, bestiality. I have read that a father in the US has stated it is his human right to have incest with his daughter. Only through a moral code that the Bible gives can such things be prevented.

The right argument is not necessarily the most persuasive to the listener.  When speaking to someone, a Catholic’s primary purpose should be to speak the truth, not to persuade the listener.  Speaking the truth means presenting an argument that makes sense and would be accepted as evidence by a reasonable person.  Persuasion is making an argument that the person you are speaking to would accept.

There are many irrational listeners.  Persons who do not admit that you may know something through someone else telling them are not rational listeners.  Persons who look for any hole in a statement to attack that statement from are not good faith listeners.  These kinds of listeners have an agenda, a chip on their shoulder perhaps, which prevents them from engaging in the conversation.

My advice, from Catholic to Catholic, is that you should be very wary of how you argue to an atheist.  There are plenty of reasonable arguments for the existence of God.  There are plenty reasonable arguments as to why morals are ‘objective’ and determined by God.  Will a person listen to these arguments?  Often, they will not.  We must not resort to making weak and fallacious arguments, which the person represents they would accept, just in order to persuade them. 

Atheism, the disbelief in God, is inherently narcissistic; the person has limited the kind of argument they will accept such that THEY are the sole determiner of reality.  This is not a true limit to what can be rationally argued; it is mere self-absorption.  Even if we intended to persuade them, on what grounds could we do so?

“2. I’m an atheist. If you are right, your God, the God you worship, will send me to an eternity of torture. I also try to live a good life, a humble life, a thoughtful, truthful life. If you end up in Heaven, enjoy it, look at God. Think about the countless people almost exactly the same as you, your friends and relatives, that your new master is torturing. If the thought fills you with joy, as the apostolic tradition demands - it says that the idea that others suffer sweetens your own joy - then I will gladly suffer. Because an eternity of living with sadists, constantly praising Daddy Rumsfeld for setting up Space Guantanamo ... that ain’t Heaven.”

You don’t have to go to Hell if you don’t want to. God’s not going to be unfair. That’s not the way He rolls.

Great article - We believers fail over and over again. But, in doing so, we know we will be forgiven by Jesus if we sincerely ask for His Forgiveness. We also find that the Lord can be a Tough Task-Master - in that He is constantly challenging us to be better people, more perfect, as He is Perfect. And, we make advances by literally learning to deny ourselves a little bit every day, through sacrifice and pray for others. And, He fills the void with His Grace. And where have we heard these things before - in the Gospels. It’s all Truth…

http://www.divinemercysunday.com/contemplation_on_our_lord.htm

If I were an atheist and I believed that there was nothing beyond this current life and that I only have now as John D said, I wouldn’t waste a second of it talking to some crazy people who believe in an imaginary, made up God.  If you’re an atheist why in the world are you wasting your time talking to delusional people about something that doesn’t exist?

“How about all the killings done by atheists from the time ... Nazi era”

Do you really, really want to go there?

OK ...

http://alamoministries.com/content/english/Antichrist/nazigallery/photogallery.html

... and relax. 

Last I’m going to say on that one.

“I have read that a father in the US has stated it is his human right to have incest with his daughter.”

Again ... if you’re arguing that the Catholic position is that no Catholic has ever abused a child?

People do wicked things. Religious and atheist. The vast majority of the prison population of the US is religious. They did not commit crimes *because* they were religious, being religious did not stop them.

This is well known, and any discussion that claims that all atheists are Nazi facilitators of child abuse ... let’s just not do that, OK?

“But from an atheistic perspective, what reason can you give for a moral framework at all?’

I live in a society of other people. I do unto others as they would have them do unto me. I don’t murder because I don’t want to live in a society full of murders. So do you. You ignore the laws set down in the Bible that don’t make any sense at all, you follow all sorts of laws that aren’t in the Bible. We all do.

“I love how you picked what you like from us because it fits your agenda, such as the story of St. Brigid and the ‘abortion’, but then dismiss everything else as unbelievable.”

No. I find her story unbelievable, too.

“To take the few lines written about the woman and St. Brigid and call it an abortion or attempt to equate it to what occurs today is fallacious.”

Cogitosus wrote:

‘Brigid, exercising with the most strength of her ineffable faith, blessed her, caused the foetus to disappear without coming to birth, and without pain.’

Now, if life begins at conception, and foetuses have souls ...

It’s a blessed abortion. A miracle. You can’t spin your way out of that one (the Catholic Encyclopedia just misses that bit out, that’s how they square that circle). It’s almost as though religious values aren’t eternal, they change over time, isn’t it?

“I live in a society of other people. I do unto others as they would have them do unto me. I don’t murder because I don’t want to live in a society full of murders.”
I don’t think this outlook is very viable on a large scale. Human nature being what it is, what you’re really saying is, “I do unto other as they would have them do unto me - unless I can get away with it.” This could be as harmless as blowing a stop sign because a cop isn’t parked nearby - or sending thousands and thousands to concentration camps in Siberia or Poland or China.

Also, presenting websites from a very disturbing cult and passing it off as “what all religions believe” isn’t a very Socratic way of making your point, Jemima.

‘what you’re really saying is, “I do unto other as they would have them do unto me - unless I can get away with it.” ... Also, presenting websites from a very disturbing cult and passing it off as “what all religions believe” isn’t a very Socratic way of making your point, Jemima.’

Well, touche, because telling me that what I’m ‘really saying’ is the exact opposite of what I’m saying isn’t exactly Socratic, either. Oddly enough, I don’t send people to concentration camps.

When Jesus said ‘do unto others’, was he also being impractical?

This is brilliant and so true, Jennifer.  I often think that I would HAVE to be Catholic because the very best people I have ever met and known have been the faithful Catholics, and with them, is where I find things making sense, where Truth resonates with me——I can’t go into denial!  Even when I’ve gone through little spiritual fits and dark nights where I “pretend” I don’t believe and I’m struggling with my Faith….I am always humbled by the fact that grace manifests itself, and amongst those embracing and living out the Catholic Faith—-for real——love and true heroism is modeled, and peace found.  The reality that the people I want to BE LIKE, and associate myself with, and have been most comforted and inspired by when it has mattered the most, are again:  those vessels of sanctifying grace, sincere and simple Catholics.  God bless.

Jennifer has so eloquently elucidated her conversion story that there is nothing to add but congratulations and please continue, because as you understand, there is no end, in this lifetime.  And, as usual, you will have the crackpots amongst us, as many of our upper-schooled liberated-minded pseudo-intellectuals will have their say even though they seem to get their big thoughts off cereal boxes.  Never mind them.  They have to get ready to think before they can learn. Keep putting it out there;  as Philip Rieff taught, “there is always a constituency wanting to hear truth”.

1. Not only don’t you need a belief in a god for this one, belief in a god can’t save everyone from making the same mistakes you claim you made before your conversion, rationalizing your way into doing whatever was most comfortable.

2. How can your actions be good if they’re done only to avoid torture? That’s not only selfish, but it frightens me what you or any believer might do if they thought it was what their god wanted.

3. St. Ambrose of Milan’s anti-Semitism must be quite inspiring. like St. John Chrysostom’s, but Mother Theresa probably takes the cake for making a show of “comforting” the sick yet refusing to actually try and treat their ills. Of course when she got sick, it was off to NYC to see a top heart specialist.

4. Every believer has their own idea of what their god wants (and amazingly it’s what they happen to want), so I don’t see how this can be a universally good guide. Modeling yourself on a saint isn’t exactly good either depending on the saint I guess, but history has all kinds of good people. Why limit the pool from which you pick your good models?

5. Of course whatever works for you, as long as that indulgence doesn’t impose on others; faith, drugs, alcohol, a box of Oreos, et. al.

“Again ... if you’re arguing that the Catholic position is that no Catholic has ever abused a child? People do wicked things. Religious and atheist. The vast majority of the prison population of the US is religious.” But the Catholic position is that it is not right to abuse a child, whereas the atheist position is to have no position at all, as it is a slippery slope, first allowing one thing because of human rights, then allowing another thing. I take your point about large numbers of religious people in prison, but it does not distinguish whether they became religious after they went to prison and have realised they have sinned, or were religious before.

Goodness comes from God. He invented it. He IS it. The more good people do, the more like God they become - whether they realise it or not. Now I can become quite good on my own, trying to guess whatever is good, but I can only go so far. I’m limited by my own standards. Therefore, if I want to excel at being good, I need to compare my standards of goodness to something else. If I am the final judge of what is good or bad, I will be good, but I can never be better than me. Everybody needs a standard of excellence to improve. Who better to compare standards to than the Creator of morality? We don’t need God to be “good” – we need a God to be as good as we can be. There is a reason why athletes have coaches. They need someone who will call them to account, someone to motivate them to fight on when everything is telling them to quit. It’s the same with morality. Atheists can be good people, and being a Catholic is no guarantee of being a good person (in fact the opposite). Being a Catholic merely means that you’re committed to trying to be better, and to do that, you’re using the ultimate standards of morality created by God. Non-Catholics might disagree that everything that God (and therefore His Church) say is good actually is “good”. In fact, they might well think it’s immoral. This is normal and not limited to atheists. As a devout Catholic, I will spend the rest of my life disagreeing with God. Disagreements leave me with a choice. Go my way, or go the way of the God who made me out of nothing, made the universe, made love, kindness, happiness and who is more moral, by His very nature, than the most moral person you’ve ever met.

“But the Catholic position is that it is not right to abuse a child, whereas the atheist position is to have no position at all”

The argument that because Catholic priests know it’s wrong, but do it anyway, they have superior morality isn’t terribly convincing.

This study found that religion was used to justify abuse by parents:

http://www.nospank.net/bottoms.pdf

Whatever may or may not be lacking in the moral *theory* behind atheists’ actions, I think this is a point where you look at the practice.

“I take your point about large numbers of religious people in prison, but it does not distinguish whether they became religious after they went to prison and have realised they have sinned, or were religious before.”

Studies have been done, feel free to Google.

Here’s a fact: In the general population, around 22% are self-declared Catholic and 9% ‘don’t believe in God’. In 1997 Catholics made up 39% of the prison population and atheists 0.2%.

Religious belief does not keep you out of prison. If there’s a correlation, it’s strongly the other way. (I suspect religious belief is completely irrelevant, that it’s a function of how the poorer and less educated are more likely to end up in prison).

This is one area awash with statistics - facts, in other words. The facts are not on your side. The fact of the matter is that there are almost twice as many Catholics in prison as we’d expect, and fifty times fewer atheists.

“Catholic is no guarantee of being a good person (in fact the opposite). Being a Catholic merely means that you’re committed to trying to be better”

Finally.

Yes. This is admirable, this makes sense. This is a healthy and sensible way to look at the world.

“and to do that, you’re using the ultimate standards of morality created by God. Non-Catholics might disagree that everything that God (and therefore His Church) say is good actually is “good”. In fact, they might well think it’s immoral. This is normal and not limited to atheists. As a devout Catholic, I will spend the rest of my life disagreeing with God.”

OK. Perhaps, finally, we can find some common ground and basis for discussion.

Again, I think this is good and admirable. Here’s what I’d say, as an atheist: I can have role models, too. I can, if I like, use Catholic role models. I find that quite hard - many of the modern ones are pretty nasty people (Agnes Bojaxhiu, ‘Mother Teresa’, was clearly an appalling person if you look at what she did rather than what she said, there’s no way around that). Many of the ancients are revered solely for their faith. But I’ve got lots of role models available.

The challenge has always go to be to challenge myself, not to just use belief to bolster what I’m already doing. To become a better person. Something like the Purpose Driven Life disgusts me, it uses religion solely to reassure people that their hatred of gay people and buying of SUVs is where God put you, and who are you to argue? I know that’s not Catholic, but reading Jennifer’s posts, I do get a whiff of that. She doesn’t like modern art? GOD doesn’t like modern art! Her taste becomes COSMIC TRUTH. She seems, and I’m sorry if this is a misjudgement, to have come to Catholicism because it fitted her existing needs and personality, not because it’s a challenge.

And I see this a lot in the religious. They are homophobic, so God must be, too, the whole Natural Law of the universe must be against homosexuals. Catholicism, for me, has an incredibly nasty misogynistic streak in it, and much of ‘God’s will’ looks incredibly like what creepy old men who are scared of women would come up with. If you actually look at what the *Bible* says about abortion, or what *Jesus* said about it, there’s almost nothing. You really have to stretch and strain and take things out of context. So why is abortion such a big deal? When did it become such a big deal? How is it that Saint Brigid of Kildare can make a fetus disintegrate and it was a miracle back then? When does the Bible say life begins? Birth. Categorically, it’s ‘at the first breath’. So why does the Church teach that it’s at conception? The answer is simple: the policy on abortion is *incredibly* recent. Just do some research if you don’t believe me. It’s fear of women’s rights that drove it, not any eternal values. And you know this - Catholics are just slightly less likely to use contraceptives, and slightly more likely to have abortions (those two facts are related, of course) than non-Catholics. You think and do what non-Catholics do, even if you recognize the difficulty in saying it. Because you know that the Church isn’t just wrong when it says condoms ‘cause AIDS’, it’s knowingly spreading a malicious falsehood that’s the opposite of the truth.   

The question ‘how can I be a better person?’ is the real one. In this life, we are never, ever going to prove or disprove the existence of God. We all know this. We can look at the world and believe or understand. We can test claims and draw conclusions. We can’t prove.

The more I’ve tried to be a better person, the more I’ve realized it’s incredibly simple. That the ancient truths dressed up in, for me, a load of mumbo-jumbo, make sense. Be nice to your parents, treat people as you would treat them, be there for your friends, keep your finances in order, don’t cheat, stay in control of any hedonism, tolerate difference, learn patience, know your local community, there’s more to life than money, nature’s beautiful ... and so on.

There’s a challenge originally set by Christopher Hitchens - find one virtue that’s *actually* religious. You can be non-religious and have faith, or be humble, or ‘spiritual’ (whatever that actually means). Nature’s beautiful with or without a God. Now, obviously, if you’re in a mindset that both Nature and Beauty are created and defined by God, it *becomes* a religious virtue. And this, I think, is my case *against* religion. It’s parasitic. It claims credit for things it didn’t do. If you can appreciate nature without God, remove God from the equation, spend that ten seconds you would thanking God appreciating nature just that little bit more. God didn’t cure your sick aunt, the hospital did.

Become better people, do it yourself. Give credit where it’s due, and none where it’s not.

Jemima Cole:
“I live in a society of other people. I do unto others as they would have them do unto me. I don’t murder because I don’t want to live in a society full of murders. So do you. You ignore the laws set down in the Bible that don’t make any sense at all, you follow all sorts of laws that aren’t in the Bible. We all do.”
So are you saying that you are Atheist?  If so, you are saying that your morals are based off of treating others as you would want to be treated.  If this is the case, read Luke 6:31.  I don’t think that you can base your moral Atheistic beliefs off of the Golden Rule given to us directly from God.  God has written these morals on our hearts, whether we believe in Him or not.  I would also like to know which laws you think that I ignore, that I don’t think make sense, and which laws aren’t in the Bible.  Of course some laws aren’t directly in the Bible.  I think everyone knows that nowhere in the Bible does it say that you can’t ride your bike on the sidewalk because it’s stricly for pedestrians..lol!

Jemima Cole:
In your prevous post you asked why abortion is wrong?  You clearly said in an early one that you don’t murder because you don’t want to be murder, but you agree with abortion?  And yes, it is talked about in the Bible.  John the Baptist was filled with the Holy Spirit in his mother’s womb.
Also, SEMacDowell…how do you disagree with God?  I think Jemima Cole may take that out of the context you were writing it in.

Responding to dms06
“John D. said, regarding the existence of God “...There’s no evidence.” You say atheists “are not making a positive claim,” implying that you are thus free from any burden of proof. Well, you have come to a certain conclusion. You thus should be expected to be able to defend that conclusion, just as you expect theists to defend theirs. You have come to a conclusion that there is no evidence for the existence of God. You say the evidence for the existence of God is equal to that of unicorns. Prove it.”

It’s absurd for you to ask me to prove the lack of evidence. The burden of proof is on the one making the claim - if I told you I’d been abducted by aliens it isn’t your job to prove me wrong, it’s my job to prove that I’m right, and if I can’t you’re perfectly justified in not believing me. You are the ones claiming God exists, so it’s your job to provide evidence. Thus far I have not seen one Christian manage to produce anything that qualifies. (in fact, I have had Christians tell me that evidence for God would contradict the Bible - that you’re supposed to take it on faith)

“Also, please tell me how you came to a conclusion of what “behaving nicely” means. Why is murder, stealing, etc., not nice? Elementary questions, I know.”

I don’t want to be murdered. I don’t want to be stolen from. Etc. Pretty much everyone agrees that they don’t want those things to happen to them. Seems pretty simple.

Answering more of Marie’s points:
“If your wrong about God’s existence…”

This is Pascal’s Wager - it’s been countered many times, but I’ll give you what I think is the best counter argument. There are many proposed gods. Not all of them can be true in light of the fact that the claims are contradictory. You may be wrong about Allah, Buddha, Zeus, Thor, Ra, Amaterasu, or any of the host of other claims. There may even be a god who likes atheists for some reason. There are so many possibilities that to pick one when you don’t see evidence for it would be absurd. Should some reliable evidence be provided for any of the claims, I would be inclined to change my beliefs accordingly. (you can find more counters to this here - http://wiki.ironchariots.org/index.php?title=Pascal’s_wager)

“2.  In your response to #2.  Why is it that humans have this desire to care for each other and animals do not?”

Well the thing is that some animals do care about eachother - for instance there have been cases where chimpanzees fall into such deep depression when one of their children or close friends/family dies that they don’t eat and starve to death. The degree to which animals care about eachother varies by species, and is a function of how they evolved.

“3.  Question about #3.  You asserted that murder, rape etc. are wrong.  How can you prove that this is wrong?  This is a rule that you have imposed on human behavior.  How do we know that murder, rape and etc. are indeed wrong?
So you are basically saying there is no univeral truth or morals. however, rape, murder etc. are universally wrong and should be punished.  Why is it obvious to us human beings that these things are universally wrong???”

See my response above. It’s near universal in humans that they don’t want those things to happen to them.

Responding to Ian W.
“Atheists may hope for a world based on being nice to one another means that God does not need to exist, but there are many things the Bible stops people doing e.g. incest, bestiality.”

The vast majority of people in the world aren’t Christians and don’t use the Bible to get their morality, yet most of them don’t do these things. Incest and bestiality are things the majority of us are instinctually not going to be inclined to do. Some people are going to be sick in the head and do things that range from odd to outright disgusting, and no holy book is going to stop them.

Responding to Adam Slide:
“If I were an atheist and I believed that there was nothing beyond this current life and that I only have now as John D said, I wouldn’t waste a second of it talking to some crazy people who believe in an imaginary, made up God.  If you’re an atheist why in the world are you wasting your time talking to delusional people about something that doesn’t exist?”
Many reasons.
1. I enjoy debate. It’s something I like doing, and this is a subject people are passionate about so the debates tend to be fun.
2. I live in the same world as those people. If they kept their beliefs to themselves then those beliefs wouldn’t affect me in any way. However, people’s beliefs drive their actions, so their beliefs do affect the world in which I live. So, if I think they are wrong I’d like to correct them.
3. I care about truth and believing in true things. That means I need to test my beliefs against others to see if they hold up. So far they have, but you never know when someone might surprise you.
4. If nothing else, it lets me correct certain beliefs about atheists that people wrongly hold. Some believers are outright hostile towards atheists (not saying that of you guys - so far you’ve been relatively cordial and I thank you for that) because of their misconceptions. I don’t necessarily believe I’ll win many converts with my arguments, but at the very least some people might have a better understanding of our perspective.

John D.
-We obviously agree that there are certain universal moral truths that we all recognize.  How did they get here?

“You clearly said in an early one that you don’t murder because you don’t want to be murder, but you agree with abortion?”

I agree, broadly, with the current law. I don’t *like* abortion, I don’t think anyone does. It’s not a choice anyone makes casually, it’s not a choice anyone enjoys making. The vast majority of abortions are very early on in pregnancy, to preserve the health of the mother or because the fetus is already dead or won’t survive or will be seriously disabled.

It’s not murder because it’s not a human being. It’s a bundle of cells early on, any attempts to depict it as anything else have to invent some magic ghost that lives in the womb, ‘the soul’. There’s no nervous system to feel pain. Later on ... well, I’ll discuss that with vegans, but a fetus aborted at three months feels less pain than the fully grown pig that was killed to make your breakfast this morning.

Late term abortions shouldn’t happen. They don’t, on the whole. What anti-abortion extremists call ‘partial birth abortions’, and which doctors call ‘Dilate and Extract’ almost always take place when the fetus is already dead, or has developed in a way in which it is about to die or will die within minutes of birth. It’s an extremely rare procedure.

I’ll listen to the medical experts, and the people who have to deal with the realities. No modern Pope has fallen into either category. It should be rare, but it should be available.

“And yes, it is talked about in the Bible.  John the Baptist was filled with the Holy Spirit in his mother’s womb.”

Not in the original - the original is ‘from birth’ (it means ‘from when he left his mother’s womb’. In Biblical times, you’re born when you take your first breath and not before), and versions like the New International correct earlier mistranslations. And it’s not a discussion of abortion. And Biblical scholars distrust Luke’s account generally and the John the Baptist bit specifically. But apart from that ...

Jemima wrote, “The answer is simple: the policy on abortion is *incredibly* recent. Just do some research if you don’t believe me.” That is not what this site says, i.e. the Church’s teaching has been consistent and not recent at http://www.catholicculture.org/culture/library/view.cfm?id=3361

“We obviously agree that there are certain universal moral truths that we all recognize.”

I don’t.

I believe there are *laws* that have applied to all, or virtually all, human societies. ‘Murder is bad’. But, clearly, all human societies have needed those laws, so there have always also been murderers, too. We know from the Bible that the commandment not to murder *confirmed* what people already knew, it didn’t impose some crazy new law. As for ‘universal’ - no. Plenty of animals eat their own young or own siblings.

Our moral laws ‘come from’ the need for a functional society.

“I don’t think that you can base your moral Atheistic beliefs off of the Golden Rule given to us directly from God.”

Ah, you’ve fallen into my little trap.

It wasn’t made up by Jesus, Confucius had called it the Golden Rule five hundred years before Christ, it was known in ancient Egypt at least a thousand years before *that*:

https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Golden_rule

There is nothing theistic about this rule. It predates *monotheism*, let alone belief in Yahweh, let alone Christ. Given that it’s basically what every mother tells her child (‘how would you like it?’) it very possibly predates belief in gods.

My argument is that religions take credit for things they shouldn’t. This is a clear example of that. This is not Christianity informing basic morality, it’s basic morality informing Christianity. There’s no way round that, except to infer that wait, wait, what you meant to say was that Christianity was so obvious, everyone knew it before Christ. Which I invite you to say out loud, to see if you realize how stupid that sounds. If not, there’s not much point discussing this with you.

A common theme throughout the comments here from the religious is simply asserting beliefs as facts such as, of course, that there is a god, but also that humans are alone in exhibiting such moral behaviors as self sacrifice, that such uniqueness is because of this god, that it wrote “in our hearts” a moral code that is “universal” and that you can’t be moral with subscribing to these assertions. As long as believers are simply asserting things, be it here or anywhere, no one is going to want to listen to you. Anyone can assert anything. The Scientologists assert some pretty interesting things as well, but WHY should anyone give such ideas the time of day? On what basis should anyone believe your assertions? I don’t find that often but when I do it’s usually either an emotional appeal or a fallacious argument.

As an example, take Meagen’s “how did they get here?” Yours or anybody’s inability to answer something doesn’t give you carte blanche to invent or accept the invented answer of someone else. Here’s an example. I hear a noise in my house when I believe I’m alone. I don’t know what caused it, so I look for the source but never find it. Am I justified in believing it was ghost, since the explanation seems to fit? What about believing it was an aborted alien abduction? The return of Xenu? Point is, we can’t just accept an explanation without demonstrable evidence. To assert there’s a god responsible for morality is like the ancient Greeks asserting Apollo carried the Sun across the sky in a chariot because they didn’t have an actual explanation for day and night.

So when you assert things, think about how that’s received by others. If that’s difficult for you, then just think how you feel when you hear assertions from Muslims or Scientologists. When you offer arguments such as Meagen’s argument from ignorance, Pascal’s Wager, or other such fallacious arguments, stop to think first about the argument. Is it logical? Is it REALLY logical, or are you being biased? Would this convince me or at least make me pause and think if someone said it to me?

Actually, the Christian modification of the Golden Rule discourages empathy because it’s narcissistic, it frames things in terms of your feelings rather than others’. I can’t just do unto others what I would want done because they may not like what I like, therefore my charity may actually be a burden or offense. The original Golden Rule, the ethic of reciprocity, is about understanding others in order to amicably work out agreements for mutual gain. The Christian variant encourages imposing your view on others because YOU think that’s best and YOU believe if you were “them”, you’d want someone to do what you’re doing. That’s not empathy, that’s not good behavior, that’s selfishness.

“I would also like to know which laws you think that I ignore, that I don’t think make sense.”

Abortion’s legal, so you think that makes sense, presumably? Homosexuality is legal. Child abuse is a crime, the Church has shielded the perpetrators from within its own ranks rather than make them face consequences, presumably you’d like to see the Pope in an American jail for that obstruction of justice?

“If that’s difficult for you, then just think how you feel when you hear assertions from Muslims or Scientologists.”

The very best way for a Catholic to understand this is to ask themselves first why they don’t believe in Jupiter, and second why people used to believe in Jupiter. Once you understand that, you’ll understand why atheists are atheists. Catholics are atheists, too, we just go one god further.

No, I don’t agree with that argument, Jemima. Christians don’t believe in other gods because their belief system says there’s only one. In other words it’s an act of faith, so they don’t necessarily have common ground with an atheist on that front. Let’s also remember atheists are atheists for a variety of reasons. The rational atheist who requires demonstrable evidence is not THE atheist standard (although it may be the majority opinion). There are faith based ones as well, like Buddhists or Raellians for example.

Responding to Meagan:
“We obviously agree that there are certain universal moral truths that we all recognize.  How did they get here?”

Human societies couldn’t function without most people having them. We evolved to have those kinds of instincts. (although there are a few people who don’t have those instincts, those being sociopaths who are literally incapable of having empathy for others) Social species require some degree of agreement on acceptable behavior, and not killing other members of your group is one that’s pretty much absolutely required.

“Christians don’t believe in other gods because their belief system says there’s only one.”

Yes. I asked you to put yourself in another person’s position - a believer in Jupiter, who believes very firmly that there’s Jupiter and in all the other gods. Call it a second century Roman, so he knows about Christianity, has that option. Why does he worship Jupiter?

There are plenty of good and bad reasons. I don’t support either team, I’m not making a case *for* Jupiter. All I’m asking is for some empathy. Why did people used to believe in Jupiter? Once you understand why you don’t believe in Jupiter, you’ll understand why I don’t believe in Yahweh (or Jupiter).

You already don’t believe in gods, that’s my point. Just figure out why you don’t believe in all the others, and you’ll see that all the relevant arguments about tradition, coherence, explanation, ritual, certainty and so on apply to yours, too.

I think that’s wishful thinking, Jemima. I would guess most believers would say something along the lines of, ‘Jupiter was never real but God is’ and ‘if believers of false gods just searched their hearts they’d know what’s real.’ We’re talking about people who are asserting things without evidence and defending that with logically fallacious arguments so to assume they can objectively look at what you’re asking them to look at is to assume much, no?
Confirmation bias is strong in faith based beliefs and it has to be, or else the faith dissolves. I think, though, that it’s possible to at least remove all the other trappings, the false arguments and the false evidence used to support faith based beliefs and point out that there is only faith to support faith based beliefs. From there, well, you have to address the actual value of faith but people don’t give up their comfort sources easily, no matter how much you show their danger. People still smoke, don’t they?

“From there, well, you have to address the actual value of faith but people don’t give up their comfort sources easily, no matter how much you show their danger.”

Clearly. And I think that’s all correct. One of the things I find really interesting about Catholicism specifically is that it diverts all the curiosity and energy *into* Catholicism itself, but it’s incredibly insular. The way in which Catholics don’t know even their own history, except as taught now by the church is staggering at times.

The most pernicious use this is put to is the idea that one in ten members of the clergy can be complicit in child abuse but it’s only ‘enemies of the church’ who make the biggest fuss. Why in the name of all that’s holy aren’t Catholics storming their churches and dragging out the bishops who condoned the systematic raping of children? It is obvious to a blind man on a galloping horse that Ratzinger was one of them, there are letters signed by him to that effect. Why has this not been a catalyst for change? Why, instead, has it seen the opposite? Why is it somehow suddenly against the rules for people to point out that raping kids is wrong? Church attendance has plummeted, and it’s not because of atheists, it’s because the Church refuses to understand the problem.

Religious people seem genuinely surprised to learn that there’s empirical evidence about prayer (it doesn’t work), religion in prison (religious people are convicted of more crimes, proportionately, than atheists), there’s a direct statistical link between education and religion (the higher level of education attained, the less likely you are to be religious). And then there are bizarre assertions like ‘God created the universe isn’t a scientific claim’ or whatever.

If Catholicism is true, it can withstand any challenge *on its own terms*. If it is reasonable, then a reasonable argument can be countered with reason, not faith. If it’s evidence against, it can be countered with evidence for. If it’s science against, science for. The special pleading, the need to create magic words ... it’s weakness, not strength.

Jemima wirtes, ‘Call it a second century Roman, so he knows about Christianity, has that option. Why does he worship Jupiter?’ But for a second century Roman, he thought he could worship Jupiter and Christianity, in the same way that some people nowadays have their animist religion alongside Christianity. The problem for an atheist is that despite the persecution, I believe their were 10 waves of persecution before it became established as the official religion under Constantine, the Christians persisted with their beliefs. The first 14 popes died a martyrs death. What made them do it, if their wasn’t a miracle of the resurrection of Jesus to start it all off? After all, only one miracle has to be true and the atheists precautionary approach fails.

Funny how “Thou Shalt Not Rape Children” isn’t one of the 10 Commandments, however bearing false witness is. I think a multi-national conspiracy to hide pedophiles and their acts from the public would be bearing false witness, no?  But hey, I’m sure all involved ‘did try to be a good person, but the temptation to rationalize their way into doing whatever was most comfortable for them made their moral code a whole lot more squishy than they perceived it to be, and ended up doing bad things and simply making excuses for why their actions weren’t bad at all.’ ;)

Ian: People are willing to die for all sorts of reasons, but that doesn’t make their reasons good and true. Drinking the Kool-Aid didn’t mean Jim Jones was a god, did it? The Tibetan martyrs don’t signify the truth of reincarnation, do they? The fact that Christians chose death didn’t mean their beliefs were any truer than the non-Christians who chose death rather than renounce their beliefs during the Inquisition.
Anyway, yes, one demonstrable bit of evidence could undermine the position of rational atheists, yet it’s amazing how no demonstrable fact or piece of logic could undermine the closed-minded faith indulger. Well good luck with finding some evidence for your belief, but I have to say that if you’re not willing to consider that you might be wrong, then you probably don’t understand what would constitute demonstrable evidence. That’s like expecting a Vegan to understand what makes a perfect steak.

I think it’s important to note that “atheists” who are regularly reading and taking the time to comment at length and in detail on the National Catholic Register are probably seeking to find God, and we should pray that the Holy Spirit can lift the scales from their eyes.  The struggle of the agnostic against God is a complicated one . . . at least these people are giving some thought and energy to their Heavenly Father.  The lukewarm Christian, or he who does NOT read/contribute on a Christian website or discussion board, is not as close to finding God as these people are.

Well I think it’s important to note that those who assert facts about others rather than take the time to discover what the actual facts are, not only don’t care to know the facts but are violating a supposedly important tenet of their belief system which forbids bearing false witness.
Anyway, many atheists add words such as “atheist” to their Google alerts to find nonsense articles like this in hopes of trying to set the record straight. You’d know that if you had bothered to ask, Nicole.

But don’t you see, PhillyChief, how you’re proving my point?  Seeking out the dialogue about God is tantamount to searching for Him.  If I thought a group were as deluded and dangerous as all that anti-Christian claptrap does, I’d just avoid them, ignore them, certainly not seek out debate when I was SO sure they wouldn’t listen to my superior reasoning!  The fact is that deep down you want to be proven wrong; you long to hear His voice, and if you put your pride aside and just let Him speak to you, He *will*.  The wisdom of man is folly to God; all of you ultra-intellectual pencil point sharp arguments are like baby-babble to God . . . and He loves you no matter what fight you put up against Him.  And in the Christian family, you are my brother or uncle, so prodigal though you may be, I love you, too.

Also, PhillyChief and others, I’ll loosely quote agnostic/“atheist” Penn Gillette, who once said, “If Christians REALLY believe they have the key to eternal life, they SHOULD run around trying to get people to believe it.  I mean, how much would you have to HATE someone not to share that information with them?” 

That’s all that motivates the Christian: sharing the Gospel, aka the “Good News,” not trying to tear anyone down or tell them their God is a “fairy in the sky” or mock what is important to them.

A great book . . . The Making of An Atheist by James Spiegel.  It talks about how we are all born, of course, with a natural inclination to search out and know our God, and what environmental influences go into beating down that instinct and making someone agnostic or “atheist.”  Very good stuff, and also gives biographies of some more famous agnostics of our time.

Perhaps you should actually take a moment to read what I wrote because I said I look for dialogues about atheists, specifically misinformation on atheists and atheism. Where that happens to occur, religious sites, political sites, news sites, what have you, is irrelevant.
Unfortunately Nicole, we can’t just close our eyes and avoid the dangers in the world so it behooves anyone to go anywhere to correct misinformation, especially misinformation which is potentially dangerous and falsely maligns others.
Btw, if sharp arguments are “baby-babble”, then why try to use one or point me to a quote or a book which you think has a good one or two in them? The secret to intellectualism is merely effort, so you shouldn’t resent intellectualism, Nicole. If you could put YOUR pride aside, admit you don’t understand certain things and make an effort to educate yourself rather than accept easy, faith based “answers”, you’ll be better for it. Deep down you want answers, everyone does, but accepting unsubstantiated claims because they’re easy and comforting is just giving up.

PhillyChief writes ‘but I have to say that if you’re not willing to consider that you might be wrong, then you probably don’t understand what would constitute demonstrable evidence.’ Dr Moreland has some demonstratable evidence at http://vimeo.com/9834426 for the existence of God and why Christianity is more believable than other religions.

Jemima Cole: Everything you wrote about abortion is not only wrong, it is very easy to verify it is wrong. Perhaps you are equally misinformed about other subjects.

Fair enough, Ian. If this is hard to read or gets truncated, you can also read it here.
The following beginning assertions are false:
1) ”[Atheists] have made it a goal to stomp out supernatural religions in the United States”.
No group that I’m aware of, atheist or otherwise, is actively working to eliminate religious freedom in the US. Ironically it’s Christian groups who are doing that by denying religious freedoms for Muslims and instilling a de facto religious test for public offices (some states still have laws barring atheists from being elected despite such laws being blatantly unconstitutional). Now in the US rights can be curbed, especially when they impose on others. Naturally a religion which practices cannibalism would be denied some freedoms to exercise their beliefs. Some States are finally revoking parents’ rights to deny their children life saving medical care because they’d rather pray (which lead to the untimely death of Madeline Neumann).
2) ’[Atheists] are ridding our schools or god’
First, it’s historically been the religious who’ve objected to religion in public schools because the religion being preached wasn’t THEIR religion, and that’s why we have an Establishment Clause, so that one religion cannot lord itself over others, imposing its will by mandate of the government. Public schools are government facilities and as such cannot appear to endorse any one religion or for that matter religion over non-religion; therefore, you can have private, individual prayer but not school directed prayer.
3) “Don’t think America can’t go secular”
Unclear what he means by America, but if he’s referring to the government, it is and always has been secular. We’re the first nation with a secular constitution.
4) ”[God] loves the [American] institutions because they were founded, by and large, on a Christian worldview.”
This is blatantly false. The founding fathers were a mix of beliefs, with a healthy dose of Deists. Furthermore, it was made very clear in the Treaty of Tripoli, 1797, that the US is not a Christian nation.

Ok, as for his “evidence”:
1) Citing the Christian bible as evidence not only doesn’t carry weight with a non-believer, but is circular reasoning (ie - the bible is true because it’s the word of god and we know there’s a god because of the bible).
2) Romans asserts that the world is a creation when there’s nothing to suggest such a belief. Of course if you start with the presupposition that the world and the universe were created, then you’ll naturally believe there must be a creator (ie - Watchmaker’s fallacy).
3) “The universe began to exist and something supernatural had to create it.”
Again, no reason to believe the universe was (consciously) created, and there is nothing to suggest if the universe was the result of some action or if it’s always been. Furthermore, there’s nothing to suggest that there is such a thing as “the supernatural” (of course we first need a definitive definition).
4) “We now know we live in an unusual universe.”
That’s simply nonsensical since we only know of one universe, therefore we can’t say it’s unusual. Unusual compared to what? How many universes do we know exist?
5) <i>“We now know that the universe of space, time and matter began at some point in the past.”
No we don’t. That’s simply false. We know that our universe once was very dense before exploding but we don’t know anything about the exact moment of that explosion nor anything that may have come before that.
6) “The 2nd law of thermodynamics…”
Oy vie, if I had $1 for every religious person who cited the 2LoTD without understanding it! Anyway, the universe doesn’t “run out of gas”, it means the energy in the universe will be equally distributed in a state of maximum entropy. Btw, it doesn’t discount evolution either since the Earth is an open system (he didn’t go there, but most religious people use the 2LoTD for that reason so I thought I’d throw that in).
6b) “If the universe has always been here, then it should have used up all its fuel an infinite time ago.”
It’s funny he simultaneously considers the universe a closed system yet speaks of its energy being burned up. Where would it go? Again, misunderstanding the 2LoTD.
7) “Until you get a point where the entire universe of space time and matter sprung into existence.”<i>
The universe is indeed expanding but appears to be dense enough that rather than experiencing heat death (the continued expansion to entropy), it could snap back to a singularity again and such a cycle may have always been repeated; therefore no, it didn’t necessarily spring into existence. To use his balloon analogy, if it stretches, it snaps back, and would continue to do so if the balloon was all there.
8) <I>“Since the natural world began to exist, then something supernatural, something outside the natural world had to cause it.”
As already explained, we don’t know if the universe always has been or not but if it wasn’t then on what grounds can we say that anything non-universe is not made of the same matter and energy as the universe? Yes, this cause would be outside of the universe but outside of the “natural world”, in other words not made of matter and energy? Why? This stinks of equivocation, attempting to make natural world and universe synonymous as a way to sneak in the word supernatural. Typical religious shenanigans, I’m afraid.
9) “I don’t have time…”
Yeah, I bet you don’t. Considering everything so far has been false, why not heap on a scoop of personal, conscious cause? I mean, you have like 15 minutes left.
10) “The origin of biological information.”
Oh brother, the complexity argument! Still, kudos for twisting the SETI program. That’s a novel one. Look, he started off by addressing the problem that kids go to college and when they come back, they tend to abandon religion. Using an argument like the complexity argument, one that will take that kid a minute to google and see the refutation of it (if he or she doesn’t already know it) won’t get it done any better than exhibiting ignorance of the 2LoTD. It failed in Dover and it fails the test of logic as it’s essentially an argument from ignorance. Anyway, dna is not a stream of information. It’s yet another thing by which we can categorize and know things. Now maybe if someone found an organism with a dna strand that actually was a stream of information, like an act from Hamlet, then you could begin to make the SETI analogy.
11) “Moral absolutes exist, and are best explained by a moral law giver.”
It’s certainly not clear that moral absolutes exist but even so, a moral law giver, especially a supernatural entity, is most certainly NOT the best explanation. Both parts of that statement are unsubstantiated assertions. As that was his last “evidence”, I stopped watching.

PhillyChief, I will continue to pray for you.  I feel you are nearer to God than any other commenter on this thread . . . if you let me or someone else take your hand and lead you to the Truth, the emptiness you feel can and will be filled.  You don’t have to answer here; you can answer in your own head and heart, and to save face, you can have the last word here, but know I am praying for you, and know that you are loved beyond measure by the God who formed you in your mother’s womb.

No desire to argue with the atheists. I just wanted to say to Jennifer that as an unforgiving, judgmental, lazy trash talker myself, I’m a better person now that I’m Catholic. The Church has helped me not just to recognize my sins, but the habits and traits within myself that lead to sin. It’s these daily habits of behavior that turn one slowly toward God and goodness. Intellectual arguments on what is right and wrong are important, but until you actively turn those beliefs into actions through regular behavioral changes the new morality won’t become realized in the world. Regular prayer, attending mass, reading scripture, and regular examinations of conscience are all the pieces that have helped to make me a better version of myself. I’ve still got a long way to go, but I’ve got the tools. Thanks for all your good work.

I find the continued assertions about my motivations and character rather insulting, Nicole. Be that as it may, I can only hope that one day you’ll satiate what you feel you need with something tangible, rather than make believe.

All the best,
PhillyChief

“Everything you wrote about abortion is not only wrong, it is very easy to verify it is wrong.”

Cool. I said there’s no scientific evidence fetuses have souls, so if you’d like to start with verification there is, please be by guest.

“After all, only one miracle has to be true and the atheists precautionary approach fails.”

Yes. The bar is really that low. And yet it’s still there.

As for your early Popes - are you really arguing that any cause anyone has thought was worth dying for is true?

http://www.catholicmoms.com/divine_mercy.htm

i love Jesus - more than anything. I want to be a nun.

Jemima writes, “As for your early Popes - are you really arguing that any cause anyone has thought was worth dying for is true?”. No, of course I am not, but I can’t understand why people would be prepared to die to spread the Good News. It is not as if they are violently trying to spread their message, they are just saying that they have borne witness to something amazing and being killed for it. I am sure you wouldn’t be prepared to die to spread a profound book on atheism. After all, the Romans at the time had to admit they were perplexed by what Jesus did.

PhillyChief writes, “the Treaty of Tripoli, 1797, that the US is not a Christian nation”. The Treaty of Tripoli is a bad example, for they were prepared to pay Danegeld to stop the attacks, so why not say you are not Christian as that will help. It is an example of pragmatism.
“we don’t know anything about the exact moment of that explosion nor anything that may have come before that.” The first cause argument comes into play here. You can’t keep on going back to have infinite causes. There has to be a first cause, and that is God.
“it could snap back to a singularity again and such a cycle may have always been repeated”. Maybe it could, but that is a postulation to which you have no evidence. In fact, as I understand it, the universe is speeding up. Also the number of matter anti-matter collisions has decreased massively since the start of the universe, so for it to go into reverse would require anti-matter to start increasing. Can you explain to me how?

“In fact, as I understand it, the universe is speeding up. Also the number of matter anti-matter collisions has decreased massively since the start of the universe, so for it to go into reverse would require anti-matter to start increasing. Can you explain to me how?”

The intercession of Saint Faustina?

There are many miracles attributed to the intercession of Saint Faustina at
http://our.homewithgod.com/divinemercy/miracles/, but no, anti-matter increasing is not one of them, as far as I am aware.

Ian:
• The US constitution is a secular document, there’s no mention of a deity in it. The basis of our government point to both the concept of the republic from Rome and democracy from the Greeks. Neither concept comes from the Christian bible, and are antithetical to it. The constitution was not based on Christianity, and any moral concepts that each may share are just that. Moral concepts did not start with Judaism or Christianity, and thankfully they haven’t stopped evolving since those religions came to be either.
•The first cause argument is self refuting, since it states everything must have a cause then concludes the answer is something without a cause. Also, as I pointed out, it’s unknown if the universe has a cause or not. It could be on a perpetual cycle of expansion and contraction.
• It’s funny to speak of a cyclical universe lacking evidence when you have no evidence for a first cause, let alone that cause being supernatural, a god, and finally the specific god you worship.
• As I cited, the idea of a cyclical universe, or at least that the universe could, at some far distant time, snap back into a singularity is supported by the measured density of the known universe. Postulation? It’s more than that because there’s actually evidence to support the hypothesis (and by evidence I mean something quantitative and observable, not mere philosophical navel pondering).
• I don’t know what you’re getting at with this “the number of matter anti-matter collisions has decreased” or what relevance that has. Perhaps you’re confusing anti-matter with dark matter and/or dark energy?
But let’s cut to the chase, shall we? Even if no one can adequately explain something doesn’t mean any unsubstantiated claim can be accepted. What it appears to me that you’re doing is looking for flaws in science as if those flaws would mean that your god is real. That’s a logical fallacy called the argument from ignorance, or “if you can’t prove me wrong then I’m right.” If only you could be objective and apply the same level of criticism to your beliefs as you do with science, but then there is no such thing as a two-way street with faith-based beliefs, is there?

“If I thought a group were as deluded and dangerous as all that anti-Christian claptrap does, I’d just avoid them, ignore them, certainly not seek out debate when I was SO sure they wouldn’t listen to my superior reasoning!”

I’m interested in why people believe. I look at what people think of as proof, and ... to me, it’s almost comically inadequate. Self-contradictory nonsense:

‘Every single thing needs a cause, that’s an absolute rule of the universe.’
‘Er ... it isn’t, quantum physics shows how ... ‘
‘For sake of argument. Literally nothing can exist without a cause. The whole idea is ridiculous. Anyone who says that something can exist without a cause is an idiot.’
‘For sake of argument? OK. So your entire argument depends on there being nothing, at all, that lacks a cause.’
‘Yes.’
‘Fire away’
‘God didn’t have a cause.’
‘But you just said - ‘

And then there’s the inevitable huge leap:

‘And because this necessary first cause loved us, he sent his only Son - ‘

I don’t think people believe in God because of arguments like that. I think people believe in God and seek arguments to justify that belief, and find things like that. That argument seems to be highly convincing to people who already believe. ‘If God exists, he existed first, so ...’. It’s a completely inadequate way of inferring God from observation and reasoning.

And, as I’ve said, I suspect Jennifer has come to Catholicism because it fits her existing needs and worldview (including ‘I want to be a better person’, and ‘There are moral absolutes, even if I have trouble seeing that’), so it’s actually a *lack* of a challenge. The modern art post was the one that caught my attention. She tells a story there that’s basically ‘I see my personal taste as being an eternal law of the universe, I think God would agree with me that this piece of art ... ’ and that’s not a position of humble inquiry, that’s bordering on monomania.

I’m fascinated by that. I like being in a place where I can ask the questions. I’m not trying to be mean. I’m sorry if I come across as that.

“There are many miracles attributed to the intercession of Saint Faustina at http://our.homewithgod.com/divinemercy/miracles/, but no, anti-matter increasing is not one of them, as far as I am aware.”

We don’t understand the reason. There’s a problem with the current scientific model. Scientists don’t just know this, they’re the ones who made the observations and identified the problems.

Do you doubt that the explanation, when it comes, will be scientific: ie, it will come from refining the maths or seeing that the known forces interact slightly differently from the way we currently think in extreme conditions?

Now, if you want to give God the credit for setting that up, knock yourself out. But there’s not going to be a ‘supernatural’ explanation.

The idea it’s Saint Faustina is a stupid one, obviously. Anyone dispute that? OK ... so it’s ridiculous it’s any Saint? How about an angel? An Archangel? Mary? Jesus? the Holy Spirit? God? At what Heavenly pay grade, for a Catholic, does the idea that something in Heaven is responsible for the discrepancies in observations of the redshift of galaxies become plausible? 

As for the medical ‘miracles’ ... it’s confirmation bias. A very well understood phenomenon. It’s what homeopathy advocates use, it’s what all the quack treatments rely on. It’s only looking at the people who got better. If you want to do this properly, you look at *all* the people in that situation, not just the ones who got better.

And if Catholics being prayed for, all other things being equal, got better faster than atheists, that would be evidence of the power of prayer. Studies have been done. Most show prayer having no effect whatsoever. The biggest study showed that people who know they’re being prayed for actually do *worse* - psychologically, if you’re told you’re being prayed for, you assume you’re sicker than you thought you were!

And then there are just laughable ones. The Cardinal Newman ‘miracle’, the Boston pastor who was in terrible pain after a back operation and prayed and felt his pain subside? Oh, and just before he prayed *was given painkillers*. Does anyone seriously want to defend that as an actual miracle? People getting better after being treated in a hospital by a team of doctors is not a miracle. I was thirsty the other day, I prayed and then drank some water and my thirst went away. Another miracle!

So it seems from what PhillyChief and Jemima are saying that atheists are more rational than people who are religious, but this article doesn’t seem to bear this out at http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122178219865054585.html. Why do 10% of atheists pray weekly and 12% believe in heaven? Also sceptics are more likely to believe in paranormal phenomena than religious people.

So it seems Ian doesn’t really bother to read anything an atheist writes carefully (and I question whether he fully reads what he copy/pastes or links to or just skims for things that sound like they support his beliefs). I stated many comments earlier that it’s not as important what someone believes but why they believe it. That’s true for atheists as well. There are faith based atheists like Buddhists, and there are also people who compartmentalize, meaning they can be rational about some things but not everything (ie - atheists with “lucky” ties). Believers are forced to compartmentalize. For instance despite the value placed on faith, no believer would rely on it to get them across the street and most will see a doctor rather than just pray to be healed.
Bill Maher fails at being objective. That lack of objectivity is something humans are prone to, which is why I don’t see promoting atheism as a cause. The cause worth promoting is critical, rational thinking. A rational thinker then won’t succumb to faith based beliefs, be they emails from alleged Nigerian princes promising riches, the healing power of magnetic bracelets, believing you can afford a home mortgage when you really can’t and of course religion.
Btw Ian, I called you out last time on attempting an argument from ignorance. Now it’s clear your attempting an ad hominem, suggesting that I’m saying atheists are better than believers thus making me out to be a bad guy and turning other readers agains whatever I have to say. I find it telling that inevitably religious people go this route. Arguments are logically fallacious, based on misinformation, and there are conscious efforts to attack and deceive. Now to be fair I’ve met believers who simply say, “I know it seems irrational but it’s what I believe.” Ok fine, but if you’re going to claim your belief is rational, that you have demonstrable evidence, that it’s the best explanation, etc, then back it up or admit you can’t. Don’t resort to childish antics. If you win someone over like that, you’re just deceiving them and if they ever figure that out, then you’re in trouble. Imo that’s the mistake most religions make and a reason why they’re losing members, because no one like to be made a fool of and deceived.

Its a good article. I myself am looking at joining the Catholic church, I have done quite a bit of reading and research on it to make sure it all lines up with the Bible and from what i can see it dose. I’ll give it a few months and see how everything goes. If all goes well, i should start looking into the RICA classes in August. You got to remember that God’s gift to you is life but what you do with it is your gift to God.

“Why do 10% of atheists pray weekly and 12% believe in heaven?”

Baylor College did a study, eh? Almost certainly a neutral academic ..

http://www.baylor.edu/

... no, a Christian university. Still, that no doubt makes them models of rectitude, they’d never manipulate figures to get the results they want ...

https://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/15/education/15baylor.html

... oops, no.

Still, at least they’re not linked to the Discovery Institute, the creationist extremists who have been found in the courts to be liars ...

https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/William_A._Dembski

But it’s not as if the whole *institution* that’s been taken over by extremists pushing their view of ...

http://noleftturns.ashbrook.org/default.asp?archiveID=5874

It’s a clown college, one that fiddles its own results, one manned by creationist extremists, with the stated aim of producing research that supports their agenda. 

In other news, Burger King did a study and discovered that even 12% of vegetarians love flame grilled whoppers.

“Posted by Gail F on Saturday, Apr 2, 2011 5:44 PM (EDT):
Jemima Cole: Everything you wrote about abortion is not only wrong, it is very easy to verify it is wrong. Perhaps you are equally misinformed about other subjects.”

Here’s absolutely everything I said about abortion. If anyone would like to ‘verify’ where I’m wrong, I’m keen to learn:

1. The Bible and Jesus say almost nothing about abortion.
2. One of the miracles of Saint Brigid of Kildare is that she ended a pregnancy.
3. The Bible states that life begins at the first breath.
4. The emphasis the Church places on abortion is extremely recent.
5. Catholics use contraception and have abortions almost exactly as often as non-Catholics.
6. Abortion is legal.
7. No one like abortions or enjoys choosing to have one.
8. The vast majority of abortions are very early in pregnancy.
9. The vast majority are for health reasons, not lifestyle ones.
10. For the first few months, fetuses are bundles of cells.
11. A pig has a more developed nervous system than that early fetus. 
12. Dilate and Extract abortions are almost always carried out in cases of dire medical circumstance.
13. The Pope is not a medical expert. 

1-3, 5,6, 10, 11 and 13 are simple statements of fact. 4 depends on the definition of ‘recent’, so say ‘the last hundred years’. 7 ... well, it’s impossible to prove a blanket statement like that, but my point is obvious and generally holds. 8, 9 and 12 are easy enough to prove with some basic research. By which I mean medical statistics, not howling nonsense from political operatives seeking to sway the religious.

I don’t think abortion should ever be a lifestyle choice - in other words, abortion should be for medical reasons, ethical reasons (I think a woman who’s raped should have the right to decide whether to keep the baby), it should be done as early as possible, it shouldn’t be done when the baby is viable. I think the right *not* have an abortion, for any reason, should be protected (ie: if doctors want to abort a baby to save the mother, the *mother* should be able to decide not to).

The law should change to reflect advances in science. Babies are viable earlier, now. Human life should be protected. At some point, in the womb, a fetus becomes a viable human being. As the nervous system develops, that is. Saying a newly-fertilized egg is a human being is like saying a lump of coal is a diamond. And invoking the ‘soul’ is as foolish as saying that the doctors should stay away from that womb because it’s haunted.

As I say, if it’s easy to ‘verify’ that newly-fertilized eggs have souls, verify away.

“I myself am looking at joining the Catholic church, I have done quite a bit of reading and research on it to make sure it all lines up with the Bible and from what i can see it dose.”

As part of that research, you may also want to run a quick check on any clergy you or your kids will come into contact with:

http://bishop-accountability.org/member/index.jsp

There are only around 4400 accused priests, and 46000 Catholic priests in total, so there’s only a 9.5% chance they’ve been accused of sex abuse. Obviously that list only includes those accused of child abuse and sex abuse of vulnerable adults, it doesn’t include tax evasion, theft or other criminal activity. Or those within the church who turned a blind eye, or moved them around. 

But by all means let the Catholic Church be your moral guide to becoming a better person. Good luck!

Jemima is a perfect example of what it means to live in darkness.  To be spiritually “blind”.  A dose of Amazing Grace is what is needed here, not ongoing debates.  She can’t “hear” a word anyone is trying to say!!

1. Often we do not write about what we assume no one would think of doing. However, since God says He has upheld His people from the moment of conception, I would tend to think that He takes seriously the death of the unborn. Furthermore, Christ was Christ from the moment of his conception. God named him prior to and not after his birth. He did the same thing for John the Baptist and many others
Listen to me, O house of Jacob, all you who remain of the house of Israel, you whom I have upheld since you were conceived, and have carried since your birth. Even to your old age and gray hairs I am he, I am he who will sustain you. I have made you and I will carry you; I will sustain you and I will rescue you (Isaiah 46:3-4)
The word of the LORD came to me, saying, “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I set you apart; I appointed you as a prophet to the nations” (Jeremiah 1:4-5)
When Elizabeth heard Mary’s greeting, the baby leaped in her womb, and Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit. In a loud voice she exclaimed: “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the child you will bear! As soon as the sound of your greeting reached my ears, the baby in my womb leaped for joy” (Luke 1:41-42, 44)

2. I have read numerous accounts of the life of St. Brigid, including accounts from her home in Kildare. Not one mentions your miracle. Furthermore, if this was a miracle of hers there is a HUGE difference from God removing a child from the womb versus abortion. Abortion removes it by tearing the child limb from limb. God removes the whole child without pain to either the woman or the babe. Since He gave the life, it is His to recall when it has fulfilled the purpose for which it was sent.

3. The Church has ALWAYS taught abortion was wrong.
http://www.priestsforlife.org/magisterium/earlychurchfathers/fatherscover.html

4. Catholics behaving badly does not somehow make a sin less sinful. Catholics commit adultery, drink excessive amounts of alcohol, steal, lie, speed, fail to pay debts, fornicate, etc. etc. It is no more surprising to find sick people in a hospital than it is to find sinners in a church. The difference between those sinners and you is that the sinners in a Catholic Church have acknowledged that they are sinners and are seeking help to overcome their sins.

6. Legal does not mean right. Slavery was once legal, too. That didn’t mean it was right.

7. That no one likes it or enjoys the choice to have one should be an indicator that there is something wrong. One might delve into the question why no one likes it or enjoys the choice to have one with openness and honesty. I think the answer is because at the heart of it you know it is wrong.

8. Fact: 61.8% of abortions take place before 9 weeks gestation.
However, this also means that 38.2% of pregnancies take place well after the 8 week mark. That would be almost 40%. Therefore, it is NOT a fact that the “vast majority” of abortions take place very early in the pregnancy.

9. Fact: 50% of women cite problems with their husband or partner, or simply not wanting to be a parent, as the reason they obtained an abortion. 75% cite inability to afford to care for the child. Lifestyle reasons are THE most common reason for abortions, not medical problems. Rape makes up 1% of abortions.
http://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/fb_induced_abortion.html

10. Here’s the facts about a fetus at 8 weeks gestation:

“Up until this point in time your baby had a small tail… which starts to disappear this week, and your little one will soon have eyelids to cover his or her blossoming eyes. While the arms and legs are also lengthening, the fingers and toes are likely to still be webbed. Your baby’s brain is also maturing during pregnancy week 8, as nerve cells begin to connect with one another, forming the groundwork for communication later in life. Did you know the tip of your baby’s nose is already formed by pregnancy 8 weeks? The lungs are also working hard at maturing, though they won’t be fully mature until near term. However, tubes leading from your baby’s throat to the lungs begin to form branches. By week eight, your baby should have distinct elbows, which allow the arms to curve around the chest. Your baby’s organs continue to develop with lightning quick speed. Before you have time to even blink an eye, your little one will resemble a miniature human being, complete with ten fingers, ten toes, skin, and all the body parts we all have!” - http://www.womenshealthcaretopics.com/pregnancy_week_8.htm

11. Pigs develop more quickly than people. Thus, a 1 year old pig is able to reproduce whereas a 1 year old infant cannot. This does not make a human life less valuable, nor an infant in the womb less worthy of being protected. This argument is illogical.

12. D&E abortions are done in the second trimester of pregnancy, when the infant would be viable outside of the womb. 95% of all late term abortions done through D&E are NOT medically necessary: they are aborted for elective reasons. One of those elective reasons is the child testing positive for down’s syndrome. Another is when the child is the “wrong” sex - usually female.
http://women.webmd.com/dilation-and-evacuation-de-for-abortion

13. One does not need to be a medical expert to know when life begins, or to know that life is valuable. Are you a medical expert? Shall we discount everything you have to say because you do not hold a medical degree nor are you a widely recognized and highly regarded physician? The Pope has a plethora of highly qualified medical experts available to advise him. What do you have?

“Jemima is a perfect example of what it means to live in darkness.  To be spiritually “blind”.  A dose of Amazing Grace is what is needed here, not ongoing debates.”

Fire away.

I don’t believe I live in darkness. I like facts, I like discussing things. Appealing to my head is going to work better than appealing to my heart. If you mean Amazing Grace the song, I’ve always thought it was a bit kitsch, and the lyrics are pure doggerel. If you like it and find meaning in it, good luck to you, I certainly don’t begrudge you that. Imagine by John Lennon makes me cry, I’m in no position to criticize. It’s not like there’s some objective standard to these things.

If you’re saying I live in darkness because of the abortion post ... well, pick one: either my facts are wrong or they’re not. Do I think that your religious beliefs should be imposed on me? No, but let’s compromise, and pick a random religious system to live under. Sharia? Mormonism? Aztec?

If it’s the priest one, might I ask a simple and serious question?

http://bishop-accountability.org/priestdb/PriestDBbylastName-A.html

Andrew Abdon, alphabetically the first abusive priest on that list to have died. Where do you think he is now? I know it’s God’s decision, and obviously we can’t know for sure, but do you think there’s any chance he’ll end up in Heaven? If you’re a good Catholic and go to Heaven and meet Andrew Abdon there, what would you think? Do you think you’ll get a chance to speak to him? What would you say? If not, does that mean he’s in Hell? Either way, is that fair? Is there anything he could have done in life to mitigate his crimes?

Now, I live in spiritual darkness, so the whole thing is ridiculous to me. He died, unpunished, he got away with his crimes. I think that’s wrong. Then worms ate him, the end. But for those of you who live in the light, and who were blind, and now can see - *what* do you see?

I’m not trying to debate, I’m not trying to attack, I’m trying to *understand*. That priest abused at least three kids, got away with it in life, and in Catholic terms he’s now met his maker. Yes, it’s awkward to talk about a real person like this, but let’s apply this ‘spiritual vision’ to reality for a moment. From a Catholic perspective, what should be the fate of Andrew Abdon?

Right on Nick - God Bless you and welcome to the Faith. And, Debbie, I wish you my prayers if that is what you are going to do. We need more people like St. Faustina. Being a guy, she is my favorite Saint because she took on no end of suffering and was humble about it. I’m just the opposite and struggle with humility constantly but hey, it’s that ‘working at denying one’s self’ thing that I am still working on full time - with the Lord’s Help of course and her example. God Bless.

Religious experience is absolute; it cannot be disputed. You can only say that you have never had such an experience, whereupon your opponent will reply: ‘Sorry, I have.’ And there your discussion will come to an end. No matter what the world thinks about the religious experience, the one who has it possesses a thing that has given a new splendor to the world and to mankind.—C. G. Jung

“1. I would tend to think that He takes seriously the death of the unborn.”

Oh come *on*. We know what the Bible says. Exodus 21:22-25. If you injure a pregnant woman so that she miscarries, you get a fine, and specifically it doesn’t count as a life that’s been lost. Your quotes are, as I said originally, all massive stretches. They’re nothing to do with abortion, everything to do with divine foreknowledge.

We know abortions were carried out in Jesus’ time. He never once mentions abortion or contraception. Is your argument really that he knew we could take his opposition to Dilate and Extract abortion, even in cases of rape and incest, for granted?

“2. I have read numerous accounts of the life of St. Brigid, including accounts from her home in Kildare. Not one mentions your miracle.”

Yes. Because the Church has edited that bit of Cogitosus out! It’s easy enough to find the unedited version.

“Furthermore, if this was a miracle of hers there is a HUGE difference from God removing a child from the womb versus abortion. Abortion removes it by tearing the child limb from limb. God removes the whole child without pain to either the woman or the babe. Since He gave the life, it is His to recall when it has fulfilled the purpose for which it was sent.”

I’m sorry, what rot. There’s no ‘tearing of limbs’ in early stage abortion, there are no limbs! In the first 50 days, nine out of ten abortions use drugs. And your argument is that it’s OK if God does it - well, so much for moral absolutes - and that the problem is the pain it causes. So ... if science came up with a way of painlessly dissolving babies, you’d be fine with abortion? Of course not!

Do you know the origin of the word ‘propaganda’, by the way?

“3. The Church has ALWAYS taught abortion was wrong.
http://www.priestsforlife.org/magisterium/earlychurchfathers/fatherscover.html”

Yes. But not with the *emphasis* it does now, which is what I actually said, not with the political lobbying.

“4. Catholics behaving badly does not somehow make a sin less sinful.”

This desire to lead a better life, though, does seem to have practical limits.

“6. Legal does not mean right.”

Is abortion legal? Yes. Then my statement ‘abortion is legal’ is true, not false.

“7. That no one likes it or enjoys the choice to have one should be an indicator that there is something wrong. One might delve into the question why no one likes it or enjoys the choice to have one with openness and honesty. I think the answer is because at the heart of it you know it is wrong.”

I don’t like going to the dentist, should I stop doing that, too?

“8. Fact: 61.8% of abortions take place before 9 weeks gestation.
However, this also means that 38.2% of pregnancies take place well after the 8 week mark. That would be almost 40%. Therefore, it is NOT a fact that the “vast majority” of abortions take place very early in the pregnancy.”

The point when an embryo is considered to have developed into a fetus is week 12 of gestational age. 88% of abortions occur before that. The vast majority. Only 1.4% after 21 weeks.

“10. Here’s the facts about a fetus at 8 weeks gestation:”

And ... it’s not a fetus yet, at that stage.

“Up until this point in time your baby”

And so it’s not a ‘baby’ ...

“and your little one”

Oh for heaven’s sake. Does this language not suggest to you that this is an emotive account written by someone with an agenda? Why not just call the embryo ‘Sweet Little Nell’ and be done with it.

“11. Pigs develop more quickly than people. Thus, a 1 year old pig is able to reproduce whereas a 1 year old infant cannot. This does not make a human life less valuable, nor an infant in the womb less worthy of being protected. This argument is illogical.”

A pig being slaughtered feels more pain. That’s the only claim I made. If people are arguing that abortions are bad because of pain, then don’t eat bacon. I don’t make the argument that abortions are bad because of pain.

“12. D&E abortions are done in the second trimester of pregnancy, when the infant would be viable outside of the womb. 95% of all late term abortions done through D&E are NOT medically necessary: they are aborted for elective reasons. One of those elective reasons is the child testing positive for down’s syndrome. Another is when the child is the “wrong” sex - usually female.”

Study after study has shown no evidence of sex selective abortion in the US. There’s a tiny amount of evidence it happens here in Asian communities. It’s a myth, spread by anti-abortion propagandists.

“13. One does not need to be a medical expert to know when life begins, or to know that life is valuable. Are you a medical expert? Shall we discount everything you have to say because you do not hold a medical degree nor are you a widely recognized and highly regarded physician? The Pope has a plethora of highly qualified medical experts available to advise him. What do you have?”

BA Natural Science Tripos (Cambridge), a PhD in Psychology (speciality: Health Behavior), MSc in Applied Statistics. My mother, now retired, was a doctor specializing in reproductive health, and performed abortions for the British NHS. My grandfather was a GP, so’s my brother. Twenty years as a medical statistician.

But, you know, I never fought in the Second World War, so the Pope has me beat there.

“Religious experience is absolute; it cannot be disputed. You can only say that you have never had such an experience, whereupon your opponent will reply: ‘Sorry, I have.’ And there your discussion will come to an end. No matter what the world thinks about the religious experience, the one who has it possesses a thing that has given a new splendor to the world and to mankind.”—C. G. Jung
The same could be said about any psychological break from reality. Notice he doesn’t say those things are real, just that if someone thinks they experienced such a thing then there’s not a lot you can say. Btw, the difference between Jung and Freud when it comes to religion is Freud saw religion as a “universal obsessional neurosis”, whereas Jung saw it as imaginary but good.

There has been a recent debate on 30th March 2011 between Dr William Lane Craig and Dr Lawrence M.Krauss about evidence for God. It starts oddly enough about 18 minutes in and is of interest. It is at http://mckimmon.online.ncsu.edu/online/Viewer/?peid=c71f72ecead9438faf30bb39b4b1c3051d. The sound quality isn’t great at times unfortunately. I really also must say I don’t PhillyChief’s belief in an infinite number of expansions and contractions of the universe helpful. Some time or other it has got to begin.

Honestly Ian, I’m quite tired of you not reading what I write and not even bothering to investigate the things you either copy/paste here or provide links to. I didn’t say I believed in a cyclical universe, I merely showed it’s possible. As for Craig, his five arguments like Kalam, fine tuning, or moral absolutes have been refuted thousands of times over and I probably addressed them to one degree or another when addressing that last silly lecture you linked to so here’s a taste of your own medicine then, links to refutations of Craig’s five infamous god arguments. Enjoy!

I certainly understand unbelief; I struggle with it constantly. Some people have no struggles; they take to either faith or unbelief like a duck to water. I understand how some people can look at our inhumanity toward own kind and more easily see the image of a brutal primate or a demon than the image of a benevolent creator/redeemer. The world as we now experience it certainly is not the best of all possible worlds, which is what one might expect from the hands of a loving and all-powerful God. But what I don’t understand is how someone can say “I neither want nor need ‘God’ in my life, thank you very much; He doesn’t exist, as far as I’m concerned,” and then protest about hell. When we refuse to say to God, “Thy will be done,” God says to us, “Alright, then; thy will be done.”

None of this arguments is good enough to convince an atheist. Only thing it proves is that you are initially an atheist by chance not because of any conviction.
1. Moral codes were evolved over centuries of community living and rational thinking to solve the problems that arise out of it. If you say that there is an objective morality, how can we access it? I don’t think you would say that it is the Bible. How do you justify the morality of God asking the Jews to kill the other tribes in Canaan? But I do agree that we can pick and choose good morals from here and there in the Bible.
2. I as an atheist has not taken an active decision to reject God, but I don’t know whether God exists. But I know for sure, if at all he exists, he is not properly recognised by any of the current religions. But I believe in doing good works in this world because it gives me lot of satisfaction and feel good feeling. But according to Christianity, good works alone does not take you to heaven (if at all it exists), you have to have faith in God’s existence, so I will happily take hell (if at all it exists)
3. Saints are not exclusive to christianity. Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism has lot of saints who led a real pure lives. It is all about controlling your basic instincts and selfishness. You can do that if you have determination. I decided to become a vegan and I achieved it through determination. Anything is possible if you will. You don’t have to have belief in God for that.
4. Nobody knows God’s mind even if he exists. We project our own thoughts to be God’s wishes. If that brings happiness to you, go ahead with it. That does not mean anything.
5. I too forgive people not to receive any grace from God, but because it relieves a lot of burden of my mind. I can concentrate lot of more important things in my life and also not become uncomfortable when I see those people again and start conversation with them without any stress. We have a very short life to carry grudges for long in our mind. Most useful strategy is forgive and just move on with your life. Also I also am not perfect. I need other people’s forgiveness for the mistakes I make and nothing ever comes one way.
5.

“then protest about hell”

No. I’m not railing against the non-existent God about the non-existent Hell, which I will not be going to, for the same reason I won’t be going to Oz or Krypton.

What I’m protesting is the Christian, Catholic in this case, Jennifer specifically, cheerful acceptance of a God that allows Hell. Just read back Jennifer’s original comment, then some of the follow ups.

Why choose to believe in such a vicious, sadistic monster and call it ‘benevolent’? I’m not railing at *God*, I’m railing at *you*. What a strange, nasty thing to want to believe.

As for ‘brutal primates’, you should read up about primates. They’re no saints, but even a brief study and you’ll see just how much human morality originates in primate behavior.

A lot of this comes down to personal taste. I love the idea of being one of a race of curious monkeys who cobble things together and manage to reach the Moon. And this curious monkey lives in a universe with no hell in it, and a universe without a hell in it is a better universe than the one your ‘perfect being’ is meant to have come up with.

Jemima Cole, if you dont believe in universal truth, and that every one can decide for themselves what they can and cannot believe, why are you patrolling this thread telling us that we are all wrong? If you truly felt the way you said, you would be happy to let those of us Christians have our own opinions with out attacking us. So, as far as I can conclude, you believe everyone can decide for themselves what “truth” is except Christians. You dont even live up to your own beliefs. And by the way, all the “translating” you did about the verse with John the baptist. When Mary’s greeting reached Elizabeth’s ears in Luke 1, the unborn John the Baptist leapt for joy in his mother’s womb (1:44); we are also told that he was filled with the Holy Spirit from his mother’s womb (1:15). The unborn John the Baptist is also described as a brephos (Luke 1:41, 44), this being a Greek term meaning “a babe, an infant, a newborn child.” These indicate the humanity of the unborn John the Baptist(1:36–40).

Jemima Cole:
I’m not sure what your agenda is for trying to push that Christianity is wrong, but one day you will believe.  I pray God will have mercy on you.  I also pray, that before you die, your heart will be unhardened, and you find our God that loves you so much, and only wants you to be happy.  You say you don’t believe in hell, and why would God create it.  Well, there is a hell, and He created it for people that turn their back on Him.  All He wants is for us to be happy, but if we feel that we have no need for Him and don’t want to be with Him in paradise, then I guess Hell would be the best place for us.  Whether it is a fiery pit, or just the fact of knowing that we will never get to be in His presence again.  And since you seem so adamant on the topic of abortion…those are babies, whether you believe it or not.  From the time they are conceived they are a life.  Even if they are “just a bunch of cells”, they are a life that has been formed and they deserve the chance to be brought into the world.  Pretty sad to think that someone can feel so threatened by an unborn child.

I appreciate everyone’s comments.  I realize this is a site for Catholics to talk about Catholic things, but let’s try to show kindness and respect to those who find themselves here and disagree.  As a Catholic, I’ve been called names and rudely upbraided on atheist sites before; that sort of reaction isn’t uplifting or beneficial to anyone.  Let’s love first and ask questions later.

Jemima,  You’ve written a lot of things here, but I’m only going to address one of them now:

Re:  Condoms, AIDS, the Pope:  I do hope you’ll read this:  http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/faith/article5987155.ece

Harvard AIDS expert Peter Green knows the Pope is right (much as it pains him, and them).

The Roman Catholic Church has this nasty little habit of being right.  All.The.Time.

But that’s ok. Prayers offered for you, and I hope you’ll keep reading and commenting.  I mean that, truly.  Best to you.

“The Roman Catholic Church has this nasty little habit of being right.  All.The.Time.”

Oh, don’t be silly - if you believe that, you believe the Reichskonkordat was ‘right’, you believe that Galileo was wrong.

You simultaneously believe that there’s no sexual abuse problem in the Catholic Church, that there is but it’s under control, that it is massive and people are sorry, that no one was moved around, that everyone’s sorry that offenders were moved around, that it’s exaggerated by the media, that it’s all the fault of atheists infiltrating the Church, that it’s all the fault of homosexuals infiltrating the church, that it was a lapse of local bishops, that the whole church is at fault, that secular society is just as bad and that the Church has a particular problem. It is to say that every single person who won a lawsuit the Church defended was perjuring themselves and got their money fraudulently.

That article is being published precisely because the scientist in question is unusual - other scientists in the article state their view that the idea is ‘ridiculous’, and it’s easy to find articles that state and show why the Pope’s wrong, just Google ‘pope condoms wrong’.

More to the point, *the Pope changed his mind*:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1331591/Pope-condoms-ok-case-stop-spread-AIDS.html

I know that wasn’t the ‘Pope says condoms OK’ thing it was reported as, but clearly what happened is that his medical advisers took him to one side and said his previous statements had been ridiculous and he needed to be more careful.

It’s easy to think you’re right all the time if you live in a world where only the evidence you look at is the stuff that backs up what you already believe. And if every single thing is, retroactively, the will of God - you might predict a sunny day for your wedding, and say God would want it to be sunny, but then if it rains, it’s a punishment for a lack of humility. Any way, with that mindset, God wins, but only by a human being fiddling with the rules. If you really, truly believe that the Catholic Church is right about everything all the time, then I’m not going to persuade you otherwise, but there will come a point where that opinion and reality are going to smack into each other right in front of your eyes. I hope it doesn’t hurt you too much when it does.

There are facts and there are opinions. I know that Catholicism teaches that there are far more facts and far fewer opinions than most belief systems, but even within that, there comes a point where the universe laughs at some of its ‘universal truths’. 

This is healthy. Please, please note that I’m not saying I’m offering an alternative set of truths and certainties. If you want a reassuring set of dictats that remain broadly constant throughout your lifetime, stick with Catholicism. But don’t mistake that with truth, and be prepared to leave a lot of stuff out to make it fit in that little box.

“As a Catholic, I’ve been called names and rudely upbraided on atheist sites before; that sort of reaction isn’t uplifting or beneficial to anyone.  Let’s love first and ask questions later.”

As an atheist, I’m sorry if people have been rude to you. I don’t think I’ve called anyone names, I hope I’ve not been rude. I’m asking questions, that’s all. Nothing I’m saying is meant as a personal attack, and I’m very happy to answer questions, too.

I’m not here to change minds, and this thread isn’t going to end with me converting and undertaking a pilgrimage in the honor of Saint Faustina. I understand that people mean well when they say I live in darkness but ... read Jennifer’s post from a couple of weeks ago. It’s not a message that can mean anything to me. It’s like ... you know when someone loves a rock band and they sit you down and play a clip of one track, then you shrug and they play another, and then another? It probably doesn’t win you over.

I was born and raised atheist, but it doesn’t seem to have occurred to anyone that the reason I’m not a Catholic is not because I haven’t thought about it, but because I have. I know a lot of lapsed Catholics, I know a lot of people still in the Church completely screwed up by it, wracked by guilt and constantly second-guessing themselves.

Jennifer’s art appreciation post is the most telling of the mindset, I think. First of all, she doesn’t like a piece of modern art, but can’t explain why, so she needs to weave a vast cosmic order to justify her opinion. Why not just say you don’t like it? Then she says that her dislike of this art is objective truth. Then she says it’s ordained by God, and then she replaces actual art appreciation - ie: bringing your own faculties and judgement to bear - with some sort of weird guessing game where you have to work out how much God likes it. Except God’s never going to mark your answer, or show you his answer. But that’s OK because we all have an innate sense of it. So if someone disagrees with you, it’s not because you have differing opinions about an indifferent piece of modern art, it’s because you, and only you, have let the blinkers fall from your eyes and allowed the Holy Spirit to move you to tell you that the indifferent piece of modern art sucks.

And the joke is this: Jennifer’s opinion *didn’t change*. It didn’t enrich her view, or allow her to see beauty somewhere she didn’t before. It *didn’t* open her mind. It very specifically kept her opinion exactly where it was, then closed it.

So all this stuff about I’m blind and one day I’ll see ... well, no. What that looks like is enforcing prexisting views. If condoms spread AIDS, I’d be able to accept that into my worldview. I’d look at the evidence and say ‘yeah, OK’. Again, when the Pope said that, he wasn’t suddenly going ‘hey, I’ve woken up and suddenly I don’t like condoms, the awkward truth is that I was wrong before and I really regret being the spokesman for that Trojan campaign last year’. He was simply doubling down on existing prejudice.

I’ve changed my mind about things, lots of healthcare things, for example, based on new evidence. I think the issue of sex education is extraordinarily complicated, for example. I don’t know what the best practice is, I’m not sure there’s one ‘best practice’. It depends what your aim is. And ‘evidence’ is the stuff that *doesn’t* fit, as well as all the stuff that does. Don’t look at one person being cured and say it was a miracle - ask what happened to the other thousand people in the same position. If an allergy pill cured one person’s allergies and made a thousand other people die, it wouldn’t be a miracle cure, it would be a monstrous thing that would have to be stopped. You can’t have it both ways - if one person survived out of five hundred when a boat sank, lots of other people drowned. I’m not saying ‘just look at the half-empty part of the glass’, I’m saying look at the whole glass. If one person was saved, that’s better than nothing.

I think we can expect a lot more ridiculous posts from Jennifer in light of the comments activity here. You see, sites like this make money from advertisers by exhibiting a high traffic report (like Nielson ratings). The more nonsensical, the more people respond which then causes active discussions which all add up to high traffic so kudos, Jennifer. What’s next? Atheists are truly immoral? Without god, I would want to kill people? Oh, how about how you never could appreciate (love, life, art, etc) before converting? That should score a lot of traffic and net the site good advertising $$$. Of course you could just repeat old, long refuted arguments like Pascal’s Wager. I mean, Craig still earns a living making the same 5 arguments for the last 20 or 30 years despite them being shown to be flawed. Why? Because if you already believe, then you accept them and they make you feel good and if you don’t, you get angry that such a charlatan is getting away with saying things like that. Either way, it makes people focus on you, which inevitably leads to $$$.

“I think we can expect a lot more ridiculous posts from Jennifer”

Like ‘scientist agrees with Pope’, it’s classic ‘man bites dog’ stuff. She’s a Catholic convert who’s a woman, went - she says - straight from atheism to Catholicism and who didn’t do it on her deathbed. The fact that millions of women have headed the other way isn’t a story, but this is.

More power to her. The modern art post, which is what led me here, generated a thread in which Catholics got to understand what a Catholic is meant to be doing when they look at art, which is a sort of game of cosmic Pin the Tail on the Donkey, where the Donkey’s bottom is God and the tail is your opinion. Except you never get to see the donkey.

The idea that beauty is objective is simplistic, just about the only wrong thing you can say about art. But it’s a natural corollary of a mindset that can only deal in absolutes. If God exists, there is a final, conclusive answer as to what the best film made so far is. God knows the answer to that question.

And if he thinks Jaws the Revenge is better than the original Jaws, it is. Not, of course - and this is the punchline - that he’ll ever *tell you*. Jennifer starts this post with the idea that atheists find it ridiculous she needs ‘a man in the sky telling her what to do’. No - what we find ridiculous is that she *infers* what the man in the sky is telling her to do. If a voice boomed down saying ‘modern art is rubbish’, that would be one thing. But Jennifer’s actually saying - ‘*if* a voice boomed down, it would say ... ‘. 

So there’s this bizarre doublethink in place. We know, for a fact, that the vast majority of people who hear God or Jesus talking to them are schizophrenic. We can all agree that God isn’t telling that serial killer to slit up some !@#$%. And many of the rest are harmless - Faustina, that poor silly girl, at least never did anyone any harm. If she was living now, and wasn’t a nun, she’d be writing the same stories about Edward from Twilight.

So it’s not about *hearing* God, it’s about imagining what you would hear, based on scattered clues. And almost inevitably, there’s no challenge - it turns out that what God says is live the way you’re living now, but try to be a bit nicer, lose a bit of weight and to feel a bit more ashamed about whatever it is you’re doing that involves a penis. And this isn’t a sign of a lack of challenge, it’s a feedback loop - I think it feels right, so it’s right, so it feels right, so ...

Here’s the test scientists use, and one that everyone should: ‘I think I know how this works, what would I expect to see if I’m wrong?’. Accept the possibility you’re not at the right answer, you’ll end up closer to the real right answers a lot faster. And a lot of the time, when it comes to behavior, the right answer is ‘it’s a matter of opinion and personal taste’.

I usually joke that the religious reaction to beauty and what not is comparable to someone receiving the grandest gourmet meal but who needs to drown it with ketchup before eating it. In other words, they can’t appreciate beauty in it’s own right, they have to infuse or drown it with a god belief. What makes that worse is not only them saying others can’t appreciate the meal without ketchup, but constantly trying to force you to use ketchup. Of course using a god to validate your opinions is not quite the same thing, but it does speak to the belief that things can’t be good enough on their own, even your own opinions, without needing something else. That’s a shame.

@Jemima: “My mother, now retired, was a doctor specializing in reproductive health, and performed abortions for the British NHS.”

I see. This is why you must defend this terrible practice. To admit that abortion kills babies is to admit that your mother is a murderer, albeit a legally protected one. Psychologically, that would be an incredibly difficult thing to do. It really doesn’t matter what logical arguments are presented, your emotional attachment will prevent you from being able to grasp the truth.

BrandyM, exactly right.  For some reason, too, Lent brings out this sort of poster in the worst kind of of way.  They’re a bit fascist in their beliefs, but I suppose that’s hiding a lot of pain.

“I see. This is why you must defend this terrible practice.”

*sigh*

Before I told you that, my problem was my total ignorance, with you rhetorically asking:

“Are you a medical expert? Shall we discount everything you have to say because you do not hold a medical degree nor are you a widely recognized and highly regarded physician?”

But now it turns out that I do know what I’m talking about, my knowledge blinds me to reality. Thanks for turning on a sixpence, there.

OK ...

First of all, I have never performed an abortion, I am not qualified to.

My mother has performed abortions. She has also cut off men’s arms, removed eyes, helped remove someone’s heart, sucked the blood out of countless people. We can use emotive language all we like. She’s a doctor, her job is to improve the health outcomes of her patients.

If my mother murdered babies, that would be a bad thing. It’s not murder, they are not babies. It’s a perfectly legal practice, one that’s regulated and monitored more than any other. And the only one, incidentally, where, in the US, the doctor who performs the operation is at more risk than the patient, because of the terrorist threat posed by religious extremists.

Yeah ... I’m not going to win hearts and minds here on this one.

All I can do is suggest that instead of listening to the propaganda, on either side, just look at the law, look at the practice, look at who has abortions and why. There’s a crazy idea that it’s all about selfish thirtysomething middle class couples who want more disposable income so they happily abort away three times a year. That’s simply not the reality. When someone says that they can’t support another child, they don’t mean ‘and afford a new iPad each every few months’, they usually mean they have three to five children already and the father just walked out on them. Or that they are seventeen and don’t have a high school diploma. If you think it’s ever an easy choice, you simply don’t know what you’re talking about.

Oh ... what’s the use?

It’s legal, it’s not compulsory. Forcing someone to have an abortion against their will would be an appalling crime. The law has all sorts of exemptions on grounds of religious conscience.

...

End of discussion. There’s no point talking about this. I come from a family with actual day-to-day experience of the reality, you come from a generation brainwashed by constant, literal propaganda. I can fact away, it doesn’t matter, I am tainted with the sin of my mother, now, in your eyes. Blah blah. Neither of us is going to change our mind.

‘They’re a bit fascist in their beliefs’

It’s the fact that a Catholic can say that without even the slightest self awareness ...

Do you know what my grandfather did during the last war? Flew bombing missions over Nazi Germany, to try and defeat actual fascism. Do you know what your Pope was doing? Rottenfuhrer Ratzinger was trying to shoot him down, as part of a crew of an anti aircraft gun.

The Vatican signed deals with Mussolini and Hitler, it saw every level of the church keen to support fascism as a bulwark against communism. Most senior Nazis were Catholics, Hitler was baptized Catholic.

Does that make you a fascist? No, of course not. Does it make Catholicism fascist? No, although it’s always been right wing and reactionary.

But don’t you dare call me a fascist and then point to Ratzinger as a role model. Don’t you dare tell me I hate children and then excuse the systematic child abuse done under his jurisdiction on the grounds it was all a fuss about nothing.

OK ... I’m being called a fascist baby murderer. Your red mist has come down. Fine. Whatever. I think the opportunity to ask questions and talk reasonably has passed. Go back to your moral absolutes and concern for the eventual destination of your ghost, I’ll go back to trying to help actual human beings. 

Thanks for those who approached this discussion with the spirit I tried to. Let’s all try to be better people.

One final plea, then I’m gone.

I came here to find out what reasons modern people have for believing in things like moral absolutes in art, and Hell, and the moral authority of a priesthood that’s rotten with pedophiles.

I didn’t think people were delusional or insane or crazy, or even just stupid or ignorant. I assumed, and still do, that you’re nice, normal, reasonable people who want the world to be a better place and yourself to be a better person.

I tried exposing myself, in other words, to a worldview that I was not familiar with, that I instinctively feel to be ... mistaken.

Please try to do the same. Why do people like modern art? Why do people have abortions? Why do gay people want to get married? Why do people use condoms? Why do non-Catholics scoff a little when the Vatican claims moral authority? Why do people criticize Mother Teresa? Why do people challenge the Vatican’s view of history?

If you immediately leap to the answer ‘because they are wrong, and the world is full of wicked sinners’, or some variation ... resist that urge.

Think. Put yourself in someone else’s shoes. Think why someone who has an abortion *actually* has an abortion, what the experience is like. Don’t just research it on sites like wwww.atheistsmurderlittlebabies.com, just seek out some honest testimony.

Or just go to something less emotive:

As I’ve said, the post that brought me here is Jennifer’s not just blanket dismissal of all modern art, but the idea that this represents Ultimate Cosmic Truth, that it’s axiomatic that all modern art is awful and ugly. Why, then, do people make, exhibit, buy and enjoy it? The answer is not that they have strayed from the path of righteousness - there are Catholic modern artists, the Vatican had a fine exhibition of Christian modern art the last time I was there.

Do unto others what they would have them do unto you. That doesn’t mean ‘assume everyone’s like me’. It means see it from the other viewpoint. I tried to, here. I’m sorry it didn’t work out. I’ll keep trying elsewhere. Thanks for your time.

@Jemima: I am not suggesting you are a baby murderer. I am saying that your emotional attachment to your mother prevents you from seeing this issue rationally. To see the truth about the practice is to be forced to see the truth about the damage your mother has done. That’s why I didn’t bother to refute the rest of your statements. I can, but your need to defend your mother would mean that you would refuse to accept the truth as the truth no matter how logical. I don’t think you are evil, and I don’t think your mother is evil. I think abortions are evil, but I understand that we all fall prey to lies.

As a child, my mother told me abortions and birth control were necessary, and that they helped people. I believed her, until I came to see the truth.  You have been indoctrinated into the lies, just like I was, and because those lies were given to you by someone you hold dear you are unable to confront them.  Jennifer wasn’t raised Catholic. She wasn’t raised religious. She chose religion. I was raised to believe the Catholic Church was run by a bunch of women-hating and oppressive men even while my mother brought me to Mass each week and took me to Sunday School. Once I learned what the Church truly taught, then I came to believe. I wasn’t indoctrinated into this. I chose it.

Yes, the women who seek abortion are quite often the poor. They lack the trust that God is sending them this child for a reason, and that He knows what He is doing. They lack the understanding, as you do, that every child is in some way an answer to prayers of the mother, the father, and of the whole world past, present, and future.  They see the gift as a burden, and society encourages them to see it that way. Society tells them they have no right to add another mouth to feed rather than helping them to find a way to feed the child. This is the real tragedy. Too many people who could help provide will refuse to do so. Your mother thinks that she is doing them a favor, helping to prevent poverty and helping to prevent child abuse. It’s sad that the only way she can think of to prevent child abuse is to destroy children. It’s sad that she thinks she can eliminate poverty by exterminating the poor as if they were bugs. As a survivor of childhood abuse, I can tell you that life is preferable to death, even if abuse is something you have to go through in order to live. We all suffer. It’s part of this world’s realities. Death isn’t the solution.

This whole article can be boiled down to “Ignorance is bliss”. You may be more comfortable now that you don’t have to actually think about your choices, but, no, you are not better because you are Catholic, you’re just comforted.

Nora, there are an awful lot of words here from you, and an awful lot of anger.  Do you not care for research, or the truth?  I hope that someday that will change.  Until then, yes, that smacks of a fascist urge for control—of discourse, and of others’ beliefs.  And again, you sound like you’re in a lot of pain.  I pray that changes as well.

Last I checked, this was a public forum.  And I’m talking about just about everything you’ve written—so many assertions, but no support.  (And, in fact, you did respond to me—in fact, you quoted me, above.  Perhaps your anger is getting the best of you.)  In all seriousness, I think you should consider why you’re feeling compelled to post here, and why it troubles you so much that others believe differently than you.  “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you”:  I believe that in the give and take that is a forum combox, you have been treated well—do you feel you are doing the same?  Or are you angry that others do not share your worldview, for reasons to which you are unwilling to consider?

I apologize, Nora; I’ve confused you with Jemima.  But you too are very angry—I’ve seen you post a lot on these threads—thus the confusion.

I’ve called no one a fascist—I said that the kind of posts made by people like you, and Jemima, and a few others, smack of fascism, because they’re full of angry hatred and intolerance.  I stand by that statement.  You have a very strange idea of dialogue, but I do apologize for confusing you with someone, even if your posts are VERY (oddly?) similar.

LOL—Nora, you’re priceless.  Did you really just call me “missy”?  That’s awesome!  Bless you!

Again, thank you, Jennifer.  Very eye-opening and reassuring, actually, this discussion has been.  In the immortal words of Journey, “Don’t Stop Believing!”  :)  Keep up the good fight, mama!

“Superstition ain’t the way, no, no, no” - Stevie Wonder

@Nora: My statement was not that the mother prays to be impregnated by the rapist nor that the rapist is praying to impregnate the woman, but that the child is the answer to prayers. Yes, the answer to prayers of the woman and yes prayers of a rapist. Rapists don’t start life as rapists, they have become that way through a great deal of pain and abuse. They are still human beings and God still loves them and wants to call them to Him. The prayers that a child answers are prayers for healing, for a reason to live, for hope for the future, and for something beautiful to come out of something ugly.

My brother was a child borne of rape, and you have never met a more loving child than that one was. His heart brought healing and joy to my mother at a moment of her deepest despair, and a companion to me during what was about to be my darkest journey. My little sister was the child of a child molestor. She brought healing and unity to a family torn apart by the abuse, and she has proven to be a savior to two little abused and neglected girls who would have no one to help them otherwise.  God does not see things as man sees them. He brings good out of evil by ways we often do not understand until much later.

I think a far healthier way to look at such situations is to simply say it’s often possible for someone to make something positive out of a tragic situation, but to suggest or try to tell a victim that their tragedy actually wasn’t tragic, that it in fact fills the wishes of many people including theirs is cruel, heartless and selfish. The idea that it was part of a plan for the better good by a loving god is ridiculous on multiple levels even without the issue of there being a god. The rape victim is a victim, and the rapist is a monster. How the rapist came to be a rapist may provoke sympathy, but that makes him or her no less a monster.
Now as for this god thing, what a monster to have such a plan which involves people being raped, especially children. Now this is usually when someone invokes the free will defense, but how can their be both free will and a divine plan? They’re contradictory. Furthermore, if you believe your god is omniscient (all knowing) then before he created anything he knew everything that would happen, meaning he created people knowing full well most would be tortured for eternity. Why would such a being do that, and why would you consider such a being as perfect, loving and good? It’s nonsensical.
So please, don’t just show some common sense, but show some human empathy. Try to see things from others’ spots in life rather than simply from your own. It may make YOU feel better to think someone’s tragedy wasn’t actually tragic, but it’s not about you.

“Dehumanizing the other . . .” I have to plagiarize that phrase because it so accurately describes how people can support abortion on demand in this country.  Thank you!

@Nora: I never said God approves of rape or abuse. He most certainly does not. I do say that no child is conceived by accident, and that God has a plan for every human life. That life is meant to be a gift from God to the world. Those children may suffer, but anyone who suffers through rape or abuse can bring that suffering to Christ and find healing not only for themselves but for everyone around them. I did, though I walked in darkness a long time to find the peace that comes when you understand that your suffering is not meant to be a punishment but a gift. It is a gift to suffer some little bit now in order that you might help others to achieve heaven through it if you suffer while innocent, or to suffer a little now in order to avoid suffering the larger amount that you were due in eternity if you suffer for your sins. God is not wasteful. He repurposes everything for our good and His glory. We have only to hand it over to Him and allow His will to be done.

I have lived the grim realities of the darker side of human life. I have been abused, and I have been an abuser. My statements are hard-won wisdom, gained through much pain and searching for years for answers. If it sounds too good to be true that God so loves us that He is always working even at the darkest moments to bring good out of what was done for evil, you have not studied scripture nearly enough nor have you reflected sufficiently on the meaning of the crucifix.

@PhillyChief: I would never suggest that rape or incest is anything other than a tragedy. It most certainly is. It’s a heinous and most brutal act against the very nature of love itself. I do not say the act fulfills prayers. I said any child that results from such an act fulfills prayers. Huge difference.

God is love. Love requires that there be a choice to love, thus there must be an alternative to heaven, and thus there is Hell. Only those who choose to reject love through sin go to Hell. God does not desire that anyone should perish, but He will not force anyone to love Him either.

Brandy,

“I did, though I walked in darkness a long time to find the peace that comes when you understand that your suffering is not meant to be a punishment but a gift.”

Obviously this is a terrible experience, and if you’ve found a way through it, any way, that’s all to the good.

But yesterday you said, of me,

“I am saying that your emotional attachment to your mother prevents you from seeing this issue rationally.”

If that applies to me, why doesn’t this apply to you? I resist pop psychology, but ... well, you believe in a big immortal, benevolent parent in the sky who’s kind and sets fair rules and who’ll see everything right in the end.

@Brandy: Love is not creating things only to be tortured eternally. According to your belief system, your god is all knowing, meaning he knows everything everyone will ever do, so there is no choice. In your belief system, your god created most of humanity knowing they would end up being tortured eternally, so to say your god doesn’t desire anyone going to Hell is logically false. That god is not love. Even taking omniscience (all-knowing) off the table, creating a punishment for not following his rules is not love, either. That’s the “love” of an abuser. Your comments frighteningly echo those of battered wives who defend their abusive husbands saying their actions only show they love them. And yes, that’s forcing someone to love you. I can say my wife had a choice to make me a sandwich or have me beat her, but that’s not a choice, that’s abuse and I’d be a monster like the god character in your belief system. 
@Anne: Imposing your belief system on others and stripping them of their rights is dehumanizing the other.

@Nora: To say that any human being is a living, breathing monster is to deny the good that God made. No human being is purely evil. No human being without a portion of good. No human being is beyond redemption so long as they live. Their behavior may be horrible, their behavior may make a choice for good increasingly difficult for them, but they are not beyond hope as long as there is life and breath.

God does expect us to step up to the plate. Yes, we should stop it where we see it and work to be sure it doesn’t happen to someone else. However, once done offering it up to Him IS stepping up to the plate.  It’s not easy to trust in God when your trust in human beings has been so totally violated. It’s not easy to believe that God loves you when you feel so completely unlovable. It’s not a simple thing to give all of yourself to Him when you have been used by someone else. It’s not a walk-in-the-park journey. It’s a step-by-step, moment-by-moment journey that takes courage and sacrifice and constant prayer to make. It requires the willingness to face your past with brutal honesty, acknowledging everything that happened, forgiving everyone involved including yourself (you didn’t do anything wrong but there’s a psychological tendency to blame yourself anyway for being too weak to stop it), and then working to use what happened to you as a tool to help others with their healing by sharing that story. I’m still on this journey. I’m still working to be able to trust God enough to give Him everything I am.  It’s been 28 years since my stepfather last touched me, but I still find parts of myself that are broken and need healing.

Fetuses, not unborn babies, and anti-abortionists aren’t pro-life.

@PhillyChief: You would be right IF God created them FOR the purpose of suffering eternally. He didn’t. He doesn’t. He creates them to love and be loved. That they choose to reject love is their own fault. Your argument that since God knows everything there is no choice is invalid. It would only be true if you knew everything in advance. Since you do not know, you are free to choose.

Heaven and Hell both contain the fire of God’s divine love. People in heaven aren’t hurt by those flames because they join themselves to that fire. People in Hell are hurt by the flames because they refused to.  Either way you go into the fire, but whether the fire is pleasure or pain is entirely up to you.

‘abortion on demand’

Define ‘abortion on demand’, and explain where in the USA such a thing is available.

Nora’s point here is spot on - sheltered middle class women seem to conflate the ‘choice’ of being able to have a abortion with the ‘choice’ of drape color for their window treatments. They seem to think - or to have swallowed whole the propaganda - that having an abortion is something that’s as quick and easy, both psychologically and practically, as popping to the food court at a mall for a bite to eat.

This is simply not the reality of it. *Having* the choice doesn’t make it an *easy* choice.

I’m sorry, I said I wouldn’t comment again, I have. What is ‘dehumanizing’ is seeing anyone who favors legal abortion as a monster, or anyone who has one, for whatever reason, as a ‘baby killer’.

Underlying it all is a deep-seated hatred of sex and women, the idea that if women have sex they have to suffer the consequences, that sex is for babies and nothing else, that the only consideration is a maximum quantity of babies, without any thought about what quality of life they would have. That God’s plan involves unnecessary suffering. And that would be bad enough without the fact, acknowledged by the church itself, that one in ten of the priests who push this vile message are, themselves, child abusers. 

Jennifer’s new column in which she asks who babies ‘belong’ to is just as pernicious - she sees babies as a possession, a consumer item. The latest ‘must have’.

@Nora: Yes, God knew what would happen all along. Yes, he allowed the child to be conceived. He brings good (a new life) out of evil (a rape). And, yes, He is perfectly “cool” with doing so because He knows the good that will come of that child. God does not see as man sees. He is not “totally down” with rape, but He is “totally down” with bringing good out of that evil.

There’s nothing passive about what I am saying. It is an act of the will to turn your sufferings over and to allow yourself to be healed, and to in turn heal others. If it were passive, if it were easy, all those who were victims would do it and we would no longer have all the pain and all the crime. Most simply will not let go of their pain. They clutch it to themselves even though it’s like clutching shards of glass to yourself. They refuse to forgive, refuse to let go, and refuse to see God working for their good in the midst of it. This leads them to anger, leads them to bitterness, leads them to loneliness that they try to fill with every kind of unhealthy thing such as drugs and alcohol and sex and anything that won’t force them to face the truth.

@Nora: “Nothing makes Satan happier than when you confuse him with God and start feeling all good about yourself while you’re doing his work. Nothing.”

On this, you and I are totally agreed.

Phillychief,

The problem with arguing theology is that you’ve already gone down the rabbit hole. The Vatican has all the twisted logic worked out - God sent that man to rape your daughter for the greater good, only he didn’t send him, it was the rapist’s free will, God can’t subvert that, and the rape victim’s free will wasn’t a factor because ... and so on and so on. It’s not doublethink, it’s decuplethink, at least, and they’ve literally spent two thousand years brewing it.

There’s only one way to win a theological argument: ‘please present me with one piece of evidence of this position you’d consider to be persuasive if this wasn’t a theological discussion’. Watch the theologians recoil like vampires from a crucifix.

If there are moral absolutes, then they apply to God, too. If I could stop one rape (particularly without even the slightest risk to myself), I would consider that the best action of my life. God *could*, the Catholics claim, stop every rape, but chooses not to. If that God exists, the only possible moral action humanity could take would be to work out a way to track it down to its lair and kill it.

“Yes, God knew what would happen all along. Yes, he allowed the child to be conceived. He brings good (a new life) out of evil (a rape).”

And in the vast majority of rapes, a child isn’t conceived so the greater good is served by ... ?

This is a very interesting parlor game - take the most horrible thing you can imagine and explain how it’s not horrible it’s wonderful, but you couldn’t come up with a better example of arguing that darkness is light. Rape’s a wonderful gift from God, ladies! Rejoice!

@Brandy: No, I’m afraid you’re not looking at the whole picture. In your system, your god is all knowing so he knew, before he created everyone, what they’d do, therefore he created most people knowing they’d be tortured eternally. What an individual thinks he or she is deciding is irrelevant because an all-knowing god already knows what you’ll do. Furthermore, if he’s the all knowing, all powerful creator character, then everything is by his purpose. Didn’t you yourself refer to results of a rape as part of your god’s plan? Don’t believers always talk of everything having a divine purpose? As for your fire of divine love, that’s the same as the “love” exhibited by an abusive partner, or even the mob (ie - “you don’t have to pay us, it’s your choice, but it’d be a real shame if something were to happen to you…”)
@Jemima: No religion really has these ideas worked out to be bulletproof, the believers simply believe they’re bulletproof like the Chinese rebels who thought they were bulletproof during the Boxer Rebellion. If a believer actually looked at the whole objectively, they’d see it all doesn’t add up, but most, as we see with Brandy, simply refuse to do that an instead obtusely fixate on just one or two pieces of the puzzle. You can shine a light in the dark, but you can’t make people see. They have to want to see, and a common thread in deconversion stories is people stopped and looked critically at the whole belief system and saw problems. From there, some instantly become atheists, some slowly get there through progressively watering down their belief system until there’s nothing left, and some just go with the Deist/Agnostic cop-out. So yes, it can be a rabbit hole and yes, it often is a waste of time (ironically, Matthew 7:6 is apropos), however one day they may get it, plus who knows who’s reading this? Another common deconversion story is of the ardent believer who goes researching their belief system to prove someone like me wrong, and then they start looking at the whole picture and then…

@Nora: I do not, nor did I ever, blame the victim. The victim often blames themselves, and this is what I was saying. God is not ever “down with evil” nor did I ever say so. He permits it because to stop it is to also interfere with the ability of the person who commits it to choose not to do it even at the last second. He won’t ever interfere with free will. He will try to influence us through our conscience or influence others to stop us, but He will not interfere.

I do say that many victims choose not to let go of their pain. They could not stop the rape or the incest, but they do have a choice in how to deal with it once it has happened. They can live forever in their anguish and blame the person who hurt them for where they are, or they can take control of their lives and choose to let go of the hate and the pain and move forward. This is not a denial of their humanity. It is a recognition of the truth about it. They don’t have to remain a victim forever unless they choose to.

@PhillyChief: Your soul came from God and goes back to Him. On this you do not have a say, just as in your life there are many things outside of your direct control. As in those cases, your only choice is in how you respond to the facts of the matter. You may choose only in what manner your soul returns - either in anguish or in joy. It is still your choice to make. 
Your argument against this is tantamount to saying that criminals should not be held accountable for their actions since they only had one choice - obey the law or go to jail.

@Jemima: I have never said that rape is a wonderful gift from God. It is a terrible thing, as I have said many times. A child, however, is a wonderful gift from God and the circumstances under which it was conceived do not change that. You’re right that the majority of rapes do not result in pregnancy. God knows the human heart. He knows who would be most helped by a child and who would not.

I am not saying that horrible things like rape, incest, and murder are not horrible things. They are. What I am saying is that God always finds ways to make good things come out of what is horrific. Redemption came through the crucifixion of an innocent man. Good came out of what was horrific. In more secular terms, the rose is nurtured by the minerals from decomposing plant and animal life, beauty born from death. No, good does not always come out of bad. Many times we reject God’s efforts to bring good out of bad and so more bad things happen.

Brandy—you’re completely right here.  Thank you for putting it so well, and keep up the good fight.

Elaboration to Brandy:  I’ve been thinking over the past day about the point you’ve raised here. about good coming from bad.  I think it
s a subtle point, and one that goes against our rather simplistic thinking as a culture—and I think that makes it hard to grasp for those who tend to think n reductionist therms (which is a lot of us, a lot of the time).  Your point reminded me of two Catholic writers:  Gabriel Garcia Marquez, and Flannery O’Connor—both of whom talk about the strange gifts of God, and the way we tend to reject them because they’re not what we wanted or expected.  To trust in God when it seems like everything is going in the wrong direction is a very difficult thing, and yet we must advocate for it as you are doing.  When it comes to public policy, aside from religious questions, it simply comes down to whether or not the law of the land should allow for the taking of an innocent civilian’s life, for any reason.  The obvious answer to that is “no,” which is why people twist and turn to try to make it o.k..  The fact is, the very nature of our biology presses hard truths upon us, and that’s just the way it is.  Advocating for the death of an innocent life, for any reason (no matter how eloquently expressed) is to side with the monsters of the twentieth century.

re: Jemima made these comments: “If God told you to jump over a cliff, would you jump over a cliff?” and “What about the lies the Church has told - that condoms ‘spread AIDS’, for example.”

Taking the last first, the Church never said any such thing. What they have said is statistically verifiable - that abstinence and monogamy prevent AIDS far more successfully than distributing condoms. Condom use does have success in slowing the spread of AIDS, assuming the condom does not fail (break or tear). However, simply distributing condoms doesn’t prevent HIV transfer any better than it prevents pregnancies for this simple reason - few people have the discipline to use a condom every single time. (This is why condom use is promoted by Planned Parenthood. It is a marketing ploy guaranteeing them future abortion clients. They know the teenagers they are passing these things out to will be just as responsible with condoms as they are with underage drinking and recreational drug use.)

Many people simply don’t want to use condoms because, not ironically, it seems to put a barrier between them and their sex partner. The promiscuous behavior that is encouraged by the idea of “safe sex” always results in episodes of unprotected sex. The promiscuous behavior is the root cause of the spread of the virus, and that fact is the point of Catholic teaching regarding HIV prevention. Oh, and any responsible doctor will say the same thing because it is simple verifiable scientific fact.

The “If God told you to jump off a cliff” question is just silly. Oddly, the facts of these matters are implied in the atheist disbelief in a deity, and yet ignored as they contend that a person or persons were motivated toward some heinous act by their deity.

Saying “The Devil made me do that” or “God made me do that” doesn’t mean either were involved in the decision making process. The guilty party is excusing their behavior with whatever is at hand. They no more believe that God made them do it then you or I do. You are treating their lie as a verified fact that something you don’t believe in made them do it. Confused much?

What has not been brought out, is that some of the abusers amongst the priesthood could have been themselves abused.

@Jemima: I do not see those who support, have had, or perform abortion as monsters. I do not see anyone as a monster. Their behavior may be absolutely wrong and totally depraved, but to call them a monster would be to deny that there is good within them which would also be to deny that God is in them, something which I would never do since I adhere to the teachings of the Catholic Church. I understand that many of those involved in abortion see themselves as doing what is good and right, or as helping others. The mother of 1 who has an abortion because she doesn’t know how she’ll feed the one she already has and the extra one isn’t evil. She is trying, in her own mind, to protect two lives at the cost of one. The problem is that she is making a permanent decision based on a temporary decision. She takes an innocent life because she doesn’t know what’s up ahead and is afraid that things won’t change for the better. She uses her fear and her uncertainty to convince herself that it’s for the best even though she has the alternative of adoption, but that would require self-sacrifice on her part that she doesn’t know if she can handle. My mother aborted four children. Those were evil actions, but that doesn’t make her evil. It makes her someone who was afraid, uncertain, and did not have trust in God.

I have no hatred for either sex or women. There is beauty in both. Sex, though, is like a power tool. Because it can create life it necessarily should be treated with respect and not trivialized by being reduced to merely a form of entertainment. The Catholic Church has not ever taught that sex is for procreation alone. We teach, and rightly so, that it is for procreation, for the bonding of the husband and wife, and as a foretaste of heaven. If we were merely interested in procreation and the number of children a woman has, don’t you think we would have been the first to embrace in vitro fertilization? Instead, we reject it precisely because it eliminates the bonding and pleasure aspects of the sexual union.

Women are not empowered by abortion. They are weakened by it. The respect for sex that a man should have is gone when he does not have to face the consequences of his actions. Men don’t treat women better in this day and age than they did 50 years ago. In many ways, they treat them worse. Rape is at much higher levels than before birth control and abortion were legalized. The year after abortion was legalized the percentage of rapes per 100,000 people went from 9.4% to 11.2%; today it sits at 28.7%. Women are not viewed with respect, they are viewed as objects of pleasure to be pursued and discarded when convenient. If you want to know the true Catholic view on sexuality, read Humanae Vitae. Read Theology of the Body. It’s not about hate. It’s about true respect for men and for women.
http://www.disastercenter.com/crime/uscrime.htm

@Nora: I am not judging anyone, only behavior, and I agree that only God knows what is in the human heart. However, I also know that I have seen first hand many otherwise good people who blame the past for who they are today and allow themselves to become angry and bitter instead of taking a good long look at themselves in the mirror and realizing that they have the power to CHANGE that. They have the power to change their lives by CHANGING how they respond to the past. That is the true beauty of free will - we have the power to CHOOSE and no one can ever take it from us unless we allow them to convince us we do not have a choice to make.

re: St. Brigid and the abortion. This is a story written by a monk in 650 ad. It is referenced in an article written for the Australian Reproductive Health Alliance (an abortion rights advocacy group.) This unverifiable story written by Cogitosus was not a work of Catholic Moral Theology, or Catholic Moral Teaching. It is a latin hagiography - in other words, it was a story, along with many others, regarding this miracle of making a baby go away. We should not conflate stories about saints with authentic church teaching. However, in the article I reference above (http://www.arha.org.au/papersandarticles/catholicism and reproductive rights.pdf) that is exactly what they are trying to do. Since they can’t find authoritative Catholic teaching that contradicts itself, they have to take a story, elevate it to the status of infallible teaching, then compare and contrast. LOL

Where I said she is making a permanent decision based on a temporary decision I meant to say she is making a permanent decision based on a temporary circumstance. Her circumstances can and will change. Death, though, allows for no change.

‘“that condoms ‘spread AIDS’, for example.” Taking the last first, the Church never said any such thing’

You are objectively wrong.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2003/oct/09/aids

Please admit that you were wrong. At the moment, I’m going to charitably assume it was ignorance. If you don’t admit your error, I’ll just conclude it was a deliberate lie.

“@Jemima: No religion really has these ideas worked out to be bulletproof”

Of course, but there are so many firebreaks in the theology that it amounts to the house fixing the deck - ‘we can’t know the mind of God’, ‘we can only view things on the human scale - a million years from now, we might see good came from it’ and that ultimate one ‘oh, if only you had eyes to see it’. You can’t win, not with such double standards in play as ‘there is a slight anomaly in the latest astronomical data = all of science is wrong, therefore Jesus’.

It’s nonsense. But it’s like arguing with a Dylan fan when you’re both stoned - you’ll be there all night, and ten hours later, they won’t have budged an inch.

It’s fun, of course, to show *just* how stupid the game is at times.

“This unverifiable story”

Ha ha ha ha ha!

Oh, please tell me you’re real, and not some atheist come along to have a laugh.

The Catholic church cite Cogitosus as an authority on Brigid:

http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/02784b.htm

They omit the bit about the abortion Cogitosus wrote, deliberately, because it’s an awkward fact. There’s a line in there about oh, he had a vivid Celtic imagination, which is presumably meant to defuse the problem if someone spots it. But it is very clear that her first hagiographer, who may possibly even have been a relative, who the Church happily cite for other details of her life, thought she performed a miraculous abortion.

“Since they can’t find authoritative Catholic teaching that contradicts itself”

Is the doctrine that women can’t be ordained infallible?

I ask, because the Church has contradicted itself on that one.

I love your topics and always feel inspired by them. I’m also amazed by the number of angry, judgemental atheists who read your column. I simply can’t imagine you were one of them before your conversion. God is amazing ;-)
Keep up the good work and God bless.

“(This is why condom use is promoted by Planned Parenthood. It is a marketing ploy guaranteeing them future abortion clients.”

Poe’s Law states that a parody of a religious extremist is indistinguishable from an actual religious extremist. I’m sorry, I have absolutely no idea if you truly believe that quoted statement or not. Where on earth are you parroting that from?

“Oh, and any responsible doctor will say the same thing because it is simple verifiable scientific fact.”

I’m guessing ‘responsible’ here doesn’t mean that, like me, it’s someone with a doctorate in a relevant medical discipline with specific responsibilities precisely in this field? ‘Responsible’ means someone who thinks like you do, I presume?

I can state this categorically: you are wrong. I can cite and cite and cite to prove this, but I’m not going to change your mind, there’s just no point. If anyone’s interested, Google. He’s entitled to his own views, not to his own facts.

“Oddly, the facts of these matters are implied in the atheist disbelief in a deity, and yet ignored as they contend that a person or persons were motivated toward some heinous act by their deity.”

No. They *thought* they were.

OK. This is simple enough to explain:

The police catch a man who killed a woman in the street. The killer confesses and says he heard a voice from God telling him to kill the woman.

Now, I’m an atheist. I do not believe that he heard the voice of God. By definition. I think, logically, the Catholic position is ‘well ... he might have’, but in reality, I imagine that everyone here is, like me 100% convinced that God didn’t tell him to do that.

He was *motivated* by his *belief* in the reality of that message of God. This is entirely independent of the existence of God. Now, yes, some people who claim to believe in God are lying - we know this from surveys of clergymen, many of whom have admitted they lost their faith years ago. But at least some clergymen and psychotic murderers are sincere. Crazy, but sincere. They truly believe God told them to do it.

“I’m also amazed by the number of angry, judgemental atheists who read your column.”

I’m not angry or judgmental. I got angry yesterday by someone saying that I was a fascist, for reasons I think are fairly obvious. If we’re having a ‘where was your side during the war?’ contest between atheists and Catholics ... well, that’s not the high ground you’re on, there, sweetie.

“http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2003/oct/09/aids
Please admit that you were wrong.”

While we wait for that apology ... if we all only married once, were both virgins on our wedding night, never got a blood transfusion, if all needles everywhere we perfectly sterile, there wouldn’t be AIDS. This is not the world we live in.

Seeing AIDS as a punishment is medieval nonsense. But if you want to know the actual statistics, do you know which large group has the lowest incidence of AIDS?

You might have thought ‘Catholic priests’. No.

http://www.libchrist.com/other/homosexual/catholicpriestsAIDS.html

The rate of AIDS among Catholic priests is *four times higher* than the general population.

And the answer for this is simple - they live in ignorance, denial and shame. It’s a tragedy, but it was a completely preventable one - if they’d worn condoms. But, no, they’ve been told that that’s what *causes* them to stray. Never mind *that they strayed anyway*. And they are *not* bad people. I’m sure they have far less sex than the average person. But I’m sure they have far more unsafe sex than most, these days, too.

The large group with the lowest incidence of AIDS? Lesbians. If you are a lesbian, and you yourself have never had a male partner, you have a vanishingly small chance of having AIDS, regardless of how many partners you’ve had. Without going into too much detail, this is regardless of sexual practices.

Or, in other words, if the Catholic clergy was made up of promiscuous lesbians, there would be far fewer incidences of AIDS than in the actual celibate male clergy. And fewer priests paying for their mistresses to have abortions, of course.

Frater Bovious hasn’t apologized for his lie yet.

Can anyone else answer the other question I asked him: was the declaration that women could never be ordained into the priesthood Infallible or not?

The declaration in question is Ordinatio Sacerdotalis.

The stakes are this: Catholic theology is that one Infallible statement is proved false, the whole of Catholicism is false. Infallible statements are actually quite rare, and always clearly marked as such. But they are Truth.

Here’s the problem they have. They know, one day, they’re going to have to ordain women priests. But they Infallibly declared that they can’t.

So they’ve wriggled furiously and contradicted themselves left, right and center as to whether Ordinatio Sacerdotalis is infallible or not.

One woman priest, ever, in the past, present or future = Catholicism false. It’s not me saying that (I know where I stand on that one!), it’s the Vatican. Unless Ordinatio Sacerdotalis wasn’t Infallible.

Where were Catholics during World War II?  Let’s see- they were dying in concentration camps, martyring themselves-St Maximillian Kolbe and Edith Stein, to name just a couple. They were considered the “lone voice crying out in the wilderness” according to the NY Tomes of the time—Pope Pius XII.  (Pius XII was, in fact, considered so heroic by Rabbi Zolli, the Rabbi of Rome, that he converted to Catholicism after the war and took Pius’ name as his own.) Let’s see—what else?  Um, hiding Jews in the Vatican and on other property—yup, doing that.  They were issuing fake baptismal certificates to save Jewish children. Hiding Jews in countless monasteries and convents—and dying because of it, gladly, because it was the right thing to do and we would do it again.  This is just the tip of the iceberg.

So look it up, do some research, or stay a fascist pig who comes onto Catholic sites making a laughingstock of yourself with your ignorant blather Your choice Jemima.  You freakin’ moron.

“a fascist pig”

And there we go again.

What was the current Pope doing? Into what faith tradition was Hitler baptized?

Here’s some research: http://www.nobeliefs.com/nazis.htm

OK ... I said I would go away yesterday. I will now. Keep believing those lies that make you a better person. Keep believing in those little holes in condoms and that God’s ordained modern art is rubbish. Keep believing that the real child abuse scandal is that the media have hyped it up. Bye.

Oh my, biased websites from the resident fascist.  When I say research, jemima, I don’t mean typing in leading search terms to find articles to support your fascist leanings.  How about you quit attributing views to people that they don’t hold, pull your head out of where you keep it,. and learn something that’s actually true.  Moron.

And, BTW—I dare you to not respond.  Can you tell the truth, even in such a small thing?

I’m just curious, since I haven’t seen any Catholics step up here, is calling people morons and fascists part of that high moral code of yours, or do you turn a blind eye to it because it’s aimed at someone you don’t like? Just curious. I mean, moron is one thing but fascist? Really?

Yup. fascist.  I always love it when non-Catholics start hyperventilating when someone dares to call someone what she really is. Oh no!  Someone used tough language and she claims to be Catholic!  LOL.  What idiocy.  Jemima behaves exactly as a fascist would in terms of how she deals with information.  Sorry if that truth hurts. I’d rather speak a harsh truth than whinge around pretending that meek doesn’t mean what it really means.

Anyway, if anyone’s interested in what the good Cardinal represented in Jemima’s dubious link above actually said (rather than what the gaurdian—lol!—says he said),  here ya go:

http://www.wf-f.org/Lopez-Trujillooncondoms.html

If you’d rather believe propaganda, well—prepare to be called what a believer of propaganda is normally called.  Peace.

I know that word gets thrown around a lot today but seriously, do you know what it means? By what stretch of the imagination is she a fascist? And also, are you saying fascist is a commonplace word for Catholics?

So I read your link Elizabeth, and I have to say this Cardinal guy sounds like a real !@#$% (I don’t restrain my words either honey, but at least I know what they mean). So basically, since the belief system is against condoms, there’s just no way, regardless of their potential good, that a Catholic could say anything good about them, so this clown cites a 90% effectiveness for condoms as justification for saying they don’t protect against HIV? Seriously? Think about that for a moment. Any product that was 90% effective at anything would be hailed as quite the product.
Anyway, I think #s 10, 11 and 12 are quite telling. He says the church is doing things to help but then admits all they do is comfort the dying, which doesn’t even sound like much comfort if they just preach how they shouldn’t have been “bad” in the first place. Wow.
If I may, I think I can sum this all up. The church’s position is condoms are wrong, so they’re wrong, end of story. Nevermind that a faithful spouse may contract HIV through a blood transfusion or some other means beyond his or her control, no condoms! It’s also the position of the church that gay sex and promiscuity is wrong, so thank god AIDS is here as proof that it’s wrong, so there’s no incentive for the church to actually address AIDS, is there? No AIDS means no Earthly punishment which means sexual promiscuity will run rampant. Oh no! So don’t treat it, fight condom use (afterall, it’s 90% effective) and establish clinics not to treat but to “comfort” people as they die, which serves the dual role of making the church look nice while highlighting the horror of AIDS, which of course is punishment from god. Quite the little scam. That makes the kiddie-diddlin’ seem like nothing.

Why now, yes I do, and thanks for asking, Phyllo. While fascist has, of course, it’s strict political definition, in terms of common use, and in its depreciative meaning,it’s now often used to designate a person who advocates a particular viewpoint or practice in a manner perceived as intolerant or authoritarian.  So you have your gender-fascists, and your eco-fascists, and probably, yes, your Catholic-fascists; but jemima is your garden-variety atheo-fascist.  She’s impervious to fact, angry and invested in agitprop instead of reality. She hates religion, especially Catholicism, enough to seek out a place where Catholics gather to share their thoughts on-line, and tries to invade, weedlike.  She’s treated well by others, lapping up the kindness she knows they will try to show her, which is right and good.  But we Catholics need to be careful not to confuse niceness with truth—that’s just mannerism.  the truth is, she is how she is, at least here. So yeah, fascist.  What’s the problem, chief?

Also the thing about fascists is, they’re not good readers. They lash out at people in the most irrational of ways, and it makes them very, very silly.  My link was simply to show what he did say, as opposed to what the gaurdian said he said.  You’re just saying you like what he said (and BTW, only a misogyno-fascist would call me “honey”, sparky).  You think 10 outta 100 people dying because they’ve believed a lie is cool. Probably since they’re African, it’s especially cool with you.  Whatever.  But do learn to read the words on the page, not the voices in your head.

Well I find it sad that fascist is pretty meaningless then if it’s as watered down as you say. I blame Fox News and the Tea Party.
I find it amusing you consider telling people a product that’s 90% effective can help protect them is lying to them. 10 out of 100 die due to that lie you say? How many out of 100 die due to the Cardinal’s lie? How many die in the so-called facilities they have where there’s no actual treatment? I think, by your definition (not mine) you’re sounding rather fascist-like; you seem impervious to facts, angry, and invested in your own agitprop.
Anyway, I should remind you (I said it several times above, but there are lots of comments) that many atheists set their Google, Yahoo, or whatever alerts to words like “atheist” so they can find silly articles like this one online where they’re usually being disparaged or at the very least someone is (perhaps accidentally) spreading misinformation. It’s not that atheists seek out religious sites because they’re cranky, they secretly want to be Christians, or any number of other silly reasons Christians like to think are the motivations. Some of us are also dumb enough to click those “notify me of follow-up comments” and get caught up in more silly arguments then we really should bother with. I do recall Jemima saying she came by this site due to a post on art by Jennifer, so you’re hypothesis appears incorrect as to her motivations, just as they were about my alleged disdain for Africans. Oh, and the misogyno-fascist claim was incorrect too.

Sure it was, Philly-cheese.  Blame the OED, BTW, and English language usage for what you call the “watering down” of a term—you know, those nasty masses using language any which way they want, instead of the way the linguisto-fascists would have them do.

I hate to be nitpicky, but a WHO 90% success rate means, again, that there’s a 10% failure rate.  That’s their statistic, and failure=got AIDS using a condom=death.  Try to engage the actual argument, cheeseman.

As for jemima’s motivations, I didn’t say anything of those things about her—I said she’s obviously filled with hatred, based on her posts.  Again, try to look at the words, not what the voices say.

For the record, I’m not angry—though I understand the misogyno-fascist tendency to read frank language and think “ooh nooo, angree wooomin!”  It’s ok, I forgive you.

And it’s “your”, not “you’re.”

@ Elizabeth K. I don’t think calling someone a moron is going to help in persuading anyone of your views.
With regard to the picture of the Catholic bishops giving a Nazi salute. I understand that handshaking was banned by the Nazis, and that if you didn’t give a Nazi salute you could expect reprisals. We don’t live in a terror state, even though Philli-Chief might think that Catholics are a blight on the world. All the Catholic Church has got is authority, which comes and goes. I am sure President Mugabe, who is Catholic, will take on Catholic teaching when he wants to punish the people he dislikes, and not take on Catholic teaching when he doesn’t want to.

A postscript to my previous post. I am sure there were Catholics in Nazi Germany who did support the Nazis, so I am not trying to totally excuse those disturbing images

Hello, everyone.

Over at the ‘Catholic Guide to Atheists’ thread, we just concluded quite a civilized discussion about the differences between the way atheists and Catholics think. I learned things, I hope other people did, too.

I read this thread last night, and it seemed to be going the same way until the word ‘fascist’ got bandied around by first Elizabeth, then Jemima. Here’s how these things work: if you accuse someone of fascism or being Hitler, or of their side backing Hitler, decent debate goes out the window. Internet denizens call this ‘Godwin’s Law’.

Atheists get annoyed with Catholics doing this to them, as it was widely reported the Pope did before his visit to the UK last year. The truth of the matter is complicated. Some atheists supported Hitler willingly (although atheism was illegal in Nazi Germany), but many Catholics did. It’s a fact that Hitler was baptized Catholic, he believed in God for the rest of his life, it’s unclear if he remained Catholic. And irrelevant - he was one man, we’re talking about a nation. In a totalitarian state, some people would have been compelled to be members of a Party. In total war, it’s possible to support your country without supporting your leaders. It seems fair to say that the current Pope was compelled to, and unfair to demand of him that he was one of those who resisted. Few, if any, of us have lived in such a society.

The Catholic church saw fascism as a way to fight communism, which they thought was the bigger menace. Early on, they signed treaties with both Hitler and Mussolini. It’s fair to say that the position changed as the War began and continued. It’s fair to say that many individual Catholic priests were always anti-Nazi. It’s equally fair - as those links demonstrate - that many German Catholic bishops were complicit and willing Nazis. This seems true of the general population. To smear *every* Catholic with that is unfair, to absolve every Catholic is naive.

Then we come to facts. Shaking hands was not illegal in Nazi Germany, and that’s really easy to prove:

http://www.gettyimages.nl/detail/3355382/Hulton-Archive?Language=en-US
http://www.gettyimages.nl/detail/3266303/Hulton-Archive?Language=en-US

Now, those sites Jemima linked to might have an agenda, but those are genuine photos. It’s clear those bishops are not saluting under protest. The awkward truth is that while there were Catholic heroes under Nazism, it’s a simple matter of record that there were also Catholic Nazis and Catholic priest Nazis. This has no bearing at all on what Catholics living in America in 2011 are up to.

My suggestion is this: no one here should call people fascists. In the name of healthy debate, don’t respond to anyone that does. What good can it do?

As for Elizabeth’s other claim:

“a WHO 90% success rate means, again, that there’s a 10% failure rate.  That’s their statistic, and failure=got AIDS using a condom=death.”

She seems to be claiming that 10% of people who use condoms die of AIDS. If so, it’s so divorced from reality that it’s barely worthy of a response. The facts are these: no contraception is 100% effective. Condoms can split or be misused or be put on too late. The actual WHO figure for pregnancy is 93-95%. And 95% doesn’t mean “every time you have sex using a condom you have a one in twenty chance of getting pregnant”. It means that, over the course of a year, every 100 women using condoms, 5 will get pregnant.

This report spells out some of the facts about condom use.

http://www.advocatesforyouth.org/storage/advfy/documents/fscondom.pdf

It mentions Uganda, a country that saw its HIV infection rates drop dramatically when the government started promoting condom use.

While it was sensationally reported, the Ugandan experience was one reason ‘the Pope said using condoms was OK’ last November. The Vatican now believes that it’s the lesser of two evils.

http://www2.timesdispatch.com/news/2010/nov/24/aids241-ar-673685/

The ‘permeable condom’ fiasco, in which a member of the church spread a dangerous lie (there’s no debate about what Cardinal Trujillo said, he said it on camera, he said it in his capacity as a Vatican spokesman, he was asked a direct, non-leading question),

http://news.bbc.co.uk/nol/shared/spl/hi/programmes/panorama/transcripts/sexandtheholycity.txt

[Is it the position of the Vatican that the virus, the HIV virus can pass through the condom?

Cardinal ALFONSO LOPEZ TRUJILLO
Pontifical Council for the Family
Yes, yes, because this is something which the scientific community accepts, and doctors know what we are
saying.  You cannot talk about safe sex.  One should speak of the human value, about the family, and about
fidelity.]

seems to have been a turning point. To their credit, the Vatican seems to have moved away from ‘condoms are icky’ to a more practical, reality-based position.

There are opinions, there’s rhetoric, there are points of view, there are different perspectives and then there’s facts. Elizabeth K is not in command of the facts. Jemima was, but both are guilty of bandying around rhetoric that can only get people’s backs up.

Instead of calling each other Nazis, perhaps we can get back to talking about the issues in Jennifer’s original article.

Steve:  I was not claiming that 10% of people who use condoms die of AIDS. Please, if you’re going to get on your high horse about getting facts right, then get the facts right.  The statistics I’m talking about SPECIFICALLY RELATE to AIDS infection rates of those who use condoms.  AIDS, particularly in Africa, is a death sentence.  WHO’s statistics claim a 90% success rate for preventing AIDS.  That means a 10% failure rate.

Indeed, Steve, I am in command of the facts, but they seem to slipping away from you. 

And BTW, Nazi’s aren’t fascists in the strict sense—though perhaps they are in the sense I’m using it, given above.  Re:  the Nazi rhetoric here, Jemima made a claim that her side, which I’m presuming is the atheists (and God help them if she’s a representative) has the moral high ground in history.  I listed a series of facts in response to that, which she chose not to engage (gosh, I wonder why?)  I’ve made no argument whatsoever about the photographs—here’s my silence   .  Why?  It doesn’t matter.  The claim that atheists were somehow more on the moral high ground in World War II in comparison to Catholics is laughable.  I stated why.  Them’s the facts. I do find it curious hat atheists are always hyperventilating about terms like “fascist”. but never about the lies those among their ranks spread.

> Please, if you’re going to get on your high horse about
> getting facts right, then get the facts right. 

Elizabeth, I don’t want to get into a fight with you. If you want to be better understood, master basic English usage and learn that one of the basics of courtesy is that people will get cross if you call them a fascist. And that people will ‘choose not to engage’ with you because, frankly, at times you seem to be not so much a person as one of those fridge magnet poetry sets - one called something like ‘Incoherent Ranting’: if you take out the words ‘anger’, ‘fascist’, ‘hyperventilate’, ‘moron’, ‘blame’, ‘hatred’, there’s very little left in your posts. No one else here, not even Jemima, is doing that. 

A number of people on this thread have asked you to stop. I’m ‘choosing not to engage’ with you again. If you feel this represents some massive victory on your part and the only possible reason is that you were entirely in command of all facts and that the statement “In a two-year study of sero-discordant couples (in which one partner was HIV-positive and one was HIV-negative), no uninfected partner became infected among couples using condoms correctly” means that one in ten of them got AIDS and died, then well done, you won. No doubt this makes you feel like a ‘better person’.

@Elizabeth: “You have heard that it was said to your ancestors,
You shall not kill; and whoever kills will be liable to judgment.
But I say to you,whoever is angry with brother will be liable to judgment;
and whoever says to brother, ‘Raqa,’will be answerable to the Sanhedrin;
and whoever says, ‘You fool,’ will be liable to fiery Gehenna. - Jesus speaking to his disciples in Matthew chapter 5. Please don’t let them get to you so much that they become a stumbling block on your walk with Christ. If you’re getting angry or frustrated or taking it personally, get up and take a walk or do something else. Wait to respond until you are calm and your thoughts are collected. Hearts are never changed by anger. They are changed by love. Love your enemies, pray for those who hate you, bless those who curse you.

Out of curiousity about not believing in a God, can an athiest please tell me—Do athiests believe poeple have no soul?  When your body stops working, dies, is that it? You just go into the ground and rot? 

And for Catholics, should we believe that poeple that didn’t believe in a God, then there souls will just end up in what is called the left of heaven?

Just looking for some opinions on this. thank you.

@PhillyChief: Are there priests in the Catholic Church who molest children? Yes. Are there school teachers who molest children? Yes. Are there married men who molest children? Yes. You bring up the child molestation factor as if it is exclusive to Catholic priests. If you are disappointed that Catholic priests should be child molesters at all, it’s understandable. We all are. However, it is no surprise to those of us who truly study Christ’s words to find priests, bishops, cardinals, and leaders of the Church caught up in every manner of sin. Sin is like a disease. It’s no more surprising to find sick people in a hospital than it is to find sinners in a Church, no matter their rank. The leaders of the Church are not immune to sin, anymore than doctors and nurses are immune to disease. The majority of abuse cases where Catholic priests were involved were not truly pedophilia (which involves the molestation of pre-pubescent children) but hebephiles (homosexual abuse of post-pubescent boys between the ages of 13-17). Furthermore, the rates among Catholic priests are not higher than amongst the general population. I do not excuse the abuse. In other words, this is neither common practice among Catholic priests nor is it exclusive to the Catholic faith. It is a problem which is a result of sin and the fallen nature of man. This supports, and does not negate, church teaching.

There’s no atheist central authority, so I’m not speaking for everyone.

Short answer: I don’t believe I have a soul.

I know how horrifying that sounds to some people. I know what ‘soulless’ means. I do believe I exist, that I think and so on. That there’s a distinct ‘Steve’. I don’t believe this involves an immortal ghost. I know, from family experience when we were discussing wedding vows, that this is an alien, shocking viewpoint to some people. I’ve never found a way to explain this to such people. ‘The world doesn’t work like that episode where Bart Simpson sells his soul’ comes closest. Dogs don’t run away from me, automatic doors still open.

When I die, people will remember me, there will be my children, the people I met and so on. I want to make a positive difference to the world, create more than I destroy and so on. I’m not even a little bit concerned about the afterlife.

I might be wrong, I might have a soul. Meh. So, I have something that can’t be detected and makes no difference, with a fate determined entirely by the will of another being using his own, at best, semi-revealed criteria. I might as well have an immortal hjkdfhgk, a completely made up concept I just invented by bashing keys.

I think there have been interesting questions, none of them really addressed by commentators, raised by Jennifer and others. Do Catholics really believe in Hell? Where do they think the abusive priests are headed? If the secular punishment for child abuse is ten years in prison, isn’t God’s punishment - eternity being tortured by devils - a little steep? Is it possible to reconcile this ‘loving God’ with the ‘allows Hell’ God? If Hell existed and it was within my power, I’d end Hell. Wouldn’t ending infinite suffering be better than allowing it?

Killer question: name one thing you’ve done today to avoid Hell. I’m not a priest trying to trick you, I’m just curious about how it affects you on a day-to-day basis.

It strikes me that the debate is a little like the gay marriage one - some people think that if two men got married this would somehow ‘devalue’ heterosexual marriage. I just don’t understand this at all. *Your* marriage is unaffected, surely? So, if wicked souls just evaporated, rather than going to Hell, would the absence of that suffering somehow ‘devalue’ your eternal bliss? I think, deep down, the pleasure that all your hard work being a Catholic is rewarded is one thing, but it’s got to be sweeter knowing that other people didn’t make the grade, yeah? If I show up in Heaven, and in life I hadn’t believed in it, let alone God or souls, and I’d enjoyed guilt free condomed sex and never gone to church and never had to listen to a priest, or thought about the world in terms of sin ... well, you’d be furious, I imagine. It would be like me taking a week to climb a mountain and getting to the top and realizing there was a ski lift.

I don’t believe in Hell. I’ve thought about it more in the last five minutes of typing this than the whole previous year. Is Hell always on your mind if you’re a Catholic? It makes Jennifer’s list, does it make all your lists, too?

> Furthermore, the rates among Catholic priests are not
> higher than amongst the general population.

Have you got numbers to back that up?

Surely the issue is not that *only* Catholic priests abuse children, it’s that the Catholic church’s response when allegations were made was to cover up, and that their position granted priests social status and legal immunities that made pursuing them through the courts so difficult.

I think there’s a moral dimension, too - they are meant to be *especially* good people. Plus, I think, the severity of the crime - there’s very little worse than child abuse. If they’d all embezzled money from church funds, it would be bad, but not so *evil*.

And the scale of the problem is staggering. There have been attempts to collate the information, and it’s *every* diocese in the US. Not just the US. It’s global and systematic. There was clearly a problem with the culture in the Church.

This is another question I was going to ask - from the comments I’ve read on this site, and among my Catholic friends, there seems to remain a real head-in-the-sand attitude to this issue. The idea ‘everyone’s at it in the secular world, too’ is (a) not true and (b) irrelevant.

In the secular world, if a school principal covered up an example of child abuse and was caught, he would go to jail. Should a bishop? How about an archbishop? If prosecutors found evidence that a hypothetical Pope had abused a child, should that Pope face trial in a secular court? If that Pope had not abused a child, but deliberately and frequently covered up other priests’ abuse, should he face trial?

If I found that the school I sent my kids to had a massive, chronic, unaddressed child abuse problem ... well, I would take my kids out of that school. I think my main question is this: how can you sit there and stand to hear priests telling you how to live your life when they’ve proved so bad at keeping their own house in order? If you stay in that church, aren’t you guilty of turning a blind eye, too?

@Steve. When my mother died at home, she had been having breathing that was laboured, but at the moment of her death she uttered an enormous sound and then died. Perhaps that was the soul going out of her. Catholics believe that there is a soul and a spirit. The soul gets sin and has to be cleansed in purgatory, where it unites with the spirit and then goes to heaven or hell. I think this is the correct way of looking at it. As for hell, hell might just be an absence of God, and nothing else. Hell is therefore the thing that an atheist presupposes will happen, an enternal blankness.

@Steve Jeffers:
Priests are not afforded legal immunities in any state or community in the United States. Social status, perhaps, but only amongst Catholic populations are they likely to receive such bias. Amongst protestant or atheistic populations you can believe they receive no such prejudices.

Here is the columbia study conducted in 2002 on priests and sexual abuse.
http://www.philvaz.com/apologetics/PriestAbuseScandal.htm
4.3% is the highest reported rate of incidence among priests, 0.3% the lowest. Of course, it is impossible to know with true certainty as this is only based on reported incidents. The rate of pedophilia in the general population is not known,[3][77] but is estimated to be lower than 5% based on several smaller studies with prevalence rates between 3% and 9%. 
Seto MC.(2009) Pedophilia. Annual Review of Clinical Psychology 5:391-407.
“Pedophilia and sexual offenses against children”. Annu Rev Sex Res 15: 321–61. PMID 16913283.
Ahlers, C. J., Schaefer, G. A., Mundt, I. A., Roll, S., Englert, H., Willich, S. N. and Beier, K. M. , How Unusual are the Contents of Paraphilias? Paraphilia-Associated Sexual Arousal Patterns in a Community-Based Sample of Men. The Journal of Sexual Medicine. doi: 10.1111/j.1743-6109.2009.01597.x

Yes, priests are called to be especially holy, consecrated to God. However, as pedophiles are often attracted to positions of power that give them easy access to children (such as teaching, scout master, etc.) it is not surprising to me that you find them entering into the priesthood. You don’t know you have a pedophile until they commit the crime, so it is really impossible to expect that the Catholic Church would be able to prevent them from entering. It is now required to do background checks on every single person who interacts with children on any level before they are permitted to even volunteer, things which were set in place to try and prevent this from happening again. It is a severe crime, this is true, but the Catholic Church is in the business of redemption and forgiveness of even the worst crimes so, again, to be surprised that you find such things in the Church is like being surprised to find people near death or being treated for cancer in a hospital.

Pedophilia is found in every city in every county in every state in the nation and all over the world. The Catholic Church happens to be in nearly every city in every county in every state in the nation and the whole world. It is not a problem of the Catholic culture, as it occurs outside of the Church as well as inside of it.

Absolutely, if priests or bishops or cardinals or even a pope is found guilty of molesting children then they should be tried according to the law and serve prison time. Many have.

Does the Church have a problem? Yes. Is she working to fix the problem? Yes. The most recent reported cases in the news media have been from 20 years ago when we did not have a system in place to address the issue or prevent it. Every diocese I am familiar with, and I have contacts across the United states, these days suspend priests at the first hint of an allegation and only return them to active duty after the conclusion of the investigation if they are found innocent.

I don’t stay in the Catholic Church because of the leaders. I don’t stay because of who the priest is, the bishop is, the cardinals are, or the pope is. I stay because I know that I love people better when I obey the teachings of the Catholic Church than I ever could when I wasn’t in the Church. I do feel sorrow when a priest fails, but it is the sorrow of seeing an officer fall in battle. The officer may fail, the officer may betray, but that doesn’t mean I abandon the cause for which I fight.

Do Catholics really believe in Hell?

*Yes

Where do they think the abusive priests are headed?

*No idea,  That depends on the state of their sould and is between them and God, just like it is with everyone else.

If the secular punishment for child abuse is ten years in prison, isn’t God’s punishment - eternity being tortured by devils - a little steep?

*Hell is the absence of God.  The absence of God is a steep price to pay, yes, so it would depend, again, on whether that person was totally turned away from God.  Not my call—His call.

Is it possible to reconcile this ‘loving God’ with the ‘allows Hell’ God?

*Yes.  Hell is the ultimate consequence of free will.  I value free will.  God values it more.  You can’t have free will, and not have the option of rejecting God.  That would be illogical.

If Hell existed and it was within my power, I’d end Hell. Wouldn’t ending infinite suffering be better than allowing it?

*But then you would destroy free will, and violate the integrity of the person. 

Killer question: name one thing you’ve done today to avoid Hell. I’m not a priest trying to trick you, I’m just curious about how it affects you on a day-to-day basis.

*Tried to grow closer to God, through prayer, reading, Lenten observance, etc.. Hell is the absence of God.

It strikes me that the debate is a little like the gay marriage one - some people think that if two men got married this would somehow ‘devalue’ heterosexual marriage. I just don’t understand this at all. *Your* marriage is unaffected, surely?

*The question isn’t about individual marriage.  The question is about redefining words, an whether or not civil society ought to redefine words that have meant one thing, to mean another.  If marriage is redefined to mean “a union between two people who are consenting adults and who love each other,” we then must ask upon what that definition is based.  Traditionally, the family has been the basic unit of our society, with the ideal being a man and a woman raising children.  It was believed that complementarity between the sexes best suited child rearing.  Of course, this has not been the same in all cultures.  It has been for ours.  So if we’re redefining this, we should understand what the new definition—why only two?  Why human beings?  Etc.. these aren’t silly questions—they make a lot of sense, actually.  The religious question is different, of course, so I’m leaving it out.  The question of how marriage is defined for my whole society affects me whether or not I’m married, and thus I have a vested interest in the answer.

So, if wicked souls just evaporated, rather than going to Hell, would the absence of that suffering somehow ‘devalue’ your eternal bliss?

*I’m not sure how that would work, or why you’re connecting the suffering in hell with the bliss of those in heaven, whose bliss derives from gazing upon the face of God.

I think, deep down, the pleasure that all your hard work being a Catholic is rewarded is one thing, but it’s got to be sweeter knowing that other people didn’t make the grade, yeah?

*The story of the workers in the vineyard address this basic human desire to judge others according to what we’ve done in comparison to them, but Jesus specifically tells us not to engage in that kind of thinking.  Also, I don;t feel happier knowing that other people are starving while I’m eating; if I felt that way in heaven—well, then I wouldn’t be fit for heaven so I wouldn’t be there in the first place.

If I show up in Heaven, and in life I hadn’t believed in it, let alone God or souls, and I’d enjoyed guilt free condomed sex and never gone to church and never had to listen to a priest, or thought about the world in terms of sin ... well, you’d be furious, I imagine.

*If I was, I wouldn’t be in heaven anymore.

It would be like me taking a week to climb a mountain and getting to the top and realizing there was a ski lift.

*Yup, just like the story of the vineyard. Pisser, eh?  Except it’s really like saying everyone else has been spending time in this awesome place—with God—while you’ve been wandering around Walmart looking for the right set of tweezers and eating a happy meal.  What I’d feel is sorry that you had to spend such a long time in flourascent lighting on dirty floors.

I don’t believe in Hell. I’ve thought about it more in the last five minutes of typing this than the whole previous year.
*um, ok.
Is Hell always on your mind if you’re a Catholic?
*no.
It makes Jennifer’s list, does it make all your lists, too?
*yes.

Jemima,
I would like to see when there was a female priest.  Could you please give your Catholic source?

@Steve Jeffers:
1) Catholics who are believe the words of Jesus Christ believe in Hell.
2) Christ told anyone who led astray the little ones that it would be better for them had they never been born. I think that answers your question about abusive priests.
3) Steve, our legal system punishes abusers with an eye toward the one victim that has been identified. God knows the truth about all of the people that have suffered because of that one (and usually not just one) incident. He considers all of the lives that have been harmed by the sin - even indirectly. The person in Hell suffers only as much as is exactly just for the crime they have committed.
4) Hell is necessary in order to respect the free will choice of those who do not want to spend eternity with God. As I explained earlier, both Hell and Heaven are made of God’s divine flame. The reason Heaven is a pleasure and Hell is not is that those in Heaven have joined themselves to God, whereas those who live in Hell have refused to do so. 
5)I have spent time educating the ignorant and calling sinners to repentance, two acts of charity. I don’t live to avoid Hell so much as I try to live my life in such a way that it is a love letter to God and to all those who know me.
6) Marriage has already been negatively affected by homosexual unions being called marriages. This is just one example.
http://www.ukbusinessforums.co.uk/forums/showthread.php?t=197611
7) “If I show up in Heaven, and in life I hadn’t believed in it, let alone God or souls, and I’d enjoyed guilt free condomed sex and never gone to church and never had to listen to a priest, or thought about the world in terms of sin ... well, you’d be furious, I imagine.”
You imagine wrong. I would rejoice in one more soul being saved. Anytime a soul goes to Hell, the suffering Christ endured for them was in vain. I don’t want Christ to suffer in vain. I want all souls to be saved, whether they are saved at the last moment or saved early is of no account to me. You are looking at this issue from the same perspective as the “good” brother in the story of the Prodigal son. The “good” brother was “good” only because of what he hoped to gain from His father, and so was outraged when his brother got benefits he didn’t “deserve”. A truly good son is good because he LOVES his father and not because of what he might or might not gain from them as a result. I love God, and this is why I obey Him.  By the way, as a Catholic wife, I get to enjoy condom free sex all the time without any guilt whatsoever. I only “need” condoms when I’m doing something that isn’t in obedience to God’s will. I don’t “have” to go to Mass. I WANT to go there. I LOVE to hear Christ speak to me, whether in my heart, or through the priest.

@ in reference to Brandy….
Yes!  We are to hope and pray all make it to heaven.  People who have tried to live good lives on earth, and those that haven’t.  I do feel though that we are given so many blessings through obedience with God.  By doing His will while we are here, we can see all of the many blessings He bestows on us.

Teddy:
I don’t know whether soul exists. There is no physical evidence for existence of soul. It is the ‘Consciousness” and the feeling of “I” that gives us an illusion of soul. Much of it can be attributed to our cerebral development compared to other species which gave us the ability to think, reflect on our thoughts, make rational decisions, incorporate the experiences that we get from the external world into our thought processes and thus shaping a distinct personality for ourselves. Moreover soul is a poorly defined concept used only in philosophical & theological circles. But to these arguments, what theologians come up with is that souls are in spiritual realm and we can’t have any physical evidence for it. Fine, in that case, we can’t know whether it exists or not. So question remains whether you want to believe it or not. It is upto you. Same is case with ghosts, angels, demons, heaven, hell and all the imagery you get in the Bible. You are free to believe it if you wish to. But my answer would be I don’t know. In earlier period, people used to believe in even more myths. That does not make it true. I am a skeptic and I have made a decision that I will believe only those things that there is enough evidence. Otherwise I might be fooled into believing whatever people come up with. I would be happy to say that I don’t know to those things there is no evidence.

“Do athiests believe poeple have no soul?”
That depends on the atheist. Buddhists do in some way, which is how you get reincarnation. Perhaps other “energy” belief systems do as well, I’m not sure. A rational atheist does not for the same reason he or she doesn’t accept the existence of ghosts, gods, fairies and the like, because there’s no demonstrable evidence of their existence.
“When your body stops working, dies, is that it? You just go into the ground and rot?”
We are nothing but body. “We” are our brains, therefore when the brain dies, we die and yes, that’s it. If you want to live on, you’ll have to make an impression on the world in some way while alive so that you’ll be remembered.
@Brandy: It’s not important that non-priests also commit heinous acts, what’s important is, like the point of Jennifer’s article, subscribing to your belief system is supposed to make one better, that your moral code is superior when clearly that’s not true. Plus, as was pointed out, the lengths at which the Catholic church went to silence victims, enable these monsters to victimize more children and the efforts to hide it all are, pardon the phrase, quite damning.
“Marriage has already been negatively affected by homosexual unions being called marriages.”
That’s just nonsense. Here.
@Ian: Sorry, but when your mom died her lungs just collapsed and released the air inside. That wasn’t a soul.

>I would like to see when there was a female priest.

I’m not Jemima, but there have been a number, over the years. One of the better known recent ones is:

http://www.amazon.com/Out-Depths-Javorova-Ordained-Catholic/dp/0824518896

I don’t think that counts when (taken from the link), “Although she is barred by the Vatican from functioning as a priest…”

Canon 1024: Only a baptized male validly receives sacred ordination.  I could claim I was a priest, too.

Canon 1024: Only a baptized male validly receives sacred ordination.  Anyone can “claim” to be a priest.

Oops…double post.  The thing is Steve, that there is a reason that the Catholic Church doesn’t allow female priests.  My question is, if a woman knew that was the teaching of the Catholic Church and didn’t agree with it, then they couldn’t claim to agree 100% with the Church.  Why would they want to be apart of something they didn’t agree with?

@PhillyChief: Nobody, and I mean nobody, blames the gym when the 450 pound fat guy who bought a membership fails to lose weight. Everyone knows what happened. The fat guy, no matter how much he may protest to the contrary, did not appropriately use the membership. He may have shown up and looked around, but it’s pretty clear he didn’t do anything more than look at the scenary if he even bothered to do that. Same thing with the Catholic Church. You only get better if you actually DO what the Catholic Church teaches you to do. Child molesting is directly against our rules, so clearly the priest isn’t adhering to the moral code.

For starters, the 450lb fat guy isn’t the leader of the gym, revered and considered above reproach like a priest. Then of course there’s the allegedly infallible Pope of yours who, prior to being Pope, actively concealed the shenanigans of priests worldwide, and as Pope forced the Irish judicial system to grant immunity to clergy in exchange for testimony. So who would that be, the morbidly obese leader of the gym franchise who’s hailed as the pinnacle of health and fitness? LOL!

> Canon 1024: Only a baptized male validly receives sacred
> ordination.  Anyone can “claim” to be a priest.

The book’s fascinating, and her story’s online. This isn’t some mischievous lady out to prove a point. She lived in communist Czechoslovakia. After the Prague Spring, the authorities cracked down on Catholicism, the Church had to operate underground, there was a critical shortage of priests. She was ordained by a Catholic priest who was unable to contact the Vatican and she worked as a priest for at least ten years, under serious risk of punishment (it’s not clear what ceremonies she performed). She is not officially considered a priest, but she wasn’t excommunicated and we know she met John Paul II more than once. The Vatican can’t admit it, but they clearly approve of her actions.

So, she went through the ceremony, is part of the apostolic succession, she risked her own life as a Christian missionary, secretly doing the Church’s work, she operated as a priest, she’s not been punished ... but her ordination doesn’t count because she doesn’t have a penis. Meanwhile - http://www.philly.com/philly/news/breaking/20110220_Indicted_priest_suspended_by_Archdiocese.html - there are 41 abusive clergy who do still count, and the man that oversaw them is still a priest, he’s just on leave.

There is a real recruitment problem for priests, the current stock is old, and being seriously winnowed out by the abuse scandal. Meanwhile, the Vatican is actively blocking men suspected of being gay from training as priests (we had a recent discussion of this on another thread), and that’s going to prevent another huge bloc of potential recruits. Plus falling church attendances. Plus, frankly, this is the twenty-first century. The generation running and mostly attending Churches at the moment might have been raised when women were there to do housework and make babies, but younger Catholics - anyone under sixty! - weren’t, and they’ll be in charge before much longer. 

As with the Church of England, and possibly at the same cost, it’s inevitable at some point, for practical reasons if not simple human rights ones, that women will be ordained. I don’t even mean in our lifetime. But let’s be pessimistic: five hundred years from now, say.

The Vatican know that it’s at least a possibility. But the trouble is, they’ve said that the declaration that women can’t be ordained is infallible. The statement was made in 1994 by John Paul II, and was a piece of politics - the Anglican church was schisming because it was moving to ordain women, and the Vatican needed to reassure factions of their faithful and, of course, offer a hand to Anglicans who could only stomach a *man* in a dress performing church services.

I once asked a Catholic theologian about infallible declarations. He spelled it out: if one infallible declaration is false, Catholicism is false, if Catholicism is false then theism is false. That’s the consensus among Catholic theologians, he says. Infallible statements are actually really rare, and usually very clearly marked. But the Catholic theological position is ‘the moment the first women priest is ordained, God can’t exist’. Which seems a little extreme, but there you go. 

Because of that the Church have started to hedge on whether the 1994 statement, or the underlying theology, is infallible or not. They’ve been creating a little wriggle room, first saying it was, then it wasn’t, the current position is that the sentiment is infallible but not that specific statement. Now, we’re not going to see Catholic women priests any time soon, but it’s clear the authorities don’t want to box themselves in 100%, just in case.

>Why would they want to be a part of something they didn’t agree with?

This is not a question I can even approach an answer to. In the other thread, I was told 75% of new priest recruits were homosexuals. I don’t understand why any modern American woman or any gay man would be interested in the Catholic church (I can understand why Ms Javorova was). The only answer I can come up with is ‘profound self-hatred and a deep desire to be persecuted’, and while I get a strong sense of that in Jennifer’s posts, she’s obviously playing to the galleries and I doubt that’s actually the reason. I’m really not the person to ask, and I’d happily turn the question back to people who have made that choice. I can see the desire for certainty as attractive, but Catholics, to me, seem to put a priority on ‘having rules’. What the rules *are* seems almost secondary. ‘It’s good to know that it’s a cosmic truth that women can’t be priests. The idea did make me feel a bit uncomfortable, but if it’s ruled out that’s one less thing to worry about’.

This is a thread about ‘better people’. Who’s the better person, Msgr William Lynn or Ludmilla Javorova? Who has disrupted the smooth running of the church the most, do you think? Which of the two would you rather leave your kids with for half an hour?

@Steven Jeffers. Whilst the present stock of priests is getting old, they can always bring in more from less developed countries. However I did see from Jemima’s link that some of these have been found to be abusers.

>Nobody, and I mean nobody, blames the gym when the 450
>pound fat guy who bought a membership fails to lose weight.

Well, no, but they’d blame the gym if their kid was molested in the pool by an employee, and it turned out the employee had done it before at another pool and been moved to your local one to keep it quiet, and that the regional manager of this chain of gyms had done that forty times that the police knew of, and that many of the people were still employed, and none had been sacked but some were on paid leave, and then the national manager had also been involved, and it turned out that literally every gym in North America was implicated, and that this dated back *at least* sixty years and involved literally countless kids, well over ten thousand and the picture was the same, worse if anything, in the international operations, *and* the global head office in Italy knew all about it, that the previous CEO and current CEO were both directly involved in the cover up, with a paper trail proving it, and there was stated policy to destroy records and block police investigations.

I think, in those circumstances, I might stop going to that gym.

Steve,
That is all good and well that she is a good person (Ludmilla), but she still cannot be a priest.  Whether there was a shortage and she did it underground or not, Jesus Christ was a man, and left men to take His place here on Earth.  Don’t you think that if He would have wanted women to be able to be leaders of His Church, the very first woman He would have given that privilege to would have been Mary?  And about your comment about 75% of new priest recruits being homosexual…it is not a sin to be homosexual.  However, if the person is, they are to practice chastity.  Now yes, people can bring up all of the horrible things that priests do, wow what a unique argument to use.  But tell me, how is a priest doing this any different than any other type of religious person doing something.  Yes, we hold these people up to a higher standard, but they sin just like the rest of us do.  Same goes with what PhillyChief was saying about the Pope.  If any Catholic on the planet thinks that the Pope is sinless, they are wrong.  The Pope himself doesn’t think he is sinless.  His infallibility is strictly speaking on matters of the Church and only when, through Christ, it can be deemed infallible.  I think that it is crazy that everyone on the planet has a right to their belief except for Catholics.  The thing I find even more shocking is that a lot of people that will tell me to my face that I am wrong doesn’t think that their belief is 100% correct.  I’m not saying that is what anyone on here is saying either.  Anyway, there are bad people everywhere you look.  I don’t understand why non-believers think that the heads of Churchs are supposed to be perfect.  Jesus was perfect, but look at Simon Peter.  He was left in charge of the Church and he denied Christ after Christ told him he would!  This is a perfect example of how leaders are NOT perfect, but they can repent like everyone else.

Yes, but it’s not REALLY their faults, Steve. Satan is to blame, and of course the internet.

I know you are being sarcastic, but it IS their fault Steve.  We all have free will.  Does Satan tempt us with things like this internet when talking of these types of sin, yes.  But we all have free will, and we all have the choice to do right or do wrong.  God gives us the chance to try and do the right thing, and thank God we have confession and forgiveness so that we can try to become more Christ like.

Meagan, you raise an important point in your last post, when you wrote “I don’t understand why non-believers think that the heads of Churchs are supposed to be perfect.”  In general, I think there’s a fundamental difference in the way that non-Catholics and Catholics understand what a priest is, and what the calling amounts to.  An important reason why the Church will never ordain women, which is mentioned less often, is being a priest is something of a crappy job which was given to men and should not be sloughed off onto women.  People think women should be priests, often, because the job description seems to fit them so well—nurturing, caring, self-sacrificing, careful with children—etc.  This is PRECISELY why the job was given to men (and I am using the word “job” loosely, as it’s not really a job, of course).  It’s an entirely different model of masculinity from that most cultures of the world develop—and yes, some men fail spectacularly at it, because it runs so contrary to everything a “man” is supposed to be (note though—it’s still masculine, a different kind of masculinity and one that the Lord modeled for us). There are women priests, women theologians, women Doctors of the Church; the Church was the first place where women had serious options besides becoming wives and mothers; the Church oversaw the development of education for women; in short, my Church is the most empowering place for women on earth.  Telling me I can’t be a priest is telling me I don;t have to be slotted into the slot the culture wants me to fill. It’s feminist, and counter-cultural.  It has supported me in my work as both a mother and as a professor; it affirms every aspect of my being and I could weep tears of gratitude that I have been so fortunate as to be a Catholic woman.

@Meagen: First, your Pope is supposed to be infallible, yet he’s directly involved in the pedophile conspiracy, both before and since becoming Pope. Second, there is no free will if you believe in an all-knowing creator god with a plan. Third, only the person you harm can forgive you.
@Elizabeth: Your church promotes women by limiting their choices? And you’re a professor? Wow, that’s frightening.

Phillychief,

>First, your Pope is supposed to be infallible

I thought this, too, and I thought ‘God, I bet he’s an ass when the Cardinals play Scrabble’ / ‘KJFHHHER is a word. Pope. Infallible. I win again.’ But only statements declared to be infallible are, and they have to be about theology. Coming up with a definitive list of what is infallible and isn’t is tricky - sometimes it’s retroactive. And the whole idea of Papal Infallibility is a recent one, drawn up by Pius IX, one of the more fascinating Popes, and a man who it can be fairly said fell to the Dark Side of the Force during his Papacy.

As I say, the thing is: an infallible statement is a big deal. If you find one infallible statement that’s false, the Pope has to go ‘you’re right, there’s no God’ (I’m simplifying a little). So when people *do* find false infallible statements, there’s a quiet reshuffle and it turns out that, no, the statement it was an infallible statement wasn’t itself infallible. Or that anyone in violation of it was some evil renegade priest who doesn’t count. The Vatican is pretty smart about what they say is infallible - which is why they’ve really hedged on the 1994 women ordination thing since it was made. It’s *extremely* unclear if it’s infallible.

> Jesus Christ was a man, and left men to take His place here on
> Earth.  Don’t you think that if He would have wanted women to be
> able to be leaders of His Church, the very first woman He would
> have given that privilege to would have been Mary?

No. Having read the Bible, I know that there was a female apostle, that it wasn’t Mary and she was praised by St Paul, who said she was ‘in Christ before I was’. I’m also aware of how the Catholic church continues a long tradition of squirming around that awkward fact by claiming - this isn’t a joke - that that was a misprint.

>And about your comment about 75% of new priest recruits
> being homosexual…it is not a sin to be homosexual.’

I was interested in those gay men’s attitude to the Church, not the Church’s attitude them them. My point was that I don’t understand why gay men (or any woman) would see the Catholic church as a place that’s happy with them or they would be happy in.

> This is a perfect example of how leaders are NOT perfect,

Look, with the best will in the world, there’s a gulf between ‘not being perfect’ and ‘systematically abusing kids on a global scale then conspiring to cover it up’.

I think we may just have to agree to differ on this one. I can understand forgiveness and redemption and personal temptation. What I don’t understand is how it doesn’t seem to dent Catholics’ faith in the moral authority of the Church. You wouldn’t leave an arsonist in charge of fire safety, however keen their personal experience of fires.

> is being a priest is something of a crappy job which
> was given to men and should not be sloughed off onto women.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/jan/24/bishop-will-retire-early-to-save-diocese-money/

That bishop got a $250K a year package, including housing. Priests also get a lot of tax breaks. There are *worse* jobs to have.

Elizabeth, I’m not sure i understand everything you are saying, but I disagree when you say that being a priest is a crappy job, after all Jesus was the first High Priest.  God created men for certain jobs and women for certain jobs.  Being a priest is an honor bestowed to a man and being a mother is a job bestowed on a woman.

PhillyChief-you don’t understand what speaking infallibly means.  There is free will..you writing in this forum is using your free will.  And when you sin against another you are also sinning against God, so yes, two people can forgive you.

Steve- I would like to see your source where infallibility has been changed or questioned.  Also, I am speaking of His 12 Disciples, which of whom none were women.  I would also like to see where the Catholic church claims that any of the Bible is a misprint.

Steve, I’ll be honest, I haven’t studied too much into the priest abuse of the Church, but since you are so knowledgable in the area, what is the ratio of priest that abuse and the actual number of priest.  And then, what do you think the percentage is of teacher’s that have abused children?  Like I said, I have no idea what has gone on with the abuse scandals, but whoever has known anything about it will have to take it up with God one day, just as I will have to answer for all my sins.  I would also like to know where you get your information on the matter.  I don’t think anyone knows 100% truth about that matter.  If you get your info from someone who is against the Church, I’m pretty sure they are going to be a little biased in their information.  Then again, all of the people of the Church are sinners so we don’t know who is telling the truth.  I haven’t read many of your posts so I don’t know your beliefs, but are you saying that since the Church is made up of sinners there is no God?  If that is your reasoning it’s absurd…if not, then why are you against the Church?

I would also like your source on Pope Benedict’s role in covering up the abuse scandals.

Meagan,

I was speaking tongue-in-cheek, which doesn’t translate well on the internet.  Of course being a priest is an honor, but I think it’s also fair to say that Jesus had a tough row to hoe. It’s a position that, in the eyes of the world, is weak—just as the position of a mother, in the eyes of the world, is one of weakness.  My point was simply that, when we look at Church history as its treatment of women, it’s clear (to me, at least, as a well-educated Catholic woman) that our Church empowers us—the reasons why women are not priests include the reason that women have ALWAYS held the weaker positions in society.  It’s important to remember that the life of service of a priest is calling to form his soul as well as those he shepherds—and he is asked to do difficult, and in the eyes of the world, menial tasks.  That he touches God is not something of worth to the world, since they don;t believe the real Presence is, indeed, real.  So when I say “crappy job” I am speaking in terms of worldly values—the same values that would dictate that teaching, nursing—any form of ministry, really—is at least one step below more powerful positions that ensure success and wealth.  For a woman to take a position where you got paid very little and much was demanded—that’s a woman’s LIFE, at least in Jesus’ time.  Men were being asked to do something truly radical.  Misguided “feminism” fails to see the radical nature of an all-male priesthood.

@Meagan:  I doubt he could produce one—there aren’t any.  In fact, if you go back to look at the broohaha last Holy Week about Pope Benedict, you’d see that the New York Times’ own linked documents refuted what their articles were trying to imply.  Sadly, though, the damage was done, and those who maybe read a few headlines and drank the poison were unlikely to do this kind of digging.

Elizabeth,
thank you for your clarification.  It is hard over the internet to distinguish what the true meaning is supposed to be.  I’m a stay at home Mom, and I love my job.  I’ve been so blessed to be able to do what I feel is the best job in the world, stay at home and mother my children.  And yes, it is very sad that the majority of what people read they automatically believe.  I’m relatively new to the Catholic Faith…I joined in 2006, but have just recently been lit by the Holy Spirit to delve deeper into my faith.  If more people would be open to the true teachings, they would understand why the Catholic Church believes and teaches what it does, and in more cases than not they would agree :)

> Steve- I would like to see your source where infallibility
> has been changed or questioned.

Pius IX declared papal infallibility in 1870. In doing so, he went against Popes Vigilinus, Innocent III, Clement IV, Gregory XI, Adrian VI and Paul IV, all of whom had issued ex cathedra statements saying popes weren’t infallible.

So ... in the same capacity, different Popes have said contradictory things about whether Popes are infallible. 

The Catechism of 1869 explicitly stated that Papal Infallibility was a Protestant invention, not Catholic doctrine.

What are your sources?  Show me the documents so I can look over them.  They should be available at vatican.va in the archives.

I would also like your source on Pope Benedict’s role in covering up the abuse scandals.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/03/30/AR2010033002119.html

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/dec/10/wikileaks-vatican-child-sex-abuse-investigation?intcmp=239

Steve,
I wouldn’t really consider that legitimate proof.  WikiLeaks info?  And the other article stated how a close friend of the Pope’s said he would never cover anything up.  And it also said that he knew of one priest with a problem, got him therapy and moved him.  Under his orders he was not to be able to be around children again, but someone let him.  Ok, so either he knew about it and now is in a lie, or really honestly did not know.  If he was not the one that put him back to be around those children, he can’t be blamed for it.
You also never answered my question, do you believe in God?  And what is your main problem with the Catholic Church if so?

> What are your sources?  Show me the documents so I can
> look over them.  They should be available at vatican.va
> in the archives.

The Catechism: http://biblelight.net/Sources/keenan-1851-pgs-102-103.gif (about three quarters of the way down the first page).

Paul IV, the Bull Cum ex Apostolatus Officio of 16 February 1559.

Adrian VI in Quaestiones in IV Sententiae (published in 1523, when he was Pope, but the Vatican states he only said it before he was Pope). An absolutely crucial one - he says Popes can be heretics.

Gregory IX (who also said early abortion was acceptable and the cats were the tools of the devil) ... well, pretty much everything he said and how could he say otherwise - the church was in schism, he wasn’t the only Pope at the time. His entire reign, there was at least one fallible Pope knocking around.

Innocent III - see http://www.jstor.org/pss/25020865

...

All of them are concerned with the question of whether you can have a Pope who preaches heresy. Here’s the 1913 edition of The Catholic Encyclopedia:

“The Pope himself, if notoriously guilty of heresy, would cease to be pope because he would cease to be a member of the Church.”

Now, there’s a bit of No True Scotsman logic there, but it’s logic - the person you call the Pope and who you think is infallible can say something heretical ... at which point, they’d automatically no longer be Pope.

Ok, I’m not sure where any of that talks about Pope Benedict covering up abuse scandals.  Also, I’ve been trying to tell you all along that the Pope can make infallible statements, only through the Holy Spirit.  We in no way think that the Pope is infallible, but that he can say something infallibly.

> I wouldn’t really consider that legitimate proof.  WikiLeaks info? ...
>  And the other article stated how a close friend of the Pope’s

Wait ... a leaked email no one denies is real isn’t fair evidence, but something a close friend of the Pope’s said is?

> You also never answered my question, do you believe in God?  And
> what is your main problem with the Catholic Church if so?

No, and I don’t have a ‘main problem’ with the Catholic Church. There are things that baffle me about what Catholics believe and Catholic doctrine. I’m interested, and asking questions, that’s all. I’m not seeking to convert or be converted.

If I had to pick one top issue, yes, I think it would be the child abuse but ... well, my main issue there, as I’ve said, is ‘why is this even up for debate?’. It’s one of the worst crimes imaginable, on a scale that we don’t even fully understand yet. I sincerely appreciate the answers you and others are giving me, and I’m beginning to understand how decent, smart people might stand for it.

And, of course, the general theological issue of evidence for the supernatural. But we’ll never agree on that.

I hope and pray that you find God one day.  I hope that doesn’t offend you, you seem like a really great person who is very smart.  I’m not saying that most people that believe in God are dumb, it just seems like you are well educated.  If you would like to start at the beginning…where did this world we know of begin if there is no God?  And yes, the crime is horrendous, but by my belief in God, I know that those people will be punished for what they have done.  They will either repent and truly be sorry and change their ways, hopefully making it to heaven, or they will turn their back on God and be sent to an eternity without Him.(it all being His decision of course)

> what is the ratio of priest that abuse and the actual number of priest.

There are online resources that try to collate it. I think Jemima linked to one further up, and that gives links to newspaper reports, court papers and so on.

http://bishop-accountability.org/member/index.jsp

There are around 45000 Roman Catholic priests in the US, around 4500 have been accused. 

No one says that child abuse is *exclusive* to the Catholic Church. But the Church was clearly an environment where it was known and tolerated, and thrived. The Church is now addressing this, but it’s fair to say it spent a long time in many forms of denial. I think, even now, a lot of the Church, at all levels, remains complacent, or convinced of some media/atheist/gay conspiracy to bring down the Church.

> Also, I am speaking of His 12 Disciples, which of whom none
> were women.  I would also like to see where the Catholic
> church claims that any of the Bible is a misprint.

The passage in question is Romans 16:7 and the Wikipedia summary is a good one: https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Junia

This isn’t meant as a ‘gotcha’ or anything, it’s just that we end up in a vicious circle - the books of the Bible were edited to promote a certain strain of Christianity, that strain then cites the Bible as authority. The irony here is that the Catholic church stresses the apostolic tradition as much as the Bible ... but then goes out of its way to explain that Junia doesn’t count as an apostle. St Paul called her one, you’d think that would count for something.

Yes it does say that Junia is an apostle, but we are all apostles.  I’m speaking of the first 12 that Jesus gave explicit instructions to, and breathed upon them.  I’ll be the first to admit that I know far from everything about the Church, I actually don’t know very much which I why I get in on conversations so I can learn more!  But I’m simply speaking of the first 12.

@Steve. You could argue that the Church does not know how to handle crises. In most organisations once you have someone involved in a scandal you drop that person like a hot potato, or 4500 in this case. Also, if you are going to forgive sins it becomes more difficult to punish the sinner by turfing them out.

John D.,
It’s been a while and you’ve probably gone on to other things. I would reply by saying no one would be content to just let a person say, for example, “There is as much evidence for Obama being born in Hawaii as there is for the existence of unicorns.” and not ask for some loigcal explanation. Everyone would be justified in asking such a person for a rationale for this supposed statement of fact and wouldn’t think “Oh…you can’t prove a negative so I guess I have no right to ask this person for reasons for this conclusion.” I am asking you for reasons for your conclusion. As they say, what is freely assserted can be freely denied. Thanks.

> In most organisations once you have someone involved in
> a scandal you drop that person like a hot potato,

Child abuse happens. I think ‘normally’, your first concern should be for the victim, the second should be to get the police involved, the third is making sure it never happens again, the fourth is for the reputation of your organization.

No one is saying that if some fast food restaurant employee molests a kid in the restroom that you shut down that entire chain, or never eat in any location ever again. But if the CEO said ‘such things happen in all organizations’ or ‘we’ve moved him downtown’ or ‘this is all enemies of this burger chain ganging up on us’, you might.

It happens, it’s terrible when it does. As ever, the test is how it’s dealt with. It’s very hard to think of another institution that’s handled a scandal like this with such a cloth ear.

Things are improving, but even now it’s still a mess, and you do get the sense that a lot of senior people in the church still think this is a fuss about nothing.

Why is someone from outside the Church who doesn’t even believe in God making such a fuss? Because. Kids. Were. Raped. It’s not complicated.

I agree with you 100%, it is terrible.  But you cannot get the Church and its teachings mixed up with man and his mistakes.  God has written on our hearts what is right and wrong, which is why you know that raping children is wrong.  If indeed people are trying to cover it up, they will face God and have to explain themselves one day.

> I hope and pray that you find God one day.  I hope that
> doesn’t offend you

No, of course not. I know it’s meant sincerely and well. As I say, I don’t want to convert anyone to atheism. If you have something that works for you, and the people around you, I don’t want to break it.

We discussed ‘first causes’ over at the Catholics’ Guide to Atheists thread. Very briefly: I believe the scientific model offers the best understanding. Science is not a monolithic block of facts, it’s a method of looking at the world that allows us to test claims, it’s a work in progress that will almost certainly never be completed. In terms of life on Earth, I think there are now only two possibilities: (1) Evolution is true, (2) We live in a world that a powerful being has faked up to make it look like evolution is true. If it’s (2), then that being itself probably evolved; seems rather too deceitful to be the Christian God; and it’s such a good fake we’ll never see through it and might as well act as if (1) is true.

There are now scientific models for the origin of the universe that don’t *require* a God. I don’t understand the math, but then again I don’t understand how ‘we need a first cause’ leads inevitably to Jesus.

As for the origin of morality, abstract concepts and so on ... we all have to live together and come up with behavior that allows us to do that. Religion has played a big part in that, but most of it is pretty obvious. You don’t need God to tell you that stealing is wrong, you just need to ask yourself if you want to live among thieves or not. Atheists are often asked what stops us from just killing everyone - well, is what’s stopping you from killing everyone really just a desire to please God? That seems far more bleak and terrifying. But it also seems against common sense. I think, at heart, virtually everyone is nice and kind, and generous. At least if they’re given room to be.

See, I believe that God has written on our hearts right and wrong.  As far as evolution, the world could have definitely come from evolution.  However, only if God made it happen.  You seemed scholared in the matter, so if you don’t believe God started it all, then what did?  Even if it was two mere little molecules or whatever small little particles you want to start with, where did those come from.  There has to be a first.  That first is either God or something else.  Either way you look at it, you have to have faith in something.  A lot of people say it’s dumb to believe in something that you can’t prove, although either side of the road you are on, you’re in the same boat.  There is far more truth to God and Jesus Christ in my opinion.  If it’s not true, someone sure did have a wild imagination and the ability to create something that so many follow, not to mention all of the miracles that happened in Jesus’ time.  He did exist, whether or not you believe He was the son of God or just another man.  He existed and performed many miracles.

You athiests don’t believe because you are blinded, a self inflicted blindness, just open your eyes (and hearts) and you will see a million examples of why there is a divine creator who sent his son to die for our sins.  Here are 2 examples for you: Saint Bernadette at Lourdes and Saint Catherine LaBoure at 140 Rue du Bac in Paris, both met our divine Mother and their bodies lay for the world to view incorrupt and supple just as they were over a hundred years ago before their souls left this world.

“You athiests don’t believe because you are blinded, a self inflicted blindness, just open your eyes”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pa2fHkpOfoA&feature=related

I’m not a convert, but I agree with the post insofar as when I am practicing my faith, and Jesus’ loving teachings and actions in the Gospels are foremost in my mind (as a result of worship and prayer), I am far more compassionate and charitable towards others than if I’m just following the way of the world.  You shall know them by their fruits—I know the difference it makes in my life—and it is better for others, too—they benefit.  I have noticed this in others, too.  In fact, this difference was the initial attraction for several converts at my parish. A joyful Catholic radiates a winsome and lovely light. I am not here to dispute with atheists, because I remember how closed off I used to be in a previous phase of life—willfully so. So, peace to all!  Peace.

> I agree with the post insofar as when I am practicing my faith,
> and Jesus’ loving teachings and actions in the Gospels are foremost
> in my mind (as a result of worship and prayer), I am far more
> compassionate and charitable towards others than if I’m just
> following the way of the world

Can I ask whether you think this is an external or internal process - are you finding *inner* strength, do you think, or do you picture it as receiving strength from outside (God, presumably

It’s not a trick question, it’s just something I don’t really understand.

Both. It’s not a trick answer.

“Both. It’s not a trick answer.”

No, and I appreciate it.

One of the things I’m always looking for is, for want of a better word, the ‘mechanism’ religious people think is there. At root, what you think is happening.

I don’t think it’s a state secret that, as an atheist, I think that it’s purely internal. Now, if praying gives you confidence, and that confidence helps you win a game or fight a disease or whatever, then, y’know, I can’t deny it works.

For me, a world that works as it would if there was a God is functionally identical to one where there’s a God. If people can do that at a personal level ... well, that can be healthy.

I’ve asked that question before, and some people have seen themselves purely as a channel for God’s goodness, almost like he’s beaming it as energy and if there wasn’t a God, they’d be completely devoid of strength and goodness.

It’s nice to see some middle ground, in a way!

I don’t know why none of the posts were showing up in my email until now…
Steve, I definitely think that it is both internal and external.  There have been many times that I have prayed for something and felt the Holy Spirit within me and seen what He can do.  This may not be what you are talking about, but a perfect example is this…there were several times a few years ago when my husband and I were in a money crunch.  He had a good job at the time and we didn’t have kids and just spent spent spent.  I remember several times thinking…we have these bills coming due, and we were so stupid spending money like we did.  I prayed and knew that He would take care of us.  Whether it teach us what we were doing was wrong and sink us in the hole or come out in another way.  Miraculously, every single time that has happened (and no we don’t spend like that now, but we still are in a crunch sometimes paying all of our previous debts off) He has always come through.  Before we would get a bonus for something, and now I have been given the gift to work from home and stay with our children.  Some may say this is mere coincidence, but I know it is my faith in God.  He will always give us what we need.  Now does that mean whatever we ask will be given, NO, but He will always take care of us.  Through all of our past money mistakes we are on the road to having zero debt.  We could easily have never gotten any of the extra income, but God knew the way He helped us taught us that we didn’t want to be in that state again.  I hope that helps.  And to your final statement: “and if there wasn’t a God, they’d be completely devoid of strength and goodness.”  Well you would be correct there, because if there wasn’t a God, we wouldn’t be here!  ;)

“Some may say this is mere coincidence”

Very similar things have happened to me. I’ve been very short of money, needed a specific amount for an unexpected repair ... then had an unexpected bonus or rebate or something that covered it.

Now, perhaps that’s God looking out for me, too, and I’m an ungrateful swine. But if that’s a possibility, then it’s also a possibility that ... y’know, stuff like that just happens. We muddle through problems. And, I have to say, if God was the one that pushed that $200 check my way last month when I needed it to pay a credit card bill, well, I’d preferred it if he’d put my uncle’s cancer in remission instead because, frankly, stuff Capital One, they’ve got enough money.

As I’ve said, if your belief gives you the ability to cope, a framework that allows you to navigate the world better, it’s a good thing. But I worry about the mechanism - once you accept God does that for you, doesn’t that raise all sorts of questions about why he doesn’t do other things?

That’s a great point you make, however God allows things to happen.  Like I said before, He just as easily could have not given us that money and shown us through another example.  As far as your uncle’s cancer, that is very sad and I’m sorry that he and your family are having to go through that, but as a Christian I know that God doesn’t give us anything that we can’t handle.  He gives us trials to make us stronger people, through everything, life, death, sickness…etc.

Jemima…I understand your “need” to share your newfound faith or some might say lifestyle…but I think you have excluded what truly makes being Catholic special and unigue. This comes across a bit like the sound bite I used to hear from those “worthies” during Catholic School Week singing the praises of Catholic schools and thanking God they did not HAVE to go to those awful public schools with those heathen kids. In other words they missed most of what really matters in Catholic education
because they were too focused on what they saw as “the enemy” around them
and the evils of secular schooling. (not saying here they don’t exist)

That was certainly NOT a Catholic thought let alone even Christian but
it was merely an admission (obviously sub-conscious) that as long as you had the $$$$ ( you didn’t even have to be Catholic)you could escape the ” humiliation and horrors ” of a public school! All this did was to set them “apart” for all the wrong reasons..and showed a total lack of humility, the sign of a true follower of Christ. The atheists here make many solid points that totally refute what you have innocently offered as what makes us Catholics special different from all other systems of belief. ( even atheism is a system of belief )
What does make Catholicity special? The Real Presence!!! That
the whole Church is a simple but magnificently mystical Reality. No atheist on his own grasps that! Nor the faith that goes with it! Nor the life of grace so accessible through the reception of the Body and Blood of Christ. Of course, the non-Catholic will not acknowledge this Reality…sadly there are dissenters even in the Church but not the faith that will deny this…but we have thisto offer.. this Mystery in the hope that all might come one step closer to Truth and the Life and the Way! The points you raise, though well-meaning, are somewhat off-putting and easily refutable andfor the most part things any good observant Protestant or Jew could claim.
Even some of the atheists here believe they can do good things, lead a decent life on basis of human decency (which though unacknowledged comes from what the Creator has planted in the hearts of men) Let’s think this whole thing about why it is best to be Catholic through again, with the atheist in mind, and with a little more humility. In truth, being Catholic may not make us any better than an atheist in God’s eyes, if we live that life so superficially that it is hard to see the difference for the atheist. They may neither understand nor accept The Real Presence but they will perhaps begin to understand that there is a Real and Substantial difference here…in the Catholic Church. For it is truly one, holy, catholic and apostolic…and we need to be able to explain these marks of the Church’(“our reasons for the Faith”,St Peter says)before we can truly evangelize in a meaningful way.
Thanks for raising this issue of why and what we believe as Catholics. It is something we must continuously examine and acknowledge. God surely blesses you for it.

Jemima, God loves you. Keep searching and you will find Him.

James, thanks for your interest in my spiritual welfare. Please read the following.

http://www.michaelnugent.com/2011/07/20/bishop-magee-lied-and-deliberately-misled-says-cloyne-report/

Your priests prepared one child abuse report for the Vatican, and another for the police. The bishop had a special name for deception, ‘mental reservation’ where he would say something ambiguous and claim at different times it meant different, incompatible things. You may remember this technique from theology, where God is and isn’t all sorts of things, depending on who’s in the room at the time.

You believe that Jesus handed the keys of heaven to the Church, that men such as Bishop Magee are doing what he would want them to do. Which is the more horrifying option: that He did, or He didn’t?

Instead of lecturing me about the truth, how about putting your own house in order?

Hi Jemima,

The Head of the Church is Jesus Christ. He is all good, all loving and all just and He loves each of us enough to die a horrible death on the cross to save us from our sins. All we have to do is accept His love and forgiveness.

For reasons which only He knows, He chose to work through men and Women. Unfortunately some of these people reject Christ and do evil things. This is proof that the Devil is alive and well and he will present us with all manner of temptations to pull us away from Christ and get us to do evil things.

The more you are hurt and outraged by the evil done in the Church by certain evil people, the more that Christ yearns to embrace you and shower His love upon you.

Every time a child was abused by one of these evil people it was as if another nail was pounded into Christ’s limbs, and He screamed out in agony for the suffering that His child was experiencing.

As mortals, until we get to heaven, we will never understand why God allows this to happen, as we will never understand why God allowed His Son to die such a horrible death on the cross.

Always remember that God loves YOU, and He is calling out to YOU in the silence of your anguished heart. Listen and speak to him!

I’m sorry, James, but Google ‘deepity’. All you’re doing is reeling off a series of them.

Click the link, read about a systematic series of lies. Not oversights or mistakes - one report (contained the truth) was sent to the Vatican. Meanwhile, the church sent the police a false report.

Following the logic of your analysis, the Vatican and the entire church hierarchy have been successfully tempted by the devil, so ... therefore, be a Catholic.

Your blind to it, and I’m sorry. Click the link, see what the church in Ireland is up to. Don’t blame or praise supernatural creatures. Don’t kick the can down the road by saying you don’t know why God would anoint such terrible people. Concentrate on what you *can* see. The people who claim to be doing God’s work, and use that to justify not just the abuse, but the protection of abusers.

And please answer my question - which would be worse: that Jesus approves of those who would lie to protect child rapists, or that he doesn’t?

Click the link. If you read that and aren’t troubled, I don’t need a lecture from you on love or ‘good and evil’.

Hi Jemima,

“Deepity” is an interesting (and new to me) concept but personally I prefer to take statements at their face value.
I AM deeply disturbed by the acts of evil people in the Church and in the world at large, but we have had evil with us since Cain killed Abel. Evil is nothing new.
Since there is evil in the world and you are in the world; should I be all worked up and almost hysterical about you? I think not, because there is also good in the world.
Each of us has the potential for good and evil, it all has to do with how we choose to act.
If you were confident in your beliefs I don’t think the you would be so incensed about this particular evil, as vile as it is. Keep searching, God IS waiting for you to come to Him and accept His love and peace.

It’s simple enough. You are right to say we don’t know what, if anything, God is up to. It might all make sense to Him. To me, the universe we observe makes far more sense if there isn’t some alien creature with a secret plan to serve the greater good by appointing representatives on Earth to rape kids.

I’d rather live in a universe where systematic child abuse was the work of wicked men than one where it was the result of an omnipotent being playing the long game.

If God is really trying to create good by having one in ten priest rape kids, then your god’s an idiot.

You don’t need theology to see that child rape is bad, and that shielding child rapists from consequences is also bad. It’s not complicated. There’s a life lesson here: when a group of people lie for decades to cover up something so terrible, don’t rush to defend them, don’t make excuses (‘the devil made them do it’? Really?). Most of all, don’t believe the next thing that comes out of their mouths either.

Religion, Christianity and Catholicism generally demands that you turn off your brain. Just turn that brain back on again for a second, read that link. Are those the actions of good people, moral leaders, fonts of wisdom? Just imagine for a moment that you were reading about another organization. Imagine these were the allegations against Murdoch, say, or a union, or the NFL. What would you think? You’d think, if you have any humanity, that these are horrible, monstrous people. That they must be among the most wicked people on the planet.

And then you sit in a pew and nod when they say they have the secret of moral behavior, some unique access to universal goodness.

Hi Jemima,
I must apologize for forgetting to respond to your final question: “which would be worse: that Jesus approves of those who would lie to protect child rapists, or that he doesn’t?” Obviously the first would be worse. The first is also impossible because God (Jesus) by definition can never approve evil.
As I said before “Keep searching, God IS waiting for you to come to Him and accept His love and peace.

Hi Jemima,

It is not logical to condemn the good nine because of the evil one. I have never defended the evil one. Don’t believe the evil one, believe the good nine! No matter how hurt and angry you are at the evil ones who pretended to represent God; God still loves you and wants you to have his love and peace. I don’t want to pry into your life but were you or one of your loved ones abused by one of the evil priests?
I will keep you in my prayers Jemima.

“The first is also impossible because God (Jesus) by definition can never approve evil.”

The Catholic Church teaches that they are the direct descendants of the people Jesus handed the keys of Heaven to. The word *you* used, the only possible word to use when talking about the child abuse cover up is ‘evil’.

So, pick one:

1. The Catholic teaching is wrong.
2. Jesus approves.

There’s a very simple test here: does Bishop Magee, who has a special phrase for the type of lying he does, and who operated with full Vatican knowledge and approval sound like the sort of person Jesus would want to spread his word?

No. He’s fled Ireland now. He’s apparently in hiding in America. Being looked after and paid for, no doubt, by the American Catholic Church.

There’s nothing complicated here: he’s an evil man, doing the Vatican’s evil work. If you can’t see it ... well, you’ve fallen for their ‘mental reservation’ technique, clearly.

“I don’t want to pry into your life but were you or one of your loved ones abused by one of the evil priests?
I will keep you in my prayers Jemima.”

I was not abused. Are you seriously suggesting I need to have been personally abused to feel basic human empathy for those that were? I hold the belief that raping children is wrong. It’s always horrifying to hear Catholics pausing their assault on ‘moral relativism’ to explain that they don’t understand why people get so worked up about it.

And, OK, I’ll concentrate on the nine out of ten. The ones complicit. The ones who excused and justified the one in ten who actually put their penis in a child. Those nine out of ten are worse. Click the link. The hierarchy of the church, all the way up to the top, knew what was happening and they didn’t just say nothing, they *lied*. They stamped on priests and laymen who tried to raise concerns. The current Pope and the last Pope knew, and their response was to punish whistleblowers, not rapists.

Don’t pray for me. I hope that, one day, your blinkers fall off, and that you see that by coming up with excuses, by becoming defensive you are part of the problem. Just read a cold account of the facts of the Magee case. That’s all you need to do. If you don’t see evil there, where would you?

There’s truth and there’s mental reservation. And you’re on the wrong side on this one. This was a report by the Irish government, the one that’s been most servile to the Vatican. This is what the Catholic Church’s *friends* think it’s been up to. The Irish government have now said that Ratzinger is no longer welcome there, and some are even suggesting that they’d have to arrest him if he showed up.

If you don’t see the problem ... well, it’s a problem with the way you’re seeing.

Just ask this: if the Catholic Church systematically and knowingly deceived about this, what else have they lied to you about?

Hi Jemima,
You definitely do not have to be personally abused to feel basic human empathy for those that were. You are so passionate about this evil that I thought that might be the case.

The keys were given to Peter and his successor popes. That relates to the Church’s authority to forgive sins or not to forgive them. The keys have nothing to do with peoples ability to commit sins.

The teaching of the Church is correct and Jesus does not approve of any sin no matter how minor it is.

You are referring to mental reservation. If my boss who can negatively affect my career, asks me if my wife sleeps in the nude, I have no obligation to answer his question honestly because it is none of his business. If however if the person asking the question had a moral right to the information I would have a moral obligation to answer it truthfully. The same would apply to the Bishop.

I am not aware that the Bishop has been proven guilty of anything in a court of law, but if things are as they appear he definitely would not be Jesus’ choice to spread his word.

As far as I know the Bishop did not operate his cover up with full knowledge and approval of the Pope.
He does appear to be an evil man doing the Devil’s work.
I have seen allegations in blogs that the Bishop has fled Ireland and is hiding in America; however I have seen no credible proof of that. Since the US is one of the most open places in the world an we have extradition treaties with most countries, this does not seem to be the smartest place to try to hide out.
The lawyers would be suing the other 90% if there was a shred of evidence that was true.
God loves you and wants you to have his love and peace and I am praying for you.

“If however if the person asking the question had a moral right to the information I would have a moral obligation to answer it truthfully. The same would apply to the Bishop.”

The Bishop believed that he had no ‘moral obligation’ to report child abuse to the police because he answered to a higher authority. Do you agree?

“I am not aware that the Bishop has been proven guilty of anything in a court of law, but if things are as they appear he definitely would not be Jesus’ choice to spread his word.”

He fled the country. He ‘faces jail’ if he returns to Ireland:

http://clericalwhispers.blogspot.com/2011/07/magee-under-pressure-to-face-fallout.html

But you’ve accepted the broader point - the people running the Church are not all the sort of people who Jesus would want running the Church?

“As far as I know the Bishop did not operate his cover up with full knowledge and approval of the Pope.”

You’re wrong, plain and simple:

http://www.irishcentral.com/story/news/periscope/bishop-magee-did-vatican-bidding-by-covering-up-cloyne-pedophile-priests—-video-125624723.html

“He does appear to be an evil man doing the Devil’s work.”

He worked at the Vatican, he was secretary to three Popes. He’s not some local rogue bishop who they’ve never heard of.

The ‘bad apple’ model simply doesn’t apply here. Read the damn report, and see what it says. A Vatican man, reporting to the Vatican, followed Vatican policies.

There were clearly clergymen who weren’t involved. The current Pope was involved. Are you saying that the Devil has taken control of the current Pope? And that’s an argument *for* Catholicism / Jesus’s skill at delegation?

Now, without invoking supernatural creatures like God and the Devil, what does that say about the human beings that worked with Magee? To paraphrase CS Lewis, aren’t there merely two options: they are mad not to have spotted it or bad not to have stopped it?

“I have seen allegations in blogs that the Bishop has fled Ireland and is hiding in America; however I have seen no credible proof of that.”

http://www.irishcentral.com/news/Bishop-Magee-due-to-return-home-from-America-to-respond-to-Cloyne-Report-findings-125708598.html

“Since the US is one of the most open places in the world an we have extradition treaties with most countries, this does not seem to be the smartest place to try to hide out.
The lawyers would be suing the other 90% if there was a shred of evidence that was true.”

Do you not know that’s exactly what’s happening? In the US alone, over 25,000 priests have been investigated. Many are in jail. Many dioceses have declared bankruptcy to avoid paying victims. Archbishop Timothy Dolan (personally implicated in the abuse scandal) did two things last month - he ranted and raved how about New York allowing gay marriage was immoral, and he moved $130M of his diocese’s assets out of the area, so he could plead poverty and wouldn’t have to pay the settlements the courts demanded. 

Again, this isn’t ‘bad apples’, it’s policy. And these are not the actions of people who are moral paragons, it’s the actions of knowing, devious people.

“God loves you and wants you to have his love and peace”.

God may or may not exist. The only thing we can say is that anyone who claims to know 100% for certain one way or the other is incapable of supporting that claim.

People exist, we know that. What I see is human beings exploiting poor saps who want to believe in God. Taking their money, raping their kids.

Tomorrow, when you hand over money to your church, I ask you to do one thing. Think of Bishop Magee somewhere in America having a nice meal at a restaurant. Think of how you’re helping pay for that meal. Read the Cloyne Report, look at all the expense the Church went to to cover up child abuse. Think ‘I helped pay for all that. Last week, I did so unknowingly. This week, I know.’. If you can still hand the money over in good conscience, if you think on balance the good work the church does outweighs the evil, please go ahead.

If your God exists, surely he would very much approve of you not giving any more material or spiritual support to such men?

Here’s a modest proposal. Instead of a banknote, put another note ‘I will donate to you again when Bishop Magee returns to Ireland’.

If every Catholic in America did that, the scoundrels running your Church would look at the millions of dollars they’d lost out on and charter a supersonic jet fighter to fly him home. He’d be there by lunchtime tomorrow.

But, no, you won’t do that, will you?

I’m sorry your church has placed you in this indefensible position, I really am. There’s an obvious way out, though.

Hi Jamima,

You have a real talent at distorting comments and extrapolating from one thing to all. I indicated if everything is as it appears that THE bishop would not be Jesus’ choice to spread His word. You then extrapolated to try to say that I admitted that the people running the Church would not be Jesus’ choice to spread His word. I never said or implied that.
It is impossible to have a meaningful discussion with someone who is intellectually dishonest.
I am sorry that we can not continue this attempt at discussion. But God loves you and I will continue to pray that you open yourself to Him. I hope that I make it to heaven and that I meet you there.

“It is impossible to have a meaningful discussion with someone who is intellectually dishonest.”

Read the report, Mr Anderson, and you’ll see that your Church - not just Bishop Magee, but other senior people at the Vatican - weren’t just a bit uppity with internet comments, they personally abused children then lied to the government and police. They had a special phrase for lying, and felt that they answered to a higher authority.

My ‘dishonesty’ means you don’t want to discuss this further with me, which is your right. Their dishonesty has you rushing to defend them.

Again, all you have to do is read the Cloyne Report. Bishop Magee wasn’t some outlier, the report makes it clear he was fairly typical and working along guidelines set for him by his superiors.

As for heaven and hell - Mark Twain said we should go to Heaven for the climate, but Hell for the company.

Hi jamima,

I definitely don’t recommend hell. Not only is the fire very hot but the company that you would spend your time with would include most if not all of the people who abuse children.

The gospel says that there is more joy in heaven over one repentant sinner than over 99 just people. The church teaches that we should love the sinner but hate the sin. Therefore I said most if not all because God still loves them and will welcome the home IF they truly repent and make restitution to what ever extent is possible.

I find God’s overwhelming love of his sons and daughters very comforting because if there is a possibility that child rapist could make it into heaven then the odds are much better that we can make it also.

Remember God loves you and I will continue to pray that you open yourself to Him. I hope that I make it to heaven and that I meet you there.

“I definitely don’t recommend hell.”

It’s not real, so I’m not worried.

“The gospel says-”

As the saying goes, using the Bible as evidence for the existence of God is like using Action Comics as evidence of the existence of Superman. Close that book, sit alone for a moment and think about what we actually know, the evidence we actually have.

Jennifer started her post by saying she’s a Catholic because she knows the truth can’t work through lies. It would be fascinating to hear her thoughts on the Cloyne Report, which basically states that the Catholic Church works through lies. And, again, if they’re lying to you about that, what else are they lying to you about?

“I find God’s overwhelming love of his sons and daughters very comforting because if there is a possibility that child rapist could make it into heaven then the odds are much better that we can make it also.”

That’s just horrifying. What I find most disgusting is that every one of your posts express the hope that the priest makes good in the end. What about the victims? Under your logic, a priest can rape a hundred boys and if he’s vewwy vewey sowwy, he goes to Heaven, but if the experience of being raped by a priest sours his victims on the whole God thing, not an unreasonable response, they’re going to hell.

Yuck. If that’s God, it’s a monster.

“Remember God loves you and I will continue to pray that you open yourself to Him. I hope that I make it to heaven and that I meet you there.”

I sometimes wish that there was an atheist afterlife, just because an eternity of pointing at theists and saying ‘see?’ is extremely appealing. But, no, I don’t believe that, and as saying ‘see?’ singularly fails to work on Earth, I doubt it would pay off. You’d just make up some more gods. Catholic doctrine, of course, teaches that sneering at sinners in Hell is one of the sweetest delights of Heaven.

OK. I might be wrong. Perhaps there are gods. We don’t know. But we do know about people. Read the Cloyne Report, the Vatican clearly has some terrible, terrible people in it. I don’t care what happens to those priests in the afterlife, you apparently don’t care what happens to them in this life. I hope you come to understand that people should do their best in this life and nothing else can matter.

Hi Jamima,

You are distorting my words again. I did not attempt to prove the existence of God.  To me that requires no prof.

The Cloyne report actually says that some evil people in the church are liars.

“every one of your posts express the hope that the priest makes good in the end.” I believe that I have only expressed that as a possibility one time not every time. Another one of your continuing distortions.

“Catholic doctrine, of course, teaches that sneering at sinners in Hell is one of the sweetest delights of Heaven.” I challenge you to back that up with an official Church document

I do agree with this part of your last statement: “I hope you come to understand that people should do their best in this life”.

Despite your continual distortions God loves you and I will continue to pray for you.

“I challenge you to back that up with an official Church document”

Luke 16 says the people in Heaven can see down into Hell. Aquinas explained: “That the saints may enjoy their beatitude and the grace of God more abundantly they are permitted to see the punishment of the damned in hell.”

http://www.newadvent.org/summa/5094.htm

Cue someone claiming that Aquinas didn’t write an ‘official church document’, he was just some random bloke who wasn’t speaking for the majority. He’s happily cited as a definitive source, for example here:

http://www.catholiceducation.org/articles/religion/re0462.html

Pope Benedict XV said “the Church declared the teaching of Thomas to be her own and that Doctor, honored with the special praises of the Pontiffs, the master and patron of Catholic schools”

Show me the ‘official document’ that states Aquinas was wrong on this one.

“Another one of your continuing distortions.”

Again, you seem far more worried by my ‘distortions’ (are you really denying you have spent far more time on Magee’s fate than his victims’?) than your Church’s. The Cloyne Report has at least 30 instances of Magee consciously lying, and concludes his superiors knew and supported him. You also dodge the fact that Catholic doctrine is, as I stated, that Bishop Magee can repent and go to Heaven but that any victims who walked away from Catholicism are going to Hell.

You seem to be able to compartmentalize this.

Hi Jamima,

I have to admit that you came close with your documentation, BUT you missed on big part.  You said that “Catholic doctrine, of course, teaches that sneering at sinners in Hell is one of the sweetest delights of Heaven.” The documentation that you provided doesn’t use the word “sneer” and it doesn’t imply that either. The sneer concept is another one of your distortions.

The distortions I point out are your actions that make it difficult to have a fruitful discussion with you.

I described to you how I believe Jesus feels about the abuse of His children. As a father of four boys, and grandfather of two boys, and the great-grandfather of one boy I assure I am very upset by the thought of what these mainly boys went through. I pray daily that the scars of this abuse will be healed.

You also say ” ... Catholic doctrine is, as I stated, ... that any victims who walked away from Catholicism are going to Hell.” This again is a total distortion. I again challenge you to back up that statement with an official Catholic document.

In order to commit a serious sin and deserve hell there must be a serious natter, you must have full knowledge of the effects of the sin and you must have full consent of the will. It is extremely doubtful that any child who has been traumatized in this manner would have full consent of the will in the future regarding leaving the church.

I look forward to your next documentation. I was really surprised how close you came last time. I am well aware of St. Thomas Aquinas however I don’t remember reading that quote.

As always God loves you and I am praying that we both make it to heaven and meet there.

“The sneer concept is another one of your distortions.”

No, it’s just them following the lead of their master:

“the Lord laughs at the wicked, for he knows their day is coming. (Psalm 37.13)”

“I will even laugh at your calamity; I will mock when your dread comes. (Proverbs 1:26)”

Catholic doctrine contradicts this and insists that he’s sad deep down. But the Bible says the exact opposite.

Think about it. If you’re in Heaven, why would God show you Hell? Not as a threat - you’re safe in Heaven. To make you feel bad? In Heaven? No. It’s to make you feel *good*.

In any possible human sense - and in the stories you tell each other, those saints are meant to be humans, they don’t have the excuse that God has, that He’s inhuman - laughing at the damned is sadism.

It’s one of the more horrible aspects of Christianity. The prospect of going to Hell doesn’t frighten me - Hell doesn’t exist. The reality that there are human beings who secretly or openly delight in the idea their neighbours will be tortured for failing to complete some ritual ... that frightens me.

It’s Catholic doctrine that, in Heaven, you get to watch a reality show about Hell, and you’ll be spending eternity with people who laugh at people being burned and tortured.

That’s Catholic doctrine. It’s not phrased the way they phrase it, but it’s not a distortion of the Vatican line either. Give me a choice, I’ll take Hell over that Heaven, and I think most human beings with any moral courage would, too.

In other news:

http://www.funnyism.com/iphone/14299?ref=nf

@ Jemima Cole: Let’s take a look at that imagery closer. Both Heaven and Hell are engulfed in the same flames - the flames of God’s divine love.  Heaven is a happy place because the saints are one with that flame and thus it causes them no pain. Yes, they can see Hell and it does give them more reasons to glorify God - not because the souls there are in pain but because they see that God’s justice is truly perfect! The souls in Hell got exactly what they asked to receive - a world without God, without mercy, without hope, without joy, without everything they rejected for themselves or for others. The flames of divine love are a torment to the souls in Hell because they are an eternal reminder of what they could have had if they had made different choices. However, make no mistake the souls in Hell don’t WANT to change.  Go read the passage about the poor beggar Lazarus and the rich man in Hell. That rich man still thought he was better than Lazarus, still thought Lazarus should be forced to do his bidding, and the concept that he should be apologizing or that he should feel remorse for how he treated Lazarus never even occurs to him.  This is how the people in Hell are.

It’s hard NOT to laugh at someone like the rich man whose inflated sense of self still leads him to believe he is the better man. This guy is the lowest of the low, but absurdly believes he has the right to treat someone who is beloved by God as if they are garbage and trash. It’s like looking at the emperor strutting naked in his imaginary finery.  The only one he’s got completely fooled is himself and people who want to be like him.

Hell exists - if you want proof of it all you have to do is spend a night in a maximum security prison. That’s a foretaste of hell if ever there was one. That’s what happens when you put people together whose selfishness overrides everything else within them, and that’s exactly what hell is.

“Let’s take a look at that imagery closer.”

The Bible and Catholic doctrine are that God and the saints look at people suffering in Hell and laugh. That’s not a false statement or a distortion, is it?

And the maximum security prison is a great analogy that makes my point. In more primitive times, tourists would visit prisons and lunatic asylums to laugh at the inmates and take pleasure in their misfortune. People threw fruit at prisoners in stocks, jeered at public executions.

We grew. We improved our morality, and now see that as abhorrent and savage. We understand that prisons are for rehabilitation, not humiliation. 

Your religion’s morality comes from a more primitive time, one where feudal lords capriciously humiliated anyone who fell out of their favor and threw them in the dungeon below the castle.

Your god may or may not exist. If he does, and the Bible and Vatican are right about how things are run, it’s horrible. Better that he doesn’t exist than that.

Great article.  You must be doing something right to generate such dialogue.  It’s interesting, the atheists who don’t believe in God read your articles anyway.  God bless you.

“the atheists who don’t believe in God read your articles”

Jennifer’s ludicrous columns have something of a cult following among us atheists. With the flimsy, egotistical reasons she gives for her ‘conversion’ (good example: the modern art one, where her brain turned ‘I don’t like this modern sculpture’ into ‘therefore the Catholic God must agree’), plus her extremist views on the place of women, we’ve found her positioning as a ‘reasonable, mainstream, modern Catholic voice’ to be an excellent recruiting tool. If that’s what passes for normal in the Catholic church these days ... well, better options are available.

Plus, she understands that the game here is to generate hits, so cultivates that with posts like ‘five reasons atheists love the idea of the Virgin Mary’ and so on. Please don’t indulge the fantasy that we’re secretly convinced by wonderful arguments like that and are just waiting to convert. It’s more like the Emperor’s New Clothes. Moreso, given that there’s no evidence for the *Emperor* of the Catholic story, not just his clothes.

If you see no problems with arguments like ‘here’s a solution to overpopulation - there’s no such thing’, and ‘S&P downgraded the US’s credit rating because we’re not Catholic enough’ convincing ... well, good luck to you.

Meanwhile, four weeks on, Bishop Magee is still hiding in a mystery location. Some reports have him at a Catholic safehouse in the US. What a wonderful religion you have, to have a network of safehouses for fugitive priests.

http://www.rte.ie/news/2011/0810/cloyne.html

Look, it’s easy. Go to your church. Tell your bishop that you’ll keep coming to Church, but no more donations until Magee is back in Ireland. If you all did that, he’d be back in Ireland tomorrow morning. Until you do that, you’re morally complicit and I’m sure you’d concede that’s the sort of thing that would make your god sad.

Hi Jamima, I owe you a couple of replies but first I would like to respond to today’s post about Bishop Magee. There is a much simpler approach. All the Irish Government has to do is file an extradition request with the US Government to return the Bishop for trial. The current administration is not particularly pro-Catholic and they would be glad to cooperate. It has been four weeks now, why hasn’t the Irish government done anything to bring the bishop back? As always God loves you and I am praying for you.

Jamima, I will pray for you.

“Jamima, I will pray for you.”

I know that when most people say that, their heart is in the right place. But look to yourself, and the actions of the church you support, first. The subject of Jennifer’s post is that Catholicism made her a ‘better person’.

Is Bishop Magee a ‘better person’ for being a Catholic, or did the way the organization is set up simply enable him to be a worse one? Would he have been part of a child abuse gang otherwise?

Do you think you are a ‘better person’ because the church dragged you into this situation?

“All the Irish Government has to do is file an extradition request with the US Government to return the Bishop for trial.”

No one knows where the Bishop is. People think he’s probably in America, but no one is sure. But you can’t extradite someone you can’t find.

Here are a couple of questions for you: do you think there are people in the Vatican who know where he is and may even have arranged it? Whether they do or don’t know, do you think they should have asked Magee to face the music?

“The current administration is not particularly pro-Catholic”

Nancy Pelosi and Joe Biden are both vocal, active Catholics. 24 senators are Catholic (15 of them are Democrats), and that’s the largest religious group - second largest, Prestbyterians with 15. That’s about representative, about 26% of the US population is Catholic. Compare and contrast with the fact that 16% of the US population say they are not affiliated with a religion and there are exactly no Senators who say that. There are currently six Catholic Supreme Court justices, as opposed to three who aren’t.

But, of course, none of those facts fit the ‘Catholics are marginal and persecuted’ narrative, so I suspect you’re going to tell me that none of that counts, and that Joe Biden’s not *really* a Catholic or whatever.

Before you do, answer this: is Bishop Magee ‘really’ a Catholic?

“why hasn’t the Irish government done anything to bring the bishop back?”

Also, on further reflection, isn’t this rather blaming the victim, not the perpetrator? (Yes, it’s the children who are the main victims, but the Cloyne Report showed categorically that Magee and the Vatican lied to the police and government).

I don’t really understand the point you’re trying to make. Do you think, perhaps that the Irish government aren’t taking it seriously enough? Or do you think it’s all a big fuss about nothing?

@Jemima: You don’t become Catholic just by saying you’re Catholic, or even by attending Mass.  Catholics who are truly Catholic are faithful to the teachings presented in Sacred Scripture as well as the traditions handed on through the Magisterium and the leadership of the Pope. Child abuse is in direct violation of the laws of the Church, and by having committed it that Bishop has ex-communicated HIMSELF from the Church until such time as he chooses to pursue reconciliation and make amends for the damage he has done. That is according to canon law. Nancy Peloisi, Joe Biden, Kathleen Sebelius, and numerous others who cite their “Catholic” faith are in direct opposition to the teachings of the Catholic Church and by their vocal, political stance in opposition to the teachings of the Church have chosen to ex-communicate themselves from it. That their Bishops and Priests continue to allow them to receive communion in such a state is a cause of much grief and scandal to the Catholic Church, but if you ever come to the point in your life where you belong to the Body of Christ you will understand that Christ already told us there would be wolves amongst us posing as sheep, attempting to destroy the Church from within. This is why the Catholic Church is not a cult of personality - we do not follow men, for we understand that even those who lead us are weak and capable of falling to sin.  Membership in the Catholic Church isn’t like membership in the YMCA - paying your dues and holding a card doesn’t qualify you as a member. 

I’m sure this explanation won’t suffice for you because, at least in your mind, if they say they are Catholic that’s sufficient evidence of their Catholicism for you. We who are Catholic, however, know it’s not enough to talk the talk. You have to walk the walk, especially when the going gets toughest.

“I’m sure this explanation won’t suffice for you because, at least in your mind, if they say they are Catholic that’s sufficient evidence of their Catholicism for you.”

No, that explanation won’t suffice because you have to explain the Cloyne Report, which says senior Vatican officials ordered, directed and approved of Magee’s actions. In subsequent debate, it’s turned out that the Pope has been told that his role in that affair now means he’s no longer welcome in Ireland.

So, following your logic ... the Pope isn’t Catholic.

It’s the No True Scotsman argument, nothing more than that. A position that the Church can do no wrong, so all that wrong that’s been done has nothing to do with the Church. That no true Catholic can accept the rule of law on women’s rights, so any that do must be traitors to the cause.

Thankfully, the vast majority of Catholics have none of it. I just wish those people were willing and able to fix the problem.

Great article, Jen! I very much appreciated this perspective and I, like so many, am grateful for your story!

REgarding the article and the Catholic church:  This piece hits it on the head what are the positives of being Catholic!  Saints are great role models.  Instead of picking up the latest issue of People Magazine and reading about all these smutty celebrities, go and read about great people of faith—the internet is filled with great articles on them. 

New vision of yourself:  Since I came back to the Catholic Church, I try to be more encouraging to poeple, will pray for people that I know are suffering, have become more charitable, I am not as stressed or blame others for things that happen to me. I understand their stand on morality and their respect for life.

I have help:  I don’t feel so alone on this planet anymore…I have God, the saints, the angels and my passed loved ones with me spiritually—It’s nice to know they’ve got my back!

I want to reach Heaven:  Who wants to go to hell?  Isn’t there enough suffering and turmoil while we life on earth?  After I die, I want to live for ernity with my Lord. 

For non-beleivers, all I have to say is that I pity you=For you feel you should just do things that just “feel good” and “live life” without any sense of right or wrong and, in the end, when you are put into the ground, that’s it-Your DEAD and DONE.

...What a sad concept of life.

I am absolutely fascinated with how interested atheists seem to be in religion!