christmas presents
Angelina i think the church should stop showing a double standard when it comes to love. anyone can make a mistake at their wedding, that's human
A couple of changes which I can't see them ever making (who knows what will happen in 100 years) are the stands on abortion, gay people and divorce. Maybe divorce, at a stretch, because one can get an annulment so what is the real difference. Women priests are a possibility, I think, but it's practical, because it is increasingly hard to find men who want to be priests. Allowing priests to marry would help too. At least we have now had one pope who resigned because he was too old to do the job. That's progress.
- Edited
Angelina
Doctors are famous for having very very dark sense of humour.
Besides, you know he was head of the congregation of faith before becoming pope?
In case you don't know, that institution was previously called holy inquisition. So from my perspective, that joke is more than well deserved.
- Edited
Ines but Catholic Church is by far, the biggest benefactor of the world.
Why not tell that to the millions and millions of people all over the world who have been "christianised" by the sword (yes, the European type of sword with the hand guard as cross bar resembling a cross is no accidental similarity) and were brutally killed if they did not took up the new faith.
Why not tell this to the thousands of native people in New Zealand and Australia, who were taken as young children from their parents and placed into the care of the church in order to be "raised as good christians", because in the eyes of the church non-christian parents were unfit for that role. (Known as "stolen generation" and the governments of both countries have apologised, but not the catholic church.)
Why not tell this to thousands of victims of sexual abuse by priests where the church actually worked to protect the priests rather than the victims?
Why not tell this millions of women (and some men) who were burned alive for witchcraft and herecy under the order of the chruch, who actively engaged in these actions via the "holy [!!!] inquisition" and for which the church until today has never apologised or even admitted it was wrong? (Actually, as I pointed out before, the institution of the "holy inquisition" still exists, if was just renamed to the "congregation of faith" of which then Cardinal Ratzinger (later Pope Benedict XVI.) was the head).
Why not tell this to millions of muslims and naive but faithful christian Europeans, who died in the crusades?
Why not tell this to about 7 million jewish people who died in Nazi Germany's concentration camps when Pope Pius XII. stood by and signed a contract with Nazi Germany not to interfere? And many Nazi criminals evaded allied justice in Europe after WW2 because the catholic church actively helped them escape to countries in South America.
I could go on and on like this.
There are actually very few organisations (if any at all) in the world that have more blood on their hands than the catholic church.
I do not want to judge whether any church is a force for good or bad in the world (that would be off-topic), but a few thoughts:
In raw numbers, there are few philanthropists that rival the RCC. But the RCC is also one of the wealthiest organizations in the world when it comes to land ownership, sheer assets and contributions from the masses. So it does not take a lot for them to outcompete many smaller charities that dedicate a much larger share of their assets to a cause.
As @curious mentioned above, an overall judgment needs to take both the positives and the negatives into account. Any organization that is over a thousand years old is going to have a lot of skeletons in the closet, and some of those skeletons might be the very reason they have so much wealth to put to charitable causes today.
Finally, to me Benedict represents pretty much the hard core of the church. He pretty much embodied all the good and bad that the church stands for today. Anyone who strongly identifies with the late 20th / early 21st century RCC will have lots of admiration for the man, but at the same time, the values he stood for and the things he did are also one of the principal reasons why all the people that are leaving the church these days do so.
curious All major religious denominations have a record of crimes. So do ideological atheists (millions of victims of communism). Therefore, pointing out past misdeeds of the Church is misplaced in the context of the pontificate of Benedict XVI and his earlier activities as a church dignitary. In my opinion - although I am an agnostic - he was one of the better popes, definitely better than the current Francis.
Andrew Looking at that city near that large bay in central California and the sexual norms there, "I grew up with Francisco" can have a much different meaning than anything that pope Francis would approve of.
- Edited
curious I could go on and on like this.
Yes, of course, as a big I institution had mistakes, and I said it in my first post, but, it seems that you are more nterested in read your own posts and little in read the posts of the others.
And you can ask to those guessed millions of cristianized by sword, what was the option in a lot of places before the Catholic Church: Human sacrifices, slavery...
Ask the millions of children rescued of mines.
Ask the millions of women that have micro loans of Church to start their business.
Ask the millions of people cared in Christian hospitals in areas where nobody has a single doctor.
Ask the girls rescued of prostitution in bad areas of South America...
Anyway, You will continue to be convinced of the evil of the Church as I am convinced of its greatness.
curious There are actually very few organisations (if any at all) in the world that have more blood on their hands than the catholic church.
I think every empire has much more blood and none so many people helped.
Andrew So do ideological atheists (millions of victims of communism)
Atheists do not go around killing people because they are not atheists. The ruthlessness and evil of Stalinism was not an anti religious crusade. The fact that communism opposed religion is irrelevant to their actions.
hanna_anders Atheists do not go around killing people because they are not atheists. The ruthlessness and evil of Stalinism was not an anti religious crusade. The fact that communism
And what was the action of exterminating all religious denominations in the USSR from the October Revolution until 1941??? What were the crimes against representatives and faithful of churches after the communists took power in all the countries of Central Europe after 1945?