Pope Francis, Catholics, and Christians in the news worldwide
nohero said:
mtierney said:
In the United States, the conservative point of view….
Just to be clear, the document I gave the link to was issued by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, which is evident to anyone who takes the time to click on the link.
That is why, I offered a link to the “conservative” viewpoints on the issue in the United States.
I think we should lay to rest the repetitious, snarky comment about “anyone who takes the time to click on the link.” It serves as a cheap shot used only to quell any opposing opinions.
The big news here in Canada is the discovery of thousands of unmarked children's graves at the former sites of Indian Residential Schools that were run by the Catholic Church between 1870 and 1970. These schools were essentially concentration camps for First Nations children (some as young as four years old) who had been seized from their parents. The purpose of the schools was to rob the children of their families, language, culture and religion.
So far, of the hundreds of schools that were run by the Church, only two have been searched for graves. It is thought that the final body count could be in the tens of thousands.
It is believed that the Church has detailed records of what happened to the children at these schools but, predictably, they are refusing to release those records and, instead, they are seeking government permission to destroy them.
@Klinker, that sounds worse than the cover-up in Ireland (with the forced ‘adoptions’ etc ). I’ve been reading the coverage here, when time permits.
joanne said:
@Klinker, that sounds worse than the cover-up in Ireland (with the forced ‘adoptions’ etc ). I’ve been reading the coverage here, when time permits.
Hundreds at Catholic health network demand church apologize for residential schools
The scope of the tragedy is just mind boggling. Dr. Shoush was the author of the letter. Her grandfather had nine siblings. Seven of those children died at the a residential school run by the Sisters of St. Anne. Her family never received any explanation of their deaths.
Imagine, having your children forcibly taken from you and sent to a school where six of their siblings have already died. It can't be done. The suffering the Catholic Church inflicted on these people is simply unimaginable.
We were talking this week about how my Dad would have been 113 if he were still alive, and wondering how my grandmother felt having given birth to her 12th son. Yep, she had 13 sons and 1 girl. Neither parent and very few children (and almost none of their families) survived the Holocaust; my father watched his parents being shot in the street ‘like stray dogs’ (they were too old & sick to transport to concentration camp).
Not quite equivalent, but the horror still lingers.
The Washington Post: After controversy, U.S. Catholic bishops say there will be ‘no national policy on withholding Communion from politicians’.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/religion/2021/06/25/catholic-bishops-communion-biden-abortion/
nohero said:
Cardinal Tobin, the Archbishop for our area: Cardinal Tobin warns denying Biden Communion debate is 'toxic' (northjersey.com)
I still fail to understand why some clergy believe theological doctrine should be enshrined in secular law.
The Catholic Church or any religious body had the right to impose sanctions on members who disobey their doctrines but they don't have a right to insist that members of other Religions be punished by the State for violating those doctrines. And they should not pressure members who have the power to do so to impose those doctrines on non-members.
joanne said:
We were talking this week about how my Dad would have been 113 if he were still alive, and wondering how my grandmother felt having given birth to her 12th son. Yep, she had 13 sons and 1 girl. Neither parent and very few children (and almost none of their families) survived the Holocaust; my father watched his parents being shot in the street ‘like stray dogs’ (they were too old & sick to transport to concentration camp).
Not quite equivalent, but the horror still lingers.
You think you understand the scope of the Holocaust and then you hear a story like that and your realize it is and always will be incomprehensible.
Klinker, one of the most moving memories of my Mum that I treasure: we’d just participated in an inter-cultural panel for a big community forum on death & mourning customs. Mum had spoken about her difficulties of not speaking English yet needing to observe uncommon birth customs, death & memorial customs etc. So immediately afterwards she was surrounded by a large group of Aunties, elders from all over Queensland, the Northern Territory, the Island and PNG as they thanked her for speaking some of their stories of loss, displacement, cultural loss and need. The recognition of shared experience (Holocaust: Stolen Generations, always misunderstood) was so powerful, it filled the auditorium.
STANV said:
I still fail to understand why some clergy believe theological doctrine should be enshrined in secular law.
The Catholic Church or any religious body had the right to impose sanctions on members who disobey their doctrines but they don't have a right to insist that members of other Religions be punished by the State for violating those doctrines. And they should not pressure members who have the power to do so to impose those doctrines on non-members.
How could society exist without the 10 Commandments, upon which, much of secular law is based?
mtierney said:
How could society exist without the 10 Commandments, upon which, much of secular law is based?
What did societies the predated the ten commandments base their laws on? (to ask one, of many possible questions, that suggest themselves in response)
Only 2 out of the 10 commandments are laws, and I think people could have figured out that murder and theft are bad without a made up story about Moses and some tablets. Also interesting that the first 5 are seemingly more important to god than murder.
We had so much fun with this kind of discussion in our Ethics class at Uni. Bertrand Russell and Bishop Hume got good runs, as did many other modern writers including Camus, Sartre etc.
You might find this article a useful modern summary:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternatives_to_the_Ten_Commandments
Perhaps mtierney is thinking of the Noahide laws instead (many non-Jews confuse these with the Commandments, thinking that the better-known are what the early Christians kept):
mtierney said:
STANV said:
I still fail to understand why some clergy believe theological doctrine should be enshrined in secular law.
The Catholic Church or any religious body had the right to impose sanctions on members who disobey their doctrines but they don't have a right to insist that members of other Religions be punished by the State for violating those doctrines. And they should not pressure members who have the power to do so to impose those doctrines on non-members.
How could society exist without the 10 Commandments, upon which, much of secular law is based?
you really believe this childish nonsense, don't you.
joanne said:
We had so much fun with this kind of discussion in our Ethics class at Uni. Bertrand Russell and Bishop Hume got good runs, as did many other modern writers including Camus, Sartre etc.
You might find this article a useful modern summary:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternatives_to_the_Ten_Commandments
Perhaps mtierney is thinking of the Noahide laws instead (many non-Jews confuse these with the Commandments, thinking that the better-known are what the early Christians kept):
No ambiguity here…
mtierney said:
How could society exist without the 10 Commandments, upon which, much of secular law is based?
Secular laws aren't actually based on the text of the 10 Commandments.
And again, only two of those are actual laws. And FYI the last president who you supported regularly broke many of the others, so clearly these are only important to you when you feel like it.
nohero said:
Secular laws aren't actually based on the text of the 10 Commandments.
Commandments 6 through 10 are rooted in our laws. The word “actually” doesn’t fit in the discussion here. It’s a cop-out.
5, 7 and 8 (perjury) are laws. The covet commandments are the basis of advertising. 10 is now known as “keeping up with the Jones’s” and 9 and 6 were our last president’s hobbies.
Anywho, remind me how civilizations worldwide existed without these missives dropped down to 20,000 people lost in a desert again?
mtierney said:
nohero said:
Secular laws aren't actually based on the text of the 10 Commandments.
Commandments 6 through 10 are rooted in our laws. The word “actually” doesn’t fit in the discussion here. It’s a cop-out.
I assume you mean "our laws are rooted in Commandments 6 through 10". No, our laws are not based on the text of the 10 Commandments, or on 6-10. There are no laws against coveting, or against any and all lies, for starters.
Sometimes, the NYT gets it right….
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/26/us/catholic-communion-eucharist.html
Ok I will give you false witness in addition to murder and theft, but frankly that is only illegal in certain situations.
Also just for clarity saying that the commandments are rooted in our laws implies our laws came first. Which is correct, there were “laws” of some kind about murder and theft long before the commandments were written.
Hi, mtierney. Your Christian version of our Jewish Obligations (to us us they’re Obligations rather than Commandments) is based on shortened translations of the written tradition, which translations are acknowledged to have been very heavily politicised and crafted carefully in order to control populations and empires. Those short sentences have left out a lot. Plus, you’ve missed the rest of the 613 Obligations in total, which actually do lay out ethical and legal structures for contracts, town planning, family law, inheritance, medicine, environmental law, agriculture and husbandry, manufacturing and trade, industrial relations, etc. Of course, to get the full picture you’d also need to study the oral tradition in tandem with the written, the way we do in Cheder so that the full understanding of the original text isn’t blurred by the imposition of inaccurate substitute terms.
You also need to appreciate a bit of the other early Codes predating Torah to understand some of the finer developments it absorbed - not the crude ‘an eye for an eye’ that’s also in there, but the insistence on true weights and measures etc. I believe the Hammurabi Code is recognised as an early ethical legal code.
Learn from your own First Nations people how their societies were organised. It’s recognised that early civilisations in South America, in India and China, in many very ancient places had independent and ethical societies with highly developed legal systems. The Hollywood-version we have in mind of these as dirty and violent and rough has been proven inaccurate by archaeologists recreating living models from records and ruins.
Talk with Buddhists, Zoroastrians, Hindus about their values systems - all independent of Judeao-Christianity and probably older.
mtierney said:
Another common bond for Judeo-Christian rapport…
Are you trying to convert joanne?
In thinking about the commandment prohibiting "graven images" (golden calves and the like), one cannot help but recall the lovely idol that figured so prominently at the last CPAC.
Cardinal Tobin, the Archbishop for our area: Cardinal Tobin warns denying Biden Communion debate is 'toxic' (northjersey.com)