Leaving the Catholic Church - countmeout.ie (1 Viewer)

[Lili Marlene]

About a decade ago my grandmother's Christmas present to my mother was a copy of the Catechism of the Catholic Church.

 

[ann post]

And as regards catholics subscribing to all that catholicism entails, I'd say most don't have a clue about the church's views on lots of things.

*fun* game.

Ask a catholic do they think priests should be able to marry, should a woman be allowed to be a priest. If they say yes to both, ask them are they closer to protestant than catholic. Brace yourself for a person wrestling with a lot of things they had taken for granted being challenged.

 

[rettucs]

or the age old chestnut about having a ride before marriage.

 

[oh shit]

ask them where in the bible it says you should pray to saints or the blessed virgin, when they are clearly and repeatedly commanded to worship only one god

 

[Denny Oubidoux]

*fun* game.

Ask a catholic do they think priests should be able to marry, should a woman be allowed to be a priest. If they say yes to both, ask them are they closer to protestant than catholic. Brace yourself for a person wrestling with a lot of things they had taken for granted being challenged.

I thought that theological consensus held that married priests are not out of the question and therefore not an un-catholic thing to wish for whereas women priests are incompatible with Catholicism because Jesus, by having only male disciples, made it plain that he wouldn't ever have wanted lady priests.

My favorite thing about Catholicism is it's architecture

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[therealjohnny]

I got this the other day. It almost makes me wish I was married so I could produce a child with which to share it
ABOUT OUR PROJECT | Awkward Moments (Not Found In Your Average) Children's Bible

 

[MilanPan!c]

This is a typically naive liberal view of constitutionalism. the LAW is just a set of legally valid norms. Where those norms are derived from is politically contested. That's why constitutions give political legitimacy to the legislature. what goes INTO the LAW in terms of its substance cannot be determined by the abstract notion of 'equality', which only has meaning when it is used as a measurement of something substantive. If everyone but you in the country was Catholic, then the norms that go into the LAW are going to be CATHOLIC NORMS. And "equality" only means that everyone has to obey them. This is why, for instance, Irish women (equally) have no right to abortion. So formally leaving the church is obviously a political thing, even if symbolic, but 90% of politics is symbolism anyway.

Sorry, but that not all as clear headed as it seems.

Laws can and do exist that are their to protect the minorities, and those laws, while they de facto acknowledge their authors aren't necessarily biased towards their views or beliefs.

The US has been a predominantly Christian nation since is was founded, and is indeed full of religious nuts, but even so the courts have time and tIme again protected the state from religious intrusion. Maybe not perfectly, and maybe it ebbs and flows in effectiveness, but no American would tolerate if all public schools were suddenly Baptist.

The Founding Fathers were all pretty much god fearing Christians, but they made sure the state wasn't specifically Christian - as least as much was possible in the late 1700s.

On the other hand, the Irish state did the exact opposite - enshrining the specific beliefs of the majority into not only the government, but into schools and healthcare.

And it has obviously failed the state, these decisions, in less than 100 years.

No one may ever be able to put aside their personal biases, but by acknowledging them and assume they are just that - personal - laws can be made that try at least to step beyond the present day "norm" and look at what will protect everyone as best as possible, in as many circumstances as possible, for as long as possible.

Something abdicating taxes and authority to a single religious body could never possibly accomplish.

 

[MilanPan!c]

If people get something out of religion, that's great.

Like access to children...




Boom boom

 

[shower another shower]

I try to live by at least 50% of the 10 commandments at any given time.

 

[nooleen]

well yeah, you're hardly going to break more than 5 at once

 

[Unicron]

well yeah, you're hardly going to break more than 5 at once

I think 8 is doable, but you wouldn't necessarily want to make snuff porn with your parents in order to accomplish it.

 

[MilanPan!c]

well yeah, you're hardly going to break more than 5 at once

Certainly not with that attitude.

 

[ann post]

I try to live by at least 50% of the 10 commandments at any given time.

Is that doing 5 of them right or ten of them half right?

 

[rettucs]

no American would tolerate if all public schools were suddenly Baptist.

right, but if all public schools were Baptist to begin with how would the greater American public react if someone set about to change things so schools were no longer baptist? I think thats maybe a more accurate analogy to whats happening in Ireland.

People are scared of change. And again, thats not unique to Ireland.

Sure just look at whats happening with guns in the US right now. There is NO salient argument for allowing people to carry guns that holds water. The argument being put forward by those who wish to bear arms - its in the constitution and its our right. Basically, pathetic bullshit.

 

[MilanPan!c]

right, but if all public schools were Baptist to begin with how would the greater American public react if someone set about to change things so schools were no longer baptist? I think thats maybe a more accurate analogy to whats happening in Ireland.

People are scared of change. And again, thats not unique to Ireland.

Sure just look at whats happening with guns in the US right now. There is NO salient argument for allowing people to carry guns that holds water. The argument being put forward by those who wish to bear arms - its in the constitution and its our right. Basically, pathetic bullshit.

Oh I'd agree with all of that, but I think you misunderstand why I posted that.

The post I was responding to was making the argument that norms are the basis for law (in a nutshell) and that the idea of equality isn't something that can be addressed by a constitution, because of the inherent societal bias of the writers... my point was that laws can be made that overcome that bias, by acknowledging it.

We can see our own bias and do what we can to protect people from it.

I'd agree that we are in a difficult position, trying to untangle the massive mistake made by the founders of the Irish state, but I think that instead of saying, "everyone register their disapproval of the church so that the state understand the church is not the majority and legislates based on that changed demographic" we should be saying, "no matter the demographic the laws shouldn't be based on things like religious affiliation and state institutions shouldn't embed religious bias into their very core".

The point is that it shouldn't simply shift from one mob to another, but a set of values that reflect plurality and tolerance, and remove the power of religious institutions from state institutions.

Hope that's vaguely more clear.

As for guns in America, well.. there's been a campaign by a very rich lobby for decades to fool American's about the very meaning of the Second Amendment, to the point that even gun control advocates don't even know what it's all about... that problem will take generations to fix, and all the while 30K people will die from gun injuries yearly, many of them children.

 

[rettucs]

Hope that's vaguely more clear.

Tis. Cheers

 

[Lili Marlene]

I'd agree that we are in a difficult position, trying to untangle the massive mistake made by the founders of the Irish state, but I think that instead of saying, "everyone register their disapproval of the church so that the state understand the church is not the majority and legislates based on that changed demographic" we should be saying, "no matter the demographic the laws shouldn't be based on things like religious affiliation and state institutions shouldn't embed religious bias into their very core".

The point is that it shouldn't simply shift from one mob to another, but a set of values that reflect plurality and tolerance, and remove the power of religious institutions from state institutions.

I think this is very true but the symbolic gesture was much needed in 2009 when this campaign was launched. While in some ways not much has changed between 2009 and 2014 when compared to the previous 20 years, in another way I think the general public are more willing to actually look at these issues seriously.

After all the Savita business, the latest 800 dead babies and the general growth of feminism in a broader sense, I would like to hope (perhaps naively) that the separation of Church and State seems like a better idea to most Irish people.

Next census isn't until 2016, and is looking to be delayed, but i'll be a bit disgusted if 3.8 out of 4.5 million people still identify themselves as Roman Catholic.

 

[тхеодоре кацзынски]

In terms of doctrine you can't really be a Catholic and reject the legitimacy of transubstantiation, how many people who go to mass really buy that they're consuming actual flesh and blood? If they think it's representative of it then they're subscribing to consubstantiation, ergo they're prods. Some protestant churches, notably the Anglican communion which includes the Church of Ireland consider themselves to be part of a larger single catholic Church, just not part of the Roman Catholic Church.

Never considered the whole trans/consubstantiation earlier, point taken.

 

[Anthony]

Next census isn't until 2016, and is looking to be delayed, but i'll be a bit disgusted if 3.8 out of 4.5 million people still identify themselves as Roman Catholic.

Unfortunately most people will still tick the Catholic box automatically.

 

[MilanPan!c]

I think this is very true but the symbolic gesture was much needed in 2009 when this campaign was launched. While in some ways not much has changed between 2009 and 2014 when compared to the previous 20 years, in another way I think the general public are more willing to actually look at these issues seriously.

After all the Savita business, the latest 800 dead babies and the general growth of feminism in a broader sense, I would like to hope (perhaps naively) that the separation of Church and State seems like a better idea to most Irish people.

Next census isn't until 2016, and is looking to be delayed, but i'll be a bit disgusted if 3.8 out of 4.5 million people still identify themselves as Roman Catholic.

And this ^^^ goes to the heart of my post.

It's probably, in the short term, an easier to achieve goal, to try and convince Catholics that the moral way to govern isn't by the religious majority having the power to inflict their religion on the minority. That they'd in fact be better Christians AND citizens if they demanded, AS CHRISTIANS, to remove the church from the state.

Saying, we'll it's mostly Catholics, ergo it should be a Catholic state is just lazy thinking. We don't think that way about race, or hair colour, or lots of other things.

And here, listen, once it's clear to the majority of Catholics, people that get no REAL benefit from Ireland's schools, and hospitals, etc., being Catholic, once it's clear to them that the only people fighting to keep the status quo intact are also the only people benefiting FROM the status quo, then change is frankly inevitable.

At that point it's a MINORITY fighting to protect a PRIVILEGE, and that case is extremely different to what's being argued now.