First, the man who has decided that Patrick Kennedy can not have communion unless he takes political orders from the Catholic church:
Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy
The Senate’s health bill suffers from a “fundamental failure” on the issue of abortion, representatives of America’s Catholic bishops said Monday.
Representatives of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) said the healthcare bill being debated by the Senate falls short on barring federal funding for abortion, providing coverage for immigrants, and providing affordable care to all Americans.
“If in fact this legislation were to be substantially improved in these three areas,” said John Carr, the executive director of the group’s Department of Justice, Peace, and Human Development, “the members of the Senate will have a letter from the bishops’ conference saying that the bill is an urgent national priority.”
When exactly did we grant the Catholic church the right to dictate our laws?
And no more Catholics on the Supreme Court, either.
toujoursdan
As long as they don’t endorse a candidate or party, they are tax-exempt.
Sadly…
Seebach
The critique that the Catholic Church is a patriarchy concerned with controlling the lives of women seems very valid when you consider where the church decides to put its energy, money, and manpower.
Can you imagine what 2003 might have looked like if JP II pulled out all the stops to avert a war with Iraq?
les
Hear, hear. If the cathols and the rest of the god-botherers paid a fraction of their taxes, the problems at all levels of gov’t would be eased if not wiped out.
Dr. I. F. Stone
If they go, then all the Soros-funded left wing crackpot organizations should lose their tax exempt status as well.
Snail Darter
Wingnuts wearing the black cloth are still wingnuts, just adding pious to their resume.
Spaniel
So will the USCCB also deny communion to those legislators who deny coverage for immigrants and providing affordable care to all Americans? I wonder what the internet wingnuts would say if that were to occur?
demkat620
Nope, sorry Bishop his first committment is to the constitution.
As a catholic, these people are offensive.
demkat620
Tell you what laws we do have on our books Bishop.
Laws that protect children from rapists. You wanna follow that one Bishop?
Just Some Fuckhead
Who really cares what these old pedophiles in dresses think? They can all suck my cock with apologies that I’m not 7 years old any more.
RSR
>>And no more Catholics on the Supreme Court, either.
haha, we’re lawyerin’ up.
Regarding the legislative aspect, I’m very disappointed in my Church that they’re tying so closely improving health care and practices for so many to an issue about one procedure that effects a far fewer number.
Note that the Bishops mention health care for immigrants and affordabilty as well as abortion. It’s not all bad, but it seems that much debate focuses only on the latter.
noncarborundum
@Dr. I. F. Stone:
Troll?
jwb
If following Catholic teaching is so important, why aren’t the bishops imposing the same sanctions on proponents of the death penalty?
Seebach
I don’t get the Catholic obsession with fetuses? Getting over the fact that Augustine, the original playboy turned moral scold found abortion ethical until the “quickening”… aren’t all humans tainted with original sin? What makes killing a fetus worse than any other murder? Or does the original sin germs not actually get on a person until they have to travel through the icky ladyparts?
If a fetus is killed, and it is a true innocent, crafted by God Himself, doesn’t it immediately then get to return to Heaven? On the sheer basis on saving souls, it would seem a thriving industry of unprotected sex and immediate abortion would be the most effective way to prevent humans from being condemned to hell.
Seebach
But that’s because the Catholic hierarchy is only putting its weight behind that one aspect.
jwb
@Dr. I. F. Stone: Throw in the far more numerous and better funded rightwing crackpot organizations, and we can deal.
dr. bloor
@Dr. I. F. Stone:
Oh, snap.
BTW, Aimai’s going to go medieval on your sorry ass when she sees the screen name you’re using. You can ask Joe Klein what that feels like.
AngusTheGodOfMeat
@Just Some Fuckhead:
Again, we request a picture. Sigh. Again you’ll ignore the request.
Okay, anyway, the Bishop was raked over the coals by the irrepressible Tweety today, and he weaseled his way around a series of straightforward questions, such as, “What law would you (have the lawmakers) make here? Will you outlaw abortion?”
Eventually he said yes, yes he would. Right after declaring that approximately half of the American People are acting in bad conscience, in bad faith, in regard to this issue.
Ballsy.
dr. bloor
@AngusTheGodOfMeat:
Tobin is nothing if not ballsy, a real Pope Ratzi guy. The perfect choice for a Catholic state that’s been sending Democrats and socially moderate Republican’s to Washington DC forever.
jl
@toujoursdan: That is my understanding too: it is legal as long as they do not endorse or oppose a particular candidate or party. That leaves too much room for game playing for me too. But at least it is a bright line rule.
My big gripe, from a personal, religious perspective is that they have three issues they claim are important:
abortion
providing coverage for immigrants
providing affordable care to all Americans.
Do they put equal emphasis on all three when they strong arm politicians? I do not believe so. Why not? Lives are at stake for all three cases, if you follow their logic that life begins at conception (which I do not agree with).
At least, as far as I know, the official Catholic Church does not fall into the belief that we should distinguish between ‘innocent’ life and nasty icky unworthy ‘post-born’ life in these matters. I think that is heretical, and something that is becoming a hallmark of the Protestant godbotherers’ and teabaggers’ moral gymnastics in focusing only on abortion, and letting the nasty ‘post-birth’ people die like flies if doing anything inconveniences them in any way.
So, hypocrisy or heresy, takes yer choice.
Or maybe thinking that any human can distinguish in a relgious sense between ‘innocent’ and other life is blasphemy. Some one smart let me know, please.
Jager
Friends of ours, a gay catholic couple, finally said “fuck it” and joined a congregation of the American Catholic church.
In other news, my ex-wife was kicked out of a Catholic Congregation in the 70’s because she belonged to “Catholics for Choice”. The insanity was, the group met on a regular basis at her previous church! She came home mortified after the tongue lashing she took from the Monsignor about choice on top of the one she received for being married to a non-catholic. They lost her, both our daughters left too soon after they figured out what was up with the church leadership! Early in the marriage I almost converted to make her happy. One of our friends, who had divorced her non-catholic husband wanted to get married again, this time to a catholic guy. The priest called me and wanted me to write a letter about her ex husbands bad behavior…I thought about 10 seconds and told him to fuck off, quit my “instructions” and never looked back!
Tony P.
For the first time since hell last froze over, I agree with the odious Bill Donohue, head of the “Catholic League”. He told Ed Schulz that you can’t call yourself a Catholic if you are not prepared to obey your Bishops, just like you can’t call yourself a Democrat if you are not prepared to support your party leadership.
It’s not up to “us” to tell Catholics what loyalty they owe to their Pope, any more than it’s up to “us” to tell the Taliban what loyalty they owe to Mullah Omar. People who want to call themselves Catholic without accepting the Pope’s authority are perfectly free to do so, in this country. I don’t see much point to it, myself, but it’s their right.
I also don’t see much point to calling yourself a Democrat if you would even CONSIDER filibustering the Democratic health care bill. Alas, Harry Reid is in roughly the same position as the Pope: both of them could choose to excommunicate all heretics, but neither of them would have much power left if he did.
–TP
Violet
@Seebach:
Ain’t that the truth. Why doesn’t the Catholic church address this urgent issue?
I don’t get why the Catholic church has any influence over anything. Who the hell cares what the pope and a bunch of bishops think? When they stop covering up child molestation, I’ll find their thoughts a little more worth listening too. Until then, they can go to prison where they belong. I hear they don’t take too kindly to pedophiles in prisons.
kay
I was a little taken aback at Chris Matthews with the “your excellency”.
I don’t know. “Bishop” isn’t enough?
I’m not going along with that, just so the bishop and I are clear.
bayville
When it comes to morality issues, I always turn to the Church elders for advice.
From Sept. 29, 2009 (The Guardian).
See, only 1 of 20 clergy members have been “confirmed” as molestors.
Derelict
We’ve certainly come a long way from when JFK had to get up on national TV and explain that he would not be taking orders from the Vatican.
Davis X. Machina
The institutional Church is in the process of fatwa-ing itself into irrelevance. The hard line upon which it increasingly relies is indistinguishable from competing products — in the West, and in Latin America, militant Evangelical Protestantism, in South Asia and Africa, Islam — that already have the market for retrograde patriarchy and damnation carved up between them.
The Church is tossing away its unique selling proposition — its small-c catholicity — and that’s death for a product. Just admire the impending implosion.
The true Church — the consensus omnium fidelium — will soldier on regardless, much to the good of its members and the world in which they live.
bayville
Sorry, here’s the link.
Annie
“…providing coverage for immigrants, and providing affordable care to all Americans.”
We never granted to Catholic church the right to dictate our laws. Conservatives did — as long as they could use faith to hide their corrupt practices and tie patriotism to allegiance to a particular religion.
But, now they may have a problem. For conservatives, faith has only been tied to sex — gays, abortion, sex before marriage, contraception, etc. They retreat when faith is tied to social justice issues, because conservatives have never been concerned with social justice. They retreat when asked to explain how incompetent war planning in Iraq has lead to civilian deaths, US military deaths, and billions of wasted US tax payer dollars.
Will Hannity, the great Catholic, have on his show the Bishop and ask him why the administration and the Democratic Congress is not paying attention to immigrants and those not covered by health insurance? Will Hannity ask “Why isn’t Congress concerned with affordable health insurance? Will O’Reilly? Will Mark Levin? Will Sarah talk about how Obama is not aligned with American values as indicated by the Catholic Church?
I am waiting for Fox News to attack the Catholic Church for their commitment to socialism, marxism, maoism, and any other “ism” that comes to their small minds.
Derelict
And, the obligatory snark–
I think we need to band together and beat the bishop.
barrrrrrrump-cha!
Thanks, I’ll be here all week!
PurpleGirl
Please take this comment as not defending the church but as wanting to inform people about some facts surrounding both religious institutions and non-profit organizations. The tax issue isn’t simple. Most people when they talk about ending preferential tax status talk about the wealth in property that the church has but that is a local tax, federal. The main federal tax would be an income/revenue tax and in many cases they already pay income tax on non-mission related businesses. It was for that reason that NYU sold the Mueller Noodle company in the 1980s; although they had inherited the company and were instructed to use its profits for educational purposes, it created more problems for them. I’ve worked in non-profit fundraising and I’ve been on a church council. Not all jurisdictions exempt church properties from real estate taxes, in many places they make pilot payments (payments in lieu of taxes). The main reason for federal tax treatment is so that donations made to a church or organization can be made and be deducted from personal income taxes. And while many people aren’t able to do that, there are people who make significant donations and who can deduct them from their taxes. That is the real revenue stream for churches and non-profit organizations.
clonecone
The bishop opposes abortion because every abortion performed robs him of a potential molestation victim.
Seebach
I actually did not know this until recently, but the legitimacy of the Catholic Church is based upon the fact that they knew the guys who knew the guys who knew the guys who knew the guys who knew the guys, who knew the guys…
2000 years…
…who knew the guys who knew the guys who knew the guys who knew the guys who hung out with Jesus and witnessed his resurrection. It’s like total urban legend shit. I was amused.
JK
Religions Inc. – Lenny Bruce
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ISysmNCdbGo
PurpleGirl
Let me also say that for breaking the rules, the Catholic Bishops Conference should be fined and have their privileges suspended for a period of time.
Napoleon
@Derelict:
Man, I was hoping I would be the first to say something like that.
Chuck Butcher
I’d like to know how they’re getting my tax dollars with the claim that they “segregate” them from their other religious monies? Fuck ’em.
MikeJ
@Seebach: Until you get to the bits where there is more than one pope, going around poping all over the countryside, saying, “I’m popier than you are.”
But don’t worry. They picked the right guy every time an argument arose, never once picked the fake pope over the real pope. They know, because the pope is infallible and told them, “Dudes! I’m the right one!”
celticdragon
@Just Some Fuckhead:
I unsay my harsh remarks from a few weeks ago. That was one of the most funny/disturbing/still pretty damned funny things I have read.
Well done, heh!
General Winfield Stuck
@Derelict:
And a required, in some circles, reference to the great Steely Dan/ and that medieval game.
smiley
Sorry Catholics, but I think your influence in our country is soon to be over … just soon as Scalia, Thomas, Kennedy, Alito and Roberts are all dead. In other words, we’re fucked by this anachronistic religion until after we’re all dead (if then).
Just Some Fuckhead
@Derelict:
I think you mean we’ve come a long way since the Catholic Church didn’t deny President Kennedy communion for escalating the war in Vietnam.
eemom
@Chuck Butcher:
the same way they were satisfied with the pre-Stupidpak bill in the House because it didn’t permit federal funds to pay directly for abortions, and they didn’t argue that money was fungible — oh wait……
JGabriel
John Cole:
Whoa. Tell me you didn’t just recommend excluding over a quarter of the country, including most Latinos, from consideration for service on the Supreme Court? As an agnostic, pro-choice, cultural Catholic, I might have some objections to that.
Just to be clear, I agree with the overall critique of the church’s pro-life position and injecting itself into US politics. And I’d agree that conservative Catholics are currently over-represented on the court. But “no more Catholics”? That’s a little harsh, dude. Are we going back to the pre-Kennedy era?
.
jl
@Seebach: Or maybe due to the fact that Constantine, after realizing that he did not really know who or what diety his Milvian Bridge victory dream was about, he told the Christian community to bring him the Holy Books. Except there weren’t any.
After several hunderd years of Intrique, plotting. vote fixing, door-bolting before votes, and schism from what may be the more truly original church (Eastern Orthodox), we have what we have today.
During the reign of the Bad Popes, Catholic theologians developed the doctrine of how corrupt mortals could rightfully rule a holy church. Probably a good time to look at those writings again.
S o s h u l i s m, commies, atheism and modern science scared the piss out of some in the hierarchy in the nineteenth century. A few progressives tried to shake them out of their panic periodically, but it didn’t take.
John Cole
@JGabriel: Why don’t you count how many members of the current court are Catholic and get back to me.
JK
@General Winfield Stuck:
Even though I’m an atheist, God Bless Steely Dan
The greatest band intro of all-time
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PI2nV7jANOM
Bodhisattva
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6j1Ol2rRxzY
smiley
@smiley: I’m in mopderationm. Interessdtuig for rerasons not apparnebt. +50 (kiddding … erp).
Incertus
@JGabriel: Catholics have 6 or 7 of the Court’s 9 slots. I think that’s quite enough for a church that represents 20% of the population at best.
WereBear
I think it’s pretty darned funny that ossified organizations always react to external change by insisting their membership act like the changes never occurred, aka “purity drive.”
As though it was the organization changing that created the new situation!
Serious cause & effect disconnect with the ossified.
Davis X. Machina
From heaven, Justice William J. Brennan looks down and laughs, right-reactionary rat bastard he was…
Keith G
I know there are wonderful humans who happen to be Catholic here at BJ. We’ve chatted before.
So please do not think ill of me as I say, “Fuck the fucking hierarchy of the Catholic Church. They are just pissed off because although they burn through money the way a barbecue counter goes through handi-wipes, their sources for income here in the USA are drying up. Their only areas of membership growth is in the southern hemisphere. And that is a very expensive place to operate considering the weekly take.
Institutions under pressure tend to get pissy and the pope from Hitler youth has pissy in spades.
I fervently hope that progressive Catholics would some day in toto withhold their financial contributions from the church for one month as a shot across the bow. And if that that didn’t work close the purse even longer. I think Jesus would understand.
JK
I’m fine with several Catholics serving on the Supreme Court, but it sure as Hell would be nice to see 1 or 2 atheists or agnostics serving there as well.
Just Some Fuckhead
Funny how it’s only ever Democrats that find themselves targets of overzealous Catholic bishops. Anyone ever hear of the Inquisition coming after Catholic Republican Senator Susan Collins of Maine??
HyperIon
@JGabriel took exception to John Cole saying:
He gets a little worked up sometimes.
I guess he forgot that many Americans Catholics are the “good” kind, that is, the ones who use birth control AND believe abortion is a personal choice and think priests who molests kids are an abomination and know gay people.
MattR
So what are the odds of the bishop taking this action if Teddy was still alive?
Bubblegum Tate
Fuck the fuckin’ Catholic Church.
Jesuits are still OK, though.
WereBear
While we are complaining about religion, where are the Protestant ministers when we need some, you know, protesting?
Every time some whacko starts using Jesus to hurt people, shouldn’t a bunch of ministers rise and up get righteously indignant?
General Winfield Stuck
@Just Some Fuckhead:
Falls under Pope Reagan the First and his 13th commandment that wingnuts don’t target their own. Doesn’t matter if they are preachers, senators or candlestick makers. It’s the brother/sister hoods banding together to save the world from the evile libtardism.
Just Some Fuckhead
Maybe now that Bishop Tobin is devising secular law, he could advise us as to an appropriate penalty for a religious organization that systematically covered up the sexual abuse of children for decades.
Wormtown
I think Chris was exactly right when he said (more or less) the Church can’t convince it’s members that abortion is wrong, so it is trying to legislate it.
Another point – when the bishop said people make a choice to be catholic – no we don’t. We are born into it; baptized as infants, receive sacraments as children.
Keith G
@Bubblegum Tate: That they are. Back in college, a Jesuit fr. wanted to date me. He was a cutie and baked a mean loaf of bread, but I was already taken.
Steph
The church teaching is that abortion is the murder of a person. There are about one million abortions in the US each year. To say that the bishops should shut up makes no sense to me. If the Congress was suddenly to legalize infanticide, would you object to organized groups speaking up? In Catholic teaching, there is little – perhaps no – difference.
You can disagree about the morality of abortion, but if you look at it from the point of view of the church hierarchy, you can see that it makes sense that the bishops will critique the health care bill, right?
And yes, the molestation scandal did enormous damage to the moral authority the bishops can wield, blah blah blah. WE KNOW THIS ALREADY.
Sorry, this is not particularly coherent, but try to skip the knee-jerk “they’re just a bunch of molesters” schtick and at least understand where the bishops are coming from and make a coherent, reasonable counter-argument.
Or not.
Seebach
@HyperIon: I don’t think Cole meant no more Catholics on the supreme court ever. I think he meant, no more than 66% of the court can be Catholic at one time.
Seebach
Dude, this is the point: We get that the Church thinks abortion is murder, mmkay? But guess what? According to Church doctrine, unjust war and the death penalty is ALSO murder.
However, the Catholic Church only really gets a bee in its bonnet about one of these things. If you’re having trouble telling which one the Catholics whine about, link me an article about Texas Catholics being denied communion when retarded inmates were put to death, or could you give me the contact number for Catholics Against Military Spending?
The simple fact of the matter is that there is something more at work here, and it isn’t “morality” or “church teaching”. All of the church’s other morals fall curiously by the wayside.
Xanthippas
2 out of 3 ain’t bad!
Seebach
Plus, they’re still shielding molesters and those that covered them up. This isn’t really a past-tense topic. It’s ongoing. That makes it a legitimate argument against the fact that they’re arguing in good faith.
PaulW
When you all stopped voting in Unitarians to serve as your President.
You fools. You foolish fools. Now you suffer with all these Catholics determining your meatless Fridays.
As for me and my fellow Unitarians, we’re Going Thoreau. /raspberry
General Winfield Stuck
Yes we do. And there are many of us who are not Catholics, but basically like the church, who believe that that enormous crime, and especially the decades of cover up by the “Hierarchy” not only damages it’s credibility, but impeaches it absolutely. Personally, I would like to see it banned in this country, not the church, but the governing system as it is currently constructed. A good first step would be to allow woman and marriage for it’s priests. But that is only a first step. As you can tell, many are really really mad at these Bishops, and don’t want any guff coming from their hypocritical criminal pie holes.
How is that for a coherent reasonable counter argument. It’s the best I can muster from the wingnut leaders of this church that I hold in utter contempt.
John D.
@kay: “Your Excellency” is the appropriate mode of address to a bishop, much like “Your Highness” is the appropriate mode of address to a queen. Don’t read too much into it.
Steph
@Seebach:
“All of the church’s other morals fall curiously by the wayside.”
Catholic teaching is consistently against capital punishment. JP II slammed Bush on the Iraq war. Pax Cristi is the anti-military spending Catholic organization you’re looking for.
Yes, it seems sometimes as though they emphasize the one issue out of proportion. But is is out of proportion if abortion is murder? Please notice, I’m not saying that it is. But they believe it is. One million murders a year, from their point of view. If you thought one million people were being murdered every year, you’d do what – nothing?
I don’t think what the bishop is saying is AT ALL unreasonable, given his perspective. I wish it could be argued on that level.
MBSS
it’s high time we get a mormon or jehovah’s witness in the legal big leagues.
Nutella
The Catholic church is also against capital punishment and the invasion of Iraq, last I heard, so if they were taking a moral stand they would permit communion only to Catholics who could demonstrate their opposition to abortion, birth control, capital punishment, and the Iraq invasion. By this consistent moral standard, there may be a few nuns who might qualify as good Catholics but 99% of American Catholics would not.
It’s a political position from right-wing bishops, not a moral stand at all.
Seebach
Ooh, he “slammed” it. Wow, that’s totally the same as getting your media representatives on TV and telling politicians that if they vote for the Iraq war, they will not get communion. EXACTLY the same.
Steph
@General Winfield Stuck: I appreciate what you’re saying.
I am slowing disengaging from the church, and it sucks. It’s incredibly wrenching. A whole host of reasons.
And I don’t hold that anyone should be swayed by what this bishop or any bishop or any religious leader says about the health care bill. But I defend their right to weigh in on it. They are not endorsing candidates, they are discussing policy, from their standpoint.
Just Some Fuckhead
@Steph:
They aren’t doing anything if denying communion to the occasional Democrat is the response to the murder of one million innocents every year. Give me a fucking break. They either don’t think it’s really murder or they are psychopaths.
Tx Expat
@Steph:
The point is not what the church teaches, it is what the law recognizes as a person. The law does not (and will never) recognize “potentialities.”
The law also recognizes personal exercise of religion but does not countenance religious beliefs dictating matters of law and national policy.
The Catholic Bishops should STFU since they have long since abandoned their moral authority and they have should have no sway in national political discussions in any case due to a wall of separation between church and state.
If you don’t want to have an abortion, don’t have one. But I *will not* stand idly by while a bunch of old white men (or their acolytes) try to dictate on the issue of women’s rights or any issue for that matter. My Jesuit college taught me to respect human rights and social justice. For these neanderthal sexists to try to muck about in our politics is absolutely unacceptable. Take away their tax exemption and fuck a bunch of that proselytizing shit.
Xanthippas
I would be more sympathetic to this defense were abortion in fact murder. It’s not, so I’m not.
Seebach
Well, to be fair, let’s remember their position the last time a Holocaust happened. It’s not like dithering in the face of death is new to them.
Keith G
@Steph: Enjoy your input. One thing (more or less)
To me that is the point. I believe several things that are very important to me, but I would not presume to expect your participation in my belief system. That is a freedom that I firmly know that you have.
I want to enjoy the right to not be forced to live under their belief system.
Steph
@Xanthippas: That I can appreciate.
Incertus
@Steph:
Nothing personal Steph, but I think I can speak for a number of people here when I say “fuck his level.” He wants to come at us as an arbiter of morality? He needs to get his fucking house in order first–that’s what Jesus said, after all. And by the way, the Bishop and his fellows aren’t simply part of the discussion–they’re getting their hands into the legislative process and interfering, not only in healthcare, but also in DC with the extortion-threat over same-sex marriage.
jl
@Nutella: Agreed. I missed where anyone was threatened with denial of communion unless they opposed the Iraq war. That killed a lot of people too. Many of them arguabley ‘innocent’ even if they were nasty ‘post-birth’ people. Kids got blown apart, and they might be considered innocent, even if ‘post-birth’.
I admire many things about the Catholic Church. As a Protestant, the Protestant Xtianist wing frightens me much more, and I find them more objectionable.
But I think that the Catholic Church or at least the reactionaries who currently hold influence in it, do not walk their talk. So, sadly, I think they are hypocrites on abortion, and war, and captial punishment, and health care reform as well. I find it sad.
Steph
@Keith G: I agree completely. But they still get to speak up, as do we all. That’s all I’m arguing.
Just Some Fuckhead
I murdered fifty million sperm in the shower this morning. Drowned ’em all and giggled while I did it. Someone stop me before I kill again.
jl
@Steph: I do agree with that statement.
General Winfield Stuck
@Steph:
As a fervent worshiper at the alter of free speech for all, I concur as is their right to speak freely, and mine to tell them to go to hell in a hand basket for what they did and didn’t do for so long, and to not pass judgment on Patrick Kennedy for something that he does as a public servant to the constitution and it’s non sectarian demands.
Incertus
@MBSS: You’ll never get a JW–they’re politically neutral. Nor would you want one–trust me, I was one for 26 years. Honest? Mostly. Tremendously fucked up sense of values? Absolutely.
MattR
@Steph: Sure, they get to speak up. But when they cross the line from religious group to political advocacy group, then they should lose all the tax advantages of being a religious group.
Sly
Only in the sense that said ministers would traditionally hate the competition. But modern Godbother’s tend to hate heresy and apostasy much more than they do other religions, so they tend leave each other alone to deal with their respective “internal conflicts”. Notwithstanding the recent attempts of the Bishop of Rome and the Vicar of Christ on Earth to lull away Anglicans who are wetting their undergarments over the prospect of their faith being infiltrated by TEH GAY.
Think of it as a Fundamentalist Prime Directive, of sorts.
In any event, I join the sentiment of nixing tax exempt status of any Church that will punish its members for engaging in legitimate political discourse. And 7 out of 9 Catholics on the highest bench is, indeed, quite enough.
Steph
@Incertus: Not taken personally.
Yes, the DC thing stinks, but again – they don’t want to provide charitable services except under certain circumstances? Their right. I will lose all respect for DC lawmakers if they throw gay marriage onto the tracks for that reason. And it will suck for poor people who rely on those services if Catholic charities pullout, but again – it’s their right.
As for getting their hands into the actual writing of the legislation, as I understand it, it’s through the Catholic lobbying group, and I do say run them out, along with all the other lobbies.
Samnell
@Steph: I’ve never heard a good argument why it’s bad and wrong for religion to endorse candidates, but a-ok for religion to endorse policies. If it’s to stay the hell out of politics, then it’s to stay the hell out of politics.
And regardless of that, the bastards should be sucking down RICO charges in every state in the country for their No Child’s Behind Left initiative. They’ll change their tune pretty quick when a few dioceses have all their assets frozen, then broken up and sold at auction.
Bruce (formerly Steve S.)
I haven’t figured out why the Kennedys and other liberal Catholic politicians haven’t publically announced a conversion to Episcopalianism or some such. Life would be so much easier if they just renounced the Roman Corpse Cult once and for all. Medieval, misogynist, homophobic, patriarchal, corpse-worshiping stupidity, who needs it. This is all rhetorical, of course.
General Winfield Stuck
@Just Some Fuckhead:
Sperm #1: I’m not getting shot out of that thing. What if he’s masturbating? I’m liable to end up on the ceiling.
Seebach
How many homeless people would each church, mosque and temple in this country need to take in in order to reduce the country’s homeless population to zero?
Oh, that’s right, the church isn’t designed to actually help people. It’s a magic house for telling god how cool he is all of the fucking time.
Incertus
@Steph: With the DC thing, at least in part, they’re getting government funds to administer the programs. They’re supplementing it some, but it’s not all them. And personally, I say to the DC govt. this is what you get when you team up with any religious group. Do it yourself or get some non-sectarian group who’s willing to play by your rules. Let the Catholics do their own thing with their own money.
On a side note, have Catholics in other states where same-sex marriage is legal made similar threats? I haven’t heard of it.
Steph
@MattR: But when does that happen?
OK, in Maine, when the Bishop spent something like $500,000 in donations to get people to vote against gay marriage – I’d say that should throw tax exempt status into serious question. But speaking up on health care policy, not so much.
Steph
@Incertus: In Massachusetts, they pulled out of facilitating adoptions when we got gay marriage legalized here. Can’t think of other examples, but they’re probably out there.
MBSS
@Incertus:
i went to the church as a child. i understand your pain. they may be worse than catholics on abortion. my grandmother made me promise at the age of 5 to always oppose abortion.
a hare krisnha would really lighten those stiffs on the court up.
Wile E. Quixote
And this entirely NSFW video from the brilliant Louis CK says everything that needs to be said about the Catholic Church.
I think that any time that a Catholic bishop is interviewed the interviewer should ask how many children the priest has molested or how many coverups he’s participated in. Also how he feels about working for a former member of the Hitler Youth.
Wex
Samnell,
About religious groups endorsing policy, I can’t speak for Steph. But I’ve mention an American religious figure who I’m perfectly happy to see had influence on public policy — Martin Luther King Jr. The fact remains that the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and ’60s got its start mainly in black churches in the South. And they were highly political, after all Congressman Lewis got his start on Freedom Rides to support integrate bus terminals and perhaps more crucially, he and SNCC led the drive to register black voters all with the backing and considerable help of churches and synagogues. Look, I’m not happy about what the Catholic Church is doing here. But I do think religious groups have the potential to prophetic voices in the body politic.
Liberty60
As a Catholic, my opposition to what Bishop Tobin is doing is that they haven’t thought through their position.
If they want Catholics to lobby against abortion, to persuade their fellow citizens to make abortion rare and stigmatized, fine.
But in a democracy, laws are only just when they are enforceable; and they are only enforceable when there is a widespread consensus that they should be. This is why the speed limit was routinely ignored, and unenforceable.
There is no consensus on abortion, and there is no way a ban could be enforced without turning America into a police state.
Rep, Kennedy is obeying his committment to the Constitution and the moral precepts of human dignity and freedom.
Bishop Tobin is I believe confused as to secular versus temporal authority.
SFAW
Screw that, them are just as bad as Scalia and his ilk.
Now, if you were to propose Scientologists or perhaps a follower of J.R. “Bob” Dobbs, then we could talk.
Steph
@Seebach: Catholic Charities USA raises a huge amount of money to feed, house, and educate poor people. Catholic hospitals were founded to treat the destitute when they could get no health care. The pedophile priest scandal does not translate into No Good Has Ever Come Out of the Catholic Church.
freelancer
I owe my atheism, in large part, to my Jesuit education.
Where’s my appointment to the Supreme Court?
MattR
@Steph: I think denying amember of your congregation communion based on their political position or a political vote crosses the line.
JK
There’s nothing like a Catholic girl at the CYO
Catholic Girls – Frank Zappa
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XSEgFCFZU-Q
Just Some Fuckhead
I think, on balance, the Catholic Church does more good than NAMBLA.
Steph
@Samnell: Wex’s MLK example is a better argument than I could make.
You have to draw the line somewhere because you don’t want churches basically calling elections. But policy is pretty much always intertwined with values, and that’s a place where everyone should have the right to speak out – the church as well as the AARP, or the NAACP, or anyone else.
Steph
@MattR: You may be right. It’s coercion.
Samnell
@Wex: Having it not turn out to be an unmitigated disaster once doesn’t make much of an endorsement for entangling religion and politics. The Communist Party was for equal rights regardless of race decades before MLK.
Keith G
@Steph:
And they are doing much more than that. They are able to pull out the “God said” card and the “We are going to get in between you and God” card and in doing so they get to fuck with believers minds.
In comparison, my speech is a bit less powerful.
MBSS
right now there are 3 freepers lurking on this board, and they are aghast that their religious persecution complex is warranted.
Samnell
@Steph:
And policy positions amount to election endorsements. You’d have to think parishioners monumentally stupid to not make the obvious connection. The line you suggest drawing is one that allows everything and prohibits nothing. What then, is the sense of drawing a line?
Annie
@Nutella:
Exactly, exactly, exactly. Conservatives pick and choose the issues that suit them, and then wrap themselves around religious virtue. The Catholic Church is playing pure politics. When did they deny communion to those who supported the Iraq war? The Catholic Church may have stated their opposition to the war, but they would never take a stand against conservatives for their support for the war. They are cowards…They do not want to alienate what they believe is their core political base — conservatives who will speak against sex, but do not want to be challenged on other core beliefs.
Steph
@Keith G: Right, but we get to ignore their God card, right? And Catholics do, all the time, on abortion, birth control, gay marriage, war, death penalty, etc. Catholics in the US are all over the map.
Beej
@Steph: Here’s what’s unreasonable about it: This perspective is not shared by American society at large. Our political system has legalized abortion. Those who work within that system are obliged to express and follow both the wishes of their constituents and the laws of the land. This is to be done without reference to what any one particular religion believes to be moral. If Patrick Kennedy and his wife or girlfriend decided to have an abortion and the confessed the same to their priest and were forgiven, they would not be barred from taking communion. Patrick Kennedy has not said that he himself believes in abortion. He has said that, politically, he supports abortion rights. Does the Catholic
Church consider this grounds for depriving him of communion even though he has, himself, committed no sin? Apparently. Does this chill the right of any Catholic elected official to express a political opinion which might be at odds with Catholic doctrine? Absolutely. Hence, the conflict between church and state.
Incidentally, why is it that opponents of legalized abortion always seem to forget that no one is ever forced to get an abortion when abortion is legal. On the other hand, when abortion is illegal, everyone is forced to continue a pregnancy. Which one actually involves force?
Beej
Boy do I miss the edit function!
Steph
@Samnell: “What then, is the sense of drawing a line?”
Maybe there is no sense, and certainly in the last election, there was a not so subtle, unspoken message from the bishops (which most Catholics ignored).
I don’t know the history of the “tax exempt so long as you don’t endorse candidates” policy. But I do think that asking religious organizations to remain silent on law, on policy, would make no sense. Religious leaders, religious people, should be involved in the debate, along with agnostics, athiests, and everyone else.
Mako
There are still catholics in the usa?
Sean
As someone who grew up in a fundamentalist Catholic family, I wholeheartedly agree.
There is such a thing as being too Catholic, as Justice Scalia ably demonstrates.
-S
Seebach
@Steph: What percentage of the entire income and wealth of the Catholic church actually goes to charity? Remember the story Jesus told about the rich man and the poor man giving to charity, and the poor man’s gift was worth more?
Why does the fact that the Pope has a golden castle in Rome make me think the Catholic charity bullshit is weak tea?
Mako
@Mako:
I mean, of course, good waspish white catholics, not these guatamaulans and elsalvadorans.
Sorry, should have been clearer.
Steph
@Beej: Yessssss…but the politician in question, or any Catholic politician who felt “chilled” about the church’s stand that a bishop can deny communion to someone who facilitates abortion (which is what a Catholic Congressperson who votes pro choice basically does) could always leave the Church, right? And then there would be no conflict.
We’re none of us forced to be Catholics (any more). If we don’t like public shaming on the abortion issue, we can leave the church. That’s the harsh truth.
International Playboy
Newsflash to naive liberals…
The Catholic Church doesn’t give a shit about immigrants. They just want more catholic voters to elect pro-life politicians. They’ve seen the same demographic projections as everyone else, and they correctly believe that if nothing is done to limit the flow of immigrants into the country, the return of abortion prohibition is only a matter of time.
I often wonder why liberals don’t realize this. All I can come up with is that liberals blame white men for all the worlds’ ills. If I had a dollar for every time a feminist claimed that the pro-life movement was fueled solely by the desire of white men to control them, I’d have alot of dollars. There seems to be the assumption amoung liberals that a higher concentration of non-white people in the US will lead to a leftish sort of utopia.
It won’t. It will lead to, among other things, a coathanger revival. Catholic culture warriors get that, and they’re winning that particular war of attrition.
HRA
Correct me if I am wrong. Did they not deny communion to another politician not too long ago? I know I should look it up on Google. Am I thinking of John Kerry?
The Catholic church not too far from my home has cut out masses that once were needed for the overflow of people attending mass. IMO they just do not get it. Why would we who are married, raising or have raised children, and working to make ends meet seek the priest out for advice when it’s more than obvious he has no experience in our lives? Better yet, who wants to sit in the church listening to a priest sermonizing almost every Sunday over something he has no concept about at all?
I suppose they have realized their failure to have every one kneel to their message locally and now they are going nationally. It will fail there, too.
Wex
Steph,
The tax-exempt so long as you don’t endorse candidates at the federal level goes back to the mid-50s. It was something Lyndon B. Johnson spearheaded because he was having trouble with one of the King Family nonprofits (or so goes my memories from Texas History more than a decade ago). I could be wrong, and someone with better Google skills can correct me. In any case, it’s relatively recent. But still a good idea. From a church’s standpoint, I think you lose credibility (as clearly the Catholic Church as with a lot of BJ folks) by seeming always aligned with just one party. To use a biblical example, it seems it would be hard for Nathan to gain King David’s ear if he was only seen as King Saul’s man.
Steph
@Seebach: You will get no argument from me that the Vatican lifestyle is too fancy. (Though there is less wealth there than is generally supposed – a reporter recently described it as basically about as endowed as a middle-size college.)
Steph
@Wex: Thank you!
Blahblah
@steph wrote:
I am so sick of these organized groups *speaking* *UP!*
Joshua Norton
They also teach that masturbation and using protection is “murder” also. There are more than 1 million non-productive ejaculations per day, but I don’t see the “men of God” getting all het up over that one.
Seebach
@Steph: And yet people around the world are starving. The Pope can’t even pull off what some itinerant priests do, walking the world in sackcloth and living off of alms given by the generous?
Basically, the church doesn’t live up to its own fucking morals, and moreover, it isn’t even trying. It couldn’t try less if it tried to try less.
If you believe an eternity of paradise is ahead of you, and that saving souls is the answer, and that you are ordained BY GOD, no less, why do you even own a house? You should be out on the streets day and night trying to fight for salvation.
The Pope must know it’s a scam, so he buys nice shoes and rapes children. Fucking disgusting.
General Winfield Stuck
@International Playboy:
Bet they think it’s a cake walk, like Iraq. Too bad the true math doesn’t add up like you say. Hispanics went 70 – 30 for Obama, and after the wingnut xenophobes get thru when the new Immigration reform bill is introduced, and likely passed, the GOP will be lucky to get 10 percent. And they will just as likely be the minority Hispanic protestants.
Church teachings on abortion is trumped by race based cultural rejection almost every time.
MBSS
masturbation IS murder and so are those deadly iud’s, that have killed so many in the middle east.
jl
@International Playboy: Noted. Thanks. But I am crushed. I was waking up every day in fervent hope that more ‘non-white’ (whatever that is supposed to mean) voters would usher the ‘leftish sort of utopia’ of my dreams. Drats!
kay
@Steph:
The charity of Catholic Charities is a bit of a myth, Steph.
“Catholic Charities, the domestic direct service arm of the bishops, also depends on state and federal dollars. Sixty-seven percent of Catholic Charities’ income comes from government funding. That represents over $2.6 billion in 2008 — an amount that is more than three times as large as the next largest charitable recipient of federal funds, the YMCA. ”
This was raised during the Stupak debate. I was glad.
No one in this country has any idea how much money we are handing religious. Huge amounts. Just huge.
Now, you can argue that Catholic Charities are doing a better job with the money than the secular agencies they supplanted, under Faith Based Initiative funding, at the state and federal level, but the money ain’t coming from the church. It’s coming from taxpayers.
Comrade E.B. Misfit
@Tony P.: So, if good Catholics have to obey their bishops, who have to obey the Pope, who is the head of a foreign government, then are we not talking about a very large group of people who have questionable loyalty to the United States of America?
And if that is true, don’t we have about six justices on the Supreme Court who ought to then be impeached tomorrow?
Mako
@International Playboy:
Dude, I know you, right? Buenos Aires 1988, we shared a cuban and a whore and talked politics late into the night?
You were all about the victimization of the white man.
You ended up in prison, right?
So how’d that work out for you?
Steph
@kay: Holy cow. I had no idea, thank you.
They should lose their funding, then, if they’re pulling out of DC over gay marriage.
handy
@International Playboy:
Thanks for that, DougJ. I needed the laffs.
Just Some Fuckhead
@Comrade E.B. Misfit:
I recommend internment camps until we determine how big of a threat they are.
Suzan
Ooooooh.
I’m in love with you.
I’ve been waiting so long to hear these words.
From your lips . . . .
S
When exactly did we grant the Catholic church the right to dictate our laws?
And no more Catholics on the Supreme Court, either.
Mako
You know who else i hate? Jehovah’s Witnesses. And Mormons.
And Amway. The Amish are kinda cool, but those Mennonites give me the willies. And Jews, no one likes them. Episcopalians, catholic lite with women and fags, methodists and presbyterians, who cares, but we can all get behind our hate for the muslins, right? USA USA
Samnell
@Steph:
I’ll agree the line is, legally, where you say it is. The problem being that the line actually prohibits nothing. No impingement on state secularity is forbidden as long as a cleric gives a wink and a nudge. It’s contemptible kabuki. These clerics are claiming precisely what the clerics in Iran enjoy: the right to veto any act they religiously disapprove. In short, they want a theocracy.
In fact, I can’t find many religious people around who want anything else when you get right down to it. Respect for pluralistic, democratic, secular government extends only so long as it does whatever they say, or their particular sect isn’t likely to be the one calling the shots in the theocracy most likely to arise. Then suddenly it’s ok to have the law fall on everyone equally, no exceptions.
Will
I actually thought that interview was a high point for Chris Matthews.
kay
@Steph:
I know. It gets no press. Lutherans, too.
Here locally, even Mennonites are getting into the act. Their org is called “Shalom”. Brand spank’in new. I work with them every once in a while. They hire me on a contract basis. Nice people, as individuals, but I’m going to end the relationship. They’re doing some unsubtle preaching I’m not comfortable with, and I can’t cordon off my work sufficiently from that. They need to monitor their staff members.
jl
@handy: How do you spot the spoofs?
MBSS
i think all of catholicism is justified by the school girl outfits.
Robert N. Lee
“I actually did not know this until recently, but the legitimacy of the Catholic Church is based upon the fact that they knew the guys who knew the guys who knew the guys who knew the guys who knew the guys, who knew the guys…”
What’s even more hilarious is that another branch of Christianity entirely has better practical reason to make this kind of claim. The Eastern church broke, essentially, over the Western church becoming a state religion. Roman Catholicism represents the continuation of *that* tradition. Orthodoxy started with a bunch of people who wanted to keep doing things the old way, not the new Roman way.
Jager
Mako,
You and the playboy must have been broke in ’88, you had to share a cigar and a whore! Should have called I’d have wired you a few bucks.
Onihanzo
@General Winfield Stuck:
Liberation theology comes immediately to mind.
Mako
@kay:
Ah yeah, Lutherans. Prairie Home Companion.
Never a big Robert Altman fan, but that Lindsay Lohan can sometimes be interesting.
Robert N. Lee
“Now, you can argue that Catholic Charities are doing a better job with the money than the secular agencies they supplanted, under Faith Based Initiative funding, at the state and federal level, but the money ain’t coming from the church. It’s coming from taxpayers.”
They didn’t supplant anything. The US has always done this and all governments of any consequence do this because religious folks love to run charities and take care of people after disasters and whatnot, and they’re good at it.
The “Faith Based Charities” issue isn’t about that, it’s about a change during the Clinton and Bush administrations to allow religious charities to accept federal funds for proselytizing efforts, not just charitable ones.
*That’s* the bad change that happened and should alarm anybody. Funding religious charities as well as other charities just makes sense if you want crowds to show up with blood and blankets after an earthquake.
(Big old atheist here, BTW, lest there be any question.)
geg6
Fuck that fucking criminal enterprise run by sadists and pederasts and pedophiles in skirts who fear women to their very cores. Fuck them sideways. Fuck them with a rusty sword. There was a brief couple hundred years that this current abomination actually had principles and morals based on Jesus’ teachings during the very early church. The minute these bastards got their hands on an emperor, that Church lost any moral authority it ever had. It’s always been political, seeking to be THE world power, running the show from their very own Disneyland at the Vatican. And never having any problem whatsoever with rape, murder, genocide, persecution, torture, abuse, forced starvation, or any other depredation common among authoritarian, power mad, self hating psychopaths. And I grew up Catholic. But unlike most Catholics who stay, I did some research by people other than Catholics. With the one exception that others here cite, the Jesuits, that church is a sinkhole and I hope it dies a quick and painful death in this country. Why these fuckers aren’t all serving hard time for their decades- long sex ring is beyond me.
Tony P.
@Comrade E.B. Misfit: “Good” Catholics? I think the Bishops get to decide who is a “good” Catholic. And if the Bishops want to excommunicate certain Catholics, I say more power to them. “Good” Catholics surely agree with me on that:)
–TP
Steph
@Samnell: “In fact, I can’t find many religious people around who want anything else when you get right down to it. ”
I’m hoping the Congregationalists are one exception to the “we want theocracy” rule since that’s where I’m headed, in all likelihood.
Yes, there’s the wink and the veiled language, but I don’t know that there’s a better way than to have the line where it is. I don’t want religious leaders muzzled on policy, any more than anyone else. And if Catholics are any example, we tend to vote as we like – not along a single issue or with a particular party. I don’t know any Catholics who want a theocracy (though I’m sure there are some out there).
latts
@freelancer:
I once knew a wonderful actor in Memphis, Jim Ostrander (who died too young, several years ago) who had IIRC been educated by Jesuits & gone to seminary, but was agnostic at most. When I asked him why, he said “they educated me too well for me to believe them.”
Mako
@Jager:
REQUEST FOR URGENT BUSINESS RELATIONSHIP
FIRST, I MUST SOLICIT YOUR STRICTEST CONFIDENCE IN THIS TRANSACTION. THIS IS BY VIRTUE OF ITS NATURE AS BEING UTTERLY CONFIDENTIAL AND ‘TOP SECRET’. I AM SURE AND HAVE CONFIDENCE OF YOUR ABILITY AND RELIABILITY TO PROSECUTE A TRANSACTION OF THIS GREAT MAGNITUDE INVOLVING A PENDING TRANSACTION REQUIRING MAXIIMUM CONFIDENCE.
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Scruffy McSnufflepuss
I’d rather have 9 Catholics of the Justice Brennan mold than 9 atheists of the Ayn Rand mold. I don’t know how to get 9 liberal Catholics on the Supreme Court, but I can think of at least 9 Catholics I know personally who would agree with you on every single issue, and would decide cases accordingly. I can also think of at least 9 atheists I know who are Randian/Glibertarian assholes whose stints on the Court (if we were ever unfortunate enough to get them) would veer us away from theocracy and straight into the arms of Somali capitalism.
On the other hand, I don’t want a single Catholic Justice ever again if they’re all going to be like Scalito from now on. I don’t care what proportion of the population is Catholic. I don’t care what religion the Justices arem, or what percentage of them go to church on Sunday or don’t go to church on Sunday. The only thing I care about are their politics. I’d take a liberal Catholic/Muslim/Buddhist/atheist/Pastafarian/Scientologist over a conservative anything. It’s a Constitutional body that rules on the law, not an ecumenical council or an interfaith reconciliation group.
The problem is that the Catholics on there have been so wingnutty post-Brennan, that it makes it hard to remember that there are tons of liberal Catholics of the Brennan mold. (Not sure about Sotomayor yet. I’m willing to give her a chance. I just hope she turns out to be a good lefty, not another centrist dullard.)
soonergrunt
@JGabriel:
I don’t see how we cannot bar Catholics from the Supreme Court. To put a Catholic on the Supreme Court is to put a judge in the position of either making judgments that are in opposition to a couple of hundred years of jurisprudence (as the current Catholics on the Court are wont to do) or to place that individual in an untenable position with their faith.
Well, which priority will be protected–a judge’s soul or the Constitution?
In order to protect the country, there should be NO Catholics advanced to the Supreme Court, or the Courts of Appeals for that matter.
One could extend this argument to voting for or against Catholics. Since I don’t believe what “Good Catholics” must believe, I’m fairly certain that I’m on firm moral ground voting against them for public office.
@MattR: This action by the Bishop is over two years old. Teddy was alive when this started.
@Nutella: Precisely.
Mark S.
@Steph:
Bullshit. How many mid-size colleges have a bunch of Michelangelos and Raphaels in every nook and cranny?
Also, I never realized how effective asking pro-life people what the punishment for abortion should be is. I would think that if you really thought it was murder, you’d have no trouble saying, “Hell yeah, Chris, the bitch should go to prison for the rest of her miserable life.”
LD50
@Dr. I. F. Stone:
But… if they did that, George couldn’t afford to send me my check every month!!!
LD50
@bayville:
I feel so much better about the Catholic Church now.
LD50
@Just Some Fuckhead:
And I’m sure it was just an oversight that the Vatican never saw fit to excommunicate Hitler.
General Winfield Stuck
@Samnell:
It does get a little interesting when it goes to denying a man his religious sacrament for his public positions as a constitutional officer of sorts. Questions like religious extortion, if there can be such an animal, and the ethereal damnation it suggests to the spiritual self and realm in a country with people like Bishop Tobin and or others who often claim America is a religious country with implied religious rights arising from the word of God.. And where that intersects with special status for payment, or non payment of taxes. I may have hurt my brain.
Mako
@geg6:
Now see, there’s a guy who’s read up on his pope history.
The 900’s were some kinda creepy.
Joshua Norton
The Vatican was smack in the middle of Fascist Italy. They would have been leveled to the ground if they spoke against any of the Axis powers. Of course, fascist leanings are inherent to the RC clergy so that never would have been a non-starter from the get-go.
Fulcanelli
@toujoursdan:
Progressives should covertly video services in Baptist and Fundie churches throughout the South and elsewhere where the wingnut pastors explicitly and openly tell the congregation who to vote for and why and put hundreds of them up on the YouTubes simultaneously and petition the government to yank their tax exempt status.
We know it happens, they know we know, but nothing ever happens to stop it. I had a friend who transferred to Alabama temporarily for his job in 2002 and the only church for miles also doubled as the local canvassing/voting office. There were no private voting booths and as he sat on the edge of the stage in the church community center to vote in 2004 some buzzcut muscle bound redneck with a scowl and half his teeth missing literally stood over him and his wife and watched how they voted. The paper ballots dissapeared into what he described as a “flimsy looking cardboard box with the lid taped shut with masking tape”, then he stood up and walked out, disgusted.
There was a scene in Alexandra Pelosi’s documentary “Right America: Feeling Wronged” where she caught the pastor telling people who to vote for right on camera, the pastor saw it and didn’t even flinch.
I got your fucking ACORN right here Hannity. Come get some.
Mako
@soonergrunt:
In order to protect the country, there should be NO Catholics advanced to the Supreme Court, or the Courts of Appeals for that matter.
Hear hear. Jews and Mormons and Seventh Day Adventistists too. Personally, i believe anyone with tattoos should be barred from any kind of public service. And don’t get me started about the homos, you know what will happen if THEY get near your children…
Notorious P.A.T.
Oooh, that’ll show ’em.
Joshua Norton
@Joshua Norton: s/b that
neverwould have been a non-starter from the get-go.So I take it the ‘edit’ feature has been permanently disabled?
Notorious P.A.T.
Fair enough, but the Allies liberated Rome before D-Day.
Notorious P.A.T.
Actually “liberated” is a poor choice of words, but still.
Samnell
@Steph: I’m sorry I can’t grant you your exemption, Steph. So far as I can tell in my study of history and personal experience alike, the details of a religion’s internal structure make no difference whatsoever. It’s not just a Christian thing or a Catholic thing or a Sunni thing or a Theravada thing. The trend is common to all religions.
I know quite a few Catholics, and none who object to a theocracy. Hell, they pay in to maintain one in Italy. Certainly none of the clergy really object. They all want their own version of Sharia law to prevail, whether it’s over abortion or stem cells or poverty (though the hierarchy has been very successful at purging those in the last category, with Nazi Pope Palpatine being one of the main enforcers). Find me one that wants the church to pay all the property taxes it hasn’t paid for centuries and thinks the Vatican should be given back to Italy.
That individual Catholics may cynically pick and choose based on their own convenience what doctrines they care to obey on any given day doesn’t really say much overall. Like someone earlier on pointed out, if the Church had its way they wouldn’t get to make those choices. I don’t give pick-and-choose religionists any special credit for being self-interested either.
geg6
Mako: Besides the fact I’m not a guy, you’re right. When I left the church at about 17, I made it a point to study the history of the church. My mother, had she been a man, could have been a theologian, she was so steeped in it. And I mean she considered herself a Catholic intellectual. So I had to have my arguments marshalled. We never agreed about it, but she respected that I came to my (I guess you’d call it) deism from a point of knowledge. The more I learned, the more I knew it’s been nothing but a racket for eons. My dad secretly agreed with me but never bucked my mom on religion. I think he admired that about me. He was a convert (for her) from Methodism of all things. Talk about opposite aesthetics.
freelancer (itouch)
@Scruffy McSnufflepuss:
Speaking as an atheist, Rand represents very very few of us. Most of us leave faith because it’s not compassionate enough.
Though I have no doubt the first heathen on the court will be a total Galt freak.
Jager
Sorry Mako,
I only wire money for cigars and whores. In ’88 you’d have needed around 45 bucks for both and have had a few dollars left over for breakfast!
Notorious P.A.T.
Oh, and to see just how strongly anti-fascist the Vatican was, google “ratline”.
Samnell
@Joshua Norton: The Church does not get to praise martyrdom for righteousness and the primacy of spiritual rewards and then claim that it just couldn’t do the right thing because, well, they might get killed.
Fern
@kay:
Kay, if you are still here – tried to find something online about the organization, but couldn’t find anything – is there anything else about them that would help me narrow my search?
Lex
@PaulW: FTW.
Steph
@Samnell: Let me tell you, most Catholics working for gay marriage are not concerned with convenience, but answering the call of conscience. And nothing cynical about it.
As for your the rest of your post, it will probably keep me up tonight. Thanks.
Fulcanelli
@geg6:
The document you’re referring to that started that two handed power sharing shitstorm rolling is “The Donation of Constantine” and even though it’s been proven to be a fraud on more than one occasion the church still has a lot of sway and a hand in choosing the monarch in countries that still have one.
I read it some time ago and it’s nauseating in it’s mutual salad tossing imagery of how the church and the monarchy should follow God’s will and entwine together forever essentially to keep the unwashed rabble in it’s place for the unspoken purpose of supplying one side with little boys to abuse and molest and the other side with little boys to send off to war to keep it’s power and throne. Sort of a black comedy, although not too Divine.
Don’t make me come down there. – God
DougL (frmrly: Conservatively Liberal)
What is the difference between a nation that succumbs to religious pressures? If wingers believe that it is bad for a government to be run by religious dictates, such as the government in Iran, then why is it fine with the wingers for our government to respond to religious dictates? Is the difference between the two the amount of distance the religion puts between its leaders and the government? In Iran the religion directly runs the government and in our country religion wants to tell government leaders how to vote, is that the distinction they make?
I think another reason the wingers hate other religion based governments because the clergy in those countries are in control of everything, top-down absolute control, much like the wingers would like christianity to impose here at home.
They have ‘Control Envy’…lol
As a permanently lapsed catholic I heartily agree that the SC doesn’t need any more catholics on it, or any other religion for that matter. A few humans would be a nice addition though. Also.
Samnell
@Steph:
As much as I approve of ignoring religious leaders, I see an element of cynicism here. If one really believed that they were given carte blanche from on high and had the one and only inside line on not only personal immortality, eternal bliss, and avoiding eternal torture (all these being dogmas of the Church) then one would be hard-pressed to find any possible excuse for disagreeing with one iota of the hierarchy’s rules. Remaining a member of an organization with such an official ideology and then ignoring it at will implies a great deal of cynicism to me. I’d say the same thing to the pro-lifers that love the death penalty.
I recognize that Catholicism has become more or less an ethnic religion and it’s a bit gauche in educated circles to suggest that anybody actually believes any of the crazy nonsense involved when really the thing is about having cute, silly rituals to fool around with because it’s fun to have cute, silly rituals to fool around with (see also: Judaism, Shinto, etc) but nobody has notified the Church…or its growing flocks in Africa. Or Bill Donahue and Bart Stupak.
gnomedad
@MattR:
Exactly. Even advocating policy doesn’t cross the line, IMO, but if they claim the power to dictate policy decisions to members who are legislators, how is this different from theocracy? They should lose their tax-exempt status and go ahead and whine away about “anti-Catholic bigotry” when it’s argued that no-one who submits to their “discipline” should be considered fit for public office.
Mako
@geg6:
Oh sorry. Had to scroll up… maybe “There’s a broad who knows her popes?”
Thanks for the bio. I’m an athiest. I think religion is a stupid crutch. But i got no problem with other people believing whatever they want to believe.
Look, this whole i’ hate your religion’ ‘no i hate your religion more’ is silly.
I am very intelligent and well-read and wise, possibly i was conceived without coitus. Make me supreme ruler, give me access to a couple of neutron bombs and i will sort this shit out toot sweet. And then we can all go back to looking at pictures of Cole’s dog and discussing gardening.
Warren Terra
I have mixed feelings about this. I hate today’s Catholic Church with a quite unseemly passion; as a proud Atheist Jew both the Church’s god-bothering and their essentially unrepentant stance about their blood-soaked history (and don’t get me started about JPII’s so-called apology for the Spanish Inquisition, which amounted to “if we had to do it all over again maybe we’d choose differently now”) meant I was never going to find them to be my cup of tea. But on the other hand I believe in respecting others’ theological beliefs, so long as they don’t cram them down my throat, and I don’t see any problem with any ideological community setting terms for people who want to belong to it. It’s no worse for these people to have opinions about policy, however bigoted, than for crystal-healing new age nutters who have absurd notions but probably vote for the same candidates I back to have opinions about policy. I don’t think religions should be tax-exempt, but we made that decision a long time ago, and it’s silly to ask systems of moral philosophy, even those handed down by a magic man, to avoid rendering moral judgments. In theory, the Catholic Church is against capital punishment and in favor of due process; are those stances equally questionable?
I think the real story is just how awful the modern Catholic Church has become, and how fast. In the 80’s the Church was represented by the people it inspired to do good works, often in liberal causes. In the popular culture there was the fictional Father Mulcahey in the nightly reruns of MASH and the largely fictional (see Hitchens) but very widely disseminated public image of a saintly Mother Theresa. In the real world and on the street, and too often in the hospitals and the morgues, there were the martyred Archbishop Romero and the other Catholic clergy and lay workers for Catholic charities abused and slaughtered by both sides in our dirty wars in Central America; there was Liberation Theology abroad, and at home there were its echoes in the Sanctuary Movement and in many of those who stood with Cesar Chavez. In my hometown of Seattle the local Archbishop was Raymond Hunthausen, who was always out in front on issues of social justice and in favor of peace and was a leader in welcoming homosexual Catholics as parishioners.
Since then – since, in essence, the fall of the Soviet Union freed the devotedly anti-Communist John Paul II to concentrate on his other goal, dragging the Church kicking and screaming back to the 14th century (or, worse, the 19th: see Pope Pius IX, who John Paul II and Benedict both want to see canonized). His main tools in this effort were his ability to select the cardinals who would choose his successor, and the offices of the Inquisition, led by one Joseph Ratzinger, later to be Pope Benedict XVI. Not incidentally, Ratzinger responded to Archbishop Hunthausen’s Gay-friendly leadership (and his other sins, like refusing to excommunicate divorcees) by having him deposed and sent to contemplate his errors in a monastery in Montana for most of the last twenty years. The Church has turned its back on Liberation Theology and the Sanctuary Movement, and now its public image is defined by its history of child abuse and by its continuing cover-up and by a plethora of loudmouthed closed-minded Bishops like the one who inspired this post.
American Catholics are not my people, and so it’s not my problem, but as someone who does try to respect other peoples’ faiths and who hates to see American Catholics torn between their beliefs and traditions on the one hand and the fact of the troglodytes who now run their Church and try to dictate their lives and their politics on the other, I really wonder whether the result will be some sort of schism, creating a more prominent American Catholic Church – or whether Benedict and his minions will just manage to sour these people on organized religion altogether, despite the great lingering love for what the Church meant to them that many of these people continue to hang on to.
geg6
Fulcanelli: I am not referencing any particular document. I am referencing the church’s weaseling it’s way into the corridors of power and running with it. They haven’t changed since. Jesus, so far as the only evidence we have says, didn’t advocate meddling in secular matters, amassing vast fortunes and treasures, starting or supporting wars, torturing and killing unbelievers, or perpetrating, abetting, and covering up child sex abuse rings. But the church has done and still does all those things. And many more. For over a thousand years it has and it intends to continue.
Mako
@Warren Terra:
heh.
I don’t mean to be rude, but…
Mouse Tolliver
Question: Could God create a fetus so innocent that He Himself couldn’t kill it?
Warren Terra
Mako, I really am trying to be fair here. But the thing is that Benedict and his extremist kin aren’t just anathema to me and other irrelevant people like me; they hold beliefs and issue dictates that, according to public opinion surveys, are rejected a distinct majority of American Catholics. With Benedict’s Bishops cracking down on American Catholics who hold heterodox beliefs, some of those American Catholics are finding themselves forced to make a painful choice. I know one such person well, someone who used to attend Mass every week (maybe more often, I’m not quite sure) but could no longer stomach belonging to Benedict’s Church and hasn’t gone in over a year. I’m glad she made a choice that has resolved a conflict that was causing her pain, but it hurts me that an institution that had tremendous meaning for my friend changed its meaning so much as to essentially drive her out. I know she’s not alone either in the choice she faced or in her eventual resolution of that choice, and if Benedict’s Church stays on its current course I think there will be a lot more like her.
soonergrunt
@Warren Terra: Much more politely and articulately said than I managed. Bravo.
It comes down to this–There are many positions and behaviors of the modern Catholic Church in America that I cannot in good conscience, support.
I will not vote for a Catholic politician. To vote for somebody implies a belief that their general outlook is similar to mine. It conveys an expectation that they will vote the way I would vote on the majority if not most of the issues before the legislature.
To vote for a Catholic politician is to say that I expect this person to go against the dictates of their faith on some very important issues.
I cannot expect someone to violate the precepts of their religion just to make me happy, but I expect the politicians for whom I vote to support the majority of the things and positions in which I believe.
Ever since I left the church at sixteen, these two positions have been utterly incompatible.
I will not vote for a Catholic politician.
Beej
@Steph: Absolutely true. However, that doesn’t deal with the main issue which is: Is there actual separation of church and state or isn’t there? Just how far should religion inform the body politic? Where is the line between expressing one’s views and imposing them politically? I would argue that in order for our pluralistic society to survive we must have a strong boundary between church and state. What was done in the Patrick Kennedy case crosses that boundary.
soonergrunt
@Mako: Why do people always say something like “I don’t mean to be rude, but…” when they know damn well that what they are about to say is rude?
keestadoll
Nuts and bolts time…
(1) All this waxing over what the USCCB thinks: they can think whatever they want. Our Congress: they can think whatever they want also. We can’t control this.
(2) Frankly, if Kennedy was not given communion due to his position on abortion within the context of the health care reform legislation, or just because he supports abortion rights in general, that’s fine and dandy. It’s in the Catholic rule book: abortion is a no-no (surely this has crossed Kennedy’s mind before this instance). He can choose to not be a Catholic.
(3) I consider this fretting over the USCCB’s influence a bit ridiculous. Many Congressional members belong to many churches. No doubt many of these Congressional members’ churches have expressed their opinions with regards to this abortion issue as well as a myriad of others being bandied about now as well as in past legislative sessions. At the end of the day, these Congr. Reps are there to represent their constituents, not their church. If they’re doing the latter, they should and most likely would be dispatched in the next election cycle.
Besides, what Kennedy ever let Catholic dogma run their political lives anyway?
Mako
@Warren Terra:
No worries. If you’ll scroll up you’ll see i was amazed to find that there were even white jfk type catholics in the US. I thought it was a dead religion for the pasty-skinned in the US.
But then I really don’t pay much attention to religion and probably shouldn’t even be in this thread, except its kinda funny watching people argue religion and get their hate on.
Mako
@soonergrunt:
No offense but…
Mako
@soonergrunt:
Good for you. ahd never vote for a jew or a mormon or seventhday adventist or a lutheran or a muslin or anyone that doesn’t look just lack me. fuckers.
Soul On Ice
I will make a deal with Bishop Tobin:
I will renege on my support of abortion rights for women as long as he and the others in church leave the altar boys alone. Deal?
Brick Oven Bill
I think Reverend Wright should lose his tax exempt status because he hates white people, and there are racial politics. But the good Reverend is, like, seven-eights white, and has chosen to live in a white neighborhood following his service to his community, which is not Logical.
Soul On Ice
@ Brick Oven Bill – re: Rev. Wright….he hates white people so much that nursed one Very Important White Person back to health. Wow….he must be militant!
Little Macayla's Friend
Lewis Black / Surviving Holidays on my tv,
BJ on my computer.
My faith in cultural evolution has climbed back above zero.
soonergrunt
Well, there’s a couple of other religions that I won’t vote for, for the same reasons I gave earlier, but the thread was about Catholics. I left that church more than 20 years ago, so I’ll bag on it all I want anyway.
Some Christian faiths do not have the large bureaucracy that Catholicism does. The Mormons do, and they’re all about hating teh ghey. Don’t vote for them either.
By the way, I too do not vote for ‘a muslin.’
Because it’s a fucking fabric, not a religious faith. I have no particular moral issue with Muslims.
Brick Oven Bill
In case you missed my point Soul on Ice, Reverend Wright used the black community to gain personal power and wealth, and then provided him and his family distance. See also the school Obama sent his daughters to. And the cancellation of the DC vouchers program under the Democrats to keep the DC kids away from their own.
Reverend Wright is a racist.
For this alone, his tax-exempt status must be removed.
Mark S.
@Mouse Tolliver:
Trick question. The only way for a fetus to become truly innocent is to sacrifice a God-Man. This is on account of two fictional people eating an apple.
I swear, if someone came up this stuff last week, it would make Scientology sound reasonable.
gwangung
You can demonstrate that, right? You can give an estimate of his visible personal assets and do a calculation of estimated total assets, like any other asset researcher, right?
soonergrunt
@Soul On Ice: Dude, just let it go. BoB appears to be a defective chat-bot with a conservative overlay. The decision engine and the branching algorithm appear to be incomplete–possibly an abandoned project by a first-year Comp Sci student.
It’s only gotten more incoherent as time went on. Probably as a result of the conservative overlay and that fact that not having true cognition (cause it’s a bot) gets it hung up on the cognitive dissonances that are inherent to modern conservatism and becomes nearly unreadable in the worst cases.
Soul On Ice
@ Brick Oven Bill – in case you missed my point:
The Reverend Wright that you seek to make some sort of reverse-racism point about how powerful a black religious leader could be is not what most people see about him. They see:
– a high school student at Central High School in Philadelphia, where the enrollment was 90% white. Still, Rev. Wright was a respected member of his class, not making trouble at all.
– Rev. Wright served in the Marines (1961-1963) and the Navy (1963-1967) and was trained as a cardiopulmonary technician at Bethesda who were assigned the care of President Johnson after his 1966 surgery.
– Rev. Wright went on to earn an undergraduate and Master’s degree from Howard, as well as a Doctorate of Ministry.
So, Brick Oven Bill, I ask you….Rev. Wright served his country before he got up in front of the pulpit and denounced its racist past. What the fuck have you done?
Brick Oven Bill
He was granted a ten million dollar home to live in forever gwangung.
Plato teaches us that although the physical applications of mathematics may change, the thoughts themselves are eternal, and are in another realm of existence.
The Greeks were very sharp.
The good Reverend should not be getting tax-breaks.
Soul On Ice
@ soonergrunt – some of my best friends are “muslins”
Go fuck yourself
Soul On Ice
@ Brick Oven Bill – I’d like a link, please, to his $10 million dollar home, thank you.
And, besides….anyone who had to endure the humiliation of eating in the back of a restaurant or drinking from a different fountain or using a separate bathroom, or, hell, being called a nigger for no other reason other than how he was born….fuck, they should get gold-plated bathrooms and yellow-bricked roads up to their house.
Brick Oven Bill
I admit to err when I make it. The Church only built the good Reverend a $1 million dollar mansion. It has an elevator, whirlpool, butler’s pantry, and four car garage. It is situated in a white neighborhood. Here is a picture of his free house.
Chalk this one up to working all day.
Nonetheless, Reverend Wright is a racist, and should not be getting tax breaks.
Chuck Butcher
I love wandering into a religious thread and watching atheists get all het up with their religious superiority. Yes, I said religious. Explain to me how a belief (faith) in no god is different than belief (faith) in a god. You can play all the intellectual games you care to in disputing people’s faith in one, but you can offer not an iota of evidence to support your own faith.
I understand agnosticism and can easily respect it as an intellectual exercise. Atheism is as laughable as Catholicism – just different rituals. I don’t really care, but I do find the self-imposed superiority amusing. Faith being what it is I don’t bash people’s religions, I just refuse to go along with having my life dictated by them.
But you play hotshit in front of me at your own risk.
Jinx
@JGabriel:
.
Let’s do some math. We’re talking about 9 of the most powerful jobs in all of the US and of those 9 jobs, 4 are held by Opus Dei Catholics who are male and another is held by a latino Catholic woman of unknown sway. So, despite the fact thatright now a group that comprises a whopping 25% of the US population holds a smidge over 50% of the seats on the Supreme Court bench you call foul?
I have a really hard time believing that you are pro-choice but I have no doubt you’re Catholic. At best, I’d say you are ok with “it”.
When it comes to Supreme Court vacancies I am single issue but this issue guarantees a basic human right to over 50% of the people in the United States. These people are women and the right is the legal right to choose what to do with their own bodies. Their minds and their souls are their own matters and none of my concern.
But hey, I didn’t know you might find it objectionable to even suggest the exclusion of Catholics from consideration for the High Court bench since you’re pro-choice and since you know the stakes and the players.
Soul On Ice
@ Brick Oven Bill – so, it was only a $1 million dollar house instead of the $10 millon dollar house you tried to propagandize about, eh? Sucks for you!
Like I said before….Rev. Wright served this country with distinction and honor. What the fuck have you done?
Brick Oven Bill
Reverend Wright’s house is a clear example of White Privilege Soul on Ice. If only you were a little more white, you might get a million dollar mansion for free too, just like the good tax-exempt Reverend. Be careful though, because if you get too white, you have to start paying for these things.
I’ve got my medals. Thanks for asking.
Now I just work, perhaps sending you cowboy action figures.
General Winfield Stuck
@Chuck Butcher:
Albert Einstein on atheists.
Soul On Ice
Yeah, that’s a bunch of bullshit. Tell me, Brick Oven Bill, spell out your fucking record of service because, right now….I think you’re full of shit.
Please feel free to send me your remebrances of Brick Oven Bill. Because I feel he is a wormshit Cheney war enthusiast who is exploiting things for his own purpose
Chuck Butcher
@General Winfield Stuck:
That’s one of the classics.
Brick Oven Bill
Re: ‘remebrances’
I’m the one calling for the withdrawal.
Mark S.
I love the Google ads at the top:
Evils of Abortion and How
Mother Teresa quotes
silentbeep
I’m sure if these were the “right” kind of Catholics a la Ted Kennedy and Joan Walsh it would be o.k. if the court was full of liberal-lefty Catholics.
I left the church long ago. I am an agnostic Buddhist. I was raised Roman Catholic and haven’t been to a Catholic church of my own volition in seven years. So, yes the problems with this church are insurmountable for me, and I understand completely any problems that anyone would have with this institution.
But, when you start saying there are “too many” catholics in anyone instituion I call bullshit. This is absurd, and I know you get worked up over stuff John, and the snark is great, and all that, but this is ridiculous.
There are ultra-conservative Catholics, there are very liberal cultural Catholics that could give two shits about what the Pope says, and everyone else in between. It’s the conservatism that is the problems with most of the Catholics in the Court, not the Catholicism in and of itself. Fuck, I thought we were past the days where someone like JFK would have to be interviwed by a Protestant minister publicly, to declare that he would not be overly influenced by the Pope. No wonder he has been the one and only Roman Catholic elected to the highest office. With the anti-Catholic ranting that you have signed onto John, I can see the prejudice against Roman Catholics hasn’t died out like I thought it had.
Mako
@Chuck Butcher:
So whatchew packin’ down here in the end of the threads? Shotgun? I’m wearing leather gloves and gently twirling a 28 inch length heavy galvanized pipe.
Mako
@Soul On Ice:
heh, you seem… silly.
Yutsano
@Mako: The anti-BoB?
Mako
@Yutsano:
#207 soonergrunt explains BOB.
hth hand.
Chuck Butcher
@silentbeep:
When there is over 200% over-representation of any group there are reasons to ask WTF.
The same can be said for under-representation, like say Congress…
Prejudice my ass. He didn’t say they were pieces of shit, he said no more.
Chuck Butcher
@Mako: @Mako:
Remington side by side hammered 12ga coachgun …
or if you prefer more holes, Vaquero .45 Colt, 365gr @ 1350fps.
I prefer intellect and knowledge.
Mako
@Chuck Butcher:
Chuck, just a heads up, if you want to get elected to something, humourless knee-jerk idealogue is probably not the way to go.
Mako
@Chuck Butcher:
Dude you are a bottom? Okay, and you are up there in OR?
okay can we take this to facebook, cuz i really don’t want all these folks here to know we’re gay.
Chuck Butcher
@Mako:
I have no aspirations to be elected to anything. Did that stuff once and that was enough. I liked having my say and asking for agreement, I didn’t like having my hand out all the time and begging.
You asked about the shotgun, I have a lot of things that go bang. I figured the trump on galv pipe was funny enough.
drunken hausfrau
Late to the thread… but A-fucking-MEN! Who do we have to talk to in order to get their 501 c 3 status stripped????
wilfred
Hilarious thread. Good for you, Cole, you’ve crossed the last hurdle into Charles Johnson Demagogblogland.
How many Jews in the Senate? Congress? How many are Committee chairman? Over represented? How many is too many?
Lead on, John. Fair play’s a jewel.
pablo
I have been informed that the IRS is taking this seriously, and have begun to gather information on the Church’s political activities. The investigation is going forward.
Michael D.
@bayville:
…ahmmmm, any adult who has sexual relations with an adolescent male is a pedophile – homosexual or heterosexual.
Geeez. The Catholic Church wants to keep us out of their precious pedophilia club now, too!
Scruffy McSnufflepuss
@freelancer (itouch):
I know. But not everyone does, and lack of compassion is not restricted to faith. It’s an intrinsic component of human selfishness, which is endemic to the species. There are plenty of people of faith who demonstrate compassion, and plenty of non-believers who don’t. And vice versa.
Point is, excluding Catholics from the Court is as ridiculous as excluding anyone else. There are plenty of thoroughly decent, left-wing Catholics out there. Jesuits and Liberation Theologists spring immediately to mind as two sub-sets of the religion that would produce extremely wonderful Supreme Court Justices. It’s pretty hard to look at 1 billion people and say that each and every one of them, individually, is corrupt and worthless and should be discriminated against on the basis of their religion, just because the Pope and his hierarchy are a bunch of assholes about abortion and gay rights and pedophilia.
Yep. And then you’ll get to hear about how we shouldn’t allow more atheists on the Court, because the one we got is of the “fuck you, Jack, I’ve got mine” mentality.
gelfling545
When JFK was running for president everybody was in a fever that somehow the RC church would dictate to the government. I guess it took George Bush and his ilk to really get us there.
Steph
@Samnell: “As much as I approve of ignoring religious leaders, I see an element of cynicism here. If one really believed that they were given carte blanche from on high and had the one and only inside line on not only personal immortality, eternal bliss, and avoiding eternal torture (all these being dogmas of the Church) then one would be hard-pressed to find any possible excuse for disagreeing with one iota of the hierarchy’s rules.”
Vatican II was clear on this – laypeople have a duty first to conscience. There’s one’s “excuse”. (No doubt the more conservative bishops don’t like this bit of teaching.)
Liz
@Seebach: I couldn’t read any farther without responding. Good show here.
I don’t get the Catholic obsession with fetuses? Getting over the fact that Augustine, the original playboy turned moral scold found abortion ethical until the “quickening”... aren’t all humans tainted with original sin? What makes killing a fetus worse than any other murder? Or does the original sin germs not actually get on a person until they have to travel through the icky ladyparts?If a fetus is killed, and it is a true innocent, crafted by God Himself, doesn’t it immediately then get to return to Heaven? On the sheer basis on saving souls, it would seem a thriving industry of unprotected sex and immediate abortion would be the most effective way to prevent humans from being condemned to hell.
Liz
@Liz:
sorry first day with new HTML code. :(
ThatPirateGuy
Churches clearly want to play the political game. It is time for church donations to stop being treated as tax free like donations to actual charities.
If this deprives churches of funding then I’ll call it a bonus.
Liz
The thing that I find fascinating about the catholic church (which I grew up in, btw), is that it’s been obviously politically motivated since the beginning of time. Just about all organized Eastern religions are…all religions, at least to me, were invented to impose control over people. Obey or you will suffer, you will die, and live in hell for eternity. The way religion justifies suffering and your lot in life is just pathetic and evil to me. Not only that, the sheer depravity of religious leaders over time (at least catholic leaders throughout the years) is astounding. How can people still believe that utter shit?
Scruffy McSnufflepuss
@Liz:
That’s a personalized question, to be asked of individuals. To me, the alternative to belief in some form of spiritual or metaphysical purpose to the Universe is that life is a pointless excursion into nihilism. If I embraced atheism, I wouldn’t see any difference in whether I lived a moral life or an immoral life, whether I was nice to orphans and the hungry or whether I robbed a bank and spent the loot on booze and strippers, whether I died tomorrow or died 57 years from now. However I lived would, ultimately, be utterly irrelevant and pointless, an extremely minor chemical flare-up in an indifferent Universe of meaningless chemicals carved, by random forces neither understood nor explained, from an oblivion into which it would eventually return.
How anyone can believe that life is, at its core, utterly pointless shit is beyond me. But, if we’re going to question each others’ religious beliefs and their core underpinnings, then the discussion leads us into extremely insulting external misunderstandings of what constitute highly personal conclusions about the nature of existence itself.
And in fairness, I realize full well that my understanding of atheist thought is by no means the exclusive atheist thought process. I have my own skewed, personalized, and far from exclusive take on it, just as your take on religion is skewed, personalized, and far from exclusive.
RememberNovember
The Catholic Church has centuries of bad karma to work off. This is not helping. Sit down, shut up, collect your ten percent so the Pope can shit on a golden toilet seat.
les
@Chuck Butcher:
The stupid/anger is fairly strong here. An atheist believes there is no god, because there is no evidence. If you’ve been bitten by an atheist who likes to argue and believes their argument is superior, well, go lick your wounds and work on a counter argument. But the “faith is no different from not-faith” isn’t going to take you far. You can’t get much more superficial.
Very Reverend Crimson Fire of Compassion
@les: Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. The default position of rationality is the recognition of its own limitations. To say “The beautiful room is empty.” is no less a statement of faith than to say “The beautiful room is occupied by a really big version of a Palestinian tribal ruler in a big gold tent.”, unless you’ve been inside the beautiful room.So, unless you can claim a special revelation (an atheistic revelation would be quite a trick, but there are mechanisms by which it could be envisioned, I suppose), your position (i.e., “There is no God.” ) is no more rational than a believer’s. In other words, atheism isn’t an absence of faith. It’s a faith-based statement about the ultimate nature of reality, which is every bit as unknowable to you as it is to anyone else. Strictly speaking, the only conclusion an “absence” of faith could lead a rational mind to is agnosticism. This is all fairly obvious stuff to anyone who’s seriously considered the issue. The fact that you haven’t, but that you leap at the chance to call someone else stupid for disagreeing with you, tells us a lot about the “rationality” of your position. Thank you for playing.
Chuck Butcher
@les:
You blow your argument right there. But then there’s the other side’s suckitude as well.
@Scruffy McSnufflepuss:
And this would be the case because there is no empirical evidence that society doesn’t work with the kind of behavior you’re postulating as the alternative? There is plenty of evidence that people’s own lives are improved by “good” behavior.
Faith is not subject to reason and logic which is why I leave it alone. We operate on faith quite frequently, we go to bed with the faith that we’ll wake in the morning. The evidence is that plenty of people don’t.
silentbeep
@ChuckButcher
And where would the government be if we said: no more white men in any branch of government? it’s too much already? Because if you want to talk about overrepresentation of any one group we can go there.
It’s ridiculous. I’m all for diversity, not only of color but of idiology and religion as well. But to sit here and make such an extreme statement such as “no more catholics ever in the court” is offensive to me. It is prejudicial, because for so long, Roman Catholics have been misunderstood, as a group, for all being in lock-step with what the Pope says, which is not true at all. i noticed you conveniently ignored the examples I gave of very liberal or quite liberal Catholics such as the Kennedys, John Kerry, Joan Walsh on Salon or heck even the Catholics that fully supported President Obama speaking at Notre Dame.
I know the diversity of Catholic thought first-hand, because of people that I know that could give a damn what the pope says and are very liberal, and those that are yes, obnoxiously politically conservative and give unthinking obediance to the pope. Some Catholics are far more concerned about social justice issues than anything else. And some are Opus Dei followers who couldn’t get anymore doctrinairre.
The Catholic church is far more nuanced and complex than John Cole is giving them credit for. I find this offensive. Just because someone is Roman Catholic does not mean that they cannot have their own mind, and cannot be liberal and pro-choice and everything else. Say what you will about “cafeteria catholics” but there are many.
Liz
@Scruffy McSnufflepuss:
I think you can be an atheist and still be completely moral. You don’t have to believe in any god to be a good person, to follow the golden rule, and live a very good and worthy life. Since when has anyone in any religious community cornered the market on morality? That’s quite an assumption for you to make.
Why do we need to believe in god to be good people? Why do we have to subscribe to the central tenet of Catholicism, specifically, that says the more you suffer on earth, the more quickly you get into heaven? That doesn’t sound off to you? I for one am certainly not going to be beholden to any religion that murdered people in the name of its god, that treats women as second class, and amasses a fortune on the backs of its congregants. I won’t even get into the hypocrisy.
Scruffy McSnufflepuss
@Chuck Butcher:
I was stating my personal views on atheism. As I also stated, others’ views may vary. The person I was responding to had argued an atheist’s perspective on religious views, as if that were the only feasible view. I offered a theist’s perspective on atheism, since it’s apparently fair game to offer skewed personal views on other peoples’ beliefs as if they were the only way of interpreting the matter.
If you’d read the remainder of my post, you would have noticed I said this:
“But, if we’re going to question each others’ religious beliefs and their core underpinnings, then the discussion leads us into extremely insulting external misunderstandings of what constitute highly personal conclusions about the nature of existence itself.
“And in fairness, I realize full well that my understanding of atheist thought is by no means the exclusive atheist thought process. I have my own skewed, personalized, and far from exclusive take on it, just as your take on religion is skewed, personalized, and far from exclusive.”
Liz
But this is the point of being a Catholic, isn’t it? The pope says that there is only one way, and it’s his way. The church has little interest in being diverse, nuanced, cafeteria style, or anything else except singular. If you don’t follow the See to the letter of the rule, you are a sinner, and surely you can be redeemed through confession, but until you ask for forgiveness you are not welcome in the fold. You are not supposed to be pro-choice according to the pope, you are not supposed to have sex outside of marriage or for any reason other than to pro-create, you cannot accept homosexuality. These things are not negotiable.
That’s why I’m not a Catholic anymore.
les
@Very Reverend Crimson Fire of Compassion:
Jeebus, you and Chuck need to look up the definition of faith. Unless you’re riffing on some stupid “it’s impossible to define beauty” thing, the statement about the room is a statement of observed fact. And, it turns out, we’re at lot more in agreement about beauty than god, come to that. The statement, “there’s no evidence for god, so I don’t believe in god” has nothing to do with faith. It’s a statement of fact, followed by consequence. If you want to state there is a god, either pony up evidence or cop to faith. The two statements are, sorry, not equivalent. Unless you’re going theater of the absurd, and want to argue it’s a faith statement when I say I don’t believe there are pink fairies at the bottom of my garden. And Chuck whines about intellectual pretension.
Liz
@Scruffy McSnufflepuss:
also, you are right-didn’t mean to sound insulting in my first post.
tamied
@Liz: This. I was a born-again Christian in another (earlier) life and what I remember were those horrible evening meetings where a group of impressionable teenagers would watch Rapture movies and cry because their parents, siblings hadn’t been saved and were going to be left behind while the rest of us were whisked away to heaven. At some point I realized that it was all emotional blackmail and I didn’t want any part of it.
But that doesn’t mean I can’t lead a moral, decent life.
Scruffy McSnufflepuss
@Liz:
“I think you can be an atheist and still be completely moral.”
I know you can be. But I couldn’t be, and I thought we were arguing our personal impressions of other peoples’ views, not their impressions of those views. That seemed to be your point, anyway, when you were discussing religion- that you think it’s immoral and depraved.
“You don’t have to believe in any god to be a good person, to follow the golden rule, and live a very good and worthy life. Since when has anyone in any religious community cornered the market on morality? That’s quite an assumption for you to make.”
And I didn’t make it, except for myself. I said so because I was pointing out your utter hypocrisy in questioning the moral validity of others’ religious beliefs based on your own personal take on religion. If you want to question the views of 1 billion Catholics, and call them all imbecilic sheep for believing in God, be prepared to have non-atheists question your views as well.
“Why do we need to believe in god to be good people?”
You may not, but I find that I do. I can no more understand your embrace of what I view to be a nihilistic understanding of the Universe than you can understand my embrace of a metaphysical reality.
“Why do we have to subscribe to the central tenet of Catholicism, specifically, that says the more you suffer on earth, the more quickly you get into heaven?”
Well, if you’re just going to make comparative moral analyses, then what’s a “better” alternative? Randroid selfishness? Hedonism for its own sake?
“That doesn’t sound off to you?”
It sounds like an “off” interpretation of Catholicism, at any rate. I’m pretty sure 1 billion Catholics are not monolithically worshippers of suffering. But even if you made a plausible argument that they were, their beliefs are little concern of yours.
“I for one am certainly not going to be beholden to any religion that murdered people in the name of its god, that treats women as second class, and amasses a fortune on the backs of its congregants.”
Good for you.
“I won’t even get into the hypocrisy.”
I’ll make a deal with you- you respect the views of others, and others will respect yours.
Scruffy McSnufflepuss
@Liz:
No worries. Sorry for sounding insulting in my last one. I wrote it under stressful office conditions.
silentbeep
@ Liz
Hey, I am not a practicing Roman Catholic anymore either. I’m not interested in the Church for personal religious purposes anymore at all, for myself, ever again.
The issue that John Cole brought up was essentially promiting the banning of a certain group of people, just because they are Catholic: this is what I have a problem with. Heck, for the vast majority of American history most people in any branch of government were Protestant, as was the Supreme Court. In fact it’s still that way! I’m a female Hispanic Buddhist, do you think I’m particularly comfortable with the fact that the vast majority of people in governmental power are still white Protestant males? And no, I would never be o.k. with someone who said “no more white male protesenats in government again, because there are far too many” I don’t think it’s o.k. to malign anyone for their religious identity, period. I don’t share this view, but there are some Roman Catholics that believe that in order to change the church, they need to stay within it, to advocate for reform and participate in parishes that are more focused on helping the poor, and other types of social justice advocacy. Of course, you know that many Roman Catholics no matter what the Pope says, aren’t particularly interested in following what he has to say to the letter and why should they? Ex-communication is actually rare.
The Roman Catholic church is not the place for me anymore. But I will be damned to sign-on with John Coles advocacy of banning people merely on religious identity alone.
Scruffy McSnufflepuss
@tamied:
I wouldn’t say you couldn’t. I would say that if I adopted your worldview, I couldn’t. Just as you probably couldn’t lead a moral life if you constrained yourself to my views, which you would probably find stultifying at best.
If a person’s beliefs (or lack thereof) enable them to lead a moral life, I think it’s best not to question them. From the socially utilitarian perspective, that’s the only factor that generally matters to me anyway- if my acquaintances/neighbors/whomever are able to lead moral lives, I don’t want to prod them too much about the internal means by which they are able to do so. The views that work for them would probably not work for me, and vice versa.
Fax Paladin
Answering out of order:
@les: I would disagree with this on semantic terms (semantics being what I do for a living). To my mind, atheism — as differentiated from agnosticism — requires faith in the negative. To simply believe that there’s no evidence for God, lacking faith in either direction, is agnosticism.
@Scruffy McSnufflepuss: What you leave out of this equation is the meaning we impose — and that meaning doesn’t have to be Galtian IGMFY. I know plenty of atheists and agnostics working to make the world a better place because it’s right, not because somebody told them their God said they should. It may not matter to the whole vast universe of space and time, but in the here and now, in the communities where we live, it matters, and that’s all that matters.
Hell, the reason the obnoxiously evangelical atheists are so insistent they’re right is out of a view that religion is actively making things worse. If they think nothing matters, then why try to convert people to atheism? To me, that’s not nihilism.
Fax Paladin
I also observe that in the time it takes me to compose a replay, bazillions of people have also responded and the conversation has taken several steps forward from where I am.
It’s almost enough to make one believe that nothing matters. :-)
les
@Fax Paladin:
Maybe so, maybe so. To me, it’s not so much semantics–although, as a lawyer, it’s hard to say anything can’t be about words–as worldview or philosophy or some equally mushy concept. I just don’t believe things for which there is no evidence–whether fairies, Thor, Jesus, the trinity, whatever. Despite plenty of exposure, including 11 years in the Catholic school system, I don’t see any evidence and I don’t believe in one more god than the typical christian doesn’t believe in. Maybe that’s agnosticism, but it’s more than “could be either way.”
Scruffy McSnufflepuss
@Fax Paladin:
“What you leave out of this equation is the meaning we impose — and that meaning doesn’t have to be Galtian IGMFY.”
It would for me, though. YMMV.
“I know plenty of atheists and agnostics working to make the world a better place because it’s right, not because somebody told them their God said they should. It may not matter to the whole vast universe of space and time, but in the here and now, in the communities where we live, it matters, and that’s all that matters.”
Why does it matter, though? Those people are better than me. If I adopted their worldview, I’d take the bigger picture, and think to myself that social utilitarianism is an insufficient basis for personal morality. I can understand the Galtian/nihilistic perspective, and any other perspective would strike me as a sort of Nietzschean denial of that nihilism.
“Hell, the reason the obnoxiously evangelical atheists are so insistent they’re right is out of a view that religion is actively making things worse. If they think nothing matters, then why try to convert people to atheism? To me, that’s not nihilism.”
It passes the time while waiting to die. If I ever met door-to-door proselytizing atheists, I’d tell them their time would be better spent by shooting heroin up into their balls or by jumping off bridges or by eating pizza and watching TV for the rest of their lives. It would make no difference anyway. But that’s just my perspective. I’m very happy that all atheists do not share it; however, it is a major part of why I will never become an atheist.
Fax Paladin
@les: Yeah, part of the problem here is that such a wide range of opinions can fall under either or both headings. After I got up from the computer I remembered a bumper sticker that a friend of mine sells: “Militant agnostic: I don’t know, and you don’t either!” Put another way: It’s entirely possible to believe “could be either way, but without evidence that God exists we shouldn’t make public policy that assumes he does, and privileges belief and believers in God.” Which Christianists immediately paint as an an attempt to privilege atheism. :-P
les
@Scruffy McSnufflepuss:
Scruffy, I think you need to expand your definition of hedonism. Ya know, it just really feels good to live in a functioning, sane, ordered society that cares about its members. It feels good to drop the daughter off at school with a sense that she’ll learn something, figure out how to increase her own and others’ happiness, and blah blah blah. It feels good to have a couple of brews after work, especially on those days with an actual intellectual challenge well dealt with. Yeah, the drugs were fun–not that I ever tried the heroin in the balls trick–but lots of other stuff is fun too, and more conducive to living a long time and having a good time at it. Expand your horizons, man; fear of hellfire is no way to guide your life.
les
@Fax Paladin:
Yeah. Some days I’m firmly in the First Church of the Agnostic Apathetic: don’t know, don’t care.
But you’re dead on on the public policy thing–whether or not any of the believers are right.
Scruffy McSnufflepuss
@les:
“Scruffy, I think you need to expand your definition of hedonism. Ya know, it just really feels good to live in a functioning, sane, ordered society that cares about its members.”
Why? To what purpose?
“It feels good to drop the daughter off at school with a sense that she’ll learn something, figure out how to increase her own and others’ happiness, and blah blah blah. It feels good to have a couple of brews after work, especially on those days with an actual intellectual challenge well dealt with. Yeah, the drugs were fun—not that I ever tried the heroin in the balls trick—but lots of other stuff is fun too, and more conducive to living a long time and having a good time at it. Expand your horizons, man; fear of hellfire is no way to guide your life.”
I have no fear of hellfire. My personal religious view denies the existence of Hell, FWIW. But if I were an atheist, I’d hardly see any cause for chest-thumping triumph in proclaiming something along the lines of “I’m moral despite my lack of belief in an imaginary, invisible sky-god!” My entire “moral” worldview would still be postulated on a belief that anything I did had any intrinsic value beyond its flash-in-the-pan influence on the other conglomerates of meaningless chemicals I called friends, family, and loved ones. Essentially, I’d have substituted the “sky-god” fiction for the fiction that anything mattered; proclaiming a triumph of my purposeless morality over the purposeless moralities of others would be so utterly delusional as to make rearranging the deck chairs on the sinking Titanic seem like an exercise in sensible time expenditure.
I don’t demand in my personal understanding of the Universe that it have a system of rewards and punishments for the individual actions of the indivduals monkeys on Planet Earth. But what I do ask of it in order to avoid falling into a personal Hell of nihilistic insanity is that it have some purpose or cosmic order, such that its entirety is not something more than an unexplaned “magical” quantum fart into an eternity of oblivion.
I know atheists mostly would adopt a better view of atheism, but that’s why they’re atheists and I’m not. And I think I have very good reasons for not becoming an atheist. If atheists disagree, then I think that explains why they’re atheists and I’m not. It doesn’t explain why I should convert to their view of things, because if I did the first thing I’d probably do might be to throw a brick through a jewelry store window. Or drink Drano. Or just be a generally insane, selfish asshole with a grudge against the Universe for spawning me into a transient life of pointlessness and despair.
Liz
Yes and yes. I completely agree with respecting others’ views, and I do apologize for being judgemental about this, I know it’s a fault of mine because I feel so strongly about it.
But as long as the Catholic hierarchy tries to interfere with my ability to live a happy, healthy, fulfilled life by, say, trying to take away my ability to control my own reproduction and prevent my gay friends and family members from getting married and/or adopt children (Catholic or not), I’m going to remain really pissed off about it and try my best to stop them, in my own little way.
Scruffy McSnufflepuss
@Liz:
I agree. I’m no fan of the Catholic hierarchy either. But I can distinguish the Catholics from the leadership of the Catholic hierarchy. If it’s possible to distinguish, say, America from Americans, it’s possible to distinguish individuals of a religion from an asinine leadership they disagree with. (Otherwise, we’ll all have to pretend to be Canadians every time there’s a Republican in the White House and we visit Europe. Bite our tongues when the foreigners say things like “All Americans are stupid assholes who support dropping white phosphorus on Iraqi babies.”)
Samnell
@Steph: There are always excuses. We could as easily dig up a theologian in favor of the torture and murder of nonconformist Catholics.
Liz
I’m glad you’re still here, Snuffle…
Anyway-just found this little gem at FDL:
This is unacceptable to me. And it should be to anyone who cares about compassionate and dignified care at the end of life, among other things. It’s the part about suffering being redemptive that drives me right over the edge.
And I really can’t distinguish leadership from the Catholic populace at large. I agree with you that there are many Catholics out there who do wonderful things for their communities, and I’ve known really great priests in my day. But good Catholics can’t go against church teachings and still be considered a good Catholics, can they? Patrick Kennedy is barred from Communion for fighting for better health care for his constituents, many of whom aren’t Catholic. The leadership of the church is intolerant to any views different then their own.
Samnell
@Scruffy McSnufflepuss:
A few elementary points:
1) The truth or falsity of a proposition has nothing to do with how it makes you feel. A responsible person must acknowledge uncomfortable facts. Drink Drano if you want to, but it doesn’t make your opinions any more true or false that entertaining some makes you feel good and others make you feel bad. Personally I’m a bit bummed that I’m not a young, horny billionaire shagging Elijah Wood. But that disappointment doesn’t make me any younger, wealthier, or enmeshed in hobbit sex. Now if I told people that my life was worthless to me and not worth living if I couldn’t shag Frodo with his pretty blue eyes, I think they’d be out to get me help considering that’s serious stalker talk. It’s not a very stable thing to be saying.
2) If you’re a selfish, insane asshole now then deconverting is unlikely to change it. If you aren’t one now, likewise. Atheism does not claim to be a moral guide (which would be odd considering it’s a single opinion about a single issue) and religion’s failure as a moral guidepost is rather thoroughly attested throughout history.
3) There’s no reason at all that one can’t decide one’s own purposes and pursue one’s own goals. In fact you do it every day, unless you expect us to believe that you pick what you’ll have for lunch or which route you’ll take to work by direct consultation with your deity. If you do that, then do you ask him which stall you should use at the public crapper? It seems a bit self-important to demand cosmic imprimatur for all one’s decisions. I’ve been told I have a healthy ego, but I think that one takes the cake. If you can manage those choices without then you can manage others without.
4) Those purposes we choose for ourselves may have no cosmic importance, but so what? It’s your life, not the universe’s. If anybody owns it, it’s you. The only person who can render it meaningless to you is you. Your problem then is not with the universe, but with yourself. It’ll be over when it’s over, but so what? From the perspective of the person living any particular life, their lifespan is always “forever”. It’s not like you’ll have to go and sit in the penalty box for all eternity afterward, watching it all wither and die. (Now that would be pretty horrific.) There’ll be no more you to regret that the life was short, or went on too long, to resent the eons you do not live for, or any of that. Sure we all die, but we all go to the bathroom too.
5) Actually I think it’s kind of cool that everyone dies and there’s no cosmic purpose. That’s not an argument in favor of my opinion, of course. (See Point #1) But people do manage just fine without. I’m hardly the world’s happiest or most well-adjusted person, but I manage. It’s hardly impossible that if persuaded of the factual supremacy of atheism you could be another such.
les
@Scruffy McSnufflepuss:
Sorry for you, dude. If there’s nihilism in this thread, you’re pushin’ it. Your “faith,” if that’s what it is, makes calvinists look giddy.
Very Reverend Crimson Fire of Compassion
@les: You’re an idiot. Try re-reading your own post. If you can’t spot the obvious fallacies in your own reasoning, no explanation of mine is likely to register. (Two hints, dipshit: “The Beautiful Room” is a metaphor for the nature of ultimate reality, the primum mobile, sanctum sanctorum, etc. Secondly, there’s a slight difference between the bottom of your garden and the infinite expanse of all possible worlds. Can you guess what is might consist of?)What are you, fourteen? Do you suppose you’re the first person to ever consider these ideas, you illiterate fucktard? Educate your sorry ass, then come back to have this conversation.
Scruffy McSnufflepuss
@Liz:
I disagree with the Church’s position on that issue, and on many others.
I think there are maybe 5 lay Catholics in America who actually hold every position the Church holds. Patrick Kennedy was barred from Communion because he’s high-profile, and because the bishop wanted to perform a publicity stunt and get to look like an asshole. One could just as easily apply Catholic dogma to that bishop, and say that he’s going against it. He’s not God, and he’s not able to peer into mens’ hearts and see what sins they’ve confessed to or repented of in private. So denying him Communion on this basis is arguably, in and of itself, a sin.
Or so I’m told by the priest or two I’ve talked to about it, anyway.
Scruffy McSnufflepuss
@Samnell:
“1) The truth or falsity of a proposition has nothing to do with how it makes you feel. A responsible person must acknowledge uncomfortable facts.”
It’s not a fact. It’s an assumption based upon a lack of empirical evidence.
“Drink Drano if you want to, but it doesn’t make your opinions any more true or false that entertaining some makes you feel good and others make you feel bad. Personally I’m a bit bummed that I’m not a young, horny billionaire shagging Elijah Wood. But that disappointment doesn’t make me any younger, wealthier, or enmeshed in hobbit sex. Now if I told people that my life was worthless to me and not worth living if I couldn’t shag Frodo with his pretty blue eyes, I think they’d be out to get me help considering that’s serious stalker talk. It’s not a very stable thing to be saying.”
It’s also not very germane to the issue of whether a metaphysical reality exists or not. A reality which, by its very definition, could neither be proven nor disproven by empirical means, and would therefore have to be accepted or rejected based, essentially, on personal supposition.
“2) If you’re a selfish, insane asshole now then deconverting is unlikely to change it. If you aren’t one now, likewise.”
That may be true for you, personally. It would not be true for me, personally. Since we’re talking about a deeply personal question and a deeply personal impression of a worldview, it seems fair to point that out.
“Atheism does not claim to be a moral guide (which would be odd considering it’s a single opinion about a single issue) and religion’s failure as a moral guidepost is rather thoroughly attested throughout history.”
Sure, but only because you hear more about the failures instead of the successes. For every person who uses religion as an excuse for evil, there are thousands who use it as an inspiration for good. No one writes about them in history books and newspapers, though, so their efforts remain mostly anonymous.
“3) There’s no reason at all that one can’t decide one’s own purposes and pursue one’s own goals. In fact you do it every day, unless you expect us to believe that you pick what you’ll have for lunch or which route you’ll take to work by direct consultation with your deity. If you do that, then do you ask him which stall you should use at the public crapper? It seems a bit self-important to demand cosmic imprimatur for all one’s decisions. I’ve been told I have a healthy ego, but I think that one takes the cake. If you can manage those choices without then you can manage others without.”
Those choices are managed of necessity. But only because one is able to go through the motions of a daily life without pausing to contemplate ones’ placement in the Universe. Discussing the mechanics of habitual existence is irrelevant to the discussion of how one’s deeper feelings about that existence might be affected by adopting views one does not agree with.
“4) Those purposes we choose for ourselves may have no cosmic importance, but so what? It’s your life, not the universe’s. If anybody owns it, it’s you.”
“You” are nothing more than an assortment of chemicals, under this worldview. All of your decisions are nothing more than purely mechanical, chemical. You’re no better than a robot or a paramecium, albeit more complicated. So what’s this talk of “ownership” or “free will”? It couldn’t even be possible, in a purely material understanding of the Universe, except as a delusion which was, itself, a function of chemistry.
“The only person who can render it meaningless to you is you.”
It can do that to itself, if pondered deeply enough.
“Your problem then is not with the universe, but with yourself. It’ll be over when it’s over, but so what?”
So your entire existence is meaningless and pointless, and your attempts to delude yourself otherwise are certainly not in any way superior to others, who think that the Universe DOES have meaning and who worship according to religions that they feel inform them of that meaning.
“From the perspective of the person living any particular life, their lifespan is always “forever”. It’s not like you’ll have to go and sit in the penalty box for all eternity afterward, watching it all wither and die. (Now that would be pretty horrific.) There’ll be no more you to regret that the life was short, or went on too long, to resent the eons you do not live for, or any of that. Sure we all die, but we all go to the bathroom too.”
Comforting thought. So it really makes no difference whether you hit the lottery or get hit by a bus, because in the final analysis, it’s no different than having to go potty.
“5) Actually I think it’s kind of cool that everyone dies and there’s no cosmic purpose. That’s not an argument in favor of my opinion, of course. (See Point #1) But people do manage just fine without. I’m hardly the world’s happiest or most well-adjusted person, but I manage. It’s hardly impossible that if persuaded of the factual supremacy of atheism you could be another such.”
There is no factual supremacy. There is a demand for empirical proof which cannot be provided, by the very definition of metaphysics. Asking for physical proof of metaphysical reality ignores the definitional nature of metaphysics. It’s begging the question, and it has no more validity than any of a number of “proofs” of God which presuppose that God exists.
Scruffy McSnufflepuss
@les:
I’m willing to ignore your failure to carefully read my posts, because reading yours has convinced me you’re not a very deep thinker to begin with. You’re like one of those Christianist Bible-thumpers who claims the Holy Scripture is infallible, word for word, even though they’ve never read it; the only difference is, you’re a muddled atheist whose thoughts are about as “free” as a 15-year-old’s understanding of a skimmed-through copy of “Beyond Good and Evil” allows them to be.
If you fail to read text correctly, and understand it on its own terms, then the actual text to which you choose to pin your intellectual laziness is of little consequence.
Bruce (formerly Steve S.)
Ah. Propositions that in principle are unknowable and for which no objective frame of reference can in principle be established. Yet we are supposed to take them seriously.
Looks like this discussion is forever and always at an end. Thanks for playing, and enjoy the lovely parting gifts.
Scruffy McSnufflepuss
@Bruce (formerly Steve S.):
Or not. It’s a free country. But if others take them seriously, there’s no need for you to be a dick about it.
“Looks like this discussion is forever and always at an end.”
Yes. Yes, it is. That’s the whole point. It’s not as if there were a definitive answer out there, or we all would’ve embraced it by now. Don’t you think if atheism/Catholicism/Scientology/whatever could be finally, conclusively, definitively proven, we’d all be following that belief by now? Or do you think everyone who disagrees with you is ipso facto moronic?
“Thanks for playing, and enjoy the lovely parting gifts.”
I guess you think people who disagree with you are morons, then. Never mind. I’ve found very few atheists on Balloon Juice who were willing to seriously entertain the notion that theists might not be idiots. No surprise to be accused of idiocy anymore.
Bruce (formerly Steve S.)
Huh? You’re the one who just said that there is no basis for sensible discussion about these things. Seems to me you’re the one being dickish about others’ cherished beliefs.
I can only conclude you’re trying to be funny here, because these questions are comical at face value. There are any number of propositions that are as finally, conclusively, and definitively “proven” as human inquiry will allow, yet rejected by teeming hordes of humanity. There are similarly any number of propositions for which there is no objective evidence to speak of, yet are widely accepted. So I’m not sure what point you’re trying to make here.
The usual bleat. You make a fantastically absurd statement (about a “reality” dependent upon “personal supposition”) and when the absurdity is pointed out you trot out the accusations. Come back when you’re feeling better.
Scruffy McSnufflepuss
@Bruce (formerly Steve S.):
If you don’t want to believe in metaphysics, you don’t have to. Others choose to do so. You can’t prove them or disprove them, so there’s no reason to be a dick about your disagreement with them.
I can only conclude that you’re a fucking intolerant asshole who would fit in well with the Bible-thumpers and theocrats. “Proven” as human inquiry will allow means fuck-all when we’re talking about the Universe and its causation. Just because you’re satisfied with physical inquiry doesn’t preclude others from metaphysical suppositions. They remain impossible to prove or disprove. Don’t like it? Come up with a way of disproving them. Failing that, shut the fuck up and mind your own business about what other people choose to believe. If you think your whole existence is maggot-food in a couple decades, what the Hell do you care what I believe in my life anyway?
Douchebag. The only thing distinguishing you from the Bible-thumpers is they thump a Bible. You thump your chest. There’s no empirical reality to metaphysics, BY DEFINITION. Don’t like it? Too fucking bad. Good news is, you don’t have to believe it. The other good news is, you even have the freedom to be a complete asshole about it.
I fear for the day shits like you run the world, though. You’ll make the Inquisition look like a birthday party. You’ll be burning theists at the stake, you intolerant fuck.
Bruce (formerly Steve S.)
This has nothing to do with what I “want to believe”. We’re talking about your definition of “metaphysics” which is self-evidently absurd.
It’s trivially true that people will “believe in” whatever they want. What you’re really accusing me of being a “dick” about is your absurd observations on “metaphysics”, which you somehow find relevant to your jihad against atheism. If you can’t sensibly state your own concept just say so.
Note the bigot at work here. He attempts to defend a proposition with a self-evident absurdity, and when this is pointed out the hysterical pejoratives spew forth. There’s a mindless hatred of an entire class of people at work here, he summons a self-evident absurdity to bolster his preconception, and when it’s pointed out to him an entirely predictable emotional reaction ensues.
Which wasn’t the point, but do go on.
BZZZT. You have no idea what I’m “satisfied with”. And you’re perfectly free to engage in all the “metaphysical suppositions” you want, but rounding on others for not accepting that which you have defined as having no meaning outside your own head is utterly absurd behavior. Perhaps explains your hysterical resort to ad hominem, though.
Not the way it works, Sparky, but I suspect you already know that.
Note the bigot at work again. Pointlessly attacks entire classes of people, then tells them to shut up.
Note the bigot again. Reduces the POVs of others to simplistic strawmen. (snipping a few more hysterical remarks)
But does it have meaning outside your own head?
Scruffy McSnufflepuss
@Bruce (formerly Steve S.):
“This has nothing to do with what I “want to believe”. We’re talking about your definition of “metaphysics” which is self-evidently absurd.”
Not really. From the American Heritage Dictionary:
1.(used with a sing. verb) Philosophy The branch of philosophy that examines the nature of reality, including the relationship between mind and matter, substance and attribute, fact and value.
2.(used with a pl. verb) The theoretical or first principles of a particular discipline: the metaphysics of law.
3.(used with a sing. verb) A priori speculation upon questions that are unanswerable to scientific observation, analysis, or experiment.
My definition would be definition #3. Or, if you prefer, the etymological definition of meta physika, “beyond the physical.”
“It’s trivially true that people will “believe in” whatever they want. What you’re really accusing me of being a “dick” about is your absurd observations on “metaphysics”, which you somehow find relevant to your jihad against atheism.”
A personal, internal jihad, which has fuck-all to do with you. Just as your personal, internal jihad against basic decency and common courtesy would have fuck-all to do with me, if you weren’t such a flaming asshole.
“If you can’t sensibly state your own concept just say so.”
If you can’t debate a point without insulting the person you disagree with, just shut the fuck up. So far, you’ve contributed nothing of any kind beyond that you think I’m a moron. I got that from your first post, so you can fuck off now.
“Note the bigot at work here.”
Yes, I’ve been doing that since you started posting with self-aggrandizing bigotry against any views except your own.
“He attempts to defend a proposition with a self-evident absurdity,”
So “self-evident,” you haven’t even bothered to prove it, asshole.
“and when this is pointed out the hysterical pejoratives spew forth.”
I’m just calling an asshole an asshole. As an empiricist, how can you not support that?
“There’s a mindless hatred of an entire class of people at work here, he summons a self-evident absurdity to bolster his preconception, and when it’s pointed out to him an entirely predictable emotional reaction ensues.”
Actually, there’s only a very mindful hatred of one person here- you, asshole. As I’ve said repeatedly, if atheism works for others I have no problem with them living according to it. As I’ve said repeatedly, it wouldn’t work for me, and I’ve explained why. You’re the one with a senseless hatred for views that differ from your own, not me.
“Which wasn’t the point, but do go on.”
It was my point. Which was better than yours, which is to be a troll and a bigot.
“BZZZT. You have no idea what I’m “satisfied with”.”
Don’t much care at this point, either.
“And you’re perfectly free to engage in all the “metaphysical suppositions” you want, but rounding on others for not accepting that which you have defined as having no meaning outside your own head is utterly absurd behavior.”
I didn’t. I repeatedly stated that if something else worked for others, it was fine by me. I’m not about to mount a defense of your illiteracy.
“Perhaps explains your hysterical resort to ad hominem, though.”
You’re the one who wandered into a discussion, having selectively skimmed posts at best, and started insulting people. So eat shit.
“Not the way it works, Sparky, but I suspect you already know that.”
Yes, we both know that you really have nothing to contribute but insults. You can’t prove or disprove metaphysics, all you can do is label it “absurd” and me a “bigot” for refusing to goose-step toward views I am fine with others having, but that I would find insane. You have nothing to add to that, so shut the fuck up.
“Note the bigot at work again. Pointlessly attacks entire classes of people, then tells them to shut up.”
Yes, I know you did that to me. It makes me angry.
“Note the bigot again. Reduces the POVs of others to simplistic strawmen. (snipping a few more hysterical remarks)”
Note that you didn’t answer my question: if you’re nbothing more than maggot food in a couple decades, what the fuck difference does it make to you if I’m a Catholic, a Muslim, a Hindu, an atheist, a Deist, a Sikh, a Zoroastrian, or anything else? You intolerant sack of shit, all you need is a Bible and you’ll be the next Jerry Falwell.
“But does it have meaning outside your own head?”
Yes, it does. In metaphysical reality, which I sense exists. A sense that has at least as much validity as the senses that tell me empirical reality exists, and which are very possibly, themselves, flawed instruments of gauging what goes on outside of my thoughts.
I’ll ask it again, and again, and again: what the fuck difference does it make to you, future maggot-farm, what I believe, as long as I’m minding my own business and not imposing my beliefs on you the way you’re trying to impose yours on me?