Evidence for Christianity

[Captain Scarlet]

@dqualk. Firstly thank you for your first thorough reply. All these points are of course arguable. But from a historical perspective and by your own admission, the catholic church was not a bastion of steadfast resistance to the Nazi regime and was complicit in some quarters. Making the view that you promoting from Einstein rather one of rose coloured spectacles from a man who fled the regime when it came to power in 1933 and landed (and was seeking citizenship) in a country which was mainly catholic. A wise political move if not a wholly historically true one.

There are many points I disagree with in your statements, but I only want to pick up on onewhich is outrageous

Pope does sit in the Vatican with a list of who is naughty and who is nice and began excommunicating the naughty ones. The Church only excommunicates members officially when it is in the best interest of the Church. The fact is Canon Law automatically excommunicates bad people for mortal sins. So all of these people were de facto excommunicated, the Pope did not need to dig up every name to excommunicate each person.

The above is weasel words and behavious. What morally serious person could argue that the Nazis responsible for killing millions of jews in cold blood, should not be officially excommunicated, but that a man who marries a protestant should be. But then catholicism makes little sense anyway. If it is wrong, it is wrong and the church should have stood up; as a matter of historic fact they did not. So much for being Gods representatives.

Unaddressed are a host of other points about your 'evidence' for christianity. Take time to respond.

[dqualk]

It is true that the Pope would absolutely go out of his way to excommunicate Hitler, but this would be only if it actually helped to bring Nazism to an end. However, the Pope does not officially excommunicate Hitler if he believes it will actually strengthen Hitler, perhaps by turning more Germans against Catholics or by enboldening the Germans to sack the Vatican or something. Hitler is already de facto excommunicated becuase of Canon Law. I don't know why the Pope excommunicated a person for marrying a non-Catholic as this always allowed, with permission from your Bishop. Perhaps he did it without an indulgence, and the Pope felt that exommunicating him for this would actually help convince Catholics to seek an indulgence first. I guess he felt like in such a situation an exommunication would serve the common good, but in the case of Hitler he probably felt that it would only exacerbate the problem. That is unless he was evil, then I guess he did it just to be extra evil lol. Which I tend to think it was generally a good person faced with very difficult decisions and I think he just did the best he could, and I'm sure he could have done better in many ways, but overall I think he was virtuous.

[Oldandeasilyconfused]

What morally serious person could argue that the Nazis responsible for killing millions of jews in cold blood, should not be officially excommunicated,----

To be fair, all Nazis were officially excommunicated in 1930. However,this was done by the German bishops, not by the pro fascist pope Pius X1,who had signed the Lateran Treaty with Mussolini in 1929..

--- the conference of German bishops excommunicated all Nazis in 1930, and in the 1932 elections forbade Catholics to vote for a Nazi. By being the leader of the Nazi party, Hitler had already put himself outside of the Church.

http://www.funtrivia.com/askft/Question87715.html

The arrogance of the church with Catholics marrying non-Catholics and their utter intolerance of other Christian churches is something of which I'm all too familiar:

My parents were married in 1946.Mum was not a Catholic. That meant they could not be married in front of the altar.The actual ceremony took place in the vestry,the priest's changing room.

At school we were taught by the nuns not be mean to the protestant children because it wasn't their fault they were all going to hell.( I kid you not)

At that time Catholics were forbidden by the church ,under pain of mortal sin,to attend any religious service whatsoever in other than a Catholic church.

Some of the more idiotic practices and beliefs, such as Limbo and a few dodgy saints,were abolished after the Second Vatican Council. (1962-1965) These days, confession in no longer mandatory,nor is refraining from eating meat on Fridays.

[dqualk]

To be fair, all Nazis were officially excommunicated in 1930. However,this was done by the German bishops, not by the pro fascist pope Pius X1,who had signed the Lateran Treaty with Mussolini in 1929..

Thank you pad for your fair judgement. I think I mentioned that in my list of reasons why the Church is not totally evil, but I did not say it in such a clear way. Thanks. However, I did point out that the only anti fascist document to be put out by the Pope before the end of WWII came from Pope Pius XI. If you want you can read my earlier post becuase I put the name of the encyclical if you would like to check it out. Of course you could be calling him pro fascist for other reasons... Because, although I do not know about the Pope in this case, many people thought Fascism was a good compromise between communism and capitalism. I still think fascism could have been good if it were not for the retarded evil bastard hitler and mussolini, as Salazar and Franco were not too bad in my opinion. I know many people hate Franco, but whatever. Even FDR and many others praised fascism until it turned racisit under stupid Hitler.

The arrogance of the church with Catholics marrying non-Catholics and their utter intolerance of other Christian churches is something of which I'm all too familiar:

My parents were married in 1946.Mum was not a Catholic. That meant they could not be married in front of the altar.The actual ceremony took place in the vestry,the priest's changing room.

At school we were taught by the nuns not be mean to the protestant children because it wasn't their fault they were all going to hell.( I kid you not)

At that time Catholics were forbidden by the church ,under pain of mortal sin,to attend any religious service whatsoever in other than a Catholic church.

Some of the more idiotic practices and beliefs, such as Limbo and a few dodgy saints,were abolished after the Second Vatican Council. (1962-1965) These days, confession in no longer mandatory,nor is refraining from eating meat on Fridays.

Yes it is true that the Church strongly discourgages mixed marriages, for the sake of the family. It is difficult to grow up in a split home, and often the husband and wife end up hating each other becuase of their different beliefs. However, the Church does allow mixed marriage. And she has gotten better about not being so judgemental.

Yeah the old spirit of Catholicism could be quite nasty at times. Personally I think the Church has gotten better in this regards, but the things about the Church and all humans institutions is that if you are not in one ditch you are probably in another, and I think many are mad at nuns today for saying things like, nothing is evil blah blah blah and being too relativistic. It sucks that people are usually in one ditch or the other, but I think the Church's teachings are middle of the road, this is why back then people were able to be so rude to non-Catholics, and today many can be so open toward non-catholics. Its like being so closed minded you are an idiot verses being so open minded your brain falls out, for a lot of people it is unfortunately one or the other.

Yeah, it sucks that Catholics were not allowed to attend other relgious services, but this is because the Church did not have a clear undestanding of what other relgions were and thereofre how to deal with them. The Church also lived in a time that wanted to hear things like that, people in general were more closed minded so it would make sense that hte Church would cater to their needs, as the Church always speaks the language of her people, out of necessity.

Limbo and the "dodgey saints" were not abolished. They just became unpopular. Limbo is still a valid opinion, like it always was. The only difference is that back then it was a very common opinion today it is uncommon. The dodgey saints were a sad appeal to rationalists I think, so we took them off the calendar but one can still celebrate their saint days and they are still published in saint records all that stuff. Also, confession IS mandatory, and you still cannot eat meat on Good Friday and Ash Wednesday, I believe. Also, bishops can bind on their faithful a stronger observance if they wish, and abstaining from meat is still recommended.

[downbeatplumb]

Does the pope still sell indulgences to get out of purgatory or was that a superstiton too far?

[dqualk]

Well the Church still teaches that selling indulgences is correct in theology, however it is to easily abused so the Church has suspended the selling of indulgences to stop the abuse. Now it is sin to sell indulgences, because the Church has prohibitied it. However, the Church still uses indulgences, you just purchase them with good works excluding alms giving. So you can recieve an indulgence for praying or reading your Bible or doing acts of charity etc. You just can not recieved an official indulgence for giving money, even though the Church still recognizes this as a good work. Does that make sense?

[Captain Scarlet]

Well the Church still teaches that selling indulgences is correct in theology, however it is to easily abused so the Church has suspended the selling of indulgences to stop the abuse. Now it is sin to sell indulgences, because the Church has prohibitied it. However, the Church still uses indulgences, you just purchase them with good works excluding alms giving. So you can recieve an indulgence for praying or reading your Bible or doing acts of charity etc. You just can not recieved an official indulgence for giving money, even though the Church still recognizes this as a good work. Does that make sense?

No

[dqualk]

No

Ok, I'll try again. The Church stopped selling indulgences because they were being abused. People were more or less stealing money from people by misleading them. The Church recognized that selling indulgens was to easily abused. So they said, even though there is technically nothing wrong with it in theory, in practice it is abused, so we are ending it. The Church still uses indulgences, but you can only recieve them by doing good works, Technically giving money is a good work, but that was to easily abused, so now you can get indulgences for any good work other than giving money. So if you want an induglence you can gain one by reading a Bible or praying for something etc.

An indulgence is a recognition by the Church that one has done something that has helped to forgive some of their temporal sin. So they will be able to go straight to heaven, rather than having to go to purgatory. There are two kinds of indulgences, one is a plenary indulgence, which completely frees the one who recieves it of temporal sin, and there is another kind that only relieves part of ones temporal sins. One cannot recieve an indulgence to get out of hell, or to avoid hell, only to get out of purgatory, or avoid purgatory. If you go to purgatory you will make it into heaven, so if oyu are in purgatory, you will never do something worthy of going to hell, you no longer have that within your range of possible actions.

Hopefully you understand the issue now.

[Dotard]

Yes, your story is straight. It's the whole premise that's non-sensical.
Which I'm betting is why CS responded "No".

[Captain Scarlet]

Yes, your story is straight. It's the whole premise that's non-sensical.
Which I'm betting is why CS responded "No".

Indeed.

There is only so much verbal diarrhea you can put up with. A catholic complaining about the lay people 'abusing' the sale of indulgences, when for centuries they were sold by priests with a price list attached depending on what you wanted and who was doing it is bizarre. Now of course if he wants to talk about abuse we can of course turn to the endemic raping of children and systematic cover up by the catholic hierarchy, not to mention the years of mental and physical beatings at the hands of the clergy in 'schools', which make madrassers look attractive.