Meaningfulness v meaninglessness; theism vs atheism;

[Minimalist]

Most all things are partly religiously motivated. But is it enough to lay all the blame on the institution of the Catholic Church? I mean one athesit does something evil, that doesn't mean all athesits are evil, or atheism in general. The Crusades were in part a Just War, in my opinion. Much of what happened in the Crusades were very evil, done by Catholics, some of whom were truly believeing Catholics, who were misled.

There are two issues here. One, covered by Voltaire, said:

Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.

They may have been "mis-led" but they were also willing to be misled. You overlook that part.


Second, in modern times we see your church ( used to be mine but I quit when I was 20 ) condoning pedophilia among its priests, Before your head explodes understand that I agree that not ALL priests are pedophiles but in far too many cases the power-structure that is all the church is enabled these sick bastards to continue because they were far more concerned about how badly the church would look ( and how much money it would cost them!) than they were about the children who were being institutionally sodomized.

The church has not begun to answer for its role in facilitating those bastards...and by the way, that includes Herr Von Popenfuhrer.

http://www.spiegel.de/international/germ...83,00.html

New documents show how the former Archbishop Joseph Ratzinger -- now Pope Benedict XVI -- and his successor Reinhard Marx failed to properly deal with a suspected pedophile. Despite massive allegations of abuse, the archdiocese allowed the priest to continue working with children.

I get the sense that you would prefer to hide your head in the sand about all this but people are abandoning your church in droves...and I say that is a good thing.