Are certain horrific aspects of catholicism distinctive to that sect specificaly.

[kılıç_mehmet]

I was in the Czech republic through the weekend with some friends and only returned home today. At our way home we made a stop at a little inn to have a massive Schnitzelbreakfest with coffe and strawberry pudding.

Anyway, there had been a very horrific accident on the A1 highway from Salzburg to Vienna on Monday which was pritty much talked about everywhere in the papers, radio and pups. A truck was forced to stop on the highway and the truck behind it couldnt get the brakes in time and crashed right into it, the gas tank brst, caught fire, and the poor man driving the truck was stuck in the truck and was burned alive whilest nobody could help and only watch in horror.

Through some coincidence, the inn at which we stopped was in the village from which the driver who had died was from.
Everyone in the inn was talking about the man and about his family in terms of mourning, when suddently a woman who was the owner of the inn said:

"That makes you think, what kind of horrible person he must have been in life to get such a horrible end through good."

Within seconds the terms in which the poor man and his family was talked about changed radicaly. Everybody was desperate in reminding others about any kind of somehow even little bit of unpleasentry that they could in any way think of about that poor person. Turning the most childish little things, even out of that mans childhood into some big crime story.
I was so disgusted that I tried to talk my friends into leaving without paying the bill, but in the end we just left early.

On the 4 hour drive home, I came to remember that this was in a way the reason why had left Austria and moved to (protestant and more liberal) Germany in the first place ( I am currently back but will leave next year). This disgusting catholic attitude, the idea of sin and divine redemption, and that god will somehow punish people during their lives for their sins and that every misfortune that was inflicted on you must be justifyable with sins of yours, which had completly sunken into the minds and culture of this backwards society (and if I am not mistaken also in Italy, France, Spain and Poland). I remembered several funerals from my childhood in which when the person brought to grave died a horrible death - people always looked for "sins" like a fucking pack of vultures to loudly justify that horrific death in a disgusting act of self staging infront of the others as some kind of moral authority.

There were also alot of other things I remebered to be wrong in this society, like the principle of a local school who was a catholic dignitary and who harrased female coworkers and other women - but was never brought to justice but went into early retirement, and alot of other such cases which show how catholic authority can level your status in a clansih conservative society in Europe.

But it is this revolting "sin and redemption" concept that I somehow kept thinking about.

Growing up here, I always thought of it as a catholic thing which in it`s way is very distinctive and mostly only happens in catholic societies.

Am I wrong????

I don't know, man. We don't really judge people here by the way they died(unless it was a death in service of country or God, in which case they become a martyr(shahid)), but by the way they lived.

[festive1]

My mom's family is Catholic. I've never seen or heard anything like this. If anything the dead are viewed as being completely absolved of any and all past transgressions.
That being said, they do have some pretty fucked up standards for things to be endured in life. But upon death, no matter how vile a person was, comes the absolution and finding the good in a person.

[Angrboda]

I only skimmed the article on the Just-World hypothesis, but I have my own personal theory about this. (Although I don't have it fully fleshed out, so forgive if it's a bit rough.) As humans, we're a social species, and depend for our survival on important social processes. In dealing with others, which is a major part of our world, we look for fairness and trustworthiness, because these are the conditions most conducive to profitable social exchanges. We become naturally anxious if we suspect someone is lying to us, or cheating us. Thus, we have an emotional need to feel that things are fair, and that we aren't going to be rewarded for good acts with bad results. We have an emotional need to believe things are fair, so we project that need onto the universe, to things beyond other social partners. If bad things happen to good people, well, if they aren't compensated somewhere down the road, that's unsettling. Accepting that life is unfair is something we can do with our head, but less so with our hearts. We need to feel there's some justice in the world, or we're profoundly disturbed. Even those who are atheist think in these terms. We like to think that we got that promotion because we deserved it, when it could have been that my boss just liked looking at my ass. We want to believe that people get what they deserve, whether it be good or bad. (In ethics, this leads to the concept of moral desert.) It's just the emotional part of our monkey brain shepherding our biological interests by overlaying an emotional need which is instrumentally useful in social interactions, onto a context in which it has little utility, the behavior of the universe. Evolutionarily, this makes sense, as making mistakes in not applying this logic in social situations can lead to serious consequences for you and your chances of reproductive success; making the mistake of applying it where there is no benefit is relatively harmless and less costly than the former mistake. So, to speak teleologically a moment, it makes more sense to over-detect fairness even when it's not applicable than it does to under-detect it when it does matter. Evolutionarily speaking, the cost-benefit ratio is in favor of over-detection.

So while it's rather puzzling on its own terms, I suspect events like this are just another example of how the brain resolves cognitive dissonance. On the one hand, we're faced with the unfairness of an indifferent universe, on the other hand, our mammalian brain has an intense need to believe that things are fair and just. The intense need wins out, even at the cost of distorting reality to make it fit. So what you saw in that Tavern might have been exacerbated by religious doctrine, but was more likely simply people trying to resolve an emotional and epistemic crisis. Their need for a just world was threatened by the reality of an indifferent universe in the palpable form of bad things happening to good people, and the conflict was resolved by redrawing the map.

That's just the way the human mind works. The mind is less concerned with truth than it is with feeling in control. If you kick their belief in a just world out from under them, their sense of control evaporates, and panic sets in.

[Minimalist]

The poor man *must* have been a horrible person, yes? - else a benevolent overlord would not possibly allow him to suffer so

Yet, in another thread when I suggested that a baptist preacher who got killed in a bus crash must have been a shitty baptist, G-C had a shit hemorrhage.

Go figure.

[Something completely different]

Is the social concept of unquestionable catholic authority also existant in Italy?

Well, in Italy, the church may be very obtrusive but is not unquestionable at all,since fortunately we had a very strong communist party to put its authority in discussion.

And then again, I think Italy is the country with the highest rate of "I believe in god but not in the church". No one knows how many times I've heard this thing...

May I ask: Are you from the South or from the North?

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No, I've seen buddhists do it. By buddhists I mean the one practiced with monks and chanting, I know there's a hippie version going on, that's not the one I mean. In buddhists teachings, you either pay for the bad things you do in this lifetime, or in the next, so this sort of thinking is common. I know of 2 horrible deaths that buddhists told me happened because those 2 were bad people.

I have heard of that, a friend of mine who went to Laos told me that homosexuals and transsexuals were discriminated on the ground that their sexuality is the punishment resulting of a wicked previous life.

[NoraBrimstone]

Holy crap, that's an evil way to react to a horrific death! I've never heard the like in my life, and I come from a big (London based) Irish Catholic family. They love a good funeral, but the way they talk of the dead is the total opposite. The person could have been a complete psychopath they all hated, then as soon as they die they are suddenly spoken of like they were a saint who couldn't do wrong.

[Lucanus]

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Well, in Italy, the church may be very obtrusive but is not unquestionable at all,since fortunately we had a very strong communist party to put its authority in discussion.

And then again, I think Italy is the country with the highest rate of "I believe in god but not in the church". No one knows how many times I've heard this thing...

---

May I ask: Are you from the South or from the North?

Deep South, precisely South East... That's the thing that surprised me the most.

[Something completely different]

Deep South, precisely South East... That's the thing that surprised me the most.

Really?!?!!!

Isn`t the South like...... well.... uneducated, unemployed, shit inferstructure, mainly agricultural, extremly conservative, lack of industrialisation and controlled by Gamorra and Drangeta?

[Captain Colostomy]

Deep South, precisely South East... That's the thing that surprised me the most.

Really?!?!!!

Isn`t the South like...... well.... uneducated, unemployed, shit inferstructure, mainly agricultural, extremly conservative, lack of industrialisation and controlled by Gamorra and Drangeta?

I thought you were speaking of the US for a second.

[Lucanus]

Isn`t the South like...... well.... uneducated, unemployed, shit inferstructure, mainly agricultural, extremly conservative, lack of industrialisation and controlled by Gamorra and Drangeta?

Okay I'll try to answer point by point

1) Uneducated : not any more than the North (wanna talk about that guy who started speaking lombard in the EU Parliament?);
2) Unemployed : like the rest of Italy, albeit a little bit more because of shittier politicians;
3) Shit infrastructure : same as before;
4) Mainly agricultural : mainly touristic today;
5) Lack of industrialization : yes, in comparison with the North, but still, we have some big industries;
6) controlled by Camorra and 'Ndrangheta : not completely, Campania has problems with Camorra, Calabria has problems with 'Ndrangheta and Sicily has problems with Mafia, but Basilicata (where I live) and Apulia are relatively free of this shit (even though Apulia had Sacra Corona Unita, but it collapsed long ago).
Not to mention that 'Ndrangheta has practically invaded Lombardy.

It's really up to you how to grow up in this place!