What IS good, and how do we determine it?

[Catholic_Lady]

I'd much prefer that they not condone rape etc themselves, rather than believe or not what some dusty old book says.

Well that too of course. I just figured that was assumed, since I don't see how a person who believes in God could honestly think rape was ok if they thought God was not ok with it. If that makes sense.

[Tonus]

I apologize for "switching." I don't believe God ever did condone rape (I don't believe that story at all), so to me, all that matters is whether people believe He did. As long as they don't believe He did, then I don't care about the details.

In Numbers 31 god at the very least condones it. It is worth noting that god's instructions were simply to "take vengeance" on the Midianites (verse 1) and leaves the details to the Israelites. They kill all the men and take the women and children as prisoners. It is Moses who tells them to kill every prisoner with the exception of the virgin girls, who they are instructed to "save for [them]selves" (verse 18). The total of women who were thus "saved" is 32,000. Considering that number and the listed numbers of livestock, the total who were massacred was at least in the high six figures.

I suppose that some will claim that these girls were lucky, because they weren't killed... they 'only' got to watch their homeland ravaged, their families slaughtered, after which they became the personal sex toy of one of the men who participated in that atrocity. But that level of moral relativity turns Yahweh into a very different god than the one you think you are worshiping, IMO.

[The Grand Nudger]

I apologize for "switching." I don't believe God ever did condone rape (I don't believe that story at all), so to me, all that matters is whether people believe He did. As long as they don't believe He did, then I don't care about the details.

-and this shows..that despite your constant protestations..you -do- have a moral compass which is -not- dependent upon a god, and that you can explain what is right or wrong -in spite- of what a god may have done.   You have created your own god, and simply given it the name of the OT god for added authority (as did all the christians who came before you - ask a jew). That you rationalize your rejection of a god and his actions as a rejection of horrible -fictional- stories is precisely how I conceptualize those same stories, and precisely why my rejecting your religion has nothing to do with any rejection of a god.  

God never did any of that to begin with, and a "good god" never would.  Sound familiar? Now, if only you'd use that very same moral compass -that you clearly possess- in the case of the NT god, and the depravity of vicarious redemption and hell......you might say something along the lines of "well, I don't think that god ever did condone that (I don't believe that story at all)". There are, of course, christians who do precisely that. They don't believe in those stories, for the same reasons that they (and you...and I) don't believe that god ever called his troops to genocide...despite the text being clear in each and every case.

[abaris]

You may recall that when the bishops did speak out against Nazism in the earliest days of the war, Hitler ordered massive bombing in retaliation, and many innocent civilians died.

As Parker said, examples, sources, if you please. The names of the bishops from countries Hitler wasn't already at war with, since speaking out against an enemy of state is no big deal and the supposed retaliation bombing can be just as well an ordinary bombing.

It gets more interesting when looking at Hitler's direct sphere of influence. There we find one bishop having the guts to take a real stand: Clemens August Graf von Galen, bishop of Münster, who was very vocal about the so called Euthanasia program of the Nazis. Absolutely nothing bad happened to him after taking a public stance against Hitler. Too influential, too public a figure to remove in times of war. The Euthanasia program was abandoned for a time after von Galen had made it public. So, only positive effects after speaking out. That's one figure to respect in a sea of towing the line hierarchy.

[dyresand]

Pretty sure Paul in the bible said the opposite of god being good. Paul wrote god is not all good and is not all just. Even then
its common sense to know what is good and bad we already have the innate sense of good and bad religion/god doesn't tell
you what is right and wrong we evolved to know what right and wrong is. We know hurting and harming others is bad and
we don't do that. We know its good to help others that need help because its good.

[Metis]

None of which addresses the point I made about Hitler's retaliation against innocent people when a priest or bishop preached against Nazism, does it?

Why did you skip over that?

I didn't Randy, my point was that it is a tenant of Catholic Theology that the ends do not justify the means. That's why that ten year old girl who is barred from getting an abortion over in Paraguay who keeps getting threads about her on Catholic Answers at the moment can't get one.

Sure she might be crippled for life, the child is to all accounts probably going to be severely disabled too (of course I hope not) but she must give birth to the child or suffer hell. So long as it dies outside the womb she's in the clear sin wise.

Another. possibly even better example that springs to mind is the self-spite that has occurred in Europe when it comes to child adoption from Catholic centers in Europe. When same sex marriage goes through in a country all the Catholic adoption centers automatically shut down. They admit this is damaging to the children they've got inside, sometimes they even admit the child would be better off with a family than stuck in an institution. Doesn't matter, not committing sin comes before a childs welfare. The Catholic Church in Ireland, Australia and America has actually gone much further and has threatened to shut down all of its hospitals if same sex marriage bills pass. Thankfully in Ireland this apparently was an empty threat but it demonstrates the point; it doesn't matter if we leave an entire country stuck without healthcare, it's more important we don't sin. Screw your wellbeing, avoiding sin trumps all else.

Pius XII sat on the fence the entire war, he was hiding Jews under his floor one moment to appease the allies and sometimes during the very same day was directing Catholics in Eastern states to support Nazi Germany. Lets not forget now that prior to it's devolution the first government that Hitler as chancellor led was a coalition between no other than the Nazis and the Catholic Center! And if that wasn't bad enough, the Catholics held the majority in that unholy alliance!

The Catholic Church wasn't against Hitler, Pius may not have ever got up on the Papal Balcony waving Pom Pom's for Saint Hitler but he sure never directly opposed him. He had a duty to stand up and call out sins as Catholics so eagerly remind us today about almost every topic going and he didn't.

To say it was because he "feared for the lives of the innocent" is naivety at best. Where was his concern for the lives of the innocent when the Croatian Catholics were beating the shit out of the Orthodox Serbs? Where was his opposition to the Nazi's when Cardinal Hudal was openly helping SS and Nazi war criminals escape Berlin after the war? Where was his concern for the Jews when Fr.Joseph Tizo (A Catholic Priest and Hungarian leader) was openly rounding up Jews to send to one of Hitlers concentration camps?

Pius XII was a politician par excellence, but he was possibly the singly most most ineffectual and plain cowardly cleric that has led the Catholic Church in modern times. At least in his 33 day tenure John Paul I actually called sinners out like his job title suggests he should.

Your theology from everywhere from Aquinas to Newman states very, very clearly there is no excuse for tolerating sin nor one for not calling it out and purging it from the earth. Catholics have practiced it in everywhere from Just wars against non believers as they did with the Cathars to adoption today. Except when it's inconvenient for you and would risk later backfire or a drop in donations (Germany has always been the biggest funder of the RC up until the US overtook it, but it still sits at number two even today).

I think it might and for good reason! I'm just a poor, amateur apologist...of no real account to anyone.  

But what I asked is if you might actually develop an APPRECIATION for Catholic theology if you had studied it from OUR side of the divide. Stockholm Syndrome and all that.  

I apologize for that, reading it through a second time I think I phrased the bit about understanding theology rather poorly. Not the kind of tone I intended.  

As for appreciating the Theology...It depends what you mean. I don't hesitate to acknowledge the Catholic Church has one of the richest and deep Theological traditions in Christianity, but by the same token it's had far more resources at it's disposal than the Protestants or Orthodox to manage this level of academia (Although the Greek Orthodox and Coptics really aren't that far off either in sheer quantity, level and breadth of theological training they get). I do suppose I would have to say that though, I did study with a Greek Orthodox institution.

That said I don't agree with the conclusions, the further ahead we go with Catholic Theology I personally see an ever increasing level of autocracy absent in the early church. I also see several elements of Catholic Teaching which even the Roman Catholic Church concedes is based upon false premises (for instance the claim held up until the Lateran concordat with Mussolini that the Pope had a mandate originating from the so called Donation of Constantine to supreme temporal power). It had confessed long before then the document was a forgery, but it was only then it finally relinquished the claim and even then it wouldn't have happened if it hadn't been on the verge of bankruptcy (that $92 million dollars was a hell of a lot of money back then after all and they were deep in debt).

I don't think this is a matter of Orthodox bias Randy, I don't believe in their theological claims either (and there are holes in their theology too) but there are just some claims the Catholic Church makes on a doctrinal level that were I a christian I simply couldn't find viable. Your catechisms for instance are infallible right? Empowered by the teaching authority of the church? Then how come many, many works prior to 1870 such as Keelan's catechism explicitly deny Papal Infallibility? Simpsons works on the subject are rather good I think.

When I look at older texts I see lots and lots of whitewashing in Catholic Theology, when a new teaching is revealed or made dogma I see lots of rewriting of history going on. I've no problem with this in principle, all Christians do it to a degree but none so deeply or deny it so fiercely as the Catholic Church.

I think many Catholic theological works are eloquent and make thoughtful reading, but in practice they speak about points that are vague or meaningless to most Catholics and will be rewritten or hidden from view when changes come that make the points raised inconvenient.

Your spirituality in practice I have more respect for, I find the rosary for instance to be a powerful symbol and devotional tool in Catholicism of which derivatives of such as the Anglican Rosary have never achieved the same mass acceptance. Catholicism as a lifestyle and culture is far more profound and visible than Protestantism (or it least it has the potential to be) due to your visible unity in sight if not in practice, after all cafeteria Christianity is a far bigger phenomena in Catholicism than in Orthodoxy. But that's to be expected since the Orthodox Patriarchs simply can't pull an idea out of their ass all on their own and say "God said we're doing this now". I mean...I have no idea how Humanae Vitae even managed to leave the Vatican office, the scriptural backing is non existent and it finds no backing in the Church fathers so it's no surprise most Catholics ignore it. Well, other than the fact it's impossible for most couples to practice.

And looking at this post I can see I've rambled for too long. I'm trying to demonstrate I'm being fair in my assessment Randy, I know most Non-Catholic Theologians are geared towards lashing back at Catholicism (as a response to never ceasing aggressive Catholic apologetic tracts aimed at them 90% of the time) but I'm not trying to convert you, after all I think you're all wrong. Just saying it as I see it.

[Randy Carson]

Randy's point is that if God had come out and hit everyone with all the morals all at once, it wouldn't have worked. People wouldn't have listened. People would have just dismissed it all right away and never changed. So God had to do it slowly for it to actually work. That's all Randy is saying here. I don't see why that should make you want to vomit.

(i'm going to keep saying this is randy's position not mine so that I don't get accused of believing things I don't actually believe)

And my point is that God, as an extremely powerful being, would have known a million ways to get the Israelites to accept all the morals at once.  Hell, he could have just poofed it into their brain.  

What makes the vomit rise in my throat is that both you and Randy seem to think that forcing a woman to share a bed with her rapist for a lifetime, probably bearing his children, is somehow acceptable under any context.

Then swallow hard because it gets even better.

The woman taken into an Israelite home as a wife was fortunate. There, she would hear the Law of Moses and of God's covenant with Abraham, the father of the nation. She would learn of Adam & Eve, of Noah, of Jacob's journey to Egypt. She would learn about Pharoah and the mighty deeds performed before Pharaoh. She would learn of the Passover, the manna that fed the people in the desert and of all the feasts that God had instituted. She would learn of Moses and the burning bush as well as the 10 commandments given to Moses. Above all, she would learn to worship the true God instead of the lifeless idols and gods of other nations.

She would be a very lucky lady, indeed.

[Randy Carson]

None of which addresses the point I made about Hitler's retaliation against innocent people when a priest or bishop preached against Nazism, does it?

Why did you skip over that?

I didn't Randy, my point was that it is a tenant of Catholic Theology that the ends do not justify the means. That's why that ten year old girl who is barred from getting an abortion over in Paraguay who keeps getting threads about her on Catholic Answers at the moment can't get one.

Sure she might be crippled for life, the child is to all accounts probably going to be severely disabled too (of course I hope not) but she must give birth to the child or suffer hell. So long as it dies outside the womb she's in the clear sin wise.

Another. possibly even better example that springs to mind is the self-spite that has occurred in Europe when it comes to child adoption from Catholic centers in Europe. When same sex marriage goes through in a country all the Catholic adoption centers automatically shut down. They admit this is damaging to the children they've got inside, sometimes they even admit the child would be better off with a family than stuck in an institution. Doesn't matter, not committing sin comes before a childs welfare. The Catholic Church in Ireland, Australia and America has actually gone much further and has threatened to shut down all of its hospitals if same sex marriage bills pass. Thankfully in Ireland this apparently was an empty threat but it demonstrates the point; it doesn't matter if we leave an entire country stuck without healthcare, it's more important we don't sin. Screw your wellbeing, avoiding sin trumps all else.

Pius XII sat on the fence the entire war, he was hiding Jews under his floor one moment to appease the allies and sometimes during the very same day was directing Catholics in Eastern states to support Nazi Germany. Lets not forget now that prior to it's devolution the first government that Hitler as chancellor led was a coalition between no other than the Nazis and the Catholic Center! And if that wasn't bad enough, the Catholics held the majority in that unholy alliance!

The Catholic Church wasn't against Hitler, Pius may not have ever got up on the Papal Balcony waving Pom Pom's for Saint Hitler but he sure never directly opposed him. He had a duty to stand up and call out sins as Catholics so eagerly remind us today about almost every topic going and he didn't.

To say it was because he "feared for the lives of the innocent" is naivety at best. Where was his concern for the lives of the innocent when the Croatian Catholics were beating the shit out of the Orthodox Serbs? Where was his opposition to the Nazi's when Cardinal Hudal was openly helping SS and Nazi war criminals escape Berlin after the war? Where was his concern for the Jews when Fr.Joseph Tizo (A Catholic Priest and Hungarian leader) was openly rounding up Jews to send to one of Hitlers concentration camps?

Pius XII was a politician par excellence, but he was possibly the singly most most ineffectual and plain cowardly cleric that has led the Catholic Church in modern times. At least in his 33 day tenure John Paul I actually called sinners out like his job title suggests he should.

Your theology from everywhere from Aquinas to Newman states very, very clearly there is no excuse for tolerating sin nor one for not calling it out and purging it from the earth. Catholics have practiced it in everywhere from Just wars against non believers as they did with the Cathars to adoption today. Except when it's inconvenient for you and would risk later backfire or a drop in donations (Germany has always been the biggest funder of the RC up until the US overtook it, but it still sits at number two even today).

I think it might and for good reason! I'm just a poor, amateur apologist...of no real account to anyone.  

But what I asked is if you might actually develop an APPRECIATION for Catholic theology if you had studied it from OUR side of the divide. Stockholm Syndrome and all that.  

I apologize for that, reading it through a second time I think I phrased the bit about understanding theology rather poorly. Not the kind of tone I intended.  

As for appreciating the Theology...It depends what you mean. I don't hesitate to acknowledge the Catholic Church has one of the richest and deep Theological traditions in Christianity, but by the same token it's had far more resources at it's disposal than the Protestants or Orthodox to manage this level of academia (Although the Greek Orthodox and Coptics really aren't that far off either in sheer quantity, level and breadth of theological training they get). I do suppose I would have to say that though, I did study with a Greek Orthodox institution.

That said I don't agree with the conclusions, the further ahead we go with Catholic Theology I personally see an ever increasing level of autocracy absent in the early church. I also see several elements of Catholic Teaching which even the Roman Catholic Church concedes is based upon false premises (for instance the claim held up until the Lateran concordat with Mussolini that the Pope had a mandate originating from the so called Donation of Constantine to supreme temporal power). It had confessed long before then the document was a forgery, but it was only then it finally relinquished the claim and even then it wouldn't have happened if it hadn't been on the verge of bankruptcy (that $92 million dollars was a hell of a lot of money back then after all and they were deep in debt).

I don't think this is a matter of Orthodox bias Randy, I don't believe in their theological claims either (and there are holes in their theology too) but there are just some claims the Catholic Church makes on a doctrinal level that were I a christian I simply couldn't find viable. Your catechisms for instance are infallible right? Empowered by the teaching authority of the church? Then how come many, many works prior to 1870 such as Keelan's catechism explicitly deny Papal Infallibility? Simpsons works on the subject are rather good I think.

When I look at older texts I see lots and lots of whitewashing in Catholic Theology, when a new teaching is revealed or made dogma I see lots of rewriting of history going on. I've no problem with this in principle, all Christians do it to a degree but none so deeply or deny it so fiercely as the Catholic Church.

I think many Catholic theological works are eloquent and make thoughtful reading, but in practice they speak about points that are vague or meaningless to most Catholics and will be rewritten or hidden from view when changes come that make the points raised inconvenient.

Your spirituality in practice I have more respect for, I find the rosary for instance to be a powerful symbol and devotional tool in Catholicism of which derivatives of such as the Anglican Rosary have never achieved the same mass acceptance. Catholicism as a lifestyle and culture is far more profound and visible than Protestantism (or it least it has the potential to be) due to your visible unity in sight if not in practice, after all cafeteria Christianity is a far bigger phenomena in Catholicism than in Orthodoxy. But that's to be expected since the Orthodox Patriarchs simply can't pull an idea out of their ass all on their own and say "God said we're doing this now". I mean...I have no idea how Humanae Vitae even managed to leave the Vatican office, the scriptural backing is non existent and it finds no backing in the Church fathers so it's no surprise most Catholics ignore it. Well, other than the fact it's impossible for most couples to practice.

And looking at this post I can see I've rambled for too long. I'm trying to demonstrate I'm being fair in my assessment Randy, I know most Non-Catholic Theologians are geared towards lashing back at Catholicism (as a response to never ceasing aggressive Catholic apologetic tracts aimed at them 90% of the time) but I'm not trying to convert you, after all I think you're all wrong. Just saying it as I see it.

Thank you for your thoughts.

[Randy Carson]

I also feel like I need to speak up for Randy here.

While he and I have a different understanding of the OT stories, he has made it perfectly clear that....

1. He does not condone rape.

2. He does not believe God condones rape.

3. He believes God had to integrate Himself slowly into the morality of the people of the time, because they would not have listened if they were hit with all the laws on morality all at once.

^You don't have to agree with Randy's assessment of the OT, but to say he condones rape and/or believes God condones rape is just dishonest.

CL-

Thanks, but I got this.

You might want to start a new thread. This one has outlived its useful life. It's all quibbling and repeating previously stated positions now.

[Randy Carson]

You may recall that when the bishops did speak out against Nazism in the earliest days of the war, Hitler ordered massive bombing in retaliation, and many innocent civilians died.

As Parker said, examples, sources, if you please. The names of the bishops from countries Hitler wasn't already at war with, since speaking out against an enemy of state is no big deal and the supposed retaliation bombing can be just as well an ordinary bombing.

Here is a massive article that is available online: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catholic_r...zi_Germany

The Israeli consul, Pinchas E. Lapide, in his book, Three Popes and the Jews (New York: Hawthorn Books, Inc., 1967) critically examines Pope Pius XII. According to his research, the Catholic Church under Pius XII was instrumental in saving 860,000 Jews from Nazi death camps (p. 214).

Could Pius have saved more lives by speaking out more forcefully? According to Lapide, the concentration camp prisoners did not want Pius to speak out openly (p. 247). As one jurist from the Nuremberg Trials said on WNBC in New York (Feb. 28, 1964), "Any words of Pius XII, directed against a madman like Hitler, would have brought on an even worse catastrophe... [and] accelerated the massacre of Jews and priests." (Ibid.)

Yet Pius was not totally silent either. Lapide notes a book by the Jewish historian, Jenoe Levai, entitled, The Church Did Not Keep Silent (p. 256). He admits that everyone, including himself, could have done more. If we condemn Pius, then justice would demand condemning everyone else. He concludes by quoting from the Talmud that "whosoever preserves one life, it is accounted to him by Scripture as if he had preserved a whole world." With this he claims that Pius XII deserves a memorial forest of 860,000 trees in the Judean hills (pp. 268-9). It should be noted that six million Jews and three million Catholics were killed in the Holocaust.

+++

In response to the outrageous accusations posted in this thread, three books by three Jews have been noted by me:

The Myth of Hitler's Pope by Rabbi David Dalen
Three Popes and the Jews by Pinchas E. Lapide
The Church Did Not Keep Silent by Jenoe Levai

Many more could be named in the defense of the Church and Pius XII.

The idea that Pius XII was indifferent to the plight of the Jews during World War II was first put forward in Rolf Hochhuth's play, “The Deputy,” produced during the Cold War. It's a pity that the lies contained in that Soviet propaganda have taken such hold over so many.