What do you think about abortion

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It does matter.

Absent rape, a woman made a choice that resulted in getting pregnant. That's the difference.

I do not dispute there is probably a correlation in the United States but give me numbers from outside of the US. The evidence you have offered is both individual, US centric and anecdotal.

Most US conservatives strongly believe that the right to live begins at conception and ends at birth.

Teenagers today are actually less likely to have sex and drink and do drugs than 10-15 years ago, and MTV is yesterday's business.

Every generation thinks that their generation was more responsible than the following one, but the facts don't really bare that out.

And I'm confused as to why you are ashamed of teenagers for caring about the future?

It is not US centric. It's the Roman Catholic Church thats at the center of the international anti-abortion movement. The same Catholic Church that is also pro-death penalty, pro-war, and pro-pedofile. It's hardly an organization that any normal, intelligent, self thinking human being would look to for moral guidance.

The Catholic Church is anti-death penalty (http://www.catholicnews.com/data/storie ... 103884.htm), is anti-war (http://en.radiovaticana.va/news/2013/06 ... en1-697748) and not pro-pedophile. And as for the last sentence, I will try not to laugh at the idea that someone like Georges Lemaître was not intelligent or self-thinking; although I will grant you that he was not normal, since not everyone invents the big bang theory. I am going to depart this thread now as it has more or less devolved to the point of ad hominem due in no small part to your efforts.

Did you even read the links I gave you? Here I'll give you some more links. Not that I expect you will read any of them.

Death Penalty Retains Support, Even With Pro-Life Catholics

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CONCLUSION

As the Second Vatican Council noted, "insofar as men are sinful, the threat of war hangs over them, and hang over them it will until the return of Christ" (Gaudium et Spes 78 ). The danger of war will never be completely removed prior to the Second Coming.

Christ's followers must be willing to meet this challenge. They must be willing to wage war when it is just and they must be willing to wage it in a just manner.

Catholic Church Just War Doctrine

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Documents show Milwaukee archdiocese shielded pedophile priests

Roman Catholic Church Sex Abuse Cases

How the German Catholic Church Protected a Pedophile Priest

And from your own country. So you don't accuse me of being US centric.

Catholic church concealed pedophile priest Denis McAlinden's abuses
BY:DAN BOX From: The Australian July 01, 2013 1:57PM

THE Catholic church received repeated reports that a pedophile priest was abusing children, some as young as four, but failed to pass these on to police for decades, an inquiry has heard.

Church authorities instead actively concealed his abuse and encouraged the priest, Father Denis McAlinden, to move to other dioceses in Australia and overseas, where he was able to continue abusing children.

Catholic church concealed pedophile priest Denis McAlinden's abuses

Seems like you're not even reading your own sources. The official position of the Catholic Church is anti-death-penalty. Even the article mentions that. All you've proven is that American Catholics have a difference of opinion with the Vatican on one issue. So what?

1. The Vatican has only come out against capital punishment in the last few years. I've already posted several links to Catholic articles supporting the death penalty.

2. Who cares what the Vatican says. They flip-flop all the time. The fact is most pro-life Catholics support the death penalty.

I don't take anybody serious that calls themselves pro-life and supports killing people.

I'm not Catholic, so I don't have a dog in this fight. While I have several disagreements with Catholicism, I'm reluctant to get into issues with other Christians that can potentially be divisive. Since 91 has excused himself from this thread, and understandably so, I'll say this: he's tried to trap me into debating anti-Catholic issues before, and I made a point of not responding past maybe two posts. I could go on and on against Catholic theology and doctrine. I just don't see the point in engaging in a discussion that would end up being more harmful than helpful. So I'm not picking that up here, either.

I will say this, though--there is such a thing as justifiable homicide. If I feel threatened, and beyond reasonable doubt I can say my life or that of someone else is in imminent danger or even so much as at a risk for being in imminent danger due to a human intruder or like circumstance, I have no problem with shooting first and asking questions later. Kids used to vandalize my house, even after we installed security cameras (with infrared, I might add). So after we got evidence on camera and called the police, they even explained that the kids were putting themselves in danger because of what I had every right to do given the poor choices they were making. That's not to say, as angry as it made me, that I was eager to kill anyone. It simply means I had every right to protect my property and, most importantly, my family.

No, we don't have any firearms where we live now, but we do live in a rough neighborhood. People in rural areas like ours tend to mind their own business. But every now and then Meth Mouth down the road will get a wild hair to break into your shed, steal some stuff so he can buy more drugs. And he's gotten caught by rougher and tougher people than I am. Probably learned his lesson when the wrong guy put him through a wall, and last I heard this kid wasn't pressing charges. That's a can of worms you just don't want to open, and he's probably just glad he's still alive.

That's just reality. People shouldn't be punished for protecting themselves.

For most anything when bad things happen, you can talk it over. I had another kid messing with me after school once, so I pretended that I was going to play chicken with him (he was on foot, I was in my car). It wasn't a big deal, except his dad took issue with it. I didn't realize what a punk this kid was, but I was being stupid in front of a stupid little kid. Stupid dad comes over to my house. Before this guy finishes the big speech he'd prepared, I simply 'fessed up, admitted I was stupid, and assured him I wouldn't so much as look in that kid's direction again. That's all this guy wanted. A little diplomacy. He was ready to knock my head off and I took the wind out of him in less than 5 seconds.

That's the way things are supposed to work.

If you borrow something from someone and you break it, you buy them another one. If you're forced to take something without my knowledge, fine...just give it back when you're done and maybe add a little extra monetary compensation for its use. Heck, I'm using someone's empty lot to plant a veggie garden, and because I'm a nice guy I mow half of it (more than I have to) and hire someone to bush hog the rest of it every few weeks. Out in redneckville, that's how things go.

When things go wrong and you end up in court--which we try to avoid at all costs because there's nothing worse than the government getting all up in your business--a judge decides what's fair and grants a plaintiff an award appropriate to the pleading and penalizes the defendant according to what is fairly owed to the court and to the plaintiff. What's important to note here is decisions are based on what is FAIR, and good, old-fashioned, common sense often holds that your "mental/emotional pain and suffering" is above and beyond what is fair. Why? Because you can't put a price on that. To get those kinds of awards, something REALLY screwed up has to happen.

As an example, my wife was in a car accident in which she was not at fault...heck, she wasn't even the driver. The hospital went after her for the bill, which was supposed to be covered by the driver's insurance policy. When the insurance people refused to cooperate, my wife lawyered up. And her lawyer pulled every stop he could to squeeze every bit of money out of the people responsible for taking care of this hospital bill. Is it because we're greedy for money? No. It's because those entrusted to take care of the financial consequences weren't holding up to their end of the bargain and it was about to put us in bankruptcy. All my wife wanted was to get the hospital paid for. Now they not only have to pay emergency room bills but legal fees on top of that. My wife didn't get much cash back from the settlement, and she was fine with that because it ended the way she wanted. But her lawyer was prepared to take this all the way because 1) he hates seeing good people get screwed over, and 2) he likes to WIN. Those people are lucky that we hate frivolous lawsuits on principle. We're not out to screw anyone. We just want to be treated fairly.

That's all. Fairness.

Rapists and child molesters have often demonstrated that they don't do well running free in society, so we tend to lock them up for life in many cases. In other cases, we give them the old scarlet letter by making them register as sex offenders. They deserve to be punished and society deserves to be kept safe from them. So we work out FAIR ways to deprive or limit their freedom in accordance with the severity of the crime they committed. Rapists, in my view, really do deserve death, but we tend to look for alternatives.

However, if someone commits unjustifiable homicide, what we often refer to as "murder," there's no such thing as a fair exchange for the crime. That person took a person's life. There's no getting back. There's no amount of money you can put on that that will make anyone else magically feel that their loved one has somehow been restored to them. I suppose you could do life in prison. But what kind of life is that? The only truly fair exchange for a life is another life--that of the guilty. So you could look at it as a form of mercy in that death spares you from a miserable life of restricted freedom. The death penalty is justified killing and hardly qualifies as murder in terms of what you've been describing.

If you take war as another example, you have to have some mean by which you can determine that the war is a just war. There is nothing at all wrong with helping our friends in times of great need. If a few aggressors must die to save the peaceful many, I see no problem with intervening. If a country comes under attack, there is no shame in that country doing what it must to preserve itself and its citizens. Causing those who make war against it to die is a terrible, unfortunate consequence, but it is terribly and unfortunately often necessary. Western objectives in warfare seek to minimize losses inflicted on the enemy and rather address the causes of unrest. But no amount of trying to win converts will ever completely eliminate the threat that the enemy poses to those he tries to kill or conquer. Sometimes death is the only way the enemy CAN be reasonably dealt with, as regrettable as that is. No human being should have to be faced with surrender to an aggressor and the forfeiture of their own lives as the sole means of resolving conflict. If someone has to die, it shouldn't have to be the innocent.

The pro-life position has as its fundamental aim the preservation of life. They won't object to the death penalty nor to war for a just cause because it means that ultimately life is preserved despite some unfortunate loss. Deterring an enemy in armed conflict saves lives who would be negatively impacted or destroyed by the actions of the enemy. "Life for life" through the death penalty is about all the justice you can give the families of murder victims and society as a whole. Getting rid of those who seek to destroy life is a greater good than letting them run free or rewarding bad behavior by letting them live out their lives, albeit behind bars, with three hots and a cot and no worries for the rest of their days. That's not really justice at all.

The unborn have committed no crimes and generally pose no threat to the mothers who carry them. And it certainly isn't their fault if they are there because the mother was raped. There are too painfully few justifications for abortion to allow it to be so easy to obtain. IF and ONLY IF a baby poses an imminent threat to the mother's life OR IF and ONLY IF the presence of a baby is the result of a clear violation of the mother's will to conceive, which would be invalidated if it is shown that the woman was a willing participant in the act that led to conception--even assuming the risks of contraceptive failures if they're being used--THEN and ONLY THEN could I see even a remote justification for the destruction of human life BECAUSE that destruction of human life falls under the same justification as self-defense or war. It's not that the baby intends to take the mother's life, but because the woman must choose between her life and that of her baby. In the case of rape, I can't see how it is just to force a woman to live with the consequences of being violated. But it remains that a human life is destroyed in the process, and that loss of life must be accounted for. And I say that burden falls on the rapist, and he should be tried for murder should an abortion be carried out.

Could you show me, when Jesus or the pope told to be for death penalty? O_o



The Vatican IS the catholic church. Some lunatic dumbheads, that misinterpret their own believing as jewish and are recalling the old testament all the time, and still call themselves christian-catholics, even when they completly ignore the book that CHRISTian religion relies on, are hardly Catholics, because Catholics are christians and not jews, so the New Testament is the foundation of their religion and not the old Testament those lunatics always refer. And the Jesus I read about, never wanted to force someone by law, to agree his oppinion. He tried to talk to people, understand them, and tried to show them other ways and options, but I wouldnt have known, when in the New Testament he would have told his followers to create signs and protest violently against people, that are against his oppinion.

Obviously you live in a different country or something. There are two sides one that say the youth is worse and some that say that it is not as bad. It is definitely worse than the 90s when I was a teen. I should know. And the MTV thing does not mean MTV necessarily now I guess it would be all reality TV stuff just used MTV for lack of a better term.

Where do you get your information from? There are teens now and college age that are doing all kinds of sex parties and craziness rapes are happening across campuses and most are under reported. Maybe I am wrong but if you listen to the rape prevention organizations they claim that statutory and rape on college campuses are happening and up to now most go unreported. Look at the Stuebenville, Ohio case which is actually high school and the rape case there. Girls and young women are too afraid to come forward for fear of ridicule and reprisal. Most people do not believe them or they went to some party got drunk and they are blamed because they should not have gotten drunk. That is irrelevent. Whatever happened to taking care of your friends when they are drinking.

Sorry but rape like this was not happening 15 years age. People just want to bury their heads in the sand and act as if it it is not happening. Shootings at schools are going to continue to increase because no one is looking out for the people on the outside. School shootings are a product of a society that promotes bullying and the whole kids will be kids mentality. When someone goes off and says they are going to shoot people they just ignore it. I mean look at the guy who shot up the movie theater in CO. They knew he was a threat long before he committed the killings.

I guess ashamed of the youth is the wrong word. Disgusted with them is more like it. That they do not care. These will be our leaders some day and they are more interested in partying and spring break and sex. It is the dumbing down of society that has reached critical mass.

I was under the impression pro-lifers were also against the death penalty. Is there now a third camp that believes the death penalty and pro-life?

What about pro-lifers that are not religious. Like me. Where do we fit. I do not agree with the idea of only caring about a life up to being born. I have the opinion that someine has a right to live even after they are born. Also I am not of any political affiliation I hate conservative and liberal the same. If I was it would be independent.

The bible is just a collection of stories. There is no proof that it is fact. But Christians believe it is. Christianity was preceded by Gnosticism and many of the common beliefs of ealy christianity can be traced to this pre-christian belief.

I mean Jesus was executed for showing respect for even the downtrodden the thieves and the prostitutes. Although he was martyred and crucified to pay for our sins. At least this is how the story goes. In a basic sense. Jesus spoke for everyone because he was god and god loves everyone equally. These dang Old Testament crazies believe in a vengeful fire and brimstone god that punishes the unworthy and condemns the non believers and smites the guilty. Then there are those who believe in rapture and that all will be judged at the end of the world. It is all a bunch of crazy nonsense. Then you got all the Doomsday cults and you get a whole nother kind of crazy.