Calling nominal and liberal Catholics

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Stop enabling the lobby group the Catholic Church has become!
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I'm imagining myself being a liberal Catholic. (Which isn't very hard, since I have been one!)

When I'm read down the paper, I'm like "yeah!" until it gets to the atheist screed. Then I'm immediately turned off.

If you're going to engage someone on the "religion is harmful" issue, don't throw in the "religion is false" stuff as well. It reads like: "You are better than your church! Also, you are an idiot for believing nonsense!"

Edit: To be honest I'd rather let this thread be more about how the Catholic Church specifically is quite sucking at this and must really drop the anti-birth control nonsense.

I'll be waiting for everyone else who'd like to discuss religion being harmful (it is) in any other thread. Thanks.

Last edited by Vexcalibur on 09 Mar 2012, 7:38 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Even when the person following it isn't a dogmatic bigot and actually derives something positive from it?

If believers support a bigoted, harmful, and outright criminal organisation like the Catholic Church, the answer is yes.

It is one thing to believe in the Bible and think that you have a personal relationship with god / Jesus, and another thing to be affiliated with an organisation that covers up sexual child abuse on a massive scale, protects the pedophile perpetrators from criminal prosecution and supplies them with fresh victims in another parish, practices gender-unequal employment, brainwashes women into voluntary slavery (as nuns), promotes discrimination against gays and lesbians, and worsens overpopulation, poverty and the spread of AIDS by indoctrinating people in impoverished Third World countries against contraceptives.

If people don't support these activities, they shouldn't support the organization. Alas, Catholics have been brought up to believe in the "extra ecclesiam nulla salus" dogma ("outside the church, there is no salvation", i.e., only Catholics get into heaven). As a result, even moderate and liberal Catholics who are critical of Vatican policies continue to back the church with their membership, like battered wives who keep going back to their abusive husbands. Which goes to show how powerful and harmful religious indoctrination can be.

Interesting points of contention, CatLord. Some perfectly valid, some a bit of a stretch. However, I'm compelled to ask if you've personally suffered abuse at the hands of the Roman Catholic Church considering that you saw fit to post an impassioned polemic indictment of it.

When the purpose is to convince someone, there should be an attempt not to antagonize them.

(I don't like when it goes all "Dark Ages". If there was one time when the Catholic Church was actually a beneficial and useful institution, it was precisely in the Middle Ages. It wasn't less false, but at least it was in the right era, not like now. It tried to inspire compassion, took care of the poor and weak and tried to limit violence, a difficult task with a military social elite. Also, it allowed for beautiful architecture. Not like today.)

Why do you assume that only a victim can feel strongly about something like massive child rape and the covering up thereof? I'd like to think that this is the default response. It should be utterly impossible for an empathetic and moral person not to feel outrage about this and strongly condemn the organisation that enables these acts, imho.

If people still support this church, including people in government positions, there is something wrong. The only explanation that I have for this strange moral blindness is cult-like indoctrination that borders on brainwashing. If a secular organisation committed the same acts, it would long have been shut down and the leaders would be behind bars.

To answer your question, I've never been a Catholic and have never been molested or raped by a priest. But I've never been clubbed by a baby seal hunter either.

Some Catholic priests abused children, but that doesn't mean there is a policy of "massive child rape". I think it is obvious that most haven't touched a children unlawfully. As I understand it, it's mostly the very top of the Church who act reliably and systematically stupidly, though many others still live in the 17th century. I remember at least one bishop here in Quebec who encouraged contraception (as is, with an organization).

(Btw, I am not Catholic, I am not even baptised.)

In my experience, I haven't witnessed people speak out against injustice with such passion and fervor except when they were the victim of it and it has affected them on a deeply personal level.



For the record, I don't condone whatever crimes the clergy of the RCC have committed, but it seems like your idea of a "default response" is to actively hector and ultimately abolish the Catholic Church, which in my eye makes you no better than the very people you condemn. If a religious organization is indeed malevolent and corrupt and isn't receptive to reforms, it will fall apart on its own accord as more and more individuals grow disillusioned with it, and I say this from the perspective of someone who actually was the member of a religious cult in his youth and personally witnessed the abuse of others.




I wasn't alluding to such, and not all abuse is sexual in nature. However, I still stand by my suspicion that you have a chip on your shoulder due to some traumatic experience related to organized religion.

After reading all that stuff through, Mr Vexcalibur, and having understood it, my answer is a definite NO.

Its worse that you claim to understand it

yeah I tried to leave the church in Poland, turns out, it's practically impossible. the constitutional right to opt out of a group that one hasn't agreed to be included in doesn't apply in this case because of the concordat. the priests have a lovely way of announcing that fact too. I was pretty much told to f**k off and given a "neener neener" triumphant kind of smile by one of those fat pedos.

Yeah, that makes sense, especially since the hierarchy sets the good "orthodox" Catholic position.

Religion is harmful, religion is helpful. It's your choice which it is.

The Catholic Church had a long time to change its ways. There have been some reforms to address the problem that people were leaving in droves ("you don't want your grandma to suffer in Limbo? No problem, we'll close Limbo and turn it into a billard room"), but nothing has significantly changed in regard to child abuse, gender inequality, opposition to contraception, or discrimination against LGBT people.

The problems that I've addressed are built into the system. One can't demand celibacy from an exclusively male clergy, give the clergy unmonitored access to young children who have been indoctrinated to trust priests unconditionally, and expect that clerical positions only attract mentally healthy men with a harmless sexual orientation.



So, all vehement critics of the Catholic Church -- people like Dawkins, Hitchens and Harris -- must have had traumatic experiences according to you. It's the old "atheists hate god because something bad happened to them" fallacy in a new dress. It can't possibly be that intellectuals who are capable of critical, rational thought and can look beyond the bubble of religious dogma are able to see the great damage that many forms of organized religion do to society, because believers can't admit that they might have a point. That would be blasphemy. (Not that I'd call myself an intellectual, mind you).

You don't even have to critically examine your core beliefs and risk losing your faith in order to see the Catholic Church for what it is. Just read the gospels, look at the RCC, and ask yourself: Is this really what Jesus had in mind? All this excessive wealth and corruption and political scheming? I'm not a Christian, but I know the teachings of Jesus. I don't see how they can possibly be reconciled with the scandal-ridden business that is the RCC. If Jesus were to visit the Vatican, he'd probably say "you've made my house into a den of robbers" and treat the clergy like the money changers in Matthew 21:12. And that's coming from an atheist.